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Jake walked out of the hospital into a raw, sleeting December afternoon. He shivered, buried his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and hunched against the cold. He needed to walk. If it were warmer he’d walk for miles and miles until the Earth beneath the pavement took his grief and his worry and held them. Instead, he went to the mall.
He felt out of place there, with its fluorescent lights and piped-in Christmas music. Looked out of place, too, with his blue hair, Doc Martin boots, and an enormous pentacle painted on the back of his jacket. People both stared and looked away, the security guards frowned at him, but nobody hassled him. If he stayed out of the stores and didn’t talk to anyone, they usually left him alone. So he walked, hands in his pockets, from Sears at one end to a Christmas display in front of J.C. Penny at the other, where toddlers were lined up to have their pictures taken in Santa’s lap. It was almost an eighth of a mile from one end of the mall to the other. He looped around and walked down the other side again. And again.
His grandmother’s surgery was tomorrow. The grandmother who’d raised him, who’d never batted an eye at his hair or his music or his Paganism but had held him steady through some very difficult years. The operation would either restore her eyesight, or very likely leave her permanently blind.
He wished he could build a bonfire, one with flames higher than his head, and stand in front of it screaming curses at the sky or just staring into the flames. He wished he still had a working group. Back when the coven was still together, Sara and Mike would draw down at almost every meeting, opening themselves to the Lady and Lord. Like the wicks of lanterns, wicks that didn’t themselves burn but that held the flames, they held the Gods in the cast circle so Jake and the others could see and be seen, speak and be spoken to by those ancient Deities.
What Jake needed now was to look the Horned God in the eye, feel that presence—warm and bright and terrifying all at once.
Back at the Christmas display, he looked at the Santa with his fake beard, his suit of cheap red velvet padded to make him look fat. Mike had once told him how the myth of Santa Claus came from the same roots as the Horned God, the God of winter riding through the skies with the Wild Hunt on the longest night of the year. How did such a powerful archetype devolve into this?
He watched a child climb down from Santa’s knee to take his mother’s hand and be led away. For the moment, there was no line. The man in the red suit slouched in his throne, bored and idly looking around. He noticed Jake then, standing by the velvet rope. Jake hadn’t even realized he was staring until the man smirked and said, “And what do you want for Christmas, young man?”
“Please,” Jake answered. He hadn’t even realized he was going to speak. “Please, may I tell you?”
There was enough earnestness in his voice to make the man look at him more seriously. The smirk was gone. He shrugged and said, “OK. Sure.”
That surprised Jake. He was surprised at himself as well for coming up with such a crazy idea. He made his way into the display and up onto the little stage and stood before the throne. Shit. He was going to do this. It might even work. If he was doing it at all, he’d make it real. He looked up, raising his arms to the sky that was beyond the ceiling. “The old year dies,” he said. “The sun returns.” Behind the fake beard, Santa gave him a quizzical look. Jake met his eyes and went on. “All around us, fires burn.” He was chanting, making it up as he went, rhymes coming into his head as he spoke. “God of winter, taking flight, riding through the longest night.” He could feel it now, elemental energy boiling up from the ground and rising through his body. “By Earth and sky I work my will and call to thee, this priest to fill!”
He made a sweeping gesture of invocation. The same eyes looked back at him from behind the beard, but they were different now. A profound stillness was behind them, and from somewhere very deep, the man said, “Speak, my child. Ask of me one gift.”
Jake felt giddy. Felt like he was standing on the edge of a precipice. “My grandmother’s eyesight restored,” he said.
Ancient eyes, still holding his. “So be it.”
Jake knelt. He bowed, touching his forehead to the plywood floor of the stage. “Thank you,” he said.
When he looked up again, the man in the red suit was breathless, his eyes wild with bewilderment. “What did you do?” he said. “What in God’s name did you…?”
“Thank you,” Jake said again. He stood and leaned forward to lay his hands over the man’s white knuckles. “Ground,” he said. “Release it. Release the energy. Let it return to the Earth.”
The man swallowed and shook his head, staring up at Jake. “What on Earth…?”
“You should eat something. Maybe drink some water.”
A security guard appeared. “Is there some trouble here?” he demanded.
Jake let go and stood up straight, backing away. The man in the Santa suit waved off the guard. “No, it’s fine. It’s …” He was shaking his head slowly as if trying to remember a dream after waking.
“Blessed be,” said Jake. He bowed, palms together, and turned and left for home.
Peter Cooper Hay is the pen name for Peter Bishop. He’s a retired science teacher, a Quaker, and a Wiccan/Pagan, and his eclectic background comes through in his writing, where hard science can weave together with mysticism, magic, and political intrigue. He lives with his wife in a ramshackle farmhouse in western Massachusetts, and when he's not writing he can usually be found in his workshop playing with his power tools.