“By the pricking of my thumbs,
Something wicked this way comes.”-William Shakespeare, “Macbeth”
***
Grace was an old woman now, and she was about to die, but neither of those things were really what was bothering her.
Rather, she was thinking about the conversation she would have before she died, one she’d known was coming all along but still wasn’t ready for. Because when are we ever ready, really?
Grace was so old that all of her children were dead themselves–her oldest had been 80 when he finally passed on last year–and even her grandchildren were graying and increasingly prone to forgetfulness. She had great and great-great grandchildren, but they were young and she didn’t know them well, since young people rarely paid much mind to very old relatives like her–it had been so ever since she was that age herself.
She was old, but her mind was still as sharp and nimble as when she was 30, and she could still walk all the way up every flight of stairs to her little apartment on the ninth floor. Not as easily as she had once, maybe, but her bones rolled when she told them to and that was the important part.
She wasn’t weak or silly or dull like a lot of people when they got close to her age, and she felt proud and even a little haughty over it–she didn’t get nearly the credit that she deserved, she felt.
It had a good run by any account–99 years last October, and time had been kind.
Nevertheless, she was going to die–she’d woken up knowing it would happen, and feeling annoyed; she had other things she wanted to get done today.
But there was nothing for it–she would go quietly in her sleep that very night.
The thing to do, then, was not to sleep–let death come in and do the business face to face if he dared, but she wasn’t going to make it easy on him.
As the sun went down she continued pottering around her apartment, and she made up her appointments calendar for the next week, just like usual. (She’d kept busy all these years, never wanting to be one of those sad sack old people who never see anyone.)
When that was done she’d put on coffee–she’d drank good, strong, black coffee every night since she could remember, and it never kept her up, because when it was time to sleep she slept and that was all there was to it–and when the power went out around 11 PM (“Oh well now this is just what I need.”) she continued to drink it cold.
When the whole pot was done she changed into her nightgown, stopped in the privy to take one last piss for posterity’s sake, and went off to bed but emphatically not to sleep.
Her bare feet padded along the rug in the short hallway leading to the bedroom. She’d lived in this apartment ever since George died–so, longer than she’d lived in every other place combined. Most of the people she’d known once had moved out of the city, buying houses in dreary little towns and then driving 90 minutes to come here every week anyway; Grace never left.
There was a picture of George on the mantle that had sat there so long that the spot on the wall behind it was a different color. Whenever the topic of dying came up–as inevitably it did when you got old–people assured her that when the time came she’d see George again, and wouldn’t that be wonderful?
Naturally she’d agreed and said the sentimental things that were expected of her, but if she’d been honest with anyone, she’d probably have asked how in the hell was she to know?
It’d been 50 goddamn years since she’d seen him–more than twice as long as they’d been married in the first place. And now she was expected to contemplate eternity with the man? With a man who had, for all intents and purposes, been married to a completely different woman?
Everyone is a lot of different people over a lifetime–only the dead stay the same.
But nobody wanted to hear that, so she didn’t say it. In any case, George wasn’t on her mind tonight. He wasn’t the one she was going to see now.
She went to bed but didn’t sleep. Instead she lit candles and, feeling vaguely foolish about it, opened up her Bible; it was one of the only things in the apartment that wasn’t particularly old, having been given to her 13 years ago by a well-meaning but actually quite stupid friend who noticed she didn’t seem to have one.
“I used to have an old family one of course, but it was lost in the move,” she’d said at the time. This wasn’t true–the family Bible had been George’s, and in fact she’d not lost it while moving, but thrown it away.
Now she started reading, not out of any particular desire to but just the sense that it would be appropriate. After about ten minutes she gave up–how did anyone ever tolerate this nonsense, she wondered? She switched to reading Vonnegut instead; it made the dying go easier.
This went on for an hour or two, and then as the clock approached 1 AM, that was when she finally heard it:
Footsteps on the stairs.
No, not footsteps exactly; but something very like them, deep and heavy, and coming up the steps one at a time. They started all the way at the bottom of the stairwell and, one by one, they thumped their way up to the ninth floor, never speeding up or slowing down, but always that hard and inevitable:
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
She expected to also hear the sound of dragging chains, like Jacob Marley coming to visit old Scrooge, but there wasn’t anything. Every footfall made her heart speed faster, until by the end it vibrated like a hummingbird in her chest. She was sure no one else in the building could hear the steps approaching; it came only for her.
Finally the sound clattered its way down the hall and up to her very front door, and then Grace held her breath, waiting to see if it might batter the door down or, Marley-like again, float right through it.
Instead it knocked, three times. And then came the sound of some huge shape, some enormous THING, shifting its body around as it waited. When the third knock sounded, the candles went out in Grace’s room, leaving her in darkness.
Sliding down a bit in her bed, she thought, Maybe if I don’t say anything he’ll just go away…
But no, that was foolish—and she’d always prided herself on never becoming a foolish woman. Instead she straightened up, swallowed hard, and said as loud as she could, “You can’t come in.”
There was a pause. And then a terrible voice—a great and terrible voice that made the boards of the door shake—said:
“I’ve come for you, Grace Sower. Just as I said I would.”
“Well you’re too late,” Grace said. “I’m dying now. Not of anything interesting, just old. So I’d like some privacy—and besides, you’ve got the wrong woman, I’m Grace Nelson. Have been for longer than I can remember.”
“But you DO remember,” the voice said, and it made some more noise as the great body stirred behind it. To think that there was nothing between her and it except for a few inches of pine…
Except that wasn’t true, she realized. He couldn’t come in unless she let him–it must be so, otherwise he’d have barged in already, because just like every other man she’d ever known he was a complete ox when there was something he wanted. This put starch into her resolve.
The voice rolled on: “There was a time before that man tried to put his name on your body, and you’ve never forgotten it. You remember the very day we met.”
“That was so long ago now, I couldn’t possibly…”
“A lie,” the voice said immediately, and she realized she’d made a mistake: Lies were his specialty, and she’d never beat him at his own game.
And besides, he was right: Grace DID remember. She’d been a girl then, although of an age when she wouldn’t be a girl much longer, and her grandmother and her Aunt Jennet both asked her to come with them for a walk on the red bank north of the river, at twilight, interrupting her while she was playing with her little cat, Graemalkin, and while her mother was busy in the kitchen and not paying attention to anything.
All this she’d thought was strange, but she was curious enough to go along, and anyway if Mother found out she’d raise hell, and at that age Grace had loved to do anything that gave her mother a fright.
It had been a beautiful black night, and the woods were secret and close. It was one of those nights when you felt not just alive but awake, in a way that the inconsiderate intrusions of daylight never allowed.
Along the way, Grandmother and Aunt Jennet had explained to her that she was never to tell anybody else about the things they were going to do–that what happened tonight was sacred and meant to stay private from people like her mother, and especially from men.
“You have to swear,” Aunt Jennet said. “Not one of those lying swears, like you give at church: Swear so that the words stick to the roof of your mouth.”
And Grace, her heart racing with intrigue, had sworn, and meant it, for once in her life.
When they reached the riverbank she grew uncertain, because they told her to keep going but there seemed to be no way to cross. Then Grandmother whistled, and from the woods around them came certain…things.
They were tall and black and man-shaped, more or less; but they had no faces, and Grace shrank against her aunt’s skirts at the sight of them.
The older women told her not to act so silly. First one and then the other, she watched as the black things carried her aunt and grandmother across the river, picking them up in their arms like they were children and walking across the rushing black waters and setting them down again as easy as anything.
When her turn came Grace was still afraid. But the thing was perfectly gentle—and perfectly polite—and the trip across the river was over in seconds. Its touch was cool but pleasant, like lying down in green grass.
On the other side were laid out blankets and food and lanterns that made beautiful light, and her aunt explained that no one else could see the light cast by these except for them. Everything she ate tasted rich–thick with butter and sugar-sweet, the kind of food her mother rapped her knuckles when she caught her with.
The three black things sat on the other side of them and ate too, although their food looked unseemly, and she wondered how they ate without a mouth. None of them said a word–could they speak, she wondered?–but Grandmother and Aunt Jennet talked and laughed a storm as the night went on.
Afterwards they danced in the moonlight, and by now Grace wasn’t afraid of her strange faceless dancing partner at all, but found him as graceful as she. There was no music, but they kept time together with perfect ease, and all three of the strange creatures took turns spinning her this way and that until she shrieked with laughter, and they each bowed like perfect gentlemen when they were done.
Her aunt and grandmother looked on with evident pride–they both said she was an excellent dancer. At the time Grace believed them, but now she wondered if it wasn’t something else they were admiring; the ease, perhaps, with which she accepted what was happening…
And indeed, it WAS easy; strange, in that such things had never happened to her before, but at the same time everything felt natural. Why would it not?
After that they left, moving like the wind through the black night, the six of them together. They came to the house on Thomas Walshman’s farm, where he and his wife slept, and in the cradle was a little babe not even a month old, who didn’t so much as scream when Aunt Jennet picked him up.
They bundled him, tucked him in the crook of Aunt Jennet’s arm, and carried him away with them, in and out of the house without ever making a sound. Grace looked at the baby with curiosity, but Aunt Jennet assured her there was nothing to worry about: “He won’t even wake until we’re long since done,” she said.
From there, they all went to the sabbat together, into the deepest part of the forest, to a place so remote that nobody in the county was even sure who owned it. Once upon a time places like this would have been called commons, and they’d hosted black-as-night meetings like this since before anyone alive or dead could remember.
Those days were gone now, but there were still a few about who remembered them–those who had passed the stories down from mother to daughter, sister to sister, aunt to niece, and in some cases lover to lover, and they met still in those old dark places that remained, to keep the old way alive another generation more.
That was where Grace met Him for the first time: He looked like a beautiful man in black (the only man at the gathering), and all the women of the assembly did Him honor, and He kissed them all and called them his beloveds.
He’d been waiting for them already when they’d reached the clearing, with bell, book, and candle ready. He’d been waiting a long, long time, she knew–maybe longer even than Grace had been alive. But if anyone else–anyone who didn’t belong–had come across this spot, they would never have seen Him, of that she was sure.
When He came to Grace to greet her next, her heart sang; He told her that He’d been waiting especially for her and the time when she’d finally be old enough to join Him here, and she believed Him. All the other women smiled and shared not-so-secret looks, but Grace hardly noticed; she had eyes only for Him.
That very night, she’d made their pact: She swore that she would be faithful to Him alone, that she would assemble when called, that she would never reveal the secrets of the sabbat to any outsider, and that she would do wickedness in His name, killing livestock and poisoning goodly babes and turning men’s wive frigid to them in their beds, or whatever else He asked.
In return, He promised to answer when summoned, to give her the power to do any wicked act her heart desired, and to avenge all wrongs done to her. From that day on, their destinies were intertwined; when the meeting parted, He told her He would come back for her someday.
And…that was the last she saw Him. Her grandmother and aunt never spoke of that night again, and Grace was never again called to the sabbat, despite the promises made.
But she didn’t forget; she knew that, just as He said, He’d come for her again, when the time was right.
As she grew older, life went on. While women like Aunt Jenneh always managed to keep up a good name in town, Grace was too wild to hide who she was, and when she could no longer show her face anywhere, she and her mother were forced to move, and then again.
Times were hard in those days, and when the war came they were harder, and despite herself Grace thought of Him less and less. That was how it was when you became older, she knew: The fire of youth burnt high for only so long, lest it soon burn itself out.
Eventually of course she’d met George, and George was…good. Good enough to overlook her reputation–by then she’d settled down, but rumors about her misspent youth (not half so exciting as the real thing, she recalled with pride) still clung to her–good enough to give her a home, children (the first time she held her oldest she’d distantly remembered that Walshman child–whatever had they done with him anyway?), and a life–or at least what passed for a life in most estimations.
With time, that midnight meeting seemed less real and more like a dream, or a story she’d invented during her rowdy years…
But it HAD been real. No matter how impossible it seemed now, it happened, and she held more tightly onto the memory the longer she waited.
Now the wait was over: He was just on the other side of the door. If she opened it, or even just told him to come in, he’d be right there before her…
But now that the time had finally come, she hesitated. After all, what could she do now, with the few hours of life left in her worn body? Why hadn’t he come sooner, when she was still young and ready?
Stalling, she tried everything to get rid of him. “I don’t want to see you,” she said. “I believe in god now.”
Where was that damn Bible? It was heavy, so maybe she could throw it at him…
Once again he saw right through the lie. “God?” the voice said. “I was god in old Sumer; in ancient Naqada and great Akkad, they sang my names; fires burned for me in the first temples of Babylon and Carthage, in Phoenicia and Canaan and Mendes.
“Long before the gnarled priests of this age’s god first scribbled his name in the dirt, the world worshiped me–and they will again, with you by my side. Promises were made.”
“But it was all such a long time ago…”
Without quite realizing it, Grace had risen up out of bed. She pressed herself against the front door, as if trying to reach through it and touch him, and with her face against it it sounded as if his great voice was but a whisper in her ear.
“For me it might as well have been yesterday,” he said. “And for you too, in your truest heart: One lifetime isn’t enough to keep us apart. All the years lived by every woman and man on the face of the Earth isn’t enough. If the years were drops of water and they formed the deepest ocean, I’d part it with my hands and walk the sandy bottom right to you.”
“Hmph. I’ve been around long enough to know all the silly words that men say, you old devil.”
“Words are the secret keys that unlock the ways to the heart. But if you don’t want to stand on words alone, just open the door and I’ll show you.”
With her hands shaking, Grace reached for the lock…but she still couldn’t bring herself to actually touch it.
“I’m old now, though,” she said. “I’m not at all like I was when we met.”
“But I remember you as you were: Young and powerful and alive. Everyone around you was made of water, but you were a thing of iron.”
In spite of herself, Grace sighed. “Can you make me that girl again?”
“To me, you are always that girl.”
She expected the metal of the lock to be hot, but it was cool and reassuring.
“Then…then I believe in you. But I wish you had come sooner.”
And with that she flung the door open.
She expected to see the darkened hallway beyond, but instead there was nothing: Just a deep, dark emptiness, and in the doorway stood a great black goat, taller than she was, and on its head was a crown made of fire.
Suddenly she realized her apartment was gone too, and they floated together in the darkness, like it was a night sky and they were the only two stars in the universe.
“Where are we?” Grace said.
Rather than answer, the goat replied, “She who believes in me, though she were dead, yet shall live. And whoever lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you know this?”
“Yes,” said Grace. “I believe you are the god of this world, which should come into this world forevermore.”
The words came naturally to her lips, like lines she had memorized. And in fact they were memories, from a very long time ago: She’d whispered them to herself before she slept on the night they met.
At the time, she’d thought of them as vows, but now she realized that was wrong: A vow binds you, but in this they were making each other free.
Seemingly knowing her thoughts, he held forth the flaming crown. Rather than burning her, it felt cool to the touch when she took it.
“Be faithful unto death,” he said, “and you will receive the crown of life.”
The flames sparkled in Grace’s eyes. When she and George married he’d given her a ring, and it was beautiful–but it was a cold, unmoving thing, dug out of the dead ground and set in one shape forever. This was burning and alive, just like the feeling in her heart.
But when she reached up to put the crown on her head, instantly the fire spread all over her, racing down to the ends of her hair, leaping onto her nightgown, and consuming her in a golden glaze. She opened her mouth to cry out, but as soon as she did the fire filled her mouth and poured in to fill her body up completely.
For a moment she thought, “So this is how I die,” and she waited for the fire to consume her. But it didn’t happen: In a few moments, the flame burned itself out and left Grace untouched, although her nightclothes had burnt up, leaving her exposed and naked.
No, she realized suddenly, she wasn’t untouched: Looking at her hands, she was amazed to see them smooth and graceful, no longer gnarled and spotted, as she’d grown used to.
Touching her face, she found the smooth, unblemished complexion of a 20-year-old, without the sags and wrinkles that had greeted her in the mirror only this morning. Her body was smooth, sinuous, and lithe, and when she twirled around she found she could move any way she liked without pain.
“It’s incredible,” she said. “I’m…I’m me again!”
And she threw her arms around the goat’s neck, kissed his shiny horns, and whispered her thank yous into his huge shaggy ears.
“This is just the beginning,” he said. “Climb onto my back, and I will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone.”
Pulling herself up by handfuls of his black fur, Grace nestled on the huge creature’s back, and then suddenly it felt like they were flying. Her long hair trailed behind her as they vaulted across the night sky together, and when she dared to laugh the wind blew her voice this way and that.
It made her think of the Peter Pan stories of her childhood, of flying away from parents and home and off into some fairy tale. Those stories had seemed different to her once she became a parent herself…but that was all in the past now. Now she was her old, real self again, and the true joy came back to her.
For a while they flew on, and she gave no thought to where or why, caring only that it felt good and that it was happening. Finally after some time, she did lean down to speak into the goat’s ear and be heard over the night wind. “Where are we going?” she said.
“Look down,” came the answer.
Grace’s crown shone brighter, until it illuminated everything below them, like a tiny sun. She gasped when she recognized it: The trees, the field, the river–and yes, there was the red bank, just as she remembered it when she was a girl. All of the deep and old and secret forest was here, every wayward haunt she’d gone to for mischief in her black and secret days of youth.
“But none of this is here anymore,” she said. “It was all cleared away years ago–bulldozed and built on. None of this should be real.”
“In my kingdom, everything is eternal,” he said. “Didn’t I tell you: Whoever believes in me will never die? And this place is just as much a part of you as your body. For a little while, the world sees it no more–but then you saw me, and because I live, it lives too.”
They touched down as gently as a feather. Climbing down so that her bare feet touched the clover, Grace was at first alarmed to find so many other people here. But then she recognized one of them:
“Aunt Jenneh?”
Yes, it was her–not as she’d appeared in those last years, cursed by dementia and pox, but looking as she must have when she was Grace’s age–or that is to say, the age that Grace suddenly was again.
Smiling, her aunt embraced her. “It’s so good you’re here,” she said. “I always knew you’d be back.”
“I didn’t,” Grace said.
Linking arm and arm, she led Grace again to the sabbat, where the fires were already burning and where everything was decorated with lilies and blackthorns and rowans and nightshade, and the women sat weaving crowns out of flowers that they put on one another’s heads, and making garlands that they draped over tree boughs or laid along the ground, creating a long path on the forest floor.
When Grace asked what was going on, Aunt Jenneh told her, “A wedding.” When she asked whose, the other woman surprised her by saying, “Yours, of course!”
Startled, the only thing Grace could think to say was, “I was married once already…”
“But you knew that didn’t count,” Aunt Jenneh said.
There in the crowd was Grandmother–not as Grace had known her, but a smiling and beatific young woman. Grace’s mother was there too–of course she’d never have been caught dead in a place like this, always too jealous of her reputation as an upstanding church woman. But here she was anyway, laying flowers at Grace’s feet, just like all the others.
Many, many women she’d known in the past were here, and when she felt something warm press against her feet she looked down and was amazed to discover a familiar old gray cat sat there, looking up at her with expectant yellow eyes.
“Graemalkin!” she said, picking the old cat up. “You too?”
“Everyone is here,” Aunt Jenneh said. “There’s room for all of us in this place, just like we were promised. But today isn’t about us: This is all about you. I always knew you were special, Grace.”
And she put a flower wreath in Grace’s hands. So did the nearest woman, and the one after that, and the one after that, until she had so many she couldn’t hope to carry them all, and she left a trail of lost blossoms all the way up to the spot consecrated as altar, a tall, flat standing stone surrounded by the oldest trees, a place that had been ancient and sacred before the first stone was laid for the foundation of the earliest church.
There, HE was waiting for her. Not as a black goat anymore, but a beautiful man, just as she’d seen him the first time: The long path of flowery garlands formed an aisle leading up to the sacred stone, and to him standing there with it, while smiling and tearful women looked on from every side.
Unexpectedly, the cat leapt from her arms, scampered down the aisle, clamored onto the altar stone, and, facing the congregation, spoke in a loud, clear voice:
“Grace Sower, approach, and meet your bridegroom.”
Meeting his eyes, Grace felt her heart flutter and almost burst. Unconsciously, she let all the flowers fall from her hands. The space between them seemed to vanish as she all but floated down the aisle.
They stood facing each other, both of her hands in both of his. In the golden light of the bonfires, the dark skin on his cheeks and forehead seemed to glow.
“Welcome to the communion of your kind,” the cat said. “The deep mystery of sin has penetrated every bosom, and all those who thought themselves holier than you have been cast out. All things that can be desired our wicked arts have made manifest, and you stand here, depending on each other’s hearts, undeceived in the true nature of mankind. In this, indulgence will be all your happiness.
“Welcome,” said the cat.
“Welcome,” said the groom.
“Welcome,” said the women of the sabbat. Grace’s spirit welled up inside of her.
Finding her voice again, Grace replied, “There’s no need for vows.”
“Indeed,” said the groom. “In this moment we belong only to ourselves.”
“Then bestow yourselves on whomever you would choose, however you would choose it; this is and ever shall be your prerogative,” the cat said.
Before the words were even spoken Grace threw herself into his arms, and the force of it was so much that it actually knocked the shining crown from off her head. Not that it mattered: In that kiss was all the light of a million years’ worth of days.
There, on a bed of flower blossoms, in front of everybody, they had their wedding night. His lips tasted sweet and full, and wherever his bare skin touched hers (she looked shockingly pale and fair next to his dark complexion) tiny frissons of excitement blossomed.
Lying back, Grace sank into the bed of flowers, letting it surround her and swallow her up on every side. He laid on top of her, the weight of his body surprisingly light–almost delicate–when bearing down on her. The other women were all watching, but Grace didn’t feel embarrassed; why shouldn’t they watch? What could be more natural?
Whispering to her between kisses, he warned that it might hurt–that it would be like her first time again. She responded by reaching down to grab him and all but forcing him inside of her; there was a moment of tension and resistance, just as he’d said–but it gave way in a second, and almost immediately after that she was shivering with the delicious feeling of having him at last deep inside of her.
The night seemed to close around them, like a curtain drawing tight around the world. While his hips rolled and his fingers combed through her hair, Grace stretched out fully and languidly on the forest floor. While he lost himself inside of her, she grasped handfuls of flower petals, crushing them and letting them slip through her fingers; she imagined she would hold and crush the entire world the same way if she could, if only it would mean that this moment never had to end.
But then she thought, why should it end? Why shouldn’t things stay like this forever? What else was there beyond this moment? And didn’t they have the power, here together? He’d said so himself. Throwing her arms around his neck, she pulled him in tight against her body, rocking her hips and twining her legs around him like a creeping vine. She couldn’t believe how hard he felt all of a sudden–not just the hard member he plunged inside of her, but his entire body, so yielding moments ago, now was rigid as tightly drawn steel.
Struggling, Grace tried to open herself up even more. She could barely catch her breath, each deep, hard pant cut off by more exertion almost as soon as it was out of her mouth. She devoured him with kisses, and her arms wrapped tight around the bent bow of his body, trying to hold him in as long and as deep as she could. The whole universe was wetness and heat and the warring sensations of his hard body above and the soft ground below; Grace was caught between two extremes, and neither had anywhere to go except to clash over the prize of her body.
When he came, it didn’t feel like a climax or any kind of ending. Rather, it gave her the feeling of a key finally being fitted into a lock, and the door opening to unexpected possibilities beyond. The feeling formed a warm, burning kernel inside of her. She thought for a second it might even overwhelm her entirely…but if anything when the time came she felt even stronger.
She bled too, as she had her first time, but it didn’t bother her. He said that every spot of ground where it fell would be sacred, and the spot here in their bower where they’d first embraced would be overgrown with new life, created by the joining of their bodies in the most sacred way.
It would be a paradise of delights, one they’d created not over some days but across many lifetimes, of which they now had more than they could ever have imagined alone.
“Oh yes,” she said–both because she knew it was true and because of the ripples of pleasure washing over her. Together, they would conceive the world, just as they were always meant to do.
***
Noticing her door standing open the next morning, some of Grace’s neighbors peeked in to check on her. They found her in her bed, a very old woman who had gone to sleep one last time and never woken up.
A handful of them stood at the bedside and murmured to each other while they waited for someone to come and take her away. “She looks so peaceful,” they said, and noted poignantly the burnt-out candles on her nightstand, and the still-open Bible lying nearby.
“It’s so sad,” one of them said. “But she lived a long time.”
“And it looks like she went painlessly,” another added. “I hope for the same thing when it’s my time.”
Everyone nodded, and agreed that it was for the best.
“After all,” they said, “she’s with god now.”