The Broomstick Train
or, the Return of the Witches
by
Oliver Wendell Holmes
LOOK out! Look out, boys! Clear the track!
The witches are here! They’ve all come back!
They hanged them high,–No use! No use!
What cares a witch for a hangman’s noose?
They buried them deep, but they wouldn’t lie still,
For cats and witches are hard to kill;
They swore they shouldn’t and wouldn’t die,–
Books said they did, but they lie! they lie!
Story continued from here
It was late January and the Feast of Lights celebration was fast approaching. I’d planned to take Bunny with me to Massachusetts to celebrate the turning of the Wheel of the Year and see my people, whom I missed terribly. Unfortunately she couldn’t go because she was on the high school bowling team and it was the weekend for sectionals. I didn’t want to go to the gathering alone so I thought, enh, maybe next year. Perhaps by then I will have warmed Spooky to the idea of attending a witches’ ball. Hey, why not? Spooky had the blood of the stregone running through his veins; this was as plain as day to me. He just didn’t know it yet. Or maybe he did.
Feast of Lights is held in February, on or about Brigit’s Day, or Candlemas, or the midpoint between the start of winter and the beginning of spring. All are essentially the same celebration, i.e., a fire festival celebrating the returning of the Light, the returning of the Lord, the King, of springtime, of God. There are many layers to that onion and when you get it you just get it. It’s all good.
I presumed Spooky was Catholic. It didn’t matter that his family is actually part Jewish; when one is Sicilian and/or living in a rough North Jersey neighborhood indisputably controlled by the Mafia one must be Catholic. Everybody knows that. On our first date Spooky told me he “eats Biblically” and I found that curious. Doesn’t that mean kosher? Apparently, so why not just say kosher? I wondered but did not ask.
Spooky’s knowledge of both Torah and Scripture was intriguing . . . and a little unnerving. Not a turnoff; oh no I just love that stuff (really). It was just a reflexive little red flag warning me that I might face some religious intolerance in my near future. I concluded Spooky must be some kind of Catholic-Sephardic hybrid and I was cool with that. But would he be cool with me? I’d already told Spooky about how I rebelled against my repressive Calvinist upbringing and became a generic believer in a Divine Force, spirits, fairies and miracles and magic, but I hadn’t exposed Spooky to what he would be in for if we continued to see each other. I was not going to abandon my spiritual and magical work for any man or convert to any religion; I couldn’t, even if I wanted to. Some things are in the blood. Spooky had fallen in love with a delinquent sorceress, albeit a very Jesus-friendly one, and he’d just have to deal with it. Or . . . not . . .
. . . but I did not realize that I’d left tiny clues that only someone like Spooky could have captured. He already knew.
To be continued . . . here
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