Midsummer Night's ... Nightmare

“Are you sure we got the right place, Moragh? The note didnae specify a location.” 

Moragh peered again at it. “Aye, it did, Eilidh. The most important thing is the weather, and there is nae thunder and lighting, nor rain, so …”

“And I should bloody well hope not,” the third member of the group broke in, with some acerbity glancing up at the lowering skies. “Not yet. Does anyone actually know why we’re sat here on this blasted heath when there’s a perfectly good bothy in the valley? I don’t fancy being a lightning conductor for anyone. ”

“Why Ailsa, ye know well. ‘Tis Midsummer Eve. Ah ken ye’re not long a member, but …”

“Long enough to know I’m not taking a stitch off until it’s dark,” Ailsa gathered her shawl up to her neck. “And that fire will have burnt out by then. I’m not freezing my tits off for any Warlock. Where is he anyway? And shouldn’t there be twelve of us?”

“Oh, he’ll be along Hen” Eilidh said. “The Master likes making an entrance. Especially at Midsummer.”

“And it’ll just be the three of us,” Moragh added. “Recruitment isnae what it was.  Look what we ended up with.”

Ailsa bridled. “And what’s that supposed to mean? Just because I speak my mind.”

“Aye, you do Hen,” Eilidh said. “I ken you youngsters hae little respect for tradition, but you be careful you show a little to the Master.”

“I intend to show as little as possible to the Master,” Ailsa snorted. “That’s why I’m not taking anything off until dark. I’m not flashing my bits for everyone to ogle. I take it he’ll be naked as well?”

“Oh aye, he will that,” Eilidh replied with some relish. “As buff as you care.”

Moragh glared at Eilidh and sniffed, loudly. She had a way with sniffs. They spoke louder than a thousand incantations. The French have their gallic shrug, the Italians their expressive gesture; Moragh had her sniffs which had a language of their very own, with specific syntax and precise intonation - and you didn’t have to speak it  to understand the language implicitly. Eilidh blushed. Moragh sniffed again and Eilidh looked sheepish.

Despite herself, Ailsa was impressed with the unspoken exchange. “Is that part of the training?” she asked.

Moragh looked at her over her shoulder. This time the look sufficed.

Ailsa busied herself stirring the cauldron adding another handful of repulsive newt’s eyes - without gagging this time, an improvement duly noted by Eilidh. ”That’s the ticket, Hen. We’ll make a witch out of you yet,” she said encouragingly.

Ailsa hadn’t been a witch for long. She had met Eilidh at a Psychic Fair and thought that Witchery was something she could be good at. “We could do with some new blood,” Eilidh had said. “We’re down to myself and Moragh at the moment.” What she hadn’t said was why they were down to two - and then Ailsa met Moragh, who only agreed to take her on because that bumped the numbers up to a proper witching quota of three with Midsummer coming up. Witching was actually Moragh’s job - she ran a tarot reading business in one of the back streets of Leith, whereas Eilidh was a nursing assistant at a local care home. Consequently. Moragh had all the mystical expertise but Eilidh had all the old wives’ tales and homespun remedies: and Moragh had a black cat as well. Disappointingly, Eilidh only had a miniature Pomeranian called Mr. Snuggles, which rather detracted from the image but then Eilidh had a soft side to her nature. 

Ailsa, on the other hand, was between jobs in that she had never had one, but by dint of that had access to trance inducing substances that she thought might come in handy for a bit of witchery. As it turned out, both Eilidh and Moragh trumped her in that - the ‘old ways’ were always the best, and non addictive to boot.

She stirred the cauldron again, a viscous liquid which slowly bubbled the odd frog’s leg to the surface, then sucked it down again with a ‘plop’ while the newts’ eyes watched blankly. Eilidh rootled about in a sack and added a sprig of noxious herbs. Ailsa could have sworn she saw the newts’ eyes screw up in disgust.

Her perception of witchery and the reality were poles apart. Fuelled by New Age imagery, she had turned up to her inaugural meeting dressed like a Flower Power child of the sixties, all floaty and ethereal. Moragh had taken one look and sniffed, then thrown her a threadbare cape and sackcloth dress and told her to get changed. That was her first reality check. The second was the grimoire and the expectation that she would learn at least three spells off by heart every week. At that rate, she estimated that it would take her until she was ninety-two and incapable of anything more complex than ingesting a bowl of bread and milk through a toothless mouth. But, at least, the standard witching image of a dribbling, haggard old crone would be fulfilled.

As the sun sank, the tranquillity of the evening was broken by a blast of outlandish music from beyond the ridge above and a group of bushes slowly hove into view, moving with all the drooping wilt of a vegan funeral procession. Until one of them tripped over its own roots, dropped a ghetto blaster, and rolled down the hill cursing until it came to rest with its roots in the fire and began to smoulder.

“Shit, shit, shit!” it said and scrambled to its feet, beating at the smouldering leaves in panic. Then, it parted its leaves and spoke. “Moragh, Eilidh, blessed be on this Midsummer Eve. and this must be Ailsa.” lt extended a leaf bedecked hand, “You should kiss my ring,” it whispered.

Before Ailsa had an opportunity to respond in the manner that was obviously on her mind, Eilidh nodded meaningfully at the extended hand and Ailsa spotted the gaudy ruby coloured ring shining fitfully through the leaves. Dutifully, she put her feminist principles on hold and kissed it. The hand stayed there for fractionally longer than absolutely necessary and then withdrew to tear away at the concealing leaves, revealing the masked face of The Master who had adopted the persona of The Green Man. It was a little out of season but it went with the theatricals just played out. He threw his arms wide to encompass the other three  

bushes hesitantly stumbling down the hillside, one of them trailing the ghetto blaster,  another one way behind the others and stumbling rather more. “Behold!” cried The Master, “I bring acolytes! Three now becomes six! Twice the power!”

Moragh looked sourly at the stumbling trio, “An’ ye didnae think to run it by me first?” she demanded. “They’ll no doubt be nubile young wenches with not a brain cell between them.”

Behind her Eilidh sucked in her breath but she had to acknowledge that Moragh was right. The Master had taken to calling the shots just lately, embarrassed in the witching community at only commanding such a small coven and thwarted at every turn by Moragh’s taciturnity. Or, as she had told him, “You can’t just drag someone off the street and turn them into a witch. There’s got to be soul involved.” That was the polite translation. The verbatim version tended to stream the eyebrows back and pierce the forehead like a gimlet. Which was why recruitment to the coven was so problematic - Moragh was a purist. Ailsa should have felt honoured at even getting over the first hurdle. 

Added to which, the Master had aspirations and an eye to the future, which obviously did not sit well with Moragh. That trait was epitomised by his new recruits as they shambled up. Although all were ostensibly female, nubility didn’t feature much. The first, introduced as ‘Jac’ could have been considered pneumatic, although the five-o’clock shadow and a false falsetto raised immediate suspicion. The second - a heavy-set individual who had forsworn regulation robe and sandals for a pair of Doc Martens and half-mast denim overalls with a shaven, tattooed head and sundry piercings - featured an unambiguous bosom drooping to navel height. Her name was ‘Petra’ - but call me ‘Peter’ - whilst the third, Rosemary,  was … unfortunate. She swore violently at Moragh, made an unbelievably obscene gesture … and then clapped hands over her mouth in embarrassment, fell over, and started twitching.

Moragh viewed the line-up with acidity, curiously lifted the front of Jac’s robe with her stave, and turned the sour look on the Master. “Really? You do understand the first principles of witchery?”

The Master steeled himself for a difficult conversation. “Now, Moragh, it is the 21st century, not 1538, we have to move with the times.”

Moragh looked at them again. “Well, I’ll give you this, they’d all be prime fire fodder in 1538, so you’ve got that right.”

Behind her, Eilidh gasped and even Ailsa drew in her breath. Moragh walked over to Rosemary twitching on the ground, and softly helped her to her feet, parting and then gently straightening out her robe in the process. Rosemary thanked her gratefully with an expletive. 

She moved to the shaven-headed hulk glowering in the middle of the group next, considered unbuttoning the dungarees in lieu of the robe parting and then thought better of it. She shook her head and shrugged resignedly.

She turned her attention to the Master again. “You do know that the essence of witchcraft is the mystique of the female?” She answered for him: “Yes, well, you must because you’ve presented me with a total mystery here. One’s half-and-half and obviously uncommitted either way, I’m not entirely sure what the other one is and Rosemary, poor soul, is neither here nor there. Can you imagine her reading from the grimoire in the midst of one of her outbursts? It would be like putting a loaded machine gun in the hands of a chimpanzee. I have to assume that the hulk can actually read? And as for the other the female essence, if it’s present at all, will be so far scrambled as to be worthless on the empathy scale. Well done.”

For Moragh it was a fairly restrained rebuke delivered out of concern for the hapless individuals that the Master had dragged along to one of the most important ceremonies of the year. Eilidh had been expecting far worse and breathed a sigh of relief. Ailsa, meanwhile, had run to lead Rosemary back to the group, having swung herself around in the middle of an outburst and wandered off.

The Master ran a finger around the collar of his robe. “Now, Moragh, we have to be as inclusive as possible nowadays. I’m thinking  of the future - we could be the only coven locally that represents neglected minorities. I admit that Rosemary is perhaps a bit of a liability but she is representative of her grouping, and you’d never get a wheelchair to most of the places we meet. And you must agree that the concept of the traditional female is a bit outdated nowadays.”

The stand-off at the OK Corral could perhaps have had a bit more edge to it, but not by much and Eilidh stepped in to diffuse the situation before Moragh started dispensing spells like confetti. “Now, Moragh, why don’t we give it a try? Ailsa can keep an eye out for Rosemary, Jac can just stir the cauldron for now without chanting and as for Petr …Peter … well, we’ll know for sure which way the wind blows when the clothes come off. I expect they’ll all be up for that. Rosemary might need a bit of help, though. Still, I can do that. It’s what I’m used to. Oh, look! The sun’s just about to set,” she said, seizing the initiative to ameliorate the situation even further. “Everyone disrobe!”

The injunction drew reactions varying from the feverish to the reluctant, the downright perplexed and just plain difficult from Eilidh’s point of view as she tried to tackle Rosemary’s convulsions as well as stripping her own robe off. Ailsa rushed to help her, delaying her own disrobing as long as possible, but eventually her robe also joined the others piled on the ground. She hid from the Master’s level stare by hiding behind Peter whose gender was now revealed for all to see - as were the tattoos, which extended from her shaved head all over her body, accentuating the relevant features should there be any continued doubt. 

Jac, meanwhile stood buxom, naked … and proud,  until Moragh gave them a sharp rap with her stave whereupon they subsided with a whimper whilst Moragh thrust a stirring stick into their hands and pointed them towards the cauldron. “And don’t say a word,” she warned. “Just stir!” 

At last, Ailsa could put it off no longer and joined the group linking hands to dance around the cauldron being steadfastly stirred by Jac. Moragh let the Master lead the chanting for a change, if only to take his mind off Ailsa’s bouncing bosom. Rosemary’s contributions to the Midsummer dance added a bit of a counterpoint to the usual hop, skip and jump on this occasion, but Eilidh kept a firm grip of the situation whilst whispering encouragement. It was just a pity that no-one could have kept a firm grip on Jac, who was getting greener by the minute as the noxious smell of the contents of the cauldron and the ever-increasing speed of the dancers whirling by sent their head spinning until they doubled over and were sick in the pot.

That brought an abrupt end to the celebrations. “Yeughh!” cried Ailsa, as Jac gave a last dry heave and collapsed at the side of the cauldron.

Quivering with rage, Moragh grabbed the stirring stick, gave the pot one last stir, picked up a ladle, dipped it and presented it to the Master. “This inclusive enough for you?” she said. “The Master always gets first drink. Bottoms up! No? Didn’t think so!” And with that she upended the ladle over the Master’s head, kicked the cauldron off the fire, and stormed off into the night. Then, came back for her robe, and stormed off again.

The Master clawed gobbets of vomit, newts’ eyes and sundry amphibian limbs from his head and watched her go, dumbfounded. The ceremony hadn’t gone quite to plan. And then it started to rain, heavily, causing all participants to rush for their clothes and beat a hasty retreat to the bothy in the valley.

They found Moragh already there, still seething. The tiny building was a bit crowded, even more so with Rosemary occasionally flailing around. And it wasn’t in the best of repair: rain seeped through the door and dripped through the ceiling, threatening to extinguish the guttering candle that Moragh had found in an alcove, along with a box of matches. She turned a withering eye on the Master, who still had gobbets of vomit in his hair with water dripping down his nose from a leak above his head. “Twice the power, eh?” she said. “I’ve seen more power in a flat battery. Call yourself a warlock? Wait until the Wicca hear about this. You’d have been first on the pyre in 1538!”  she railed.

Sceptical though she might have been to start with, and soaking wet as she now was, Ailsa found herself being drawn more and more to the concept of paganism. As Moragh had said, it revolved around the essence of the female and procreation, despite any attempts by the patriarchy to subporn it. And, with the best will in the world, inclusion of under-represented sections of the community was never going to fulfil the underlying truth: fecundity. That was the key principle and the likes of Jac and Petr … Peter … were unlikely to fulfil that, not in the true sense anyway. And Rosemary, bless her, was fundamentally flawed through no fault of her own. It was with this thought that she turned on the Master and upbraided him in no uncertain terms which had Eilidh draw in her breath and Moragh throw her an astonished and appraising look.

Ailsa even surprised herself - it was as if someone else was speaking. The Master looked as surprised as Ailsa felt but even so attempted to bluster his way out of an awkward situation. He even tried a half-hearted attempt at a spell to bind the diatribe, until Moragh rapped him over the head with her stave. “Shut up!” she said succinctly. “Go away, and take your ‘acolytes’ with you. Not Rosemary. You can leave her. She deserves better than being someone’s token. Go and set up your alternative coven, but you can only spread inclusivity so far and see where that gets you. You’ll be laughed out of the Wiccan. The ancient way is the only way. And who needs twelve anyway? The three of us will be fine.” She raised her chin defiantly as Ailsa and Eilidh stepped beside her and the Master backed to the door, followed by Jac and Petr … Peter.  Rosemary watched them go … and swore. Ailsa sensed that it was deliberate this time and linked arms with her in sisterly solidarity. 

As for the Master? Well, he got his diverse coven. Some say he also got what he deserved. Rosemary never did become a witch - her afflictions were too severe, although she did work as Moragh’s trusty assistant in her tarot reading business - Eilidh’s home remedies had helped a great deal to modify her most severe outbursts. And the odd spell helped as well, since Ailsa turned out to be very good indeed at the odd spell as she got to grips with the more obscure parts of the grimoire. Witching really did suit her.