stove started up, making me jump. The church became a fraction warmer. I thought of flames, dancing on a wall. Cautiously, I opened the stove door.
Inside was a ball of fire. Something was twisting and moving within; it looked at me.
“Ah,” I said. “Now I know what you are.”
I am salamander, it said proudly.
In its native element, I could see its long lizard shape, the curling tail. It wasn’t like the reptile known as “salamander,” but more heraldic, elegant. With some difficulty I squatted down on my heels so that I could see it more clearly.
You have seen him.
“Who? Do you mean the person in the fields, the other night?”
Yes, that is the one. He is waking, as he draws near the sun, but not quickly enough. I am a messenger of the sun. You are in danger. You have to bring him safely through.
“How am I to do that?”
You must go to him, when it is time. You must give him your hand.
I shivered, thinking of the cold, and at that moment a blast of chilly air ran down the back of my neck, accompanied by the creak of the church door. The salamander whisked into the heart of the furnace, and I slammed the plate shut, straightening up. The churchwarden, an elderly man, blinked at me mildly.
“Professor Fallow? I’m sorry, I didn’t see you there.”
“Just came in for a bit of peace and quiet. Your stove seems to be lit.”
“Oh, is it? Doubtless one of the other wardens put it on. The church gets so damp, you know. And we have to try to keep this plasterwork intact.”
“Well, I’m grateful for the warmth.” I hoped he wouldn’t ask too many questions of his colleagues. “But I’d better be going.”
We exchanged pleasantries, and I went back to the house. Nothing flickered in the churchyard. Dusk cast a cold blue pall over the hills.
Later that evening, Alys said to me, “It’s wassail on Saturday. Had you remembered?”
I stared at her. “No. I’d forgotten it was our turn. But of course, you’re right. How many people this year?”
“I don’t know. I sent out invitations. Maybe fifty? You don’t have to do anything. I’ll sort out the food. Sausage rolls and baked spuds.”
Wassail. Nothing to do with astronomy. Lots to do with orchards and apples. It’s a celebration of the apple harvest and no, I don’t know why it’s done in the middle of January rather than the autumn, except that apple harvests can go on for rather a long time, and it’s not until after Christmas that the redwings and fieldfares fly in and devour the remaining windfalls. It’s one of those customs that goes up and down in popularity. Right now, it was undergoing something of a vogue, and a lot of the local farms were making a tidy sum by charging a few quid entry. It’s appealing because it involves alcohol and guns: you drink hot mulled cider, sing a couple of wassail carols, and a man fires a shotgun into a tree to scare away any evil spirits and ensure a good harvest for the following autumn. It’s all about the earth, and perhaps that was what I needed, with a head in the heavens, beset by the persons of stars.
The next day was even colder. I rose before dawn and locked myself in the study, shifting the table closer to the window and rolling up the faded Persian rug. Beneath, the circle was traced on the floorboards, with a conjuration triangle outlined in red beyond it. If you are summoning a spirit, you don’t necessarily want it in the circle with you. In fact, usually not. I performed the lesser banishing ritual of the pentagram, moving smoothly around the circle and invoking the protection of the archangelic powers at each quarter, each watchtower. This is standard ceremonial magic, dating from the late nineteenth century and the turgid practices of the Golden Dawn, but its roots are older. And, more important, it works.
Whether it would work now remained to be seen; I sought to summon a star. I finished up the ritual and turned my attention to the conjuration triangle. A handful of frankincense, myrrh, and sage went into the little brazier inside the circle; it hit the hot charcoal and hissed up.
I held out my hands. “Lady Spica! I invite you …”
At first I didn’t think anything was happening, and I wasn’t surprised; I didn’t even know if you could summon a star like a normal spirit. But gradually the smoke began to congeal. The air cleared. Spica stood before me, but not in the conjuration triangle. She glanced at it and smiled an ambiguous smile. She stepped over the edge of the circle, lifting the hem of her gown, and I took a step back. She was loose in the room and unbound; I’d seen no evidence that she meant me harm, but I was still taking a chance.
Her lips moved in silence. “I can’t hear you,” I said. Spica smiled again, held out a hand. Then she turned her hand over and up, palm outward.
Stop. Wait.
It took me a moment. She held a finger to her lips and pointed to the clock.
“Seven in the morning? No. You’ll tell me when?”
A nod. She spoke once more, earnestly and long, but her words weren’t audible to me. Her tendrils of hair drifted out in a rising wind, and she was gone again.
I don’t like the feeling that I’m not in control. But in magic, it happens all the time. You’re only a piece of something, a tiny cog. You may never know the full story, and the powers who engineer such things operate on a need-to-know basis. Sometimes not even that. If fifty years of this have taught me anything, they’ve taught me patience.
Which is its own reward, so they say.
After the ritual, I cooled my heels for a couple of days. I saw nothing strange; nothing strange spoke to me. I looked for the comet, but to my frustration the temperature rose, with cloudy night skies. Stella was furious. However, Saturday, the night of the wassail, dawned cold and the frost remained in the lee of the hedges and in the pockets of the fields all day, until the sun went down in a fiery blaze. Alys and the girls had cooked all day, and I did the washing up and made some bread; by the time we’d finished, cars were starting to pull into the yard as the first of our guests arrived.
Cider and mead first, then wassail. You make toast and place it in the tree—it’s for the spirits, the good ones. I gather Serena rather fancied the shotgun, but it was left firmly in the hands of a neighboring farmer who could be relied upon to aim in the right direction and not take out one of the guests or a cow. We trooped out into the gathering twilight, clutching mugs and glasses, boots crunching on the icy grass. Carols were sung; the shotgun was fired. I looked up, but it was not dark enough yet to see the comet.
As the gunshot echoes were reverberating through the orchard to the sound of cheers, I turned to see Spica standing behind me, her finger to her lips. The cheers slowed and died, as though someone had pressed a mute button. I looked over my shoulder. My family, our friends, were still there, still moving and clapping, but in slow motion, and they were shadowy, like ghosts. Only the trees of the orchard were solid, and they looked taller, harder, older: stiff as stone. Spica said, “Come.”
Her voice was musical and low, and I realized how inhuman she was. Her eyes were whiteless, a burning green. She held out a sharp-nailed hand, bonier than before, the fingers longer.
We
