Rituals of Samhain

Author's Note:

This series is a continuation of the Elfie universe.

The witches of the August Coven drank their tea while listening to a radio play. Between the four of them, they had three good eyes, four bad legs, six boils, and a single tremendous case of gout. Their sitting parlor had the smell of an embalmer's theater mingled with a pet day care. Several cats meandered in and out of sunbeams, periodically visiting the laps of the nodding old women. At the center of the room, between their four old recliners, stood a perch upon which sat a raven the size of a seven year old child.

None of them, the witches or the cats, regarded the raven as anything spectacular. It preened its feathers and occasionally cocked its head to glare at one of the women with no real intent. When hungry, it would fly out the window at the far end of the room, nearly shattering the glass each time. When it returned, one of the witches would fuss over it for a few seconds as she groaned and bitched her way to close the window again. They would all return to their quiet sitting, listening to an enchanted radio play the voices of the long dead.

Normally, that's what they did. Since the past Winter Solstice though, the raven had been acting peculiar. Twice it returned with bones, a femur of an ox and the jawbone of a hanged man. None of the witches thought either to be a good sign. Sister Alba suggested the ox bone indicated a bountiful harvest. Sister Prine reminded Sister Alba that the fields had been paved over for almost a hundred years and few people bothered to farm in their council tenement. Sister Margie suspected the jaw bone portended death, on which they all agreed, but none of them knew whose death. It could have simply meant the death of the fellow to whom the jaw bone belonged. Sister Carolyn suggested they consult the runes, but none of them could remember where they put them. As a result, the August Coven was largely unprepared when the raven spoke.

On the September equinox, during an episode of

Beyond Midnight

, the raven spread out its wings and turned its head in an un-birdlike way. Green swirls filled its black eyes as it peered out at the August Coven. It opened its beak and spoke, "Where are my servants? Where are my devotees?"

Sister Prine nudged Sister Margie from her nap. "The raven is speaking. Does it normally do that?"

"Age has stolen your wits, Night Sisters!" The raven screeched, startling the four women to attention. "You have withered. You have forgotten the ways. The doors are open once again!"

Sister Alba raised her desiccated form up as best she could, opening her eyes wide to look at the raven. "Now listen here, bird, we've kept an eye on you for two hundred years. Not so much as a peep in all that time. Rude to start squawking all the sudden."

The bird made a clicking, frustrated noise with its beak. Its eyes wheeled around to each of the old witches in turn. "Where are your apprentices? Where is the rest of your coven?"

"They never call," Sister Carolyn said, sadly. "Don't have time for the old ways. Always busy with their cell phones and turn up their nose at looking in goat entrails."

"Now see here," Sister Prine said. "What's it that you want? You have a message for us?"

The bird opened its beak again, a look of anger and contempt on its black face. "The doors are open. The Fae return! The Great Father, the Dagda, comes to see his bride, my mistress, the Morrigan! On Samhain, they gather upon the joined realm for the Seventh Ritual. The Morrigan must be free to meet her husband. Or he shall turn his staff and crack this world." The raven screeched and went silent.

The four witches remained upright and alert for a moment, but then slumped back into their chairs. "What's he want us to do about it?" Sister Margie said.

"Samhain isn't even our responsibility," Sister Alba agreed. "Why not go poke the Coven of Aphrodite with his screeching?"

"They all died, dearie," Sister Prine reminded her. "Three hundred years ago. Fucked themselves to death, remember?"

"Oh, yes, ghastly spell that one was."

Sister Prine clicked her tongue, "I suppose we

don't

want the world to be tossed into undoing by the Dagda."

"I wouldn't. All our stuff is here," another of them said glancing around at the piles of yarn and old books.

Sister Carolyn picked up a telephone with massive numbers on it. She squinted as she pressed each in a sequence, "Tabatha will know what to do."

***

Neacandrax Othelshem frowned at the floating stuffed animal.

It shouldn't do that,

she thought. Nevertheless, the small, pink teddy bear did small cartwheels around her in mid air as she sat naked on her bed with vibrator in hand. In a way, the floating bear was the intended result of her masturbation. In another way, Nea had no idea how it actually happened.

Sex magic, nymphomancy, wasn't supposed to work. It was meant to be all theorem and no practice. Nea took it up as a joke at first, but then as a way of meeting boys — which never worked out the way she wanted. Turns our boys didn't care much about the theory of sex magic. Girls either, for that matter. She'd stuck with it though. The other apprentices went off to more practical studies like divination or aeromancy, utilizing the functioning elements of the magical realm to power themselves. Not Nea. She stuck with her Hitachi and kept practicing in the hopes of one day...well, she didn't actually know what she hoped for. Something special. Floating stuffed animals didn't count.

Frowning, she noticed her phone ringing. It displayed a severe looking young woman with black hair and dazzling green eyes. Tabatha Longnight, otherwise known as Tabby, had not spoken to Nea since a particularly embarrassing incident where Nea wanted to demonstrate the effects of a particular powder on the female erogenous zones. Nea didn't mind the constant compulsion to play with her own breasts for a week, but apparently it ruined Tabatha's whole "dark mistress" mystique. Also, Nea doubted the other witch was calling with good news. "Hello?" she answered in her sweet, lilting voice, hoping to blunt Tabby's predictable wrath.

"Open the door," Tabby said from the other end of the phone.

"Sorry?"

"Your door. Open your door. I'm here."

"Did you try the knob?"

"The knob? Do you not have magical locks?" The doorknob turned slowly, and the door creaked open. "Oh, fuck's sake, Nea, you're naked."

The floating bear dropped to the bed as Nea covered herself. "Right, sorry. I didn't expect you to actually walk in."

Tabby moved across the room, a gliding figure of silky darkness. She wore black tights and a black tank top to compliment her black cropped hair, black lipstick, and black mood. She sat on the end of the bed while Nea pulled on an oversized shirt with a cartoon unicorn on the front of it. Tabby crossed her hands in her lap and sat with a rigid back, looking beautiful despite her foul air. "What are you doing in here, anyway?"

"Masturbating," Nea said, holding up her vibrator.

Tabby dipped her head forward, pressing her index finger and thumb against the bridge of her nose. "You know, Nea, most people would choose to keep that information private. They would give some kind of euphemism at least. They certainly wouldn't hold up their sex toy proudly."

"It's working, Tabby!" Nea said, excited to have someone to talk to who understood her studies. "Nymphomancy is

working.

"

"I know," Tabby said through pursed lips. "The Sisters of the August Coven called me. They've been sent a message. They think the world is going to end and only a nymphomancer can save it."

Nea waited for the rest of the joke. The kind of women who went all in on witchcraft — actual witchcraft — rarely did so for the free love aspects. In the years since selecting her specialty, Nea had been subjected to no end of ridicule and mockery. Not usually from Tabby, though. Practical jokes never seemed to interest the other witch much. "Go on then. Explain how I need to be fucked in the ass to prevent the cataclysm."

Tabby massaged her brow again. "It's real, Nea. I've done the scrying myself. I slaughtered a full grown pig and pulled a hangman's noose out of its intestine. The world has been in full upheaval since Christmas. Everyone I've spoken with agrees. The leylines between our world and Faerie have opened up like sliced veins. That's why your magic works."

"But that would mean I could bind a faerie," Nea said. "Theoretically, of course."

"No more theory," the other witch insisted. "Did you hear what I said about the noose? The world is doomed. And not from the slow entropy of human existence. Big magical poof of oceans boiling and rivers of fire."

Nea hopped off the bed, moving over to a shelf from which she plucked a book. "I don't think it'll be all that bad. What did the message say anyway?"

Tabby reached into her pocked and pulled out a makeup compact. As it opened, it spoke with a croaking, birdish voice. It repeated the words of warning given by the raven. As it finished, Tabby snapped it shut. "I looked it up. The Morrigan is the wife of the Dagda, a druid godking capable of making and unmaking the world. Traditionally, they meet on Samhain for their yearly maritals."

"Right," Nea said, nodding along as she scanned through a spellbook. "But, when the doors to Faerie were sealed, the path between the Morrígan's realm and the Dagda's got shut, too. Oo, I bet they're quite pent up after the past few centuries. Surely it's not literal though. The Dagda's got no reason to destroy our reality. It's apparently his favorite place to fuck, after all."

Tabby stood up and began to pace. "Let's assume, for the sake of my sanity, that the threat is real because otherwise I spent the better part of an hour butchering a pig for no reason. You know pigs don't smell great while they're alive. Their insides aren't much better. So, going forward with the idea that unless we get a Druid King laid, all reality will disappear into nothingness, what do we do?"

"Hmm?" Nea hadn't been listening. Her eyes ran over a page for the summoning and binding of a fae creature. "Oh, I don't know. The Morrigan isn't exactly popular. She's more of your speed than mine. She has her own realm, and generally whenever she left it, she brought war, death, strife — that kind of stuff with her. The Fae locked us out, but we locked up the Morrigan whenever we could."

"I don't understand where you found time to become a scholar between diddling yourself," Tabby said in as much good humor as she ever mustered. "What about the 'seventh ritual'? Wouldn't that imply the existence of a preceding six rituals? Nea are you even paying attention? What are you reading?"

"I am listening, somewhat. And I don't know about other rituals, but I do know who would." She turned the book around to face Tabby. It showed a charcoal drawing of a satyr-ish creature in the center of bizarre symbols and erratic notations. "A Fae. If the door is really open, I can get a Fae! Do you know what that means?"

"That you can save the world? I quite like the world, Nea, and I'm worried you're prioritizing things other than saving it."

"Sure, sure. But more importantly, I'll be able to do

magic!

Proper magic. Not floating stuff or guessing which card is next in a deck or rooting around in dead things guts. With a Fae, I'll be able to...well, like this spell. It's a fertility spell that makes a man's dick grow to double its size and guarantees an impregnation with whomever he couples with."

Tabby frowned. "And you expect that to be useful?"

"Bad example. This is one of the more...sex oriented books. They're mostly sex oriented books. But there, The Tome Arcanum. I could animate a servant from a bindle of sticks, make it clean up around here. Or transmute metals. Or make it snow on a summer's day. Don't start acting like magic isn't useful. I'd simply need to find uses for it."

"I know magic is useful. The particular use I'm interested in at the moment are the seven rituals of Samhain. Can you focus on those?"

"Yes. Step one. I'm gettin me a fae!"

***

A studio apartment did not provide much space for a ritual to summon and bind a fae, but since the ritual involved quite a display of nudity and adult situations, Nea decided not to do it outside. With Tabby's help, the piles of books and meager bits of furniture shifted to the sides of the room. Using the spellbook, they taped out the design of the summoning runes on the wood paneling. Tabby asked where Nea kept her lamb's blood which received a crinkled nose and "ink will be fine" as a response.

It took a long while to paint out concentric circles, the bizarre squiggles of a dead language, and the protective wards to keep some horrible inter-dimensional beast from ripping through the fabric of reality. Tabby handled the last task by herself while Nea fussed with a word she couldn't translate. "Sex organ? I think. This line says the summoner must give themselves over willingly through the use of a sex organ. Wonder if that means my sex organ."

"It's meant to go in the center and be the point of convection," Tabby said, reading over her shoulder. "So it's meant to pull the fae through."

"A dildo! Sex organ is dildo. I should write that down."

With her epiphany, she went to her small sleeping area and fished around until she pulled out a brightly purple dick and balls with a suction cup on the end. Smiling to herself, she brought it to the center of the summoning circle and stuck it to the floor with a loud

THUCK.

It wobbled slightly, making Tabby frown. "So, the ritual is..."

Nea pulled off the shirt in one smooth motion. She tossed it in the general direction of the bed, standing before Tabby fully naked and beaming. Her red curls bounced slightly as she tiptoed around the still wet ink, pleased to see Tabby's cheeks blush to a color other pale white. With a wild grin, she answered, "I fuck the dildo until the summoning completes."

Tabby crossed her arms and almost floated over to the apartment door. "I'm not watching this."

"Tabatha, when will you finally accept that being a witch means dancing naked in the moonlight."

She pursed her lips. "This is not the moonlight. And you will not be dancing." She slipped out of the door and shut it behind her.

"It's a bit like dancing," Nea said, thoughtfully. She moved around the circle, happier to work while naked. She checked and double checked each rune against the diagram. Working in theory more than practice taught her to be thorough if nothing else. Still, it required a great deal of self control not to start right away. For the past nine months, she'd worked to create the simplest spells, but found herself unable to harness energy she knew waited just out of reach. Now she understood why. Or at least, she assumed she did. A Fae creature should work like a conduit, helping her channel the magical energy into something useful instead of arbitrary effects, but also like a battery, storing sexual energy for greater acts of nymphomancy.

First, she had to be strong enough to complete the summoning ritual. Even a nymphomancer needed some assistance getting excited in high pressure situations. She fetched a bottle of lube from her stash of sex toys. Bringing it over to the center of the circle, she sat down with her legs splayed out on either side of the dildo, looking at it with some consternation. It wasn't her favorite, more of a "filling" aid than something that could get her off. She considered getting one of her vibrators, but that felt like cheating. The ritual text belabored the idea of reaching a point of desire that would lure the Fae to through to the human realm.

"The core theorems require a willingness to both give and receive the nymphomantic energy," she said, more to the dildo than anything else. "I have to be eager for a sexual partner as much as the other side must be eager to have one." A sudden pang of doubt hit her. She had no idea what Fae looked for in human women. Her own body often felt like the greatest impediment to her magical studies. With small breasts and a small if somewhat plump ass, she wondered if Fae went for the more traditionally fertile looking women.

Can't do anything about that...yet, anyway.

Nea focused on an idea — a young, virile man, roughly her age. She imagined his hands running over her neck, down her chest. His fingers graze near her nipples, but do not touch them. They move around the side of her breasts, dancing across her skin like sentient feathers as they make small circuits around her curves. They spread out over her collarbone as the imagined palm flattens against her sternum. She feels his strength as his hand slides fully down her stomach until it flips around, fingers slipping between her thighs as the base of his palm pushes against her mound — Nea became flustered. She tossed aside the lube and raised up onto her knees, positioning the dildo at her pussy.

The air tingled with energy as she gently lowered herself onto the phallus. Her walls spread easily to accept its small width. The outermost ring glowed as she rocked on the silicone length.

It's working,

she thought with excitement. Small spirals of pleasure radiated through her body. Her stomach knotted with anticipation while her mind struggled to both focus and relax simultaneously. She returned to her thoughts — the imaginary hands move across her thighs. They tread even more lightly here than on her breasts. With near disinterest a finger brushes against her lower lips, causing her to jerk from the sensitivity. Her mouth sags open in a low moan as the finger returns, running the length of her slit, coating itself in her juices in preparation. She knows what's coming and hums with anticipation. The imagined digit nudges insistently against her, tip still too dry to enter, but the pressure and touch are enough to cause a flood. The fingers, now two, push, slick with her want. They're inside her moving independently as they explore her insides. As quickly as they began their search, they stop, moving once again in uniform as they begin a slow push and pull against her. The palm comes up to cup her whole sex as heat spreads through her —

The second and third circles whirled to life, spinning blurs of changing colors. The runes seemed to rise from the wood, becoming floating holograms in the air between the dervishes of light. Nea's hands massaged her breasts as her knees pressed hard against the wood floor. A thin sheen of sweat coated her back, coaxed out by both the physical and mental exertions. As she kept building her rhythm on the dildo, rising up and thrusting down with faster and faster strokes, she also tried to wrangle the growing energy and pleasure in her body. She focused on the little blips of delight racing out from her core, driving them back into a single incorporeal mass of power which she willed out into the arcane designs around her. The stronger waves of pleasure threatened to throw off her effort and send her careening into screaming ecstasy. If she let the pleasure take her too soon, the energy would dissipate. It would all be for nothing — well, not nothing, but not her goal either.

Her hands slapped down on the wood in front of her as her body leaned forward. She looked underneath her stretched form, seeing her small breasts swaying as her hips pumped up and down the lifeless cock.

Maybe I needed a real one.

Maybe a sexual sacrifice so to speak.

Doubts filled her already crowded head as she moved one hand down to her clit. As soon as she touched it, an electric shock went through her. It wasn't the usual burst of orgasmic pleasure. Instead, it felt like hooks digging into her soul, hooks which leashed to something unseen. Smiling, her eyes fluttered open to see the door of her apartment glowing with bright blue light.

Open!