Day 21

Faith is not Desire. Faith is Will. Desires are things that need to be satisfied, whereas Will is a force. Will changes the space around us,...

Paulo Coelho

Taurus. Today is the second day marked by its influence. For the fun of it, I have just looked up some of the key words associated with this sign. Dependability. Stability. Patience. Serenity. These are definitely not traits I associate with this time of the year. No. When I think of Taurus, I think of Nia and Liam, both Taureans, and both quiet explosions of Nature unleashed. How fitting that I should write of them now, with the moon so nearly full.

Nia was my first witch, and probably the most powerful I will ever know. She arrived at my primary school one day in the middle of the year, with no explanation and no apparent need to explain. She simply was, and became part of the flow of every day as though she had always been there and time before her was merely a limbo of waiting and anticipation. From the moment of her arrival she was an outcast. Not because she wasn’t pretty or dressed conventionally or any of the usual reasons for rejecting newcomers, but because of the sense of isolation and tingling strangeness that seemed to accompany her everywhere she walked. The quality of her habitual silence was powerful and her cold energy spoke louder than any words, letting you know when she had passed nearby. Her isolation didn’t seem to bother her; in fact, if anything, she welcomed it and saw it as natural. The centre of the universe was in every step she took and those around her merely an irrelevance.

But every outcast, even a child of destiny, needs a confidante or familiar. So she gravitated to the only other outcast in our year: she chose me. I became her disciple and faithful follower. Possessive and jealous in her friendships, she resented all intruders, and most especially she resented Carly. But most of the time this was not an issue. We walked as a pair and the education I received at school became, I suspect, very different from any curriculum intended by the teachers.

In appearance, thinking about it, she should have looked like a young Kelly-Ann. She had very much the same colouring, with beautiful pale skin and a long sheet of black, shining hair. Her very vividness should have made her stand out, only she did not. By some strange trick she instead receded, blending into the background so as to be almost unnoticeable. Except for the uncomfortable prickling of cool air that accompanied her. If Kelly-Ann is the bright urban skyline against a clear night, Nia was the moonlit forest, a soft, eerie flickering of shadows. There was even, I fancied, a hint of damp, earthy moss about her. You might think of gentleness and welcome. You would be wrong. If you looked closely into her eyes (and few did), you would find that they neither shone nor sparkled nor twinkled. Instead, they glittered. It was a strange experience, to look into her eyes; I did not do it often. Only occasionally I couldn’t help but sneak a peek, they were so unusual. Most people imagined her eyes to be grey, and sometimes they were – they shifted in colour according to her mood. But most of the time, if I really looked I saw the truth. They were a deep and startling violet. One more reason why she should have stood out in any crowd in the most breathtaking way, and yet, did not.

Nia did not like adults. She resented the natural power and authority they held over her. Not that anything would have stopped her if she had really wanted to step forth into her power, I truly believe, but shadow served her. It was not her wish to attract notice, and so she was forced to bear the role of child and bow to the authority of those who were, according to theory and convention, above her. The rhythms of her life were dictated by the rhythms of the world around her, and inwardly she seethed. The day was coming, she knew, when it would be she who dictated terms, with none to question her comings and her goings.

Even when I first knew her, however, she was a master manipulator. No teacher was proof against the hypnotic quality of her whispered voice. You could actually see the suspicion and even open hostility in their faces sometimes, and yet, try as they might, they could not seem to assert themselves over her. If she was late or did not bring in her homework, they would berate her. But somehow it always went wrong. If another child were late, they would be quickly and tersely dealt with and the day would continue with as little interruption as possible. With Nia, the day stretched out. The more the teachers argued, the more glutinous and sticky time became. A confused or baffled look would come over them and their foreheads would crease. In the end, Nia would be sent to her seat with no punishment or serious reprimand and she would disappear back into her shadow world. And the only thing you would really remember was that the teacher (whichever one was silly enough to challenge her) had looked like a fool.

One year in primary school, when she was not in my class, she even managed to persuade her class to put on a play. No one else was putting on a play that year, and certainly not in the middle of the year when the curriculum should have been in full swing. But her class did. And the play they chose, unaccountably, was an excerpt from Nia’s favourite story of all time: Jane Eyre (at least, she loved the early part of the book; she detested the weak woman she saw Jane as ultimately becoming). At this point, probably Nia was the only person in our year who had even heard of Charlotte Brontë, let alone read any of her works. She had read them all, as well as those of Jane Austen and many others. Perhaps the teacher was persuaded that exposing the class to the story of the young Jane Eyre would awaken an interest in classic literature in them.

Even more unaccountably, the leading role went, of course, to Nia. Nia, who on every other occasion avoided notice at all costs. Nia, unpopular with both children and teachers, and who, one would have imagined, would have no stage presence whatsoever. Nia was cast as Jane. And she lived her. The play was put on before everyone in our year, so I was there to see it. I heard her impassioned defiance of authority and saw her quiet smouldering as she refused to meekly accept her fate. It was surprising to see her put so much of her self into view like that. Because, of course, in playing the role, she revealed her own defiance, her own smouldering, hidden agenda. Why did she allow herself to be so exposed? Perhaps even a witch like her cannot resist occasionally flinging back the cloak of grey to reveal the raging torrent of colour beneath. After that, of course, I also read Jane Eyre. As, I imagine, others did. Charlotte Brontë became popular in primary school that year.

An appreciation for literature was not the only thing I learned from her in primary school. It was she who first introduced me to the concepts of NLP and body language. She studied them with an avidity I found astonishing. While I enjoyed and was intrigued by the ideas she described, she was not content with mere ideas. For her, mastery was all and she sought anything that would increase her potency and influence in the world. Jung and introspection must have had little appeal for her. But NLP, body language, hypnosis… She devoured everything she could find on every possible psychological and literary magic, scooping in information at a terrifying rate and translating knowledge into dogged, disciplined practice. Determination became a living force and presence around her; she gave it life and it followed her everywhere, much as I did. It was the third entity in our relationship. There were arts and practices also that she did not share, even with me, but kept hidden only to herself.

If she used tools beyond her own phenomenal mind, I never saw them. I almost think she would have scorned them as mere playthings. But then, for all she was a child of Earth, she had no use for things external to her. Everything she was, came from within. She used information outside herself but also scorned it, absorbing it and then tossing it aside. She did not appreciate the role of student but took on for herself, as quickly as she could manage it, the role of master. If there was one thing she resented more than any other about adults, it was the advantage of time they had over her, time in which to learn and become autonomous agents. She chafed at the weakness created by her own youth and inexperience; it was a weakness she was bound to resolve as quickly as she knew how.

And perhaps, if she had one weakness as a witch, it was that. Not youth and inexperience, but her refusal to acknowledge any force beyond herself. She did not work with Nature so much as she used it, gaining from it what she needed but refusing to acknowledge the noble essence of anything outside her own self. She had, also, her own great need to hide, including from her mother, so physical tools would not have worked for her. She would give none the evidence they needed to prove that anything was unusual. Outwardly, unless you looked too closely into her eyes, or stepped too near her prickling shadow, you would see absolutely nothing that might arouse concern. Even her books she read mostly within the confines of the libraries she visited on weekends, so that her borrowing record would not show a trace of her reading habits. Or else she would buy them with her pocket money and keep them hidden in a secret place, away from both home and school.

For me, ironically, given her great desire to grow up, Nia was most perfect and powerful in her childhood. In her very defiance of authority and in the unusual quality of her precocious mind, I could see the strange and unique force that moved within her. But even a Nia must grow up and must face the one thing she could not completely control, her own hormones. In high school she met, not Mr Rochester, but Heathcliff.

Liam was that typically tortured soul who would most attract her. Tall, dark and haunted, he moved through his world like a despairing god. His own looks were a match to hers in pallor and darkness. Only his was a sickly pallor with tiny veins showing through and deep purple smudges beneath his eyes that were a perfect match to the violet of her own. But he was tall – tall and broad and strong. Or at least, he would have been strong if he had not been so haunted. He could completely engulf her in his embrace, and I don’t know if she felt more comforted or frightened by this fact.

Satisfyingly vampiric in appearance, with looks marred only by a surprising gentleness, he was, bizarrely, completely unconscious of his power. In anyone else it might have become an almost Hollywood-esque affectation, but he was absolutely and completely clueless. He had no concept of himself or of how he might appear to others. Also, he was not a witch, nor did he have any spiritual path. He wielded no conscious power of intention. It’s a shame really. If I imagined him as a Pagan, he would be a great Druid, though of course, his robe would have to be black, not blue or green or white as are the robes of the Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids. But his very lack of interest in matters spiritual or magical was probably one of the things that made him acceptable and safe for Nia to conquer. Here was no power to rival her own; if, physically, he could pick her up as though she were still a child, mentally, the power was entirely with her. He was ensnared utterly within her web. Just exactly as she needed him to be.

Liam was the one boy who ever attracted my own attention, but he, of course, had eyes only for Nia. I knew it and there was no way I was ever going to attempt to compete. I felt safer watching from a distance anyway. Nia might have the power to ensnare him, but I, on the other hand, would have been afraid of the power he might have come to unwittingly hold over me. So I enjoyed the tension of our closeness without ever having to question its import.

There was one thing she forgot to factor into the equation: her own feelings. No matter how tight a control she kept over him, she could never feel entirely safe. She was betrayed from within and the weakness was all but unbearable to her. For that she could not forgive him. She began to weave stories for him. Terrible stories about their relationship and about herself and her past. She told them until he believed them with every fibre of his being and would have moved heaven and earth for her. At the moment when she had him most roused, she would tell him she had been lying. That it was all a game. But then, unexpectedly, she would again reassert the truth of her tales. Reality shifted as swiftly and uncomfortably as the cloud before a full moon on a night of storm. Now true, now false, now a different truth altogether. She spun her tales with so much venom that reality became a dream. A nightmare. Gravity ceased to exist for him and there were no foundations beneath his feet. When he looked at her, what did he see? A mirage? Smoke? A shifting phantom who held him in thrall? Because even he, eventually, must know that he had been enslaved.

In the end, their relationship became a magnetic field of hate and compulsion. They could not live together; they could not live apart. Wherever they went, the ground cleared before them. No other students wished to be near them and I alone was witness. Why did they want me there? Why did they allow me to be the third wheel? Because, in their own ways, they each needed me in order to feel safe. And so it was that I witnessed their increasingly silent battle, one fought with blades. I watched as they stared into each other’s eyes as each took up a blade, cutting rage and hate and impossible love deeply within their own flesh and veins.

Into this inner circle I dared not enter, but whenever one would steal the blade from the other I would gladly dispose of it where it could cause no further harm. But there were always more. More and more blades, and nothing to stop them. And all I was doing by throwing away the confiscated blades was to abet the victor of the moment in asserting power over the other, allowing one to carve fire into themselves whilst denying this power to the other.

Where might all this have ended? I do not know. I do not want to know. Could I have told anyone? Asked for help? I do not think so. Neither would have forgiven me and I was terrified to risk the wrath of vengeance that I would arouse in Nia. Besides, by that time I had already had my own encounter with the school’s counsellor. I had no wish to draw attention to myself again. But one day, as suddenly and mysteriously as she had first arrived, Nia was gone. With no explanation, no farewell. The home she shared with her mother stood empty, though it had seemed full and just as usual only the other day. She was gone.

For quite a long time, Liam continued to spend as much of his free time as possible with me. We even became close and had long conversations. When he could stop thinking about Nia for two minutes, I discovered that he was actually a fascinating thinker with a great mind; I loved to debate with him as once I had debated with Carly. And my favourite moments ever were the ones in which he smiled. Just occasionally I could surprise in him a relaxed, delighted laugh, and these moments are among the most precious in my memory. But gradually the scent of Nia faded from me and I could no longer remind him of what had once been. The sparkle and interest I saw when he looked at me slowly died and we began to drift apart. Slowly and gently he let me go. For all his Heathcliff-tortured wanderings, he was too gentle to want to hurt me or anyone if he could help it. Except, of course, himself. And Nia. Finally, he too, was gone, like Nia before him, and Carly before her. And I again walked alone. There was freedom and relief in this, but also a lingering sadness.

I could probably find Nia if I tried hard enough. Unless, of course, she has completely changed her name and identity, as she may well have done for all I know. But even if I could, I don’t think I would. For a start, of course, I fear to be drawn back into her power. To be a follower of hers (friend is too strong a word) is to be drawn into the very heart of the tornado. One cannot see outside or beyond it when one is caught in it; even the sense of up and down becomes lost. If I were to find her again, and, if she did not reject me, I would, again, disappear. And I would not want that.

But I think there is a greater fear than the fear of being caught within her flame. It is the fear of whatever change I might discover within her. What if time has worn her down? What if, as an adult, she has become merely ordinary? Merely a witch as other witches, practising her arts without benefit of the extraordinary, precocious child she once was? What if, in gaining mastery, she has lost the very essence of unequal struggle that once so defined her?

By not seeking, by not knowing, I can keep her forever pure and untainted in my mind. For me she remains forever that singular, extraordinary force of Nature, the quiet storm personified.