Shane unpacked the last of her books, forcing herself to exile much loved collections of fairytales to the plastic storage unit under her bed. It was best that the books recuperate, as she had broken their spines to a one over the years. They were now nestled under her date underwear, intact price tags of the latter serving as bookmarks. Shane had never had to share a room with anyone before, having grown up an only child, and imagined her "underwear tags as bookmarks" ploy a good method of determining whether her roommate was as nosy as Shane knew herself to be. What one wore under their clothes could be much more revealing than the artifice. Shane had always been concerned with who people truly were behind self-adhesive labels and confusing actions. She wanted to know people in the light and dark, though the latter only in the most figurative of ways.
Shane flounced onto her bare mattress and yipped at the sting of a spring in her back. This puppy-in-heat yelp was her unwittingly announcement to her roommate for the first time. Roselyn, wearing a lace blouse that would have befitted the princess at a renaissance festival and tight blue jeans more appropriate in a sorority house, pushed the door further ajar and stuck her head in as though she might have expected and preferred there to be dogs copulating. She was every inch the model for the fairy painting hung on the wall, more so for the confusion she wore on her angular features. The world must be a very strange place for fairies, Shane thought, more so that they hid their features behind so much make-up.
The illicit scent of sage lingered in the air like an unanswered question, the only tangible remainder from the spell Roselyn had done to bring her the perfect roommate. She did not wish to rely on the mundane survey when there was a chance to use witchcraft. Why on earth shouldn't she use every means at her disposal, natural and otherwise? It seemed that the Powers That Be gave Roselyn a geek instead of someone spiritually empowered. She reminded herself to have a petulant conversation with her patron-goddess-of-the-week about this. Shane wasn't without potential, though. If she were to take her hair out of those childish pigtails and wore a billowy dress instead of just a t-shirt and jeans, she could pass for a fairly attractive girl. And a bit of mascara and blush wouldn't kill the girl. Just something to take attention away from her nose, complimentary colors to strip away the shadows under her eyes of long nights spent reading. Roselyn was growing in the opinion that there were few problems a woman could have that couldn't be solved with the proper application of oils and unguents. Though she was certain that Shane would never make it as a true Daughter of the Goddess, at least she didn't decorate her side of the room obtrusively or, in fact, at all. Quite a lot could be said by Roselyn for someone that did not intrude upon her evolving style (which seemed to be evolving back into the depths of the sea), though very little would actually ever be said. She had no interest in harming the geek or any living creature she wasn't using for a meal or outfit.
Shane rose from the bed and extended the hand that wasn't occupied with rubbing her emerging bruise. "Hi, I'm Shane," she greeted. She did not see Roselyn's "evolving style" as anything more than a collection of clothing -- including unicorn underpants -- and baubles; though she was aware of subcultures that dressed as Roselyn did, she didn't consider what one wore much of a lifestyle choice. Clothing was simply what one wore in order not to be naked.
Roselyn perplexedly peered down at Shane's hand. She took it in her and shook it. Then she kissed the back of it, a gesture that struck even Roselyn as extreme. Shane recoiled slightly, having spent every other handshake of her life with dry fingers and irked that she could no longer boast this.
"I'm Roselyn," she said, trying to enunciate each letter as exotically as possible, Roe-Zell-Lion. "I'm a witch," she added. Roselyn felt it paid to get that out of the way, though the same could not often be said for those to whom she introduced herself. They tended to shuffle awkwardly when she started talking about her coven or showed them her athame up close. Shane just nodded and shrugged as though this was plain to see, which, after the fact, it was.
Off Shane's lack of shock, Roselyn silently thanked her patron goddess and swore to burn candles to her for a whole week. She knew in an instant that she must have been wrong, judging too rashly. Shane suddenly seemed to have excellent vibrations, very accepting and curious.
"That's… nice. I've read a bit about witches," Shane replied finally, given that the conversational ball seemed to be in her court and she wished to lob it far away to a topic with which she was more comfortable. She wasn't lying. In between fairy tales and anthropology, it was hard not to stumble through the works of Margaret Mead. She wouldn't be able to explain much further, but there was certainly a precedent for revivals of pagan cultures and none of the Neopagan sects she'd read about was inclined toward renewing any human sacrificing their predecessors had done to appease the gods. It seemed to Shane just a lot of chanting at the full moon and aspiring to be good people and it filled a need in their lives. It was not a need Shane felt she had-books were religion enough for her-but who was she to judge?
Roselyn appraised Shane as though she were an interesting rock, saying nothing. To be fair, Roselyn was the sort much enamored of rocks.
If Shane was going to have to spend her evening (and two hundred subsequent ones) with this person, she couldn't allow a silence to reign. Despite Shane's attempt to divert Roselyn with a discussion of books, all she had succeeding in doing was to change her expression to that of a person examining a smaller rock.
"Are you a freshman?" Shane asked, hoping a direct question would do the trick, since the answer was plain before the asking. Manor House, she now knew, was lousy with fellow frosh.
Roselyn blinked dreamily, eyelids dark with eyeshadow. "Oh no, I am an old soul. I used to be Cleopatra." Shane froze, teeth slightly parted, as she tried to summon a response. Roselyn then giggled to indicate her joke. She had subjected her new roommate to enough and knew that her persona as a witch only lasted as long as her attention stayed focused, which happened in short spurts and almost never in the presence of sugary cereal. She was an artist unceasingly, however, and that is the aspect of her that couldn't stand keeping Shane uncomfortable.
Shane tittered in turn, though Roselyn didn't think she actually got the joke. "Sorry, Wiccan humor. Anyone who is anyone claims to have been Cleopatra. There must have been a gaggle of Cleopatras in ancient Egypt, all with their own Marc Anthony. I think the Egyptians probably invented this cloning stuff. Yeah, I am a freshman. And," she added before remembering to retain a sense of mystery about her, the painter again wanting to divulge her masterpiece immediately, "I've never really been away from home before. And, I'm really kind of scared... No, I'm really really scared. I never had a sister or a roommate. So…" Roselyn wasn't in the practice of revealing personal information to near strangers. It was fine to show them your underwear, but never your fear.
These words were the first out of Roselyn's mouth that were even slightly comprehensible to Shane. Through the make-up and the pretense -- the two most popular illusions -- Roselyn was a human with squishy organs and concrete needs. These Shane understood and appreciated, giving a more honest and friendly laugh. Shane was thankful to be able to call the ice broken and crushed. "Yeah, I'm the same: no sisters or brothers or roommates. Just my mom. I know I just met you and this is a weird thing to say, but I'm glad we ended up roommates. I could do a lot worse."
"Do you know anyone on campus?" Roselyn always felt the need to know as many people as she could. Knowing people on campus, even by proxy, tended to make one's social life more agreeable. It gave one the pleasure of selectivity.
"I used to," Shane confessed, "but... he isn't here anymore, so you are officially the first person."
Roselyn smirked. "You could do a lot worse, Shane. I'll have you know I rock in no small way."
"How the hell can you equate video games with actual art?"
Jake turned from the screen and glared. "These games are art. Look at the graphics and storylines. People spend a lot more time creating and working with this... this interactive medium than with books or movies. There is an individual, personal role in each of these, rather than someone telling you what to think. I learn the lessons here."
"What lesson are you learning right now? How to graphically disembowel an dark elf? You imagine that's going to be useful?"
This wasn't a new argument, but the sort between friends that flares up and dies down, but is never actually resolved. This one no longer needed an antecedent, one party would merely refresh the argument apropos of nothing and the other would obligingly fill his role as adversary. Were they to know one another one hundred years--it had only been two--they would discuss this on their deathbeds while scratching their catheter tubes. While Virgil tended to be the one to back down when conflict arose, he had too much pride and took too much pleasure from these heated discussions to be anything less than adamant. He was far from an art buff, until that was the position Jake wanted him to fill.
Jake lapsed into a stern silence, the only sound coming from the flamethrower his computer game character wielded against muscular ghouls. Virgil returned to his book, all the more focused but absorbing measurably less.
Owen pushed the door of the common room open onto this scene, making sure that it slammed loudly enough to get the attention of his suitemates. "There is a matter that may soon demand our attention," he declaimed in a voice that was resonant and flat. Effect, he knew, was everything. Make them the ones who got excited, make them think it was their plan and they always went along.
Jake and Virgil barely stirred from actively ignoring one another. Jake murmured, his voice dulled to emphasize how much he was giving this his attention. "A matter… like… what?"
Owen sneered. He could have lived on his own, but assented to their arguments against "breaking up the three musketeers." Though it had been a very long time since he read the aforementioned book, he was almost certain Athos did not waste his days defeating demons in first person shooters and Porthos was more than a kowtowing brat. Instead of exploring the world, his two roommates spent most of their time outside of class staring at a screen or page, only offering the occasional mutters to show they had higher brain functions and were not in desperate need of watering.
"A matter related to a certain departed friend of yours, I believe."
"That kind of matter?" ventured Jake, avoiding specification. He had spent this last year trying without success to forget, but it was very much like trying not to mention the rotting elephant in the middle of the room. Even now, the thoughts released snakes of queasy melancholy slithering from his gut.
Virgil's sat upright, rigid. "What do you mean? What are you talking about? You don't even mention…" Virgil trailed off, unable to quite fill in what should go at this point in his accusation, but he was almost certain it was fiercer than an ellipse. Virgil could not keep the wavering uncertainty out of his voice. He didn't want to know why Owen and Jake behaved this way on rare occasions--he knew better to pry--but he knew the answer would force itself on him much sooner than he would have liked, which was exactly never.
Owen, having provoked his associates to anxiety, no longer felt the need to be anxious. The wheels rolled along once he applied a little starting momentum. He leaned his back against the ignored bleeping of an arcade game called Prymevil and he grinned. "It-she, actually-is something that may or may not have to be dealt with. It may just be coincidence…" Owen trailed off as though the silence bowdlerized the unpleasantness, which it did not. The silence was far uglier. "This university enjoys a certain reputation, doesn't it? A deserved one, I would think. Maybe it was just spoke so well of the college that she couldn't stay away. Or maybe she had applied before… matters occurred. The options are quite limitless."
"Where did you see her?" asked Jake, easing back into his chair. Life was easier in front of the screen, like being wrapped in a childhood blanket filled with violence and pornography. There was always the chance that he could search the web for help, though the chances of hitting on anything not involving barely legal coeds were slim. Even then, he could better manage life when gullible porn stars were a click away.
"I didn't, exactly," answered Owen evasively, his strong suit. "But her actions were such that there might be reason for concern. Not too much concern, however, as I stated previously. Such would not be prudent." Owen's sentences had a tendency to drift into the prolix when he needed to mask his thoughts from his two associates, a fact they both well knew by now. It was unnecessary; he hid his thoughts as though he spent several lifetimes perfecting the art, though it had really only been the past year as he drifted farther and farther from the person they knew.
Jake began pacing, wiping his rectangular glasses on his t-shirt. "What kind of concern? She's just a girl, right?"
"Have you learned nothing about women at college? No female is 'just a girl.' They just make you think they are. She may be, as you said, 'just a girl.' Or she may not."
Virgil had enough of the verbal cat and mouse, especially when he couldn't quite figure where the mousetraps lay. "So, we assume that this girl knows?"
Owen's legs twitched like a tiger in pounce. "We assume nothing. Assumptions are dangerous. We know what assumptions can do, don't we? The next move is hers and we will be ready when that happens, won't we?" he noted darkly.
From Shane's diary:
Last night, Roselyn asked me to do a spell with her. It isn't as though I believe in things like magic. I leave religion to the religious and that simply is not me. I don't care to speculate whether there is a creator, though the evidence has never seemed strong. It can be dangerous and stupid to believe there is some supernatural being looking out for us, that we can talk to ourselves and some divine intermediary will step in and patch us up. People need to be self-reliant. If there is any sort of a god, I have to believe he or she or it likes people who can stand on their own two feet and don't waste time and energy with things like prayer.
All of that sounds really negative. So why did I do this spell with Roselyn when I am nowhere close to being a Wiccan? I guess because she asked me to and, for all of her weirdness, I really can see us becoming friends. It would be a lot easier for me if we do, since I'm not going to get out of this room assignment. Like I said last night, I could do a lot worse. Given the quality of the other people in our dorm, I know that for damned sure. This spell was important to her. I did tell her how I felt about all of this. She was upfront with me and it was only reasonable to be just as upfront with her. Still, I didn't want to have to sit though "thees" and "thous" being spouted from a mouth that should be abusing the word "like." Religion should not be ridiculous.
After I confessed all of this, while she was digging though her plastic trunk, she asked me, her words cavernous, "You believe in psychology, right?"
I told her that I definitely believe in psychology, though I didn't think that psychology was something that required my belief in it to be true. It is a lot closer to science than witchcraft.
"In that case," Roselyn said, removing a plastic baggie full of cotton, "just consider this tapping into the Jungian Collective Unconscious to make us feel that the room is truly ours and safe. Drive away those nasty manifestations of fear and doubt. Okay?"
"Is that what we are doing?" I asked, actually a little surprised that Roselyn had enough of a grasp on something like psychology to spout off like that. That isn't to say that what she said makes total sense to me, but I guess I'm just not used to other people being smart. (That sounds really arrogant, doesn't it? It does, I know.) Still, it sounds like something my mom would have told me after one of her graduate psych classes. At least Roselyn wasn't analyzing me… that I know of.
She looked up as me and seemed to appraise me for a moment. She has got these dark green eyes like you wouldn't believe and when she looks at you in that way, you can swear she is really seeing something you are trying to hide. I bet it is all that eyeshadow, but it is a damned good effect. So she was staring into me, and then she said, as chipper as can be, "No, we aren't. But if that is what you have to think to help me with this, do it."
Seriously, I really think I could get along with this girl. She's got what my mom would call spunk.
I watched her as she removed the cotton from the plastic bag she was holding bag and produce a brown egg covered in writing. She handled it like it was the most fragile thing she had ever touched and then laid it down in a pot-a cauldron, I guess--no bigger that a measuring cup. Where do you even get something like that? Are their whole businesses dedicated to this sort of stuff? Is the occult a sound corporate model? Maybe I should switch my major from English to Demonic Business Administration.
After lighting the candles one by one with a flaming punk of incense (which she handed to me to light those votives she couldn't reach) she motioned for me to join her on the cold linoleum floor. She had put down a large mat with a spiraling Celtic design, but the cold seeped right though. It likely does not help that my ass is conspicuously lacking in insulation against the elements. I could get cold in a sauna.
"Do you always keep your eggs in there, Roselyn?" I asked. This seemed an important and potentially pungent question to get out of the way. I wouldn't want it to come as a surprise a month from now when we are the campus pariahs owing to our sulfurous wardrobes.
"Shh," she replied, "this is just for this ritual. I planned this out weeks ago. Don't worry."
There wasn't chanting, to my great surprise. We just sat on the floor and stared at the egg. The incense must have made me a little dizzy, because the egg looked wavy for a moment, like I was seeing it though a wall of rising heat. Then Roselyn picked the egg back up and held it out to me. I started to take it from her, because that seemed like the right thing to do given the situation. Her fingers latched onto my hand and she squeezed, the egg held between us. The eggshell shattered, but my hand remained yolk-free. The egg had been hollow. Tricky girl.
Roselyn broke the eggshell finer and finer in her hand until it was little more than a powder. She sprinkled what remained into the cauldron and placed smoldering incense on it. It pulsed a deep red, grey smoke rising up a mixture of sulfur and sage.
"To new beginnings," Roselyn said, her face serene and beautiful.
"To new beginnings."
We Shadows is a serialized novel being written by Xen, also known as Thomm Quackenbush. It didn't happen to you, your best friend, or his cousin. Why? Because it didn't happen. All persons, living, dead, undead, or unliving are purely coincidental. Any real persons are used fictiously. What you are about to read is not a news broadcast. No portion of this book may be distributed without the expressed written consent of Xen. Feel free to rope your friends into reading it, though. Do it or I start shooting PuppyOrphans.
