“Hey Mom!” Oskar called out as he entered the house, “am I adopted?”
Juliana had been dreading this day. She knew it would come, but she was hoping it would be after Oskar was a little older. He was a senior in high school, but still she hoped a few more years could pass before that question had to be answered .
She had known for many years that the other children were teasing him for being… different. It wasn’t just the fact that he had dark hair while her hair was blond and his father, Seathrun, had red hair. No, there was another difference. That difference wasn’t really obvious at first glance and most adults didn’t notice. But the other children did… and children can be so cruel, even when they are almost fully men and women.
She patted the couch next to herself and indicated that Oskar should sit next to her. To her surprise, he chose a chair across from her. Memories of the many times that her little Oskar would sit next to her and cuddle into her side while they discussed things went through her mind as she sat silently. Then her reverie was shattered as he said somewhat forcefully, “Well, am I? The other kids talk about the fact that you are blond and dad is a redhead and I’m neither of those.” He paused and then said, “And they say that there is something… different about my eyes.”
She sighed a very deep sigh and looked directly into his deep brown, almost black eyes. After another deep sigh, she spoke. “No my little Oskie, you are not adopted.”
She stood and bent slightly to ruffle the dark black curls on the back of his head.
“I am your natural mother,” she said firmly, trying to make it also sound very loving. “But your dad is not your natural father.”
“Does he know?” Oskar said, his eyes very wide open.
Juliana returned to her seat, laughing softly. Once seated she said, “Yes, honey, he knows. He knows the full story.” She paused and then said almost flatly, “He was witness to most of it, though there are parts that he does not remember.”
She leaned forward, smiling at Oskar’s ruffled hair and asked, “You do know how babies are made, don’t you?” she asked.
“Mother!,” he snapped back. “I’m not an infant. I’m eighteen years old. Of course I know how babies are made.”
“It happened at a Halloween party,” she continued. “Halloween is a very mysterious time and some things happen on Halloween that wouldn’t happen any other night of the year.”
“Why is that?” Oskar asked, now showing a childish innocence she hadn’t seen in years.
“Some say it is the alignment of the planets,” Juliana said softly. “Others say it has to do with the variations of the intersections of the spiritual planes.” She laughed slightly before continuing, “But the truth is, it is a special and mysterious night because people believe that it is. They dress up in all sorts of strange costumes to help them suspend their disbelief and have many rituals and customs which declare that night to be set aside as a night of mystery and magic.”
“So it is just a matter of belief?” Oskar said. His face showed that he was questioning what he was saying.
“I used to think that,” Juliana said with a slight laugh. “I still say that there is nothing special about Halloween.” She paused before adding, “But since that night I’m not so sure.”
“What night, mother?” Oskar asked, now looking directly into her eyes.
“It was right after I graduated from college,” Juliana began. “I had decided to take a year to travel. I was far from home, far, far, from home and caught up in the magic of the night. I shouldn’t have, but I decided to attend a Halloween party in that far away place. It was a different culture with different foods and different drinks and a different language. Everything seemed so mystical and magical and unbelievable.”
She smiled at Oskar and said, “The family I was staying with told me not to go out of the house. They said that it was an alpha scorpii dark Halloween and that powerful forces would be about.” Her face suddenly looked… determined. “But their daughter, Deirdre, told me she was sneaking out to go to a Halloween party and I was hell-bent to attend as well.”
“Mother,” Oskar interrupted softly, “what is an alpha scorpii dark Halloween?”
“It’s sort of complicated, Honey,” she started to say in an almost sing-song voice and then realized that Oskar was no longer her darling little child gazing up at her with inquisitive eyes. He was nearly an adult and deserved an adult answer.
She sighed and began over again in a normal voice. “There are three ways to determine the time of Samhain. The modern calendar says it is on October 31st and is called Halloween. The pagan Scotts and Celts, who call it Dark Night, say that it is the first dark of the moon following the fall equinox. Those who look to the stars, like the Celtic Druids who call it Antares Night, say it is when the brightest star of the Scorpio constellation aligns with the moon in a very particular way.
Halloween and true dark night can never occur on the same day. Dark night is always at least ten days before Halloween. But some years, dark night is a full month before Halloween so that Halloween itself is on the dark of the moon. It is very, rare that Halloween and Anteres Night occur on the same night. It is even more rare that Halloween, Anteres Night, and the dark of the moon happen on the same night. This particular year everything aligned, so it was an alpha scorpii dark Halloween ”
She looked up as if picturing a memory and continued, “There was a large group of young people from the village who had decided to ‘do Halloween right.’ They had prepared in advance in a clearing in the woods a couple miles from where I was staying. The clearing was sort of an elongated circle with trees in three thick rows all the way around it almost as if they had been planted there hundreds of years ago. There was a large, flat stone that stuck up a little ways out of the ground in the middle of the clearing. At one end of the oval some simple wooden tables had been set up to hold bottles of wine and various breads and snacks. At the other end sat seven musicians. The music was strange, almost eerie. The only two instruments I recognized were a simple harp and some sort of tambourine or hand drum that was being sounded with a strangely-shaped double-ended mallet.”
She paused and slightly cocked her head. Her voice seemed unsure as she said, “I don’t know how much of this to tell you. …But you are an adult now, so…” She took a very deep breath and then continued. “As we arrived, I said to Diedre, ‘Don’t you wear Halloween costumes in your country?’”
“Diedre laughed and said, ‘You are already wearing your costume. You just have clothing on over it.’”
“I looked at her totally perplexed and then someone shouted, ‘We are complete, a double coven.’”
“Diedre smiled at me and said, ‘That is why I was so insistent that you come tonight. You are the thirteenth. …Well, the thirteenth woman.’”
“I was still staring at her when everyone… except for the musicians… began taking off their clothing.”
Oskar looked at his mother with that startled face of realization that she was once his age and did things that he and his friends did… and perhaps even more. Juliana just chuckled slightly.
“By this time,” Juliana said with a smile, “we had all had a lot of wine… and other things, so I added my clothes to the circle of cloth that stretched all around the inner circle of the clearing.”
She paused to let Oskar adjust to the idea of his mother dancing naked under the stars. “Then,” she continued, “we started dancing. The men were holding hands in a big circle on the outside with the women in a smaller circle on the inside. Somehow I knew the dance… or maybe I was just good at mimicking the steps of the other women. It was a simple dance where you cross-stepped constantly to the left and every seven steps you sort of jumped up into the air. It felt like we were going really fast, but that was only because the men were doing the same step but in the opposite direction.”
She smiled at Oskar and then said in a rather loud voice, “Suddenly one of the women yelled, ‘Stand!’” Her voice got softer as she explained, “Maybe it was just ‘stad’ that she said, or a word like that. She had a very heavy accent and I really couldn’t understand a lot of what she said. A man in a long robe standing over by the band lifted a long stick into the air and looked up it, like he was sighting a gun at the stars. He lowered it and yelled out, ‘Not yet!’ The same woman who had stopped the dance said loudly ‘Lean on,’ or ‘Lean out,’ or maybe ‘Lean ort,’ and the dance continued. The only difference was that now the women were going to the right and the men were going to the left.”
Juliana’s face became a deep shade of red and she turned away for a moment before again taking a deep breath and continuing. “I had never danced like this before and I didn’t realize that such long steps to the side with your legs crossed would… uh… rub… on my… on my… woman parts. I found that I was becoming very aroused. And looking at the men in the outer circle it was clear that such a dance step had the same effect on a male.”
She laughed lightly before saying, “Or maybe it was just the sight of thirteen very aroused females dancing past them.” She paused and cocked her head slightly as if remembering something, “There was also the smell of woman in the air. I could smell it slightly, but I assume the men could smell it even more strongly. After all, that pheromone is intended to attract a man to a woman.”
Juliana bobbed her head slightly as if listening to music from the past, then she said, “The music seemed to get louder and louder and faster and faster. We were dancing round and round the circle and as we danced it was as if the circle were getting smaller. Maybe we were just pulling each other closer but finally we were dancing past the men almost close enough for our bodies to touch. I was about to collapse from exhaustion when the man with the stick yelled, ‘Now!’ and the leader yelled ‘Stad!’ and we all stood facing each other and gasping for air.”
Oskar was staring at her and she found that she was breathing almost as heavily as she did on that night. “Your father was standing opposite me,” she said in an almost dream-like voice. “The girls on either side of me… one of them was Dierdre… they pulled me backwards and I felt myself falling slowly over the long, flat stone. Your father pulled himself up between my legs and then… he changed.”
She paused to let Oskar’s mind catch up with what she was telling him. “His orange hair turned jet black. His light greenish-brown eyes became as black as the night around us. His pale white skin darkened. His chest enlarged and so did…” She was now beet red with embarrassment but knew that she had to tell the complete story. “…so did his manhood. He spoke with a strange, deep voice and asked, ‘Are you willing to carry the special seed into the light?’”
Oskar had slid off of his chair and was now kneeling in front of her. She grabbed his hand that was outstretched toward her before again speaking. “I said ‘Yes,’” she said, almost crying. “And now here you are. You are a child of darkness which has been brought into the light.”
“But what does that mean?” Oskar asked, almost wide-eyed.
Juliana laughed softly and said, “I don’t know. I really don’t know. But Dark Night and Antares Night and Halloween all approach. One of them will call to you. One of them will claim you. One of them will reveal who you truly are to yourself and to the world.”
“Thanks for telling me, Mother,” Oskar said as he rose to his feet, suddenly very calm. As he began walking upstairs to his bedroom he said, “Now I can tell my friends the truth.” He paused and then added, “But maybe I will wait until midnight at the Halloween party.”
He stopped suddenly, looked very thoughtful, and said, “Or maybe I should wait until next year to tell people. The nineteen year Metonic cycle will have completed and there will be a dark of the moon on Halloween night. Anteres will be visible just over the horizon as the sun sets. And Orion will reach its highest point in the sky just after Midnight. That should be a very magical moment.”
Juliana looked down and sighed. Then in a very soft voice which she hoped Oskar could not hear, she whispered, “It certainly was for me.”