Joseph McNair

It was a night of signs and portents. Maggie had shut the cabin up tight against the looming storm, but not before moonrise. She saw, as did everyone else who was out and about, that the moon had a ring around it. But what sent people scurrying for shelter was the fact that the moon was the color of blood. Those who discredit magic say that a ring around the moon is caused by the refraction of moonlight from ice crystals in the upper atmosphere -- a perfectly natural occurrence. But the village's residents, a simple folk who held tightly to their magic under a homespun veneer of religion, who knew well enough that a ring around the moon usually foretold the coming of a storm, wondered if this bloody moon, halo and all, truly marked the great and terrible day of the Lord. A sacred scriptural prophesy, as dire as it seemed, was preferable to an unthinkable alternative.

Maggie, the village healer, was well-versed in the heaven's lore and knew that it was not a conventional godling who would come this night bringing death and destruction in his wake, but a mother of storms. This storm would take much from the town this night. Maggie knew, too, that She, the storm, would leave something in return. This was the way of things.

The wise woman had long ago abandoned any effort to pass on much of what she knew to the village folk. They tolerated her presence because she was so good at her healing arts. But in truth, they feared her. They believed her skill with the herbs and plants she gathered was uncanny and peculiar. Some went so far as to say that she conversed and cavorted with spirits. This latter piece of gossip was no doubt reinforced by the handful of spurned suitors who found it difficult to be forbearing about her rejection of them.

The truth was more prosaic. Maggie had come to the village of Aiye, ten years before, fleeing a simple-minded, brutal husband, and the knowledge that she might have killed him. She had traveled hundreds of leagues and made many stops to put distance between her and another life.

Maggie was a comely, brown-skinned, big-boned woman, just on the good side of awkward. Tall for a woman from those parts, there was an ethereal quality about her that seemed to emanate from her stature. One had to look at her intently, persistently to focus on her features, to remember what she looked like exactly. She wore her bushy hair medium length and combed back, often covered with a bright colorful scarf. She had large, piercing brown eyes that would not flinch when she looked at or through a person. Few forgot the experience of those eyes. They sat bracketing the almost perfectly oval space just above her broad, well-formed African nose - a stretch of skin that more than a few people said seemed to hide a third, all-seeing eye. Her lips, full and sensuous, bore the teeth marks of her will and stubbornness. She wasn't a beautiful woman, but she had a certain glamour, an allure of mystery.

Maggie was born into a farming family, the middle child of seven siblings and one of three girls. The family had a modest farm on the outskirts of a small provincial town of no more than six hundred folk.

Her grandmother, her father's mother, was the matriarch of the family and a healer. It was from her that Maggie learned herb lore and the healing arts. This formidable woman, known for her quick tongue and her quicker temper, told Maggie that her knowledge came from her ancestors - healers from another land who came to her in dreams. They taught her in her dreams and guided her as voices in her head during her ministrations to the sick.

Her grandmother, known in the town as Miss Sadie, told her that these ancestral spirits had come to her in a dream the night before Maggie was born and told her to prepare a plate of food and bring it to the birthing room when the time of birth was near. She was also told get several iron rings and small bells which she was to place on ribbons and attach them to the ankles of the newborn.

She was to hang a small iron chain round her neck. The plate of food was to distract the death dealing spirits who would be there at her birth. The jingling of the iron and the tinkling of the bells were to drive away the life stealing spirit who would attempt to enter her body and not allow her to live. She was a child destined to bring much grief to her family being born and dying over and over again if such precautions weren't taken.

Her mother, father and her three older siblings, three boys, were enjoined by the grandmother to watch her constantly. When she was old enough to walk and talk, her mother died suddenly. Miss Sadie took over her direct care and nurture. The family stopped worrying so much about Maggie who, when she lived passed the age of thirteen, had become strong and flexible as a yielding sapling, racing and wrestling with her older brothers, learning how to protect herself.

She had been accompanying her grandmother on her visits to the sick and suffering from about the age of four, sitting at her side, ready to fetch a packet of herbs or handover an implement, but mainly watching everything her grandmother did and fixing it in her memory. She learned the names of every plant and herb in the forest surrounding the town. She learned all of their properties, what would cure this ailment or that. These became her companions. She spoke to them, gave them pet names and loved them. She imagined them talking back to her, displaying their personalities, yielding their secrets.

She learned to make teas and draughts for ailments ranging from acne to consumption. She learned to make the soft heated masses of meal or clay that was spread on a cloth to treat inflamed skin or to improve circulation. She learned to break fevers, pull teeth and deliver babies. She even learned to set broken bones. She apprenticed with her grandmother for twelve years. When her grandmother pronounced her ready, she went to visit the sick in her grandmother's stead. She was a gifted healer.

Maggie told her grandmother that when she was near a sick person, she could feel in her body where that person hurt; felt pain. She said she could feel the tingly heat pass from her to the infirmed person when she touched the place that hurt.

But more than healing, the girl was captivated by the knowledge of the spirits. This, too, she learned from Miss Sadie, taught to her in secret and more often than not, at night in ceremonies held in the woods, in certain clearings or down at the crossroads outside of town during the phases of the new and full moon. Her grandmother taught her that the creator bade the spirits to work directly with human beings. These spirits spoke to humans in dreams or through trance, when they took over one's body. Singing and dancing to the rhythmic beat of the drums usually summoned them.

Miss Sadie taught Maggie that human beings have a personal protective spirit that looks out for them; that protects and teaches them. The old woman regularly conducted ceremonies in the woods, replete with drummers and dancers. She helped Maggie meet her guardian spirit, who taught the young girl, along with her grandmother, and took over her instruction when her grandmother had exhausted all of the knowledge and wisdom she had.

By the time Maggie had reached the age of twenty-two, she surpassed her grandmother in skill and reputation and took over most of the healing duties as the old woman waned in health and strength. Maggie's father, despairing that his strange child might never marry, arranged for Maggie to marry the son of the town's butcher, a wealthy man of means when compared to the farming folk.

Robert, the butcher's self-indulgent, almost corpulent son, had neither his father's industry nor his generous spirit. He was a man of medium height whose red-brown almost girlishly handsome face was often twisted in a sneer. One corner of his upper lip seemed permanently raised, ready to expose yellow canine teeth. Even his smile flowed easily into a mask of scorn and contempt. His behavior mirrored his countenance. He was habitually cruel and overbearing, especially to smaller or weaker people and possessed an abundance of overweening pride. The tenderest feeling he could concede for Maggie's sake was lasciviousness. The only social usage he could observe for her was a compulsion to control.

They had a modest wedding. The butcher secretly hoping that this rite of passage would help his son mature, become more responsible and perhaps a little kinder. Maggie's father was just relieved that he had finally secured a husband for his strange daughter.

As may be expected, trouble surfaced within the first few days after the wedding. Robert, jealous of the high regard the town's people had for Maggie's skills as a healer, demanded that she stop this "healing foolishness." It was unseemly he said that his wife would spend so much time tending the sick and shut-ins and not nearly enough time looking after him.

Robert thought he had married a simple girl who gathered plants and made poultices and potions for fevers, indigestion and simple injuries. He thought that she would drop all of that in a moment to meet his every need. But what he found was a young woman committed to healing and obsessed with knowledge of the spirits. He quickly discovered that she cared little about what he thought of her or what he did. She had the perfect weapon for his possessiveness and need to control - her indifference. But fearing that subtlety would be lost on him, she sent a message that even he could not misunderstand -- she refused to share his bed.

Robert quickly realized that his wife was neither obedient nor submissive. When he tried to beat her, she fought him back. And being nearly as strong as he, she would often hurt him. He was so self-absorbed that he never once considered how truly dangerous she might be if she used her lore against him.

When he couldn't force her to quit her healing practice, he tried to poison the minds of the town's people, saying that she was a witch; that she had made a pact with the devil, which was why she was so good at what she did.

A few people, perhaps, were scared off. But her skills brought them back to her when illness or injury struck. Devil or no devil the town folk believed that she could make them and keep them well.

One night, frustrated that he could not make her obey him, he went to a local tavern and got roaring drunk. When he came home, he had the presence of mind to tip-toe stealthily into the bedroom where she was sleeping. Before she could wake up sufficiently, he punched her brutally about the face and head and forced himself upon her. He was too drunk to really feel her bone-breaking but futile resistance. He managed to penetrate and tear away her virginity before passing out.

For the next week he coughed up blood and passed, excessively and frequently, a watery and blood-soaked stool.

Maggie ran to her father's house when the week was out to beg him to let her come back home. But not even her bruised face and the admonishments of his mother could keep him from sending her back to her marital home and her husband. As she left her father's house dejected, her grandmother, who had grown somewhat feeble in the intervening years, walked with her part of the way back home.

"What must I do, Gran?" Maggie wailed and burst into tears of frustration, "I'd rather die than stay with this man!"

Her grandmother stopped her, took her face in her hands and looked up into Maggie's eyes:

"Foolish girl!" She fussed "Have you forgotten that you have only one true husband? Call to him, this very moment. He will protect you. He will tell you what to do!"

Maggie understood. Her grandmother referred to her spirit guide - the one who owned her head. But he was much more. In one of the many secret ceremonies conducted by Miss Sadie, Maggie had dressed as a bride and had placed rings on her fingers long before she had married Robert. She had danced that night to the rhythm of the drums swirling around and around until the world around her became like unto a dream. An old black man, her teacher and protector, materialized before her. He rested his weight on two wooden canes, but he did not seem cripple.

Although he appeared old, with white hair and a white beard that created a startling contrast against his night black skin, he radiated immortality. Two dogs, a black one and a spotted brown and white one, sat at his feet looking up at him with playful adoration. Naked save for a purple tunic that hung from one shoulder and draped down to cover his heavy loins, he exuded a power that was at once sexual and spiritual. He took her hands - He who opens the gate to the spirits - and danced with her.

He spoke to her -- He who makes the spirit language plain -- above the thunder of the drums, and formalized his vows. And then he entered her, violently, throwing her to the ground. But she felt no pain. She touched his wisdom; saw through his eyes. He filled her with his spirit and she understood as she had never understood before. He was her husband and would shower her with special protection and favor if she would receive his spirit in her dancing and in her dreams.

Instead of going straight home, Maggie went out into the woods, sat quietly under a tree and performed a certain rite. Hearing the drums in her head, she began to sway to their rhythms. She closed her eyes and opened herself to her spirit husband. He came into her like the rushing wind. And he told her what to do.

Maggie went home to get some needed implements: a pot, a few packets of herbs and some containers to hold water as well as her tools to light fires. She snuck into her kitchen hoping to avoid her husband. He was not at home

She then returned to the woods where she gathered some different herbs and stripped some bark off of a particular tree. She drew a circle and sat in its middle. She scooped out a hole, placed some flat stones at the bottom of the hole and placed the gathered herb leaves on the stones. She pulled from her apron a piece of flint and steel and set the leaves on fire. She blew on them until the smoke rose up and engulfed her. She allowed the smoke to blow up into her face and hair, into her clothes.

She then got up and took one of the containers for water over to the small stream that ran through the woods. She dipped an amount of water from the stream and came back to the fire. Before she put her pot onto the hot stones, she put more herbs on the stones and repeated the ritual of the smoke. When the herbs had burned up and the smoke dispelled, she placed the pot on the stones and filled it with the water she had dipped from the stream. She threw some small twigs in the hole under the pot that flamed after contact with the hot rocks. She crumbled into the water three different types of herb that she brought from her house and allowed the water to boil.

When the water came to a boil, she took the pot off the hot rocks and allowed the liquid to cool. Then she stripped herself naked and anointed herself three times with warm herbal waters, purifying her body. She chewed the bark she had stripped from the tree to cleanse her mind and open the channels to the spirit world. She again conjured up the rhythms of her drums in her mind and the spirit language came to her. It flowed out of her mouth in a chant that was not of this world.

She saw the face of her spirit husband, the old white-haired and white bearded black man. It was a face she had grown to love. But as she beheld this beloved face in her mind's eye, it began to change. Suddenly, looking back at her was the face of another, a face that looked sick unto death. A black face turned ashen gray and covered in flat, crusted red pus-filled lesions and scabs. She shrunk back from this visage, but he reached for her, grabbed her hands and forced her to gaze upon his face. Suddenly, this alien face became Robert's face and the same pustules and scabs covered not only her husband’s face but also the whole of his body. Robert's face shrunk into a death mask. The rest of his body withered away.

Having seen this, she gathered the remainder of her herbs and bark and tossed them all into the herbal water. She took the pot, the containers and all therein to the crossroads, left everything at the intersection, turned and walked away from those crossroads, that town and that life without ever looking back.

She came to this village after a year or two of wandering, settling for a time in the coastal town of Orí about two days travel to the south, helping the sick and infirm where she found them, even making a love potion or two. She took whatever payment was offered. She played a significant role in helping the townspeople through an epidemic of the flux before eschewing town life and moving on to this village.

There was something about this particular village. It held her. She knew without being told that this village was a nexus, place where two forces meet, join sometimes, and where one force ceases to be.

She found an abandoned thatched roof structure at the edge of the village and moved in. She scavenged a wood stove and an old wooden chest to make it suitable for her to live in. There was a stream close by that meandered into the woods, which formed a backdrop behind the house against the sky. Once she was settled, she made her rounds introducing herself and letting the villagers know that she could and would heal their ills. She wanted little to do with them other than to practice her craft and be left in peace.

Maggie thought on these things as the wind began to blow in earnest. She thought about them as she boarded up her little hut and barricaded the door. She knew she had no friends in the village. And while she took care of many, she had no one special to lavish her care and attention on.

She didn't regret not having a man. After the experience with Robert, it would take much to get her to trust a man enough to let him get close. None of the men from the village really interested her. They were prose to her poetry. They lived in a world as vastly different from hers as the ocean floor is different from dry land. Only one or two of them even cared about a few of the things that interested her, and then, only to the extent that the knowledge helped their planting or smithing or cobbling.

She sat down in the single chair by the small table that dominated the sparsely decorated and appointed room. Her large wood stove stood against the rear wall, her chest doubled as a place where she stored her clothes, her herbs and healing products and a pile of straw covered by the bedclothes demarcated the corner where she slept. She would drink a mug of herbal tea this night, perennially bubbling in a kettle on the stove, and wait this Oya storm out and see what it might bring.

Before long, the weather turned violent. The wind screamed soprano, laughing and crying insanely. Lightning flashed, illuminating the room incandescently bright, making the darkness deepen in its aftermath. Thunder followed with the basso rumbling of the world breaking apart. The rain hammered the dwelling. The droplets of water were stones the size of fists, pounding on the door and walls, demanding entry. The walls seemed to lean under the onslaught.

Incredibly, Maggie thought she heard a noise at the door outside and above the din. She moved to the door and listened. Yes, some of the pounding was an actual human fist beating on the door. Someone was out there. Standing close, she could make out a voice over the howling of the wind.

"Miss Maggie, Miss Maggie, please open the door. Sally's water broke. Please help us!"

The desperation in the man's voice quickly cancelled out any reluctance she had to open her door to the elements. This was, after all, what she was born to do.

The man was blown in with wind when the door was opened. He helped her close the door and replace the barricade. He was soaked to his skin. His eyes had the look of a cornered animal. Only the urgency of his wife's impending labor drove him out into this foul night.

"John Allen, what do you need of me?" she said, wasting no time with formalities.

"Miss Maggie," he pleaded "I'm sorry to bother you on a night like this, but it's my wife, Sally. The baby is coming, and she is screaming something awful. I don't know what to do"

John Allen, who lived up the road on a small dirt farm, was as close to a neighbor as Maggie had. Like many of the villagers, he could barely take enough from the ground to feed his family. He was a small, proud black man, embarrassed by his poverty, which he covered with self-righteous judgment. Maggie wasn't the kind of person he wanted around his family.

He had heard how she spurned the attentions of the few bachelors and sporting men in the village that were interested. He was given to believe what they said about her strangeness. He believed them when they spoke of how she would walk the woods at night by herself or dance in the moonlight with a few of the village's misguided women to the sound of devil drums. Some had even claimed to have seen her clandestinely meeting and talking, in the woods, at her house, with an old, half naked, white-haired and bearded black man in a purple tunic, who walked about on two canes even though he didn't seem to be at all cripple.

John Allen would barely give Maggie the time of day if he encountered her on her herb gathering expeditions or on her infrequent trips to the market. He had kept himself and his family distant until his wife became pregnant.

In fact, it was Sally who came to Maggie in the early stages of the pregnancy when her morning sickness was severe. Maggie's teas brought quick relief. Sally, a plump loquacious yellow woman, would use questions about her pregnancy as an excuse to come and visit Maggie, but Maggie didn't encourage her. Sally was a terrible gossip and Maggie knew that for the crust of information Sally brought to her, she would take a loaf, true or otherwise, away.

Maggie knew John Allen had to be desperate to seek her aid. So she collected her medicine bag, put on her cloak and followed him out into the storm.

The night was electric. Borne on the gale were the fragrance of ozone and the burnt offerings of lightning-charred trees. Trees that withstood the force of the winds were bent over like men touching their toes. Less resilient tree and stump alike were uprooted and cast about like a diviner's bones. This was a bone-breaking, house-destroying storm.

They walked into the teeth of the wind, he walking in front to shield her from the brunt of the blow. It took what seemed to be hours to travel the third of a league to John Allen's house. When at last they got there, she rushed in and went immediately to work.

"Put on two kettles of hot water and bring me every towel you can spare", she commanded the children and the husband.

The wind outside continued its shrieking call, answered by Sally's pain induced response. Maggie heard John Allen mutter:

"It's the Devil's storm, that one!" and he left the room to wait in another part of the house, fearing more what he might witness in that room than the ravages of the storm.

Sally, confined to the bed in her bedroom, was barely conscious. Her breathing was shallow except when her screams announced her contractions.

Maggie rummaged through her medicine bag and found a tincture of black and blue cohosh which she immediately gave to Sally by prying open her mouth with a flat stick and empting the contents of the small glass vial down her throat. She prayed she was not too late. Then she called to Sally's big thirteen-year-old daughter, Emma. The healer pulled a packet of herbs out of her medicine bag and shoved it into the girl's hand.

"Take these raspberry leaves and steep them in a cup like you were making tea. You do know how to do this don't you?" she said to the girl sharply. There was no time to waste.

The tall, wide-eyed, freckled-face redbone girl nodded and ran into the kitchen. Within moments she was back with the herbal tea. Maggie took the cup and poured small amounts of the liquid into Sally's mouth. Suddenly a scream announced a contraction and her flailing hand knocked the cup from Maggie's hand. Maggie quickly grabbed another packet.

"Go make some more, child, and quickly. And bring in that kettle and those towels!"

When the girl returned, Maggie fed Sally the tea, in larger gulps. She would not be surprised again. Next she used some of the hot water to clean Sally's hands and face. Then Maggie placed the towels, strategically; some for wiping away sweat, some for cleaning up birth fluids, and others for the unpredictable miscellany of childbirth. She let the girl stay and watch, thinking that she might be needed.

Maggie was concerned about Sally's color, which was turning gray. Her breathing was still ragged and while her screaming was not as loud as it had been, it was only because she was too exhausted to make the noise she once could.

Maggie grabbed Sally underneath her buttocks and lifted up, moving her hips from side to side the way they would move if she were walking. She did this at intervals, allowing herself to rest a certain number of breaths before lifting her again.

She allowed Sally to rest a few moments and gave her the contents of a vial filled with the oil of the castor bean. This oil was believed to cause spasms in the intestines surrounding the uterus and these spasms, in turn, caused the uterus to contract. With little success, she was desperately trying to stabilize the contractions.

Suddenly, Sally stopped breathing. Maggie angrily pounded Sally on her chest again and again in an attempt to get her lungs working, but to no avail. She told the girl to pound on her mother's chest as she had done while she covered Sally's mouth with her own and tried to use her own breath to breathe the life back into her. Together they pounded on and breathed into Sally for more than ten minutes before Maggie knew there would be no saving the mother. Sally was dead.

Maggie was determined though to save the child. She took a sharp knife from her medicine bag, and after sterilizing it in the hot water, made a cut from the abdomen, down through the uterus. The fleshy tissue just below the skin bulged upward after the skin was cut. Blood flooded out of the wound.

Maggie then cut through to the layer of fibrous connective tissue, which held the muscles, and organs of the abdominal wall in place. She made another cut to push the muscles attached to this tissue out of the way. She then made a very careful cut through a thin segment of tissue so as not to harm the baby. She placed her hand inside the uterus under the head and buttocks and lifted baby out. It was a well-formed male, with a membrane covering his head like a veil -- but the baby was not breathing

Maggie lifted the baby up. Placing his head lower than his feet, she slapped the soles of the baby's feet. No response. She began rubbing his back. Still nothing. Keeping her panic in check, she lifted the membranous skin which covered the baby's face, and put her own mouth over the baby's nose and mouth and blew into them two quick very gentle puffs of air. Finally with a shudder, the baby began to cry.

Pleased with herself, she cleaned the fluids from the baby's mouth and wrapped him in a white towel. She gave the child to the girl to hold and went into the kitchen seeking the father.

"I am sorry, John Allen. She did not survive the birthing. She is dead." She knew of no way to make the telling easier.

"Then kill that devil child, witch!" he screamed. "Do with him as you wish. I don't care. Just keep him away from me! I don't want to see him or have anything to do with him. The devil killed my Sally. What are we to do?" John Allen gave in to his grief, dropped his head into hands and sobbed openly.

Outside, the storm had stopped suddenly. Maggie did not know exactly when the calm had come, although she had her suspicions. She took the crying baby from his sister and wrapped him tightly in three towels against the night. It would be best that she take the child, if only temporarily. Maybe John Allen would have a change of heart. But the thought rang false even as she considered it.

"I am called Emma, Miss Maggie. Will you let me help you take care of...my brother?"

The girl looked Maggie directly in the eye when she said this. Maggie admired her courage and plain speaking.

"You did well tonight, fine girl. You are strong. You have seen death and did not let him undo you. This is good. You must see that your mother gets a proper burial according to your custom. You father and your siblings will need you more than this one. But I suspect he will need you, too. Let us see what the days bring. I might be able to teach you something in exchange for your help. Let us see."

The blood-red moon looked obscenely fat after the storm. Its face, a clown mask, lighting up the indigo sky. Maggie knew now what the storm had taken and what it had brought and left. She held the storm's gift in her arms.

He would need mother's milk. That she couldn't give him herself but she would see to it that he had as much as he needed. Everything else, she could and would provide. She entered her hut and lay him on her bed. She moved about the hut closing it up and preparing for sleep.

She smiled to herself as she looked at him nestled in her bed of straw. He was not crying now, but breathing comfortably and contentedly with his eyes closed. She could see this in spite of the membrane that covered his face that came from the placenta that held him. She would remove the veil tomorrow; put it away; keep it safe.

"I know who you are, little one," she said laying down beside him, propping herself up on one shoulder, "and I think I know why you have come. Let us pray that the world will be kind to you."

Maggie stood at her back door gazing at the full arc of spectral colors that appeared in the sky opposite the sun: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. As abruptly as the rain had come this muggy day, drenching those caught in moments, it left. And the sun had returned with a vengeance.

The rainbow seemed to form a perfect arch to pass under into the deep woods. She had heard some religious folk say it was a sign left by the creator promising not to destroy the world ever again by flood. Others, cynical of the largesse of deities of any kind, declared that the rainbow was a symbol of illusory hope, the kind that people can waste their entire life hoping to realize. But Maggie knew better. It was a sign, sure enough, the symbol of the mistress of the sky, the snake goddess, the great mother who above all else provided the reassurance of a secure future.

Maggie was reassured. Life had been pretty good. Aiye, her village, had rebuilt itself after the killer storm of five years past. The villagers had banded together and repaired or rebuilt damaged huts and houses, moving from house to house. This new sense of community spilled over to the farms where crops damaged by the storm were cleared and new crops were planted in their stead. When harvest time came, the reaping was communal as well. This common spirit of comradeship, enthusiasm, and devotion to each other's welfare had continued for five years, and there was no indication that it would soon stop. This was one good that came out of the destruction of the storm.

New people and new commerce came to the village. The population doubled. A village square was built and several small shops were established selling everything from crafts such as weaving, carving, leather and brass work to hardware to lingerie. The open-air market, held every four days, was thriving as never before. Merchants and vendors as well as farmers came from miles around to trade goods and information. The mood of the market was celebratory and people looked forward to market day. This was another good.

With new people came new patients for Maggie's healing craft, new customers for her potions, a few new students seeking her wisdom -- and a few initiates seeking the knowledge that she herself had hungered for. Sensing the need to offer more than just herbal lore, Maggie had pieced together the fragments of ritual she remembered from the teachings of her grandmother; that she herself had performed. These combined with the revelatory instruction provided by her spirit guide gave her a body of ceremonies that contained a set of actions to be performed by those seeking spirit knowledge and the source from which it came. This, too, was good.

Like the village, Maggie had begun to prosper. She had bought a cow for regular milk, a few head of sheep and goats and lots of chickens. She kept a nice garden of vegetables and rare herbs that did not grow wild in the woods. She was eating well and had fleshed out into a handsome thirty-seven year old woman, whose streaks of gray in her brushed back African hair seemed premature. This was very good.

She, too, had added rooms and a new backdoor to her modest hut, provided not by the esprit de corps of the village but by several indigent but proud villagers in lieu of payment for her services. While she was not yet received with pleasure and hospitality into the homes or company of most villagers, she was generally tolerated as a very necessary evil. There were even a few who dared seek her advice and counsel, if not her friendship.

These several "goods" were ones she could readily account as gifts from the storm given to the village and to her personally. The greatest good for her, however, was found in the adOríng eyes of the man-child who called her "Mama."

She had named him for the thunder and lightning that heralded his birth. Her spirit guide came to her in a dream and gave her the name, hinting that it meant much more than a child born in a storm; that the boy had come from the birthplace of the ancestors, the ancient African spirits from whom she drew her wisdom. She would name him formally on the seventh day of his life in a ceremony her grandmother had taught her

The thought of her grandmother made her sad. When Maggie left her place of birth, fleeing from an abusive spouse and the crime she believed she had committed, she had been unable to say goodbye to her grandmother. Her grandmother's ghost came to Maggie in a dream, the night after the child was born, telling Maggie to rejoice because she had left this world and found her way to the spirit world. Her grandmother told her that her true husband -- the keeper of the gate to that spirit world -- would bring to her a name for this child.

The boy was well formed and pleasing to look at. His skin, a dark mahogany brown with reddish highlights, flowed smoothly in and out of wide, slightly slanted precocious eyes, a broad, flat nose and plump salubrious lips completed his handsome face. He was an active newborn, a lusty feeder given to angry outbursts of crying if his food was late or his diapers full. There was an air of command about him, and not the least bit out-of-the-way, it seemed, for one so small.

The boy had been born with a veil - a membranous piece of the afterbirth covering his entire face. Maggie gently cut it away on the morning after the birth, dried it and put it away for safekeeping. The presence of the veil only confirmed for her what she had sensed from the onset of the storm -- that this child, being a gift of the storm, was special. The presence of the veil told her that he could "see" into the spirit world - a gift to be nurtured and cultivated.

Maggie was not the boy's natural mother, but no natural mother could be more caring, affectionate, kind, loving, or protective than she. She was the midwife that had brought him into the world. She had literally cut him from his dead mother's womb, determined that he would live. She and the boy's sister, who was present at the birthing, were the first to hear his birth cry. His natural father rejected him, calling him a devil child and the killer of his wife. So she took him home with her because it was the right thing to do.

Maggie did not know a lot about being a mother, but she did know a great deal about caring for people. The boy brought out the best of her care-giving instincts. She remembered the unpleasant task of finding him a wet nurse. Although she was a caregiver, she hated asking others for help. Resolved, though, to find him the mother's milk that he needed, she had left him in the care of his sister (without her father's knowledge) who had expressed a willingness to help take care of him despite her father's animus. In less than a day of asking around, after braving the suspicious looks and occasional hostility of those who found her, a supplicant, at their door, she found an impoverished young farmer's wife who had just delivered, and who was willing to share her milk in exchange for regular meals and the postpartum care that Maggie could provide.

With the wet nurse in place, Maggie immediately sought out the child's father. His guilt had made his hostility all the more acute. He met her at his door, refusing to invite her in.

"Don't you take that tone with me, John Allen!" she said undaunted. "Whether you like it or not, we have matters to discuss." Taller than he, she drew up to her full height and cast a shadow that darkened his entire doorway.

"I came to see if you had changed your mind about your...son." She looked him squarely in the eye, as if doing so cut off every means to escape.

"That is no child of mine!" he spat. "That devil should have died with my Sally. You had no right to save him. Emma told me what you did. That was witch's work! I want no part of him. You took him; you can keep him or kill as you please."

Maggie was saddened to see how deeply wounded this man was; how his grief had robbed him of his senses. She wished she had a salve or a potion that could bring him relief, but knew she did not. Only time could do that.

"I am a healer, John Allen, not a witch." She replied gently. "No healer would've let that child die. If you don't want this innocent baby, I will raise him myself." Before continuing, she waited a moment to let her words take effect. Then she allowed the menace that came from deep within her soak into her next words.

"Be warned, John Allen.” She hissed. “I am not an enemy you wish to make. If you harm this child, in word or deed, you will answer to me. I love my work and it comes very easy for me to preserve and improve life, but make no mistake, I can take away life just as easily. This is my son, now. If you cause my child to be hurt in anyway, I will kill you. Do you understand?"

John Allen nodded mutely. Seeing his death in her eyes, he knew better than to balk this force of nature.

“It is meet that you do understand, John Allen. Now, you will relinquish all claims to the boy by whatever oath you swear to any god you believe in. Swear it now!"

The command in her voice could not be resisted. John Allen's anger turned to fear. Thus he did swear.

"Good" she said when the oath was given. "There is just one more thing I ask of you. Allow your daughter Emma to help me care for the boy. In return, I will teach her the healing arts. This village will soon need another healer. She can make a good, honest living."

John Allen's avarice fought with his aversion. The drama played itself out on his small, black face. He was a dirt farmer. It was likely that his three remaining children would be dirt farmers or marry dirt farmers. He had seen how Maggie had turned her earnings into livestock, a flourishing garden, even tasteful additions to her once abandoned hut. If Emma could do half as well, it would be more than what he could provide for her labOríng day after endless day. Avarice won out.

"Don't you turn my daughter into no witch, Miss Maggie. Promise me that." He bargained.

"I told you already that I am no witch." She said irritably. "I swear to you, I will do my best to help her become the best healer she can be. She has the calling. I saw it in her on the night the child was born." She looked at him and added, as if reading his mind:

"She will be able to make you quite comfortable, John Allen. That is, until she is ready to start a family of her own."

"She will move into one the spare rooms I had added onto my house immediately. I will feed and clothe her and provide her training. All I ask from her is obedience, civility and a diligence in following directions and taking instruction. If it doesn't work out, I'll send her back to you, no harm done.

Unexpectedly, the paternal love that had been buried under his grief made itself heard:

"Take good care of her, Miss Maggie. Do well by her, and you'll have no trouble from me.

With Emma settled in and learning her duties and the wet nurse, Lela, in temporary residence in the other spare room, Maggie set about planning the child's naming ceremony. To accomplish this important task, she altered the standard ceremony for training her initiates in the old ways.

On the seventh day after the child was born, Maggie, accompanied by Emma and Lela, and a contingent of celebrants consisting of three lean young boys, twelve, fourteen and fifteen whom she had taught to play her cowhide and goat-skinned drums. There were also three female student/initiates from the village, one a plump middle-aged serving woman, another about twenty-eight years and married to a brass worker and the third, a dreamy-eyed girl of eighteen.

Maggie had heard the three boys, two brothers and a cousin, three years before playing together on hollowed logs outside in back of the house of a farmer she was treating for gout, that painful condition caused by the inflammation and swelling of the feet and hands. She went out to listen to them after she had finished with the farmer.

The farmer's son, Tom, was the oldest and the cousin. He was tall, black, powerfully built, and determined looking. He attacked his drum as though he was beating an enemy. His face, angular like a piece of faceted onyx, bore almost no expression when he played no matter how hard he beat his hollowed out log.

The brothers, Simon and Peter, fourteen and twelve, were the sons of the farmer's brother who lived on the adjacent farm. These two were a study in contrast. Simon, the elder, was nearly as large as his cousin Tom and almost as dark. He was broader in the shoulders than his cousin but not as tall. His face, which can only be described as beautiful, was open when he played, so that everything he felt was displayed on it.

Peter, his brother, was small framed and so light-skinned that he was almost albino -- but his sticks were a blur with dark, visceral passion. One could almost see that the rhythms he played resonated through his entire body. When she approached them, initially, they stopped playing and began looking at each other, shyly, furtively. It was clear that they knew who she was. They were apparently embarrassed that she had heard them, as well as apprehensive that she might want something from them.

She begged them to continue playing. They did as she wished. They picked up the rhythms they were playing before they had stopped. She listened intently. After a short while, she stopped them and asked them to play a certain rhythm that she called out. The younger boy, the most talented of the three, picked it up immediately. She stopped the older boys, wishing to hear if the younger one, Peter, could sustain the tempo. Then she stopped him and sang out a counter rhythm for Simon to play. Satisfied that Simon had picked up the counter rhythm, she stopped him and sang out a rhythm for Tom to play, one that opposed the two she had called out earlier.

After a few fits and starts, the older boy got it right and played louder and more enthusiastically as his confidence grew. She nodded to the brothers to add their parts and she stood there with them rocking back and forth. The rhythms played by each of the boys were clearly defined and repeated themselves after a regular duration. The young musicians were natural players and began to improvise on their given themes as if it were the next right thing to do.

She did not know how much time had passed, but when she came to herself she realized that the boys had stopped drumming and were staring at her curiously.

They all nodded eagerly; afraid to speak for fear that she might change her mind.

"You must meet me in the woods on certain nights, just after sundown. I will give you directions when I send for you. You must be careful that you are neither followed nor missed. I will teach you drumming such as you've never heard before."

And so Thomas, Simon and Peter came to be her drummers. Maggie would have them meet her in a secret thicket beside the stream which cut through the woods behind her house. There she taught them the rhythms of the gods.

Mava, the serving woman, came to Maggie a few short weeks after she recruited the drummers. Mava was seeking help with painful menstruations. Maggie gave her a tincture made from chlorophyll, the substance in plants that makes them green. But she sensed a deeper problem.

A vision came to her of Mava as a child having sex with a grown man. Mava, who was a corpulent, coppery brown woman, paled visibly. She seemed to shrink into herself when Maggie shared her vision. After some intense questioning, Mava revealed to her great shame that her father had "had his way" with her when she was about nine years old. This continued regularly and for over a year.

She had vowed, when he stopped, to take no pleasure in anything associated with sex or childbirth. The experience had left her feeling soiled and unworthy. She was, at forty, childless and a passive, unenthusiastic sexual partner with her husband.

Mava was amazed how quickly Maggie got this information out of her since this was a secret she had determined to take to her grave.

"We must take that demon from you, or you will never be happy." Maggie invited her to come out into the woods with her and many of her questions would be answered. Mava became her first initiate. She would join Maggie and the drummers when summoned and Maggie taught her how to dance.

Ezzie, the brass worker's wife, seemed touched by the gods. She was a beautiful black woman. She was so black, her forehead and high cheekbones flashed purple highlights when caught by the sunlight. She was tall, and on her long slender neck rested a perfectly elliptical head with fine close-cropped hair. Her facial features, though unremarkable by themselves, when viewed together were a composition of color and figure that brought delight.

She was ethereally thin and seemed the embodiment of grace. Even her speaking voice was musical. She had come to Maggie for a love potion -- not one, it turned out, for her husband. Maggie sensed something familiar about her. The voice in her head shouted "ask her for her true name!"

Maggie followed the guidance of that spirit voice. Ezzie's entire demeanor changed.

Now it was time for Maggie to be shocked. Enzili was one of the names of an old goddess. In the spiritual home of her ancestors, this goddess had dominion over all the rivers. She was called the "mother of nations" and was sought out for counsel in matters of love and health.

"Oh I don't know. Some man my father went to see, a roots worker like you. I was told that Baba was afraid he wouldn't have children. The man told him that if he swore his good oath to name his first child Enzili, my mother would conceive. My father kept his word and that child was me."

"Oh yes, my vain one, it was indeed you." Maggie whispered. She closed her eyes and let the spirit voice speak through her.

"I remember you, pretty one. There was a time when your father wasn't wealthy enough to pamper you, like your husband does today. He could barely afford to give you one dress. A white linen dress it was. And you, so vain and meticulous, washed that dress in the river every day. You washed it so often that it turned yellow, which you then declared to be your favorite color."

"You are much more than what you seem, Enzili. Your destiny awaits you, here, in this nondescript village. You have wasted much of your adult life with vain flirtations and illicit love affairs, brought pain to the one man who adores and forgives you day after day after day. There is within you a healer of great power, especially for women who wish to bear children. But you have forgotten this in the dream you are living. It is time to wake up, woman. The choice is yours to make. Join me, seek the knowledge of your true self and be that healer -- or embrace your other destiny, a ruthless mother of witches who paints herself with the blood of her enemies!"

Frightened and intrigued, Ezzie made her choice and agreed to answer Maggie's summons. She joined Maggie, the three boys and Mava about a year after she began conducting ceremonies in the woods.

Aida, the eighteen year old, and the most recent of Maggie's initiates, came to the wise woman because she was troubled by her dreams. She, too, was a beauty, but of a different kind than Ezzie's. She was slightly built, medium height and yellow-brown with cinnamon colored freckles. Her liquid eyes had a golden cast and her nose and mouth were wide like a singer's. Her glory was her bushy hair, which draped over her shoulders, was naturally red.

She had seen her mother die in childbirth in a dream when she was thirteen, but no one would heed her warnings. In fact she was scolded and beaten by her father for alarming the family. When her mother did die just as she had foreseen, she was shunned by her loved ones and called a witch.

A week before the great storm, she warned her father to take precautions. She had seen the tree beside the house uprooted and brought down on the house like a hammer, destroying it. She had seen the livestock, laying dead where they had grazed. She told her father to cut down the tree. On the day before the storm, she told him to take his cows and goats into the forest and tether them each a tree with a strong rope. She also urged him to bring the chickens into the main house.

Fearing what might happen if he ignored her prognostications, he reluctantly did what she told him to do. Her timely warning had saved her father's livestock and minimized the damage to their compound. The entire family praised her for keeping them from abject poverty.

Aida had a recurring dream that showed her sitting at the strange village healer's feet as if she were learning lessons. She was, frankly, afraid of Maggie. She was even more afraid of what the village people would think of her if she were seen regularly in Maggie's company. But these two fears combined were much less than the fear of facing her dreams alone. She had come to Maggie a year and a half before the great storm.

The first time all six celebrants met with Maggie was on the eve of the first full moon in autumn a year before the great storm. From that time forward, they would meet regularly at each new and full moon.

Prior to this night, Maggie used the meetings to teach - rhythms to the drummers, dance steps to the women. On occasion, she would invoke her guardian spirit to bring them messages through her. She familiarized them with her guardian spirit with these regular preparatory contacts and he in turn assisted in teaching them the meanings behind the dances and the rhythms they had learned from Maggie. He would always, before leaving, tell them that they would know much more when "the ones that ruled their heads" came.

One night, the night of the full moon in autumn, they met in their spiritual school house, a thicket of ironwood and swamp dogwood trees and indigo bushes. This copse, about half a league upstream following that body of water into the deep woods behind her house, formed a natural half circle opening up on the eastern bank of the stream, giving an unencumbered view of moonrise. She told them to wear white.

When they arrived at the place and at the appointed time, they found her there sitting meditatively in front of an old ironwood tree at the rear arc of the thicket. She was dressed in a simple white dress, with her head covered by a plain white scarf. She had built a fire in the center of the coppice made of logs and twigs from the surrounding bush and encircled with large flat stones from the stream. The fire burned bright casting long shadows.

Maggie sat them all down in front of her and told them what they were to do. She then sent the boys over to her right to the three cow-skin drums that sat in front of the large swamp dogwood tree. There were stools behind each of the drums. The large drum for Tom, the medium sized drum for Simon, and the small goatskin drum for Peter. Before she would allow them to play, she had them take off their shirts and dust their heads and upper torsos with the red dirt from the ground until they looked like dirt demons.

When they were seated behind their drums, she sang out a rhythm for each to play. The boys were quite accomplished by now and the rhythms came together quickly; seamlessly. Maggie got up slowly and began to move in time with the drumming. Her long body bending like a willow in the wind. She pointed the women to the indigo bush on her left, bade them sit and watch what she did.

Slowly she began to dance, spinning in easy clockwise and counter clockwise circles. As she danced, she called out the following invocation:

"Papa, open the gate for me;
My husband, open the gate for me;
Open the gate and let me enter.
Open the gate for me, husband and father.
When I return, I will surely thank you !"

She continued her spinning dance stopping at intervals to repeat the invocation as she mimicked someone trying to open a door. Suddenly, it seemed Maggie had lost control of her body. She began to shake violently, her eyes rolling up into her head. Then it seemed that she was thrown to the ground, struggling frantically before giving in to that which attacked her. But it was no attack. It was merely her spirit husband entering her.

She got up slowly. Her limbs began to twist and contort, and she walked around the copse like a well-endowed man. She seemed transformed into a man with a huge penis.

She pranced to each of the women, leering at them and holding her crotch before pulling each up to join in the dance. They followed the compelling rhythms with their feet, swirling in circles and semi-circles until transported away on those staccato wings of sound.

Aida was the first of the women to succumb, falling to the ground, undulating her body, darting out her tongue, hissing like a serpent. There was an aura about her that mimicked the multicolored bands of a rainbow. Maggie came over to her and put her ear near to Aida mouth as if to hear what she was saying.

Ezzie, eyes blank, followed her dancing feet to the edge of the copse where she had been sitting and picked up a little leather pouch that she had brought with her and left beside the dogwood tree. Entranced, she began to groom herself as if she standing before a mirror. When she was finished she walked toward the drummers, swinging her hips, giving them seductive looks, pursing her lips as if sending them kisses.

She walked over to Tom, stuck out her tongue and licked him from his shoulder to his neck and up the neck and left side of his face. To his credit, he didn't miss a beat. Suddenly she, too, collapsed to the ground weeping uncontrollably. Maggie regarded the weeping Ezzie with a look of glee and danced around her like a trickster.

Mava's manifestation was not nearly as dramatic as the other women, but just as intense. The spirit that rode her made her dance faster and faster until her large body and thick legs and feet were moving double time against the rhythm of the drums. She moved toward the fire, reach for a burning twig and holding it in her right hand made movements as if she would set the trees afire. She, too, dropped finally from exhaustion.

They each awoke sometime later to find the drummers asleep under their tree, and Maggie sitting beneath the ironwood tree, regarding them thoughtfully.

In the days that followed, Maggie explained to each of the women what had happened to them and which elemental spirits, which she called Oríshas, had taken possession of them. They would learn the attributes of each spirit guide, how to feed them and sing their praises; how to get and benefit from the knowledge the spirit guide had to offer. This they would learn from Maggie and from the Orísha herself, as Maggie had learned from her spirit guide.

From that night forward, when they met, they would drum, dance and sometimes prophesy. The young men by now knew by heart the favorite rhythms of each of the gods. The women, growing in personal wisdom and power as directed by their Oríshas, were manifesting spiritual gifts. These were Maggie's spiritual family who would celebrate with Emma and Lela and herself, her son's naming.

She let her mind drift to that very special night of Shango’s naming ceremony:

When they met on the night of the naming, Maggie dispensed with the all the usual ceremonies except for the invocation of her own spirit guide. The boys played his rhythm, and he took Maggie as violently as ever, knocking her to the ground. She writhed on the ground longer than usual before slowly getting to her feet.

Her reverie was broken by the sound of little feet running up behind her. She felt little arms embrace her legs. As she looked down on the love of her life, she felt a pain in her heart because the boy was crying:

"What has frightened you so, little one?" She was curious, now. Her son, even at five years old, did not frighten easily.

"Mama, I was in the woods playing with the rabbits and the squirrels." She smiled. He did have a way with animals. Most of them would walk right up to him and let him pet them. He was not afraid of them and they were not afraid of him.

"It was a snake, Mama. And it was this big! He stretched his little arms out as far as he could reach.

She was alarmed now. There were many different kinds of snakes in the woods, she had taught him about the good snakes, the harmless ones and the snakes he need to avoid. If he was this afraid, he had seen one of those dangerous snakes.

"It was that one with the pretty shapes on its back. Diamonds you called them. I remember them because you told me that only rich people have diamonds."

She was truly alarmed now. If she was not mistaken, the boy was talking about a diamond back rattlesnake. In these parts, those snakes grew large indeed. She grabbed the boy by the shoulders looking him over carefully.

"No Mama. I was playing with this one rabbit, petting it, when it seemed to go to sleep. It wouldn't move. I looked up and saw it, then. The snake was curled up right in front of me. It raised up its head and looked me in the eye. I don't know where it came from."

"Did it bite you, child!" she repeated thinking that in his fear and excitement he hadn't understood her. She continued looking him over, more frantically now.

"The snake talked to me, Mama. He said, 'Ka-bee-yay-see.' He said it twice and then crawled away into the bushes. That's when I got up and ran home."