The Wyvern Street Irregulars

"I am a stranger around here," the Wizard told them. "I can't run around questioning people and I don't want to invade anyone's privacy."

"Megan will have info for us by lunchtime," Debbie assured him. "So she claimed, anyway."

John smiled. "She can be quite charming when she wants to be," he said. "So lets inspect the grounds while we give her time to work, eh?"

They took the Wizard on what seemed a fairly thorough tour of the entire grounds before setting out in the minivan to meet Megan for lunch.

Megan began reciting as soon as she was in the minivan, telling them the new kid's name, his parents names, the private boarding-school in England that he came from, even where his parents had lived in London. He and they would both be coming over on tuesday for the Halloween party, so the Wizard would even get a chance to meet them. They fed her sandwiches and milk while she chattered, and all too soon lunch break was over.

"All very convenient so far," said John. "The flow seems to be flowing."

They drove back to the Covenstead, where the Wizard was soon online to his Internet servers.

An hour and a half later he joined them in the kitchen. "Got hold of someone who knew them back in England," he announced. "The son wasn't involved, but he heard the stories. They brought him with them here instead of leaving him at the boarding school in order to get him away from all that, it scared him. I doubt he's playing with such stuff."

A kettle begin to whistle on the woodstove. John got up to make tea. The Wizard sat at the table and began helping Debbie shuck peas. Milk, sugar and mugs were already on the table. While the tea steeped, John helped them with the peas. By the time the tea was steeped the peas were finished. John took the pods out to the compost bin. Debbie poured tea. They sat, sipped, consciously relaxed. Their trained imaginations sent out roots deep into the earth.

The Wizard smiled. "Its nice to be here."

John saluted the Wizard with his mug. "Glad you came."

"No illusion of catastrophe?" Debbie asked, smiling.

The Wizard nodded at Debbie. "Right. The universe is after all perfect."

"Just needed a little adjustment, eh?" said John. "Everything rolling along smoothly?"

The Wizard nodded thoughtfully. "I think so. It is an act of faith to think so, but for me that act of faith still seems to keep on working year after year."

"For us too, said Debbie. "But we have each other."

The Wizard nodded. "Be thankful for that. You are very blessed." He became thoughtful though, asking himself the questions Debbie's comment hinted at. Was he lonely? How long now had he been alone? The years had been slipping by. "I made the mistake of wondering how the mundane world works, I guess." He mused.

"The mundane world?" Debbie asked.

"Economics and politics." The Wizard explained. "The infamous Ninth of November destruction of the World Trade Centre in New York got me wondering how such a thing was attracted, for example. Why has Canada seemed so much less a target than some other nations? What is Canada doing right? That event brought it home to me that magick, or spirituality, or at least psychology or sociology, is right on the edge of why and how such things come to happen. I also keep looking at money from the point of view of how to equip people with it instead of how to take it away from them. I watched the dot-com boom and bust, saw a lot of marketers of one kind or another at work. Meanwhile I managed to get Wyvern Street set up. That took a lot of work but it is starting to look as if it will be worth it."

"You have touched a lot of lives," said John. "Many many people have passed through Halifax and gone all over the world. Heck we have all touched a lot of lives. Maybe we're growing up already," he smiled at Debbie.

Debbie smiled back at John, looked at the Wizard. "We are thinking it might be getting toward time to have children."

The Wizard smiled. "Good idea. I am still hoping it is not too late for me to do that too. I've let a lot of time slip by but truly I have always wanted children. When the dot-com bubble burst though my economic situation became too unstable to think about that kind of thing. This coming year we'll see how my real estate empire works out." He smiled again. "Have you any idea yet what is going to happen here?"

"Oh yes," Debbie told him. "During this week Marie and Marny will move out completely, John and I will take their place, Susan and Robert will take ours, and Terry will take theirs. It could hardly be smoother. It all just clicks into place."

"Yes," said the Wizard, "I like the moves, having Marie and Marny in Wyvern Street is so perfect, I can't think of anyone better to have there. Within a year or so I hope to have that working as an income property for them and have another up and running too. So the moves are lovely in that respect."

"This place is so perfect for us, too," said John. "Basically we have been given an entire ecological niche, or economic niche, ready made for us."

"Which reminds me," said the Wizard. "There is going to be a lot of going back and forth this week, you might as well stock up Wyvern Street's woodshed."

John smiled. "Thanks. We'll let Terry do it, he'll be glad to get some extra hours in." As if on queue, they heard a chainsaw start up in the middle distance. John smiled more broadly. "That chainsaw is probably Terry in action right now. I guess we really are in tune today."

Debbie topped up their teacups, sat back with a satisfied sigh. "I was starting to worry about how we were attracting problems or maybe even danger into our life," she admitted. "We have read a lot of occult fiction of course, including classics like Dion Fortune's 'Adventures of Doctor Taverner', but do you really encounter things like that in your Tradition?" she asked the Wizard.

The Wizard looked thoughtful. "Personally I am somewhat dubious about those stories," he told them. "Merely because to me much of it seems so subjective. Maybe I am just not sensitive enough, but I would probably tend to think in terms of my own thought processes, for example, more than in terms of ghosts or astrally projected people. It is easy to imagine conversations with disembodied beings, but it is much harder to correlate such conversations with actual people. Maybe I am too mystical. Although I try to work on the basis of the world being a manifestation of spirituality, an actual living spiritual school, I also believe that the ordinary day to day world is very real. The mundane world is not mundane, it is very very magickal. But that means it is the result of all the most powerful magicks there are. The end result of all of the magick appears as the so called mundane world. It can easily be argued though that the reason my personal experiences only seem to go as far as synchronicity and some kinds of what can sometimes seem to be telepathy or empathy, or some kind of synchronicity of thoughts and feelings, is that is what I have chosen as my personal limit of how strange I am willing to let my experience become."

"You create your own reality and you have chosen not to create it as too strange, eh?" said John.

"That would be the theory, yes," the Wizard replied. "Some authors, such as Lyall Watson, author of 'Supernature' and so on, have written supposed non-fiction in which some strange things such as psychic surgery are able to occur provided that their occurrence does not force people to believe in such things against their wills. Basically he has evidence mysteriously vanishing and stuff like that. I think we all have noticed that in spirituality there seems to be a tendency to allow people the free choice of whether to believe or not. The mundane world is not a mere toy to be upset or upended at a whim. It may not actually be mundane, it could be very very magickal, but it is also very very real, at least to its inhabitants."

"But there are people who kill other people by means of magick?" John asked.

"People have worked with that intent," said the Wizard. "Some coincidences must happen from time to time of course. But real practical killing magick? Personally I still doubt it. It seems more likely to me that some people who are going to die anyway choose, unconsciously of course or via their higher self that in any case already chooses such things for its own reasons, to die in ways that allow those coincidences. Ways that make it seem as if killing by magick can work."

"But why would a supposedly higher self choose such a thing?" asked Debbie. "In what way could that be higher? What higher purpose would it serve?"

The Wizard waved a hand as a kind of disclaimer. "Lets be clear that I do not know," he said. "I do not hold some weird wisdom beyond your knowledge. Or if I do, I am not aware of it. I have read a huge amount on such topics, so I am aware of a lot of different views and theories and beliefs. If there is anything to the idea of survival beyond death though, in particular to survival other than instantaneous reincarnation, then the explanation could be that it is useful to learn that our beliefs, or our minds, or some such faculty, creates our reality. The theory is that our waking world, this material world, is only very slowly changed by our beliefs or minds or ideas, possibly even only by our actual actions, but that when we are not incarnate in physical form we experience worlds that are far more controllable, influenced much much faster by our beliefs or our minds, our thoughts and feelings, our imagination."

John cleared his throat, spoke up. "Basically it would not be useful to believe that psionic killers are on the loose, right?" He asked. "Our best defense is simply to believe that our own good karma and aura strengthening exercises and banishing-ritual practices and so on prevent such things from happening around us?"

The Wizard nodded. "Yes. Some people who try to kill by magick might well believe that they can do so, but for us there is no point feeding such a belief. If magick works, our magick works too. We are linked in to worldwide defensive networks of magick. If we choose to believe that magick has power, we should take an optimistic view. In such a view, given what we know so far, we can hope that Marie was simply acting as an early-warning system, just letting us know that a family who had been close to such things in the past is now in this area."

"Is that coincidence too?" Debbie asked. "Or is that some kind of telepathy or some such thing?"

The Wizard's mouth quirked ironically. "It is probably mostly to avoid trying to make that call that I usually just lump telepathy and synchronicity together. We know that we sometimes seem to be in tune. How exactly that happens, or even whether it is simply a kind of superstition, I do not know. Supposedly at some level we are all one. Everyone, all people, ultimately all consciousness, maybe even the consciousness of each atom and particle and photon and so on. The universe is one huge mind, maybe, and so everything that happens is a kind of telepathy within that ultimate mind."

"So lets all firmly decide that nothing bad has actually happened here yet, that Marie was simply warning us well before anything bad could actually happen," said Debbie.

John looked at the Wizard. "We'll simply will it to be that way," he said. "As we will, so shall it be."

The Wizard smiled. "It is so," he affirmed. "We'll find out for sure tomorrow when you get to chat with the parents. Meanwhile if for some reason Marie or both Marny and Marie are unconsciously attracting something they are safely out of the way for now. I expect we'll find though that the main impetus behind all this was simply to get them to move back to the city."

"You've been wanting them there anyway eh?" John asked.

"I hadn't settled on them specifically," said the Wizard. "I guess I was kind of hoping something would happen to show what to do. They seem to like the idea, so hopefully its what is meant to be."

They settled into silence again for a while. An easy, companionable silence. The chainsaw was still at work somewhere outside. Eventually John stood up, gestured toward the back door. "Lets we see what we can find in the vegetable plot," he suggested to the Wizard.

The Wizard rose, grunting assent. Debbie rose too, started puttering around getting ready to do some boiling and baking. She set a huge pan of water on the woodstove, set out a dozen pieplates and a large mixing-bowl, and began to mix pastry.

Debbie had half a dozen pieshells baked by the time the men returned, accompanied by Terry. The men were all heavily laden with pumpkins and other colourful Halloween-decor vegetables. The men covered the table with their loads then went briefly back outside for another load. Debbie started rolling pastry for another six pieshells. The men singled out the pumpkins from the other goards and began cleaning out messes of pulp and seed, trying to separate the seeds as well as they could. The seeds went into a pan of salted water on the woodstove to boil them clean and soften them up ready for roasting.

They put aside thirteen carefully chosen pumpkins to make jack-o-lanterns. The rest they sliced and diced, carefully separating the rind to make pumpkin marmelade and honeyed treats. Soon the flesh of a dozen medium-sized pumpkins was dumped into the boiling water in the large pan on the stove. Debbie began making cookies. When the second batch of pieshells was baked a couple of sheets of cookies took their place in the oven. John made a fresh pot of tea. Terry sieved the pumpkin seeds, set more salt water to boil, and started rinsing the seeds, as best he could, at the sink. Debbie set out food colouring and icing sugar, coloured sprinkles and little metal tips for extruding icing, and started mixing another batch of cookie dough. John and the Wizard mixed icing, worked out how to fold it into waxed paper with one of the metal tips. Debbie took the cookies from the oven just as Megan entered, followed closely by Jason.

Megan smiled and surveyed the room, moved toward the stove to check what was on it; Jason headed directly for the cookies. Debbie brought a pile of plates to the table, John started writing initials in white icing on hot cookies. Debbie put more cookies into the oven. Megan and Jason poured themselves tea, sat down with hot cookies to sip at it.

While the cookies cooled the Wizard carefully folded more wax paper to make another icing squeezer, making sure Megan and Jason saw how he did it. But instead of trying to copy him they mixed icing. Megan mixed bright orange, Jason mixed bright yellow. Slopping it into the wax paper contrivances as the Wizard completed them was a bit messy, but soon they were both busily decorating cookies. The cookies were still a bit hot for that but their initial efforts were clumsy enough that it didn't matter much. Besides, these practice ones were for eating, not for tomorrow's party. Debbie didn't take long to notice what they were up to, and set them to practicing on sheets of wax paper instead of on cookies.

The Wizard made more of the wax-paper squeezebags. Terry noticed that the saltwater he had put on the stove was boiling. He dumped the cleaned pumpkin-seeds into it. Debbie mixed dough for cupcakes. Megan, satisfied that she had mastered the art of squeezing out the icing, started another batch of cookie dough. Jason continued practicing until he had used up all his icing.

"Okay, enough practice," said John. He moved the practice sheets of icing-covered waxed paper to a side counter. "We'll give the cookies and cupcakes plenty of time to cool before decorating them. Lets make some jack-o-lanterns now." He looked at Jason and Terry. "We'll do it in the woodroom, that'll get us out of the way." Jason and Terry each chose a pumpkin, John grabbed some knives, and newspapers, and they left.

Debbie recycled the icing doodles, scraping the icing into the huge pan of pumpkin boiling on the stove. The Wizard sieved the pumpkin-seeds. Megan rolled dough and began cutting shaped cookies.

"I told the new boy, Joshua, that we don't want kids here to try to copy what the kids at the school in England did," said Megan. "He doesn't want that to happen either. He thinks any kind of magick is wrong, that people should just have faith in, well, basically whatever their religion is. As long as its not some kind of evil religion, an anti-religion, demon stuff. He likes the Catholic Church because it does exorcisms. He said he's glad an exorcism was done at the school in England."

"You seem to like him," the Wizard observed.

"He's okay," said Megan. "His parents aren't fundamentalists or anything. He wants to talk, he just doesn't want anything to do with magick."

They fell silent. The Wizard smiled, nodded to Debbie, selected a pumpkin and headed for the woodroom: a large outer room where wood for the stoves was chopped and stored. The rich earthy smells of old and new wood displaced the smells of baking that wafted after him from the kitchen. Terry moved over a little on the floor to make room for him. John handed him a knife.

Jason smiled at the Wizard. "While we make our pumpkins we think about the season," he said. "We think about people who have died this year. We wish them well wherever they have gone."

"We think of the light these lanterns will cast," said Terry. "A light of sorrow for what is gone but also joy for what will come."

"We think also of the animals harvested in the blood harvest," said John. "As we cut into the flesh of the pumpkin we do not wish it ill, we hope it joyfully takes part in life with us. We thank the vegetable kingdom for the nourishment it has provided us all year, and the Devas for the bounty of our garden."

They looked at the Wizard. He smiled. "We thank the Earth and the Sun, the Air and the Rain," he said.

"We send our roots into the Earth," said John. "Our branches reach into the sky. The planet floats in the light of the Milky Way. Our imaginations expand throughout the universe, beyond the universe, seeking the universal light, the white brilliance, our Higher Selves. We bring down that light into our knives. We open the top of the pumpkin, pouring that light into it."

Carefully, concentrating, they carved open their pumpkins.

"The centre is full of the goodness of Nature, the wisdom of the Earth," said John. "We scoop it out with reverence. It holds the promise of new life."

They scooped and scraped in silence until all the seeds were rescued.

"We'll return the seeds to the earth when we are finished," said John. "Through the winter they will sleep, the cold will penetrate them, tell them that winter is passing. Some will awaken in the spring, and we will welcome them." He paused a moment while they all looked at the pile of seeds and fibrous pulp. "Now we take our knives again and focus on the light, the brilliance, that we focussed into the entire pumpkin. Let that which wants to go onward into the night, the winter, remain with the seeds. Let that which wants to stay a while with us and light our way through these days of celebration and reverence remain with the pumpkin, the lantern." Another brief pause while they concentrated. "Now we open windows for the light to emerge and illuminate the turning of the year."

They settled down to the carving, John watching Jason carefully because of the sharp knife. Jason smiled at him and cut carefully, slowly, just scoring the rind to show the shapes he wanted, not trying to cut the holes himself. John nodded, smiled, and set to work scoring the design for his own pumpkin's face. Terry was less meticulous: with bold thrusts he cut triangular eyes and nose into his pumpkin and set to work on a jagged mouth. The Wizard, thoughtful, carved circles for eyes on his and started trying to sketch out a mouth with square teeth, added a large downpointing equilateral triangle as nose.

Jason sketched upright five pointed stars for ears on his. "Ears of Spirit!" he said. Everyone smiled.

"Ears of Spirit," John agreed, looked around. They all nodded, sketched. The kitchen door opened. A rich smell of nutmeg and cinnamon and mace wafted toward them. Debbie entered bearing spices to rub into the insides of the pumpkins.

"Susan and Robert will be home soon," Debbie announced as she handed out the spices. "They have some good news." She returned to the kitchen.

They looked at the spices. "Solar and Mercurial spices," said John. "For light, guidance, luck and prosperity. Of course it also makes the lanterns smell nice too." He handed his cup of spices to Jason then passed his pumpkin too and took Jason's. "Here, you spice the inside, I'll curve your shapes out for you." He cut deeply along the lines Jason had scored on the rind.

They heard a vehicle pull up outside the barn, a van door opening and closing, the van pulling into the barn. Soon the outer door opened to admit Susan and Robert.

Susan smiled at Robert. "I'll fetch you a pumpkin."

Terry and the Wizard shuffled apart to make space for Robert. Susan continued into the kitchen.

Robert looked at the pile of seedy guts of pumpkin. "Susan and I might have found the spot for a new pumpkin patch," he said. "We'd like to save some of the seeds a few days so we can plant them on the new land if we get it."

"You're getting the twenty acres?" Jason asked him.

Robert looked at Jason, paused a moment, thought, nodded. "I think we are," he said. "But technically we won't know for sure for a few days."

Susan entered with a pumpkin, handed it to Robert. He placed it on some newspaper, turned back toward Susan. She handed him a knife. He smiled, accepted the knife, saluted her with it. She handed him a bowl and returned to the kitchen.

Jason and the men looked around at each other, smiled, lifted their knives.

"We welcome our brother Robert," said John. "His roots reach down with ours, his branches stretch to the sky with ours." Pause. "The planet floats in the light of the Milky Way. Our imaginations spring out to the limits of the universe. We seek the white brilliance beyond." Pause. "We call down that light into this vessel Susan has chosen."

Robert cut open the top of his pumpkin. They all pointed into it with their knives, concentrating their attention and their intent.

"Susan and I might have a child this year too," said Robert. "If we get this land, we will probably plant a baby as well as a pumpkin patch."

"You'll get the land." John told him. "There is no title problem or anything, Marie and Marny already checked that stuff back when they bought the woodlot."

Robert scooped out the seedy guts of his pumpkin, piled it with the rest, mixed the pile. "Let the new enter into these seeds," he said. "Let that which wishes to stay a while with us and light us through the changing of the year remain with the lantern." He spread his hands, looked around, found the bowl Susan had given him, and lifted a few handfuls of seedy pulp into the bowl. "Let that which wishes to colonise the neighboring land with Susan and I inhabit these seeds," he said. He placed the bowl aside, took up the knife, looked at everyone else's designs, looked thoughtfully at his pumpkin. "Ears of Spirit, of course," he mused. "All the rest square for stability and the Earth."

They watched while he carved, passed him spices when he was done.

"Solar for fortune and fertility, Mercurial for smooth commerce," said the Wizard.

Robert smiled, nodded, spread the spices generously all over the inside of the pumpkin. "Good fortune to all throughout the coming year," he said.

John handed them each a part of a newspaper, shared out the pile of seedy fibrous pulp, gave them each a small trowel. They rose. Terry picked up a spade and led the way out to the pumpkin patch. The air outside was cool and still. An overcast hid the stars. Terry tested the ground with the spade, nodded, set down the spade. They spread out and set to work with the trowels. Across the road, a doe watched from a stand of trees. Gradually they each became aware of her presence. They moved slowly, gently. Eventually an owl hooted and the doe moved away into the trees.

"Remember when we first planted this patch?" John asked Jason

"Yes," said Jason. "Marny asks me that every year."

"To make sure you remember," John replied. "Marny is not here so I asked instead."

"In a few days," said Robert, "maybe you can come help me plant mine."

"I'll remember that too," said Jason. "I also remember planting Wyvern Street's patch a few years later."

"I missed that one," said Robert. "Susan and I were minding the Covenstead."

"I know," Jason replied. "Debbie and John came into town, you and Susan stayed here. Marie and Debbie and Megan baked ginger cookies and pumpkin pies and pumpkin cupcakes."

"Next weekend you'll probably be at Wyvern Street," the Wizard told him. "When we go inside I'll email Marie and Marny, tell them to save some pumpkins. Maybe we can do this together on Friday night. They'll be doing it tonight of course, same as us. Marny might be planting seeds at Wyvern Street right now. Marie is probably baking."