Living Wizardry Order of the TIETÄJÄ

Please enjoy this excerpt from my novel in progress. Working title Heavily Inked.

The Initiation

Nicki sat in the park watching the world go by. Had all of this really happened? She thought back to the days before she had gone on the walkabout. She hadn’t appreciated the pure bliss caused by her ignorance.

Flowers in full bloom, lazy bees sunning themselves and the smell of freshly mown grass filled her sense and led to a deep feeling of melancholy that she could not shake. Painful reminders of childhood innocence passed through her memory and before her eyes.

“It’s not the end of what you remember it’s the beginning of its rebirth.” It was Jerry. She hadn’t even seen him walking up the path towards her. “Childhood innocence isn’t as innocent as it seems. When we are young we see the ugly but we see with the eyes of a child. The eyes of kindness and hope. When we grow up we lose the ability to see with purity. We are taught that it is unnatural to understand these things. We are pushed into a life based on the culture that we live in. We are made to become empty robots of the culture to be used for the gains of the corrupt and the wicked. Our spirits are slowly crushed and we look at the same events with jaded eyes. It’s not the time or message that changes it’s the person. You will be reclaiming yourself.”

Nicki looked up. “When I was young and I would go to bed I would dream that I was flying. I would fly over my house and feel the wind in my hair, smell the night and see the eyes of the night creatures. When I got to the end of my tether I would have to turn to come back. I always wondered what was beyond, what would have happened if I had tested the strength of the tether, if I had pulled against it.”

“You would have died, discovered that you left too soon and returned to start all over again”

“I don’t hold out much hope for your vision Jerry. I see too much. Spiritual warriors or not this battle is big and the enemies have been growing for a very long time.”\

Jerry thought for a moment. “Nicki, you don’t have to do this. I brought you in because I felt that you were strong and I felt a special affinity for you.” He looked down at the ground and sighed. “Wizards have their faults too Nicki. I was lonely. I wanted someone to stand with me. I don’t have a choice in this I’ve gone too far. There is no going back.”

He stood and looked down at Nicki. “I can make the memories go away. I can put time back for you. You won’t remember a thing, in fact I can make it so that you don’t even remember who I am.”

Nicki looked up at Jerry. “I might like that.”

Jerry turned away from her to look out over the treetops and over the horizon. “Then we will do it tonight. Just come to the shop at the time we’ve already agreed to. By tomorrow you will be back to Nicki the computer programmer. You will have no recollection of anything that has happened. No recollection of me.”

“And the tattoos?”

Jerry laughed. “I’m a wizard not a magician. You will have the tattoos and a great story about how you got them on your various trips to Cancun with your CEO boyfirend. I will see you later.”

Nicki watched as Jerry walked away. He looked all of his two hundred and twenty five years. She stood to leave but a hand reached out from the bench next to her and grabbed her wrist. Nicki looked down to see the face of a grizzled old man. His clothes were filthy and he smelled of whiskey and body odor. “Missy got some change? I need my medicine.”

Nicki shook her arm loose. “Let go of me I’ve got nothing for you. Your medicine will kill you in the end old man.”

“Not before I get to your boyfriend Missy.” Nicki watched as the old man grinned the grin of madness, of the demons that had overtaken him. “I heard it all. We all know who he is. He thinks he can win but we are simply too strong. There are too many of us and too many more to come. It’s gone too dark Missy, way too dark to bring the world out. We are almost there, almost to the end of days.”

Nicki looked at the old fool with a mix of disgust but also with a thought so foreign to her that even she wondered where it came from.

“And then what old man? What happens then, at the end of days?”

The old man looked at her “Then it’s over and we go to our reward.”

“And what reward is that? Living in the eternal stink of darkness and ignorance? Begging for a favor from your dark savior? Crawling on your belly to the beast and hoping that it doesn’t just wipe what’s left of your miserable existence from time? And then what? Waiting around for it all to begin again so that you can return and play the same tired role in the same tired play in the same tired misery?”

The old man looked at her with confusion on his face. Nicki was picking up a good head of steam. “So you think you have won. This is what you have done with your miserable life. All the hope and all the good that was given to you in the beginning and this is how you have squandred it, following the teachings of idiots. I’ll bet there was a time when you could have turned the corner to something else but it was too much trouble. It was easier to wallow in your own misery, to play the victim, to be the martyr and see where it has brought you? You’re a puppet, a shell, a lazy miserable blight on and otherwise beautiful day. Go down to the Mission and feed them your story they’ll give you a good dose of Scripture, some soup and a shot of penicillin. Then you can think of how kind they are to keep you like this.”

With that Nicki called upon the dragon on her left arm. “Deep from the abyss, from time eternal, from those unseen, from the warriors both then and now I call you to end one demon’s reign.” At the end of the incantation she whirled and threw the energy in the direction of the old man on the park bench. Out of the blue sky came one bolt of lightening so bright that Nicki had to shield her eyes. The lightning struck quickly and with mercy, there was no sound, no moan, no cry and no wail, there as simply nothing where the old man had sat.

Nicki looked on for a minute not quite believing what had just happened. “Shit” she uttered as she turned quickly and began to run in the direction of her house.