coven
The moon hung high above the circle of shadowy figures, its reflection rippled in the silver pool. They crowded around it like beasts of the jungle around a watering hole. One, or was it several?, voices sang a plaintive melody, the notes trailing into the dark night. The woods were sleeping, subdued, save for their presence.
One voice cried out, husky and urgent:
“Oh brothers, sisters - be still, for he comes, the life-carrier!”
Into their midst, a black cat slipped, large as a panther. It padded into the pool, the water rising mid-haunch, and sat up looking among them with its brilliant green eyes. Its shape blurred, and then it was a cat no more, but a beautiful ebony-skinned youth who knelt in the pool, arms relaxed in graceful tension.
“I have come, I bring you life.”
His voice was solemn and low, it resonated through the sudden stillness of the shadows. They faced him now, faces inscrutable, bland and shapeless. Only their eyes gleamed, with the fear of their mortality, eager and hungry. He raised his arms to the moon and sung, a single word in an ancient language repeated again and again. The meaning of the word had long been forgotten by man but not by the beasts, who stirred uneasily in their sleep, hearts quickening to the beat. The shadow figures danced in a shivering ecstasy. Their bodies grew solid and heavy. Their faces were smoothed and beatific, sculpted into beautiful masks, noble and proud.
And then it was finished, the final note hanging in the air. One stepped forward silent and quick, breaking the mirrored water of the pool. It gently touched the, now again, cat who lay curled upon itself, still and breathless.
“His task is finished”, it murmured sadly.
They slipped away one by one into the heavy darkness. The last picked up the lifeless cat as if it were no heavier than a feather and followed the others into the shadows.
