Mastery Year 1: Samhain

Happy Samhain!

These last few months, I've basically gotten used to being back. There have been times--beginning very soon after June and I arrived--when it seemed as though I'd never been away and the world outside was not, and had never been, real. But now, at Samhain*, I'm once again struck by how long I was away and how good it is to be back.

I did not celebrate Samhain the whole time I was away. I could have, but I didn't know how to celebrate it alone, and most of the time I was gone my attention was wrapped up in grad school, and I really wasn't thinking about anything else. But there is something important, something vital, about celebrating the dead, and I have missed it. I did not realize how much I had missed it until just now.

I had a hard time explaining it to June. She's heard of Samhain, of course, but she hadn't celebrated it before, and had trouble understanding how it relates to Hallowe'en on the one hand and Dia del Muertes on the other. And she thought it rather morbid to end the school year on the same day, and had trouble understanding why we take the winter off to begin with--I think she's sad that her classes are over, since she only gets the one year as a novice--until I reminded her how cold the Chapel was back at Brigid and asked if she really wanted to take classes in those temperatures all winter. That building leaks heat like the proverbial sieve.

In any case, once again I sat and hung out with some of my dorm-mates as late afternoon turned into evening, and once again I looked out a window over campus grown dark and saw the central field illuminated by hundreds of flickering candles. The sky was clear and dark and spangled, the temperature falling rapidly into the first truly cold night of the year, and I thought that this moment, which doesn't happen every year, when I look out and first see all those candles, is my favorite part of the holiday. It's like that moment on Christmas morning when you're a kid, when you wake up, before the presents, before the candy, before everything, and you know for sure it's going to happen.

I met June in the landing above the central stairway down into the Great Hall--which is itself decorated with pumpkins and squashes of all kinds and sizes, and shocks of corn all bundled together, and creepy vines all twisted and dried and twining across the ceiling, and the Thank You Doll, now all shriveled and old, still sitting in state and ready for its own internment, and we and the rest of our crowed put on our shoes and our cowls and cloaks, and walked out through the Green Room towards the Chapel, my wife and I holding hands.

When we got to the Chapel, of course the room was full of light, lit candles in the aisles and in the holders along the walls and on the stage, and already the room almost half full of people. We found our seats.

"I'm excited," June confessed. "I don't know what's going to happen."
"That's the idea," I told her. "You're a novice."

The bells began, and the masters processed in, looking strange and mysterious as they always do, with their hoods up and almost covering their faces, like so many enchanters. That some of them actually are witches, or alchemists, or magicians is an entirely prosaic fact around here, as normal as being able to play the guitar or write poetry, but being a witch, or an alchemist, or a magician, or whatever it is Charlie is (a Troll King? An Ent, one of the shepherds of trees?) ought not to be prosaic, and there are certain days when they dress up and remind us that something extraordinary is going on. Samhain is one of those days. They took the stage, and the ceremony began.

We read the names of the Beloved Dead (I recognized one name as belonging to someone I'd met--Charlie's brother. I'd known he had died, but not what Charlie felt about it. I looked over at my teacher and he seemed attentive but impassive. Some questions don't have answers), recited some dozen short eulogies, and sang Hats Off to Dead Folks. The masters came down off the stage and we all milled around, talking, until the bell summoned them and they left, mid-sentence, taking their candles with them, leaving us with that much less light. And the rest of us streamed out onto the already freezing grass, headed towards the bonfire and dinner and s'mores.

And just as I realized June was not beside me in the crowd anymore, I heard a strange sound in a familiar voice. I turned back to investigate.

The sprouts, costumed for the holiday and lying in wait, had captured their grown-up, as they do every year. Usually it's one of the masters, one year it was me. They hold the grown-up ransom for candy and expanded privileges, and everybody pretends they don't know the ruffians are children playing a game. But this time, they'd caught June.

"Ahoy, there, pirate!" I called. "I would parley with ye!"

A rough-clad figure in a dreadlocked wig, who I suspected of being Adelee Grimm, detached herself from the group and came over to talk to me.

"You're supposed to pretend you don't know it's us," she said, sullenly.

"Me? Know who you are?" In the still-distant firelight, identification really was difficult. "All I know is you're a fearsome pirate--and you've kidnapped my wife." I let my voice sound suddenly stern and irate.

"That's how the game works," she said, rolling her eyes like the teenager she'd recently become. She won't be a sprout much longer. "Come on, you're ruining it for the littles."

Behind her, I could see Paul and Ruthie, my niece and nephew, looking at me in frightened confusion. I knew them in the dark by their small size and by something in their postures. Lo had picked them up when she brought Alexis to campus earlier in the day. That Chris wasn't with them proved we'd known exactly what the plan was. Only kids four years old and older can play this trick for treats.

"How the game works is you're supposed to take a master or a senior student, not a novice!" I let myself get even more stern. I was not play-acting. June was lying, half-tied-up, under a restraining pile of children, probably getting cold, and she didn't know what was going on.

"Aw, but she's Mrs. Kretzman," protested Billie. I know his voice. He meant that she was a staff-member. And of course, she had been the director of the summer camp they had all attended. But that wasn't the point.

"She's a novice," I reiterated. "You have to go tell her the rules and ask her if she wants to play. If she doesn't, I'll take her place."

So, Adelee went back to her group and conferred briefly with the prisoner, who thought about things for a few seconds, then nodded. Adelee reported back, still sullen. I had little sympathy.

"She said yes."

"Ok, give me a little time to go tell the masters she said yes. And when you do come out, negotiate hard. Make this worth it." Ok, I had a little sympathy, and I didn't want to ruin their fun, or have June think she had ruined it.

"Ok."

I found the masters and almost everyone else already at the bonfire. I whispered my news in Kit's ear. She nodded and then let the others know, subtly, without calling attention to themselves. When the costumed sprouts showed up and announced they'd taken June, I was suitably distraught, really camping it up, offering them anything, anything, for the safe return of my wife, while Kit and Greg held firm, insisting that we do not give in to criminals. Eventually, the kids got half a pound of candy each, plus a shopping trip to a certain favored toy store, to be funded collectively by the masters and parents. It was somewhat less than they've gotten in other years, but there's always some variation so I'm not sure that their choice of target hurt them. I didn't think it should.

June was released, none the worse for wear, and yes, a little cold from having lain on the ground. I wrapped my cloak around both of us and warmed her as best as I could.

"You know," I told her, "It's really a compliment."

"Oh?"

"They thought you counted as one of the masters. It's a good sign that you will be."




*I'm posting this on October 30th, although Samhain begins at sundown on October 31st and extends through November 1st.

Year 4: Part 7: Post 1: Samhain

Happy Samhain.

The school year, my last one here, ended with something of a whimper (and a bang, non-academically speaking). My two classes simply ended with no particular ceremony or special observance, and I was done. Of course, they weren't final classes for most of the other students--they were only mine by chance. We finish our time here all in different places and in all different ways.

Finding out that I've been a straight A student has had an odd effect on my perspective on my academics. We're encouraged, here, to think about our classes only in terms of how well we mastered the material, how well we met our learning goals--there's no objective, impersonal standard to compare ourselves to, except success or failure, and no way to compare ourselves to each other. I'd almost gotten used to thinking that way, almost let go of being a high-achieving student. I mean, that was always part of my self-concept, as a kid and a teenager, I got good grades. And I'd just started to let go of that.

And now it's back.

I look around at my fellow students and wonder how many of them got A's? Do any of them know that I did? Is there any socially acceptable way to tell them? I always got good grades, but never this good. 4.0, a perfect score on everything. Surely that has to mean something important.

It means I'll have a somewhat easier time getting into grad school, and I might be able to get some scholarship money. Nothing more. To get bragging rights, you have to be among other people who are likewise bragging.

In any case, Samhain Eve this year was cold and clear and perfect. We gathered, as we do, in the Chapel and we eulogized the Beloved Dead and sang Hats Off to Dead Folks by the warm, flickering glow of beeswax candles, and it was lovely. Perfect. Normal. This is normal for me now. This is home.

During the mingling period, after the masters had come down off the stage, but before they left, Charlie came up to me, apparently eager to tell me something before he went into eclipse for the year--there's no rule against their talking to us outside of the school year, and of course there's the reception afterwards by the fire, which they share with us, but Charlie tends to like to seclude himself pretty deeply and I imagine he didn't want a To-Do item looming over him.

"Daniel," he told me, "you don't have to worry about sex. She doesn't demand monogamy."

It took me a couple of seconds to figure out what he was talking about--he didn't mean Joanna, he meant the land, the physical campus which he had described as his wife and lover.

"You can follow a path like mine, without being physically celibate as I have been."

"Thanks for telling me," I began, but at that moment the bell rang and Charlie went blank, stopped seeing me, and walked away. They all do that, at that moment, even if they're in the middle of a sentence.

I honestly hadn't stopped to think about that--it hadn't occurred to me that loving the land, as Charlie had taught me to do, might preclude my loving a woman. But then, I didn't take the possibility of being married to the land literally. I probably didn't take it as seriously as he did, either. I wanted to talk to Charlie about that, to ask if that was a problem, if I needed to go deeper. I also wanted to ask why he had thought to issue me that particular reassurance now of all times. How much did he know and how did he know it?

We all streamed out of Chapel Hall, towards the fire circle. I fell to the back of the group, distracted by my thoughts. I made myself vulnerable.

A jolt, and I fell and my fall was oddly cushioned. I settled on the ground gently, like a leaf. Tiny bodies swarmed over mine, immobilizing me by sheer weight, and a small hand pressed itself over my mouth.

"Don't fight, Mr. Daniel! You'll hurt the Littles!"

It was Gage Grimm's voice, Sarah's son and the current oldest of the Sprouts, a boy I did not know well. His voice penetrated my reflexive panic. I realized what had happened and, obedient, I stopped struggling and lay still.

As far as I can reconstruct it, two of them had pushed my legs forward, out from under me, while two more grabbed handfulls of my uniform at my hips and sides and yanked me backwards. The four oldest, all nearly adult size, caught me using the zipper lock arm arrangement they learn for elevated trust falls at summer camp. The whole thing was incredibly well coordinated, and while it was happening I was mostly disoriented and confused.

"You don't need to call him 'Mr.,' he's just a student," said one of the Ackerman-Ben twins, great-nieces of Charlie's. They're not identical, but I can't tell their voices apart, and everyone was wearing masks. It was very dark. And then it was very bright.

"Don't shine the flashlight in his face!" said an older girl, Mary Grimm, I think. The brightness went away, but any night vision I'd had was gone.

"He's almost not a student, though," interjected Billie Grimm.

 "We don't need to call any of them 'Mr.' or anything tonight," Mary Grimm continued. "It's Samhain."

"Yeah, but I don't want him to be scared," said Gage. "Or angry."

"I like him," said a small voice. Alexis! Allen's daughter. I like her, too, but didn't know whether I should speak. There was still a hand over my mouth, though it felt light and somewhat distracted now. "Mr., um, I mean, Daniel, don't be scared, we practiced all of this. A lot!"

"He knows that!" said Mary. "They're in on it, too, you know. This is all just pretend."

"Get the rope around his feet," said Gage. "Here, hand me that gag. Don't talk with this gag on, ok, Daniel?"

I nodded my assent, and a bandanna was tied loosely across my mouth. It wasn't a gag at all, of course. But the rope around my feet and legs was quite real, and the older children checked the knots to make sure they were secure. Next, they tied my hands together, then sat me up so they could wrap another rope around and around my chest, pinning my arms in front of me. Then another bandanna went across my eyes. Gage had me roll this way and that, so they could get something like a cargo net, or maybe a hammock, under me. I didn't understand that part, at first. I thought they would tie it around me, like a cocoon, but they didn't. They proceeded to do something to my hair and my shirt collar and my ropes, something that sometimes pricked, sometimes tickled, and sometimes felt quite pleasant, like a massage. They took off my shoes and socks and placed them in a pile on my belly.

Gage ran off to negotiate the ransom for me. I lay quietly and thought about life while the children speculated about what kind of loot their performance would earn. The loot would be mostly candy, of course. For the Sprouts, Trick-or-Treat leans heavily towards Trick-and-Treat.

Finally they picked me up by the cargo net (that's what it was for! Of course, the way they'd tied me I could not walk), all of them working together, and carried me over to the fire. There they received the first payment of their candy, cheered, and ran away, leaving me lying there like a caterpillar.

I was quickly unwrapped by friendly adults, who explained that I'd had chicken feathers stuck in my hair, my shirt, and my bindings. I'd looked ridiculous, as intended. My health was ascertained and someone put a mug of mulled cider in my hand. I found my bearings again, gradually.

The party continued, evolving into a ghost-story-telling circle. Charlie told two, marvelously spooky tales, of course, and, to my surprise, Joy told one that was genuinely frightening. I'd never thought of her as into that sort of thing. All the other stories were told my students, one after the other, late into the night.

While all that storytelling occurred, I could have found Charlie and asked my questions. But I didn't. There is a way in which Charlie is scarier than any ghost story, and I was in no mood to challenge him. I sought out Allen instead.

"Allen?"

"Hmm?" He turned his head slightly towards me, but kept looking at the fire, kind of mesmerized.

"I have a question."

"Glad to hear it."

"Do you...talk about us?"

He looked at me and the corners of his mouth twitched up in a bit of a smile.

"Define 'you' and 'talk about' and 'us,'" he said, and then looked back at the fire.

I took a deep breath.

"Do you, the masters, share information among yourselves about the private lives of us, students."

A quick chuckle, like he'd been caught, and a quick, sideways grin.

"Congratulations, Daniel," he said, almost smirking.

I snorted and turned away. I'm sure I was blushing furiously.

"We're human," he hastened to explain. Then: "How many of your friends did you tell that I'm bisexual?"

"Three," I admitted, embarrassed. He had me. He totally had me.

What I'd actually told them was that I thought he might be, based on something ambiguous Allen had said about his past. I didn't much care, one way or the other, there are a lot of "out" gay and bi people on campus and it isn't a big deal, but Allen's slipperiness inspires speculation. If he is bi, I doubt he's closeted, it's just private information that doesn't come up much, and he's being mysterious about it with me in order to yank my chain. Notice that his wording, "how many did you tell that I'm bisexual," doesn't actually clarify the matter. I could have told them wrong.

Anyway, I'd always gossiped about teachers, ever since I was little. Everyone I knew did. I never stopped to think about how they might feel about it. I'd never really stopped to think that "teachers" are human. And this was Allen, my friend.  I was both embarrassed and ashamed and I could not look at him.

"I'm sorry," I told him, and meant it.

"Thank you," he said, and clearly meant it. "But we know you do it, that's why we don't let you see anything we really don't want you to talk about."

"So, why do you talk about us," I asked. "I'd think...you seem too professional to gossip."

"We're human, like I said...but we don't gossip. We exchange information. On Fridays, at our dinner meetings, we talk about what we know of all of you."

"Why? It's not any of your business."

"Sometimes it is. Knowing more about you helps us with our teaching--Charlie's reassurance to you tonight, for example. And it keeps us from gossiping. You know how information gets distorted as it's passed along? This way, we each get our information directly, and we can see it for what it's worth. We can question and challenge our sources."

"Huh." I felt kind of mollified, but not completely.

"So, how did you know about, about me and Joanna?"

"That I can't tell you. I need to protect my professional secrets, you know?"

"Allen?"

"Hmm?"

"One of the Sprouts said I'm almost not a student. Did he just mean because I'm getting ready to graduate, or...a couple of you have said things like that, over the past few months. As though you expect me to...join you. Do you know something about that I don't?"

I could hear Allen's smile in his voice, this time. When he turned to face me his face lay in shadow, but his voice was clear.

"No, Daniel. We don't know anything. I'm a magician, not a prognosticator. I have every confidence you can earn your green ring if you want to, but I don't know if you'll want to, and I don't know what openings may come up or whether you'll be available when they do." Remember, earning master status mean's you're eligible to get a job with the school, but it's no guarantee you'll be hired.

"We don't know whether you'll join us," he said. "We talk like that because we're hoping you do."

Year 4: Part 6: Mabon

Happy Mabon.

The rest of the Northern Hemisphere now agrees with Kit; it is Fall. The days are getting short, there is a real hint of color in the trees, the meadows are full of goldenrods and asters, and the mornings are usually cool, though not cold. There is still a definite hint of late summer, especially in the afternoons, and occasionally we still have a hot day, but I agree with Kit, now; it has been the season of transition for weeks. The idea of the same season holding sway over an entire hemisphere at once seems strange to me--I have a cousin in New York, and it isn't Fall there yet. Why should it be? These are different places, different countries.

I'm taking for granted so many ideas that used to seem strange to me.

Anyway, I had me nephew with me again for the Mabon festivities (my niece is still too young--she's not walking yet). He's just past two, now, and so I let him spend a lot of time running around with the other Sprouts. I was nervous about that--he seems so very small, hardly more than a walking baby, and of course my sister-in-law would kill me if anything bad happened to him--and I'd let her kill me. I mean, I'd feel so awful. But, as Kit pointed out, the older Sprouts know more about taking care of toddlers than I do, and they'll keep an eye on him.

So I was free to wander around, mostly on my own, like any other student, sampling food and drink and marveling at the unusually large vegetables at the harvest fair set up on the Central Field. This year there was a whole selection of quick breads to choose from, made with different kinds of squash and fruit and nuts. I liked the acorn squash and raisin bread best, and ate quite a lot of it.

At the cider-tasting tent I ran into Charlie--around here, "cider" usually means hard cider, since we have no refrigeration, but they've just pressed a couple of batches, so there were non-alcoholic ciders there, too. Anyway, I saw him a few seconds before he saw me, then our eyes met--and his face went hard and blank and he turned away.

Everyone thinks that Charlie is a curmudgeon who growls at people because he doesn't like human beings. And, in fact, I think he does like other species a lot better, but I don't think that's really it. I've seen his gentleness with the vulnerable, with children and small animals, and I've seen the way his face and body relax when he's in the company of people he trusts. And I saw how sad he looked last week when I was so angry with him for lying to me, for deliberately hurting my feelings by telling me my spot in the woods was going to be cut down. It wasn't, he just had to check to see if I really cared--that was his final exam for me, part of his job, as he saw it, the job I asked, even begged him to do almost four years ago. He knew I'd pass the exam, knew what those few seconds of mistaken grief would be like for me, and knew there was a chance I might not wholly forgive him for it. And he did it anyway, but it made him very sad.

He turned away from me in the cider tent because he did not want to see me turn away from him.

I've known people who didn't especially care for me. Most people like me, superficially, at least, but not everyone really cares and that ok. And I've known people who hold me special, who do genuinely care. That's ok, too, more than ok, in fact. But I've never known anyone else, except maybe my Dad, who cared about me and liked me and unhesitatingly did something that might alienate me, simply because they believed I needed it--no one else except Charlie.

I attended the Paleolithic Feast over lunch, along with most of campus, which of course Charlie runs, but we didn't speak to each other then, except to sort of details of where I should put the dish I brought and whether he needed me to help set up chairs, that sort of thing. He didn't seem hostile at all, he wasn't not speaking to me, but he did seem distant, closed off. My heart kind of hurt.

After lunch, I went to the Thank You Doll build instead of the Gratitude Circle I went to last year and my first year. Sarah runs the build, but Charlie always attends, just like Kit always attends the circle. The two avoid each other, and while Charlie doesn't get in to the snippy stuff Kit does, I think the situation bothers him somehow. These are the two main events of the afternoon, and they happen at the same time, so you can't do both. I think Charlie was glad to see that I'd chosen his.

The build itself went really well. This year we made the Doll mostly out of red potatoes (potatoes come in all different colors, red, white, yellow, blue, and lots of sizes and shapes), with tiny blue potatolets (tubers that hadn't come to full size by harvest, for whatever reason) stuck on for eyes, nose, mouth, ears, and fingers and toes. We used a large potato as a big butt in the back, for balance, and a small one stuck on the back of the head, like a bun, as the foundation of the hairstyle--we made a sort of fan-shaped halo of blue potato slices and behind that, stuck on to the "bun," a large fan of dried grass heads, all of the large Seteria species that look like big, golden caterpillars.

The hairdo was Megan's idea, Megan being one of the Sprouts, one of Charlie's many grand-nieces. Her twin sister suggested we give the Doll some clothes, which we did my making a skirt out of curly kale leaves. We didn't have any kale in the box of veggies Sarah had brought, because it's pretty perishable, but Adelee, one of Sarah's daughters, ran and got some for us. All the remaining Sprouts, except my nephew, Aidan, and Alexis, are either Sarah or Charlie's relatives, so we had all of them except Alexis helping with the build. It's a fun activity anyway, especially for kids.

When we woke the Doll up, my nephew listened for its voice and, once again, he heard it, or said he did. I still want to know what that's like. I could have asked Aidan, or Billie, or Julius, or Adelee, each of whom have been the youngest in the group at least once and heard the Doll, and who now have strong enough language skills to explain the experience, but I didn't ask.

Some mysteries are better left unplumbed.

Afterwards, while we were cleaning up, I approached Charlie.

"Thank you," I told him, simply.

For a moment he did not speak, just looked at me.

"You're welcome," he told me, gruffly, and turned away to consolidate compost buckets. But I could almost feel the tension drain from his body. I could feel him lighten somehow. I haven't studied him for four years for nothing.