Coal to Diamonds (2 page)

Cole had been the one, who knew, just
knew,
without any New-Age manual, how to turn a predicted dusting of snow into a crippling blizzard, so the boys could stay at Bobby’s house and play video games instead of taking a math test. The other two boys had followed his frenzied lead, stabbing into a block of ice and drizzling the shavings down from the oak limbs, but only Cole knew the archaic names to call. They had discovered gnosis, the trance-like state that allowed them access to power, though they hadn’t known the name back then. When a cheerleader called Cam a fag, it had been Cole’s idea to steal a Barbie doll from Bobby’s sister, mar its smooth face with a red marker, and send the girl to the winter formal with a face full of weeping pimples as big as peas. Cole had felt triumphant, for the first time in his life not powerless, for the first time a contributor to the world and not its victim. The spell’s success frightened the other two boys. After that Cole caught them glancing at him out of the corners of their eyes, or whispering about him, wondering if they should be afraid of his skill and intuitive knowledge. Maybe they were afraid of him now.

Since Cole’s feet had been the first to touch that forbidden path, and his hands had grasped those of his friends and pulled them along, they now looked to him to be their guide again. He’d also been the first to meet Darius Thorn and go to his bed. Bobby’s evenly colored brown eyes bored into him insistently, like ivy infiltrating the mortar between bricks. Cam shifted his weight from the ball of one foot to the other, never letting go of the wooden charm he wore.

Cole stood and twisted his waist to make his back crack. He felt much older than twenty-eight. Before he spoke, he downed his drink, which was straight whiskey toward the bottom. “First,” he said, “we need to protect ourselves. We need to block him out, so he can’t see or hear what we’re doing. Then we can plan.”

The bulb beneath the plaid shade on Cole’s desk strobed. Bobby and Cam disappeared and reappeared in rapid bursts. His computer switched on and then off. Cam jumped at the beep when it restarted.

“What do we need to do?” Bobby asked.

B
OBBY
and Cam stood naked on the square of bare earth between Cole’s cabin and the woods. They neither hugged themselves nor huddled together, but waited, bravely exposed. Cole was proud of them. Their bodies, fleshy and soft, clashed hard against the emaciated sharpness of the bare branches, stripped berry fronds, and foot-cutting frozen ground. They looked as out of place as blooming roses would have this time of year, between Thanksgiving and Christmas. They seemed to Cole just as lovely and vulnerable.

Cole finished arranging the things he’d brought from the house on a cloth at the bottom of the porch steps and went to join the others. “The smaller the area, the less energy it will take to seal and maintain,” he told them. “Try not to go more than a few feet from the cabin. Go around the cars, though. We might need them. Are we ready to start?”

Bobby nodded, and Cam whispered, “Yes, Cole.”

Cole retrieved from the stairs a shot-glass-sized vial of oil. He’d made it in the early spring, on the night of Ostara, the spring equinox, just before Bobby and Cam came back to him. Infused with bitter nettles, rose hips, lily of the valley, and the thin March sun, it warmed his palm. A tiny shard of opal floated near the bottom, for protection. After letting a few drops trickle onto the fingertips of his left hand, Cole knelt in front of Cam. Chilly, jagged rocks bit his bare knees as he touched the knob of bone above Cam’s big toe. Then he leaned forward and pressed his lips to the creamy skin of Cam’s perfect dancer’s foot.

“Bless your feet that tread the sacred path,” he said.

He rose to his knees, anointed his fingers again, and touched the seam in the center of Cam’s scrotum. He ran his hands over the V of muscle that stretched from Cam’s hipbones to his groin. His fingers left glistening trails. Cam was so perfectly proportioned. Every bend and curve flowed into every other with the grace of a slow river. Cole rested his palms for a second over the trail of dandelion hair on Cam’s belly. Then he lifted Cam’s cock, shrunken by the cold, and let the head balance on his lower lip. Cam inhaled and instinctively touched the back of Cole’s head. Cole opened his lips a fraction more, so that they encircled Cam’s cock when he kissed it. He couldn’t resist tapping the slit with the tip of his tongue before he broke away. Most of the books he’d read suggested saying something about fertility at this point, but it never seemed appropriate, so he just whispered, “Bless you here.” Forms of fecundity existed beyond creating more humans, and Cole had long ago forsaken the so-called wisdom in New-Age manuals.

Cole stood and took both of Cam’s hands. He held them in front of his chest and kissed each of his knuckles. “Bless the hands that hold the wand.”

For several moments Cole looked into Cam’s forest-pool eyes, beautiful and awe-inspiring in the way only nature can be. Then he touched Cam’s lower lip with the oil, took his cheeks in both hands, and kissed him on the mouth. Cam’s lower lip, trembling from the cold, slipped between Cole’s lips. Cole swept his tongue across it, and then he withdrew his mouth. But he leaned in again, nipping at the coral-colored bow of Cam’s lips a second, and then a third time. Cam relaxed his jaw, and Cole wanted nothing more than to kiss him deeply, but it would have to wait.

“Bless your mouth that speaks the sacred names.”

Cole kissed each of Cam’s eyes. Then he pressed his lips between Cam’s brows so hard his lip flattened and his teeth pushed against the bone under Cam’s skin. He wove his fingers into Cam’s thick hair and said, without moving his mouth from Cam’s forehead, “Cam, bless your eyes. Your eyes that see.” He wet his pinky with the oil and traced a diamond shape where his lips had been, around and around Cam’s potent third eye. “Open this up,” he crooned, rubbing, coaxing. “We need your sight.” Finally, a faint, elliptical glow, the green of new grass, satisfied him. Cam slipped into gnosis, his mind transcending the rational, moving to a plane where reality was malleable.

He blessed and anointed Robert in the same fashion, lingering over his hands instead of his eyes. “Bless the hands that wield the staff,” Cole said, squeezing Bobby’s palms, stroking Bobby’s thumbs with his own. “Bless them for their strength.” Throughout school, Bobby had been their protector. No one could fathom why popular, athletic Bobby Forester, with his strong chin and disarming smile, would befriend Cole Riley, the bookish outcast, or Cameron Webb, the fairy from the drama and dance club. At first Cole thought it was a joke, or a dare. But Bobby had stood by them with the quiet, unwavering power of mountain stone or an ancient tree. An ochre aura now surrounded his arms to the elbow.

“Can you do me, please, Bobby?” Cole asked, passing his friend the oil. Bobby knelt, and Cole closed his eyes and let his mind begin to slip to the place it needed to be: a few feet beyond the confines of his body, a few feet into the soil, a few into the sky, and a few to the sides, where it would brush against and join with the souls of Bobby and Cam. Bobby kissed his feet, and they felt light, like balloons filled with warm air instead of blood and bone. He could no longer feel the jab of the pebbles against his soles. The tepid buoyancy spread throughout him. He let Bobby’s slightly calloused palm brush away the mundane from his calves, stomach, chest, and face. Everywhere he touched, Cole felt changed. His body expanded, floated. Only his cock, half erect despite the temperature, felt corporeal. When Bobby’s lips brushed his, it felt like their faces melted together. Cole’s mouth, his speech and words, was the throne of his magic. Bobby’s lips slipped away, and Cole saw the light of his own power escaping between his teeth, white hot, blue-tipped, knife-edged, and flickering.

In this semi-trance state, Cole never felt like he controlled his muscles. So he willed his consciousness near the tools on the stairs and found himself beside them a second later. One thing he’d learned from his grandmother was to collect rain water. He gathered it from each storm in a mason jar and labeled it by writing on a piece of masking tape the zodiac sign, moon phase, and time of day. Certain rains benefited growth, others banished it. Tonight’s jar proclaimed “Taurus/Waxing-three-quarters full/Dusk.” Cole unscrewed the metal ring, removed the lid, and handed the jar to Cam. It smelled of melted snow, dark, potent soil, and crocuses. “Call West,” he said.

Cam often spoke as if he recited a poem: musically and nervously. “I call to the spirits who reside in the West. I call to the spirits of water. Be present with us and aid us tonight. Wash and purify us. Refresh us. At my beckoning be with us now.” He dipped his slender fingers into the jar and flicked some liquid into each of their faces, making them blink.

Next, Cole handed a terra-cotta bowl to Bobby. The muscular man sprinkled some of the cornmeal and basil on their toes, saying, “I invoke the strength of the earth spirits of the North to aid us on this night.” Bobby had been a lawyer; his crisp words resounded. “Come at my calling and stand beside us in our work.”

Cole struck a match and held it to a bundle of incense sticks. “Spirits of the East,” he said, “spirits of the cold ether, who ride the wind, rush now to my side.” The wind responded, whisking away the fragrant smoke. “Lend us your sharp power, like a double-edged blade, to cut the flesh of our enemies.” This time the blast of air moved through Cole’s body as if his skin had been made of the thinnest gauze.

With his free hand, Cole lifted a red candle. The flame sprung alight as soon as it touched his palm. Cam gasped. “Fire spirits of the South, whose tongues are flame, join me here, now. Let my soul be engulfed but not consumed. Let the fire temper it, like steel, into a sword. Nairyosangha, Gabija, Adramelech
.
Fill us with your fury. Agni, Moloch, Belial, Gibil
.
Let us direct your might toward those who would harm us, boiling their blood and melting their eyes, reducing their skin to bubbling liquid and their bones to ash. Decimate any who stand in my way—”

“Cole, enough,” Cam whispered, grabbing his friend’s elbow. “Your hair was starting to smoke.”

“Cast the circle,” Cole panted.

They followed him in an egg-shaped path around the cabin, from the porch, to the propane tank around the side, to the back, where the evergreen ferns sloped up to meet the hemlocks, and back. Bobby scattered the meal, and it fell like amber to the ground, leaving a radiant golden blockade. Cam’s spring water added a shimmering bottle green. The dual forces in Cole’s hands produced a trail of blazing red and ice blue that twisted together like mating serpents. As they circled again, the colors combined to erect an abalone shell wall, full of shifting hues. Once again Cole was proud of Bobby and Cam. They’d spent ten years away from tutelage, and he’d feared they’d be too out of practice to be effective. But their wills and intentions were as concentrated and devastating as the beam of light a boy directs through a magnifying glass to dispatch ants. Bobby’s aura, clay-colored and steady, walled the small cabin and burrowed into the ground to protect even the foundation. Like a dragonfly touching down on water, Cam’s sparkling, emerald energy flitted here and there, erratic, but peppering everything eventually.

They circled the cabin thirteen times before stopping at the steps. A tepee-like shield of mutable light surrounded the little wooden structure. The colors bled into each other, mixed, and changed, reminding Cole of the aurora borealis. He could only imagine what the spectacle looked like to Cam, with his finer perception. Still, he wanted it stronger.

“Now thirteen times with our wands,” Cole said.

Cam set down the empty jar and lifted the necklace from his throat. He wrapped the cord twice around his wrist, then held the little piece of wood like a pencil.

“Mine’s in the truck,” Bobby said. He jogged, his naked body light against the dark trees and graphite sky, to retrieve it, and returned with a staff as thick as his wrist. Terra-cotta beads on hemp braids thumped against the wood near the top. Holding the staff beside him and staring into the woods, Bobby looked like the wise, patient, and stoic mountaineer that he was.

Their magical tools had been carved from the body of the oak whose arms once cradled their tree house. It had been witness and conspirator to their early attempts at enchantment. Among its leaves and swollen acorns, during the tail end of summer, they’d gathered to say their good-byes to childhood and each other. High school, with its joys and horrors, had finally ended. Cam was bound for New York and a dancing job just off Broadway; Bobby was headed for school in New England. Cole’s uncle had offered him a decent paying job at the insurance agency, and he planned to save up for a year or so before studying writing and sorcery, hopefully in England and throughout Europe.

That night, with the aid of a few six-packs and a tube of hand lotion, they’d pushed through the only wall that still separated the three of them and passed the final phase of their initiation. Drunk, awkward, overzealous, and inexperienced, they’d all left a bit of their blood on the tree house floor. Thinking back, Cole knew this was as it should be. All of the world’s pagan magic involved a rite of passage. All of the rites involved pain and blood. He’d read about circumcision, tattooing, scarring, and worse. Transformation needed sacrifice of something to gain something else. Blood was the ink that marked the moment when childhood ended. Blood, though Cam and Bobby shied from it, held more power than any substance Cole knew.

Exactly one week after Bobby, Cam, and Cole became men together, lightning struck the oak. There had been no moon that night. The catastrophic bolt toppled the tree house and split the trunk down the middle, exposing the dark heartwood. Bobby’s father’s station wagon had been crushed and the shingle roof of the home pierced by a branch. One by one, without discussing it, the young men had each gone to the yard and taken away a bit of the charred wood. Concentrated within the fibers was all of their magic, their love, their innocence, and memory. None of them was willing to lose it completely.