Clare-Dragonfly (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
clare_dragonfly) wrote2018-01-26 08:22 pm
clare_dragonfly) wrote2018-01-26 08:22 pm
Fiction: The Witches' Solution
Title: The Witches' Solution
World: other
Word count: 2,978
Rating: PG
Prompt:![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
allbingo apocalypse theme: magical solution; rainbowfic Antique Brass 16, You guys sound excited! Did I solve it?!; Hills of Iowa 1, We walk in the world of safe people and at night we walk into our houses and burn.
Notes: This took a weird turn near the end that I did not expect. I guess that's what I get for not planning out the actual solution ahead of time!
The first house to go up in flames belonged, not to the president or to his family, or to the vice president or to one of the cabinet members, but to a minor functionary no one believed had anything to do with the scandal.
But his house still burned, and it burned hot and fast, with no time for him or his wife or children to escape. He and his family burned; only the dog made it out.
Immediately, most people assumed arson. The fire marshal promised what the president demanded: a full and thorough investigation. Their preliminary findings did not indicate human agency in the fire, but it had burned so precisely that it was difficult for anyone to believe it had been an accident.
The next house to go up, the following night, did belong to a cabinet member. The third house belonged to one of the president’s children. The fourth, going up the same night as the third, was one of the president’s properties, a house in another city—where the president happened to be sleeping that night.
Half the country was in a panic, whether they cared for the current president or not. After all, how could anyone be getting away with so many fires in such scattered places and so quickly? No one had been caught. No suspects had even been identified. There was still no sign of any actual human intervention, and resources had begun to spread thin.
Of course, after the president’s house burned, the fire marshals were able to bring in more resources, nationally and internationally. But that did not last long. On the fourth night of the fires, three houses burned at once in three different countries. International investigators returned to their homes; other travel was canceled or delayed.
The morning after the fourth night was when the first observers pointed out that the flames were following a Fibonacci sequence, of course. The morning after the fifth night, when five houses in four countries burned, there were few people who had not heard that the fires were following a Fibonacci sequence and learned far more than most of them ever wanted to know about what exactly the Fibonacci sequence was.
That didn’t help anyone catch the arsonists. Even bringing in volunteers, firefighters and engineers and those with no training but some ability to patiently sit and sift through ashes, the fire departments were baffled. There was no sign of any accelerant, any explosive, any human touch. None of the fires even had a single point of origin. They had seemed to catch the entire house at once, killing any humans unlucky enough to be trapped inside.
Pets, it seemed, always made it out.
Many claimed divine retribution, of course. Of the families and groups that had been killed, all had at least one that a significant portion of the population could agree were evil. But all had others who seemed to be innocent. Infants died just the same as their grandparents, wives the same as their husbands.
After another week, the world’s resources were spread too thin to make any headway on all the fires at the same time. A large body agreed to focus on one of the most recent fires, the one that seemed easiest to study. But no evidence to catch the culprits could be found.
That was when the witches got to work.
“All right, I call this meeting to order,” said Holly. “First of all, does anyone know of any magical significance to the Fibonacci sequence?”
There was quiet all around. Finally, Colin said hesitantly, “It could be considered sacred geometry. You could certainly do magic with it.”
“But that doesn’t help us find out who’s doing this,” said Arta. “The Fibonacci numbers aren’t exactly obscure. Anyone with mathematical knowledge can trot out the first few.”
“There must be some significance,” said Leah. “Why else would you use them? They’re up to hundreds of houses a night now—it will be thousands soon, if they’re not stopped—so they could obviously have just started with thousands at a time, if that’s how many they wanted to burn. Or all of them, if that’s what they’re going for.”
“Maybe they weren’t sure how many they would do at first,” suggested Quentin. “They thought they would burn a few, and as they haven’t been caught, they’ve been getting bolder and bolder.”
“But then why not a simpler mathematical progression?” Leah asked. “Or an exponential one? Those would be easier.”
“I think we’re getting off track,” Holly said. “Focusing on the why doesn’t help us, if no one can trace it to a specific magical use of the Fibonacci sequence.”
“Maybe they only have the power to burn as many houses as they did on the previous two nights,” another witch suggested. “It could simply be a practical limit.”
“But then how did they get started?” Arta asked.
“And has anyone actually heard of such a thing?” Holly asked. When no one answered, she shook her head. “Guessing games won’t do us any good. Let’s try another tactic. Does anyone know a spell that allows one to burn things without any trace like these houses are being burned?”
“I actually do know that one,” Leah said. “Or a version of it. It’s meant for ritual destruction—you can completely destroy the symbol without actually having to touch it or get close to it. But since I’ve been experimenting with the spell this past week, I haven’t been able to get it to be bigger than a fist or to start outside of my line of sight.”
“They must have found a way to add more power to it,” another witch said.
“What are the components of the spell?” Colin asked Leah.
“Dried sage and valerian,” Leah said. “And your hands have to be dry. It’s a very dry ritual. But there isn’t much else to it—you just rub the dried herbs between your palms and do a chant.”
“They could be using a lot of herbs,” Quentin said.
“They could be using a lot of people,” Arta said.
“That might increase the power of the spell.” Leah nodded at Arta. “But how many people could be working on this at once and keep it a secret? If they’re multiplying the power of the spell I know by multiplying people, they would need at least two, and probably more, for a whole house. I wouldn’t like to try it with less than a circle of thirteen.”
“Thirteen per night?” Holly asked.
“Thirteen per house,” Leah said. “Maybe a single group could do several houses in a row, but hundreds would be incredibly exhausting. They’d need a whole new set for the second night. And how could that many witches be working together without any of us, let alone the rest of the world, knowing?”
There was silence in response to her question. It was rhetorical, but she was right.
Finally, an old woman known as Hazel stood up. Her back was bent, but her eyes were bright. “We’re going about this backward. We don’t have to know who is doing this, or why, in order to stop it.”
“But how can we stop it without knowing the source?” Holly asked.
Hazel shook her head. “Not with logic, but with magic. Go to the houses that have burned, and cast a seeking spell. Start with the freshest. Then we all gather back here and compare notes. If we can triangulate, or if several spells point to the same place, then we know where to look for the source.”
Arta frowned. “That sounds reasonable. If we can’t get it at first, we can move around from house to house.”
“If the firefighters will let us in,” Leah objected.
“One person should be able to sneak past the barriers, with some help,” Colin said.
“No,” Hazel said. “Leah is right about one thing. We must make circles of thirteen, or our powers will be too feeble and scattered to do any good.”
“Agreed,” Holly said. “And we should focus on the freshest fires, but at least one circle should go to the first fire, as well. I don’t think they’re working as hard on that one—the fire investigators’ focus is on the homes of people they consider more important.”
Hazel smiled. “Very good. The most power will be there—that one may have been personal to the instigator.”
“But if we can figure out what’s personal to the instigator, we can figure out who they are,” Quentin argued.
The witches continued to argue and discuss the magic, the logic, and the possibilities for hours. But in the end, it was Hazel’s solution that they adopted.
Some of the witches had contacts or power within their home governments. Some of them had skills. Some of them had nothing but their witchcraft, and some of them had very feeble abilities indeed, but once they managed to organize themselves into circles of thirteen (those who had been solitary matching up with smaller covens, while large covens broke into pieces), they all balanced one another.
The first night, they begged, cajoled, and snuck their way into the houses, and they cast their spells. The second night, it didn’t seem quite as difficult to find their way inside. By that time, thousands of houses a night were burning, and the majority of them belonged to the rich and powerful. Some even belonged to the fire investigators themselves. Society did not know how to deal with the losses of so many of their leaders at once; it was beginning to come apart at the seams.
One of the circles died in a gunfight between the police and the area gang, both of whom had lost their chiefs. One of the circles was run out of the house by an angry mob wanting revenge. One of the circles never made it into their chosen house because of the Christian prayer circle around it.
But there were hundreds of the witches, and slowly, they began to find their way toward a solution.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the solution was… themselves.
Every time they cast a spell of seeking, it pointed toward one of the other circles of thirteen. They tried it night after night, and no two spells pointed the same place each night. They never pointed to any of the empty houses, no matter how long ago or how recently it had burned. They never pointed anywhere but a house that one of the circles had chosen that night.
“I call this meeting to order,” Holly said. She sounded tired. She was tired. So were the others. They were quiet, subdued. They’d been up half the night for several nights in a row; they were trying to stop the world from coming to an end, and all they could do was look at each other in accusation.
“If someone is doing this, if someone is burning these houses on purpose, step forward now,” Holly told them. “Tell us your reasons. You’re a fellow witch. We won’t… we’ll listen. I promise you that we’ll listen.”
There was silence—an uneasy, strained silence. The witches looked around at their neighbors, their friends. Each of them felt trust and kindness only toward those twelve other witches they had been working with the past few nights.
“It can’t be any one person,” Colin finally said. “The way this has worked, it has to be one person in each circle.” He made a gesture with his arm, pointing to the circle beside his. “It could be Arta.”
“It’s not,” said Jessica, one of Arta’s circle-mates. Her tone was sharp. “I would know.”
“And it’s not Jessica, either,” Arta said. “Our spell could easily have pointed back to us. But it pointed at a different circle each of the past three nights. I am certain of that.”
“No one is changing circles,” Hazel agreed. “It can’t be any one person.”
“Then it has to be many people. One person, at least, in each circle.” Holly shook her head.
“That just brings us back to the original problem,” Leah said. “How could so many people be working together in such silence without one person cracking? Without one person letting a sign be seen? Without one person changing their mind?”
No one answered that question, either. There was no answer for it.
“It isn’t any one person, or any many people, or anyone at all,” Hazel said. Everyone turned to her to listen. “If we kept going, kept casting the same spell every night, it would just go through all of the circles until each circle had seen every other circle accused. Because it’s all of us.”
There were indrawn breaths at that, cries of protest, sounds of anger. A few people tried to make arguments, but there were no real arguments to be made. No specific group of people could be accused. It was everyone or it was no one.
“But what are we doing?” asked Leah in true bafflement. “How could we all be doing this without meaning to and without knowing it?”
“And if it is us,” Quentin said, “is it really right to try to stop it? After all, we are targeting those who would harm us.”
“Maybe it is you, Quentin,” said Mary, a member of his circle, physically turning on him. “Maybe we can pin it down to one person. Because I can’t believe any witch would say that.”
“We all agreed from the beginning,” Holly said, frowning at both Quentin and Mary. “The targets may be those who would harm us, but there is too much collateral damage. Freedom from that fear is not worth the death of any innocent person, and thousands of innocent people have died.”
“Even if the families aren’t innocent, more people are dying now,” cried Chris, whose lovers had been in one of the circles that had died. “Society is crumbling at the seams, and if we are the only ones who can stop it, we must.”
“How?” asked Arta. And many of the others agreed with her, and asked the same question, until the word was echoing throughout the hall, not intelligible language anymore, almost a spell in itself: “How? How? How?”
“By giving up,” Hazel said, her clear voice cutting across the cries and moans. “By giving it all away.”
“Giving what away?” Holly asked, turning to her, almost begging for the decision to be made.
“Our power,” Hazel said simply.
Leah shook her head. “That’s not possible. Our power is part of us. Any person could be a witch if they cared to. It is not an externality.”
“Maybe it should be one,” Hazel said.
“How can we separate it from ourselves?” Arta asked.
“We are witches, are we not?” Hazel said with a tired smile. “If we can do nothing else, we can do this one last spell.”
The arguments continued, but after an hour of speaking in circles, the witches once again agreed. Hazel’s solution was the only one. They sadly buckled down to the work of designing their final spell.
Perhaps it was luck, perhaps it was design, perhaps it was the mysterious workings of unconscious powers that none of them could claim or understand—but the next night was the night of the moon’s dark phase, the night when banishing spells are strongest. In the day the witches mourned those who had died in the continuing fires; in the night they gathered one final time.
They built a pyramid of sticks in the center of the park where they were holding their meetings. Each witch added one stick to the pyramid until it was a vast edifice. Each witch had brought a candle; they each lit their candle in the way that they thought best, then each placed that candle under or, when they ran out of room, around the pyramid of sticks.
The flames were already beginning to catch on the wood before they had finished placing their candles. They took hands and made a circle, all of them facing the growing bonfire, and with one voice, they began to chant.
Goodbye to their Gods. Goodbye to their Goddesses. Goodbye to their spirits, their anima, their fae. Goodbye to their Craft names. Goodbye to their hierarchies, their covens, and their solitude. Goodbye to their special status. Goodbye to their connections.
Goodbye to their power.
They chanted while the bonfire blazed up and illuminated the sky; they chanted while it died down; they chanted until it was no more than a few scattered embers and a large pile of ash. By that time, the sun was coming up. Finally, their voices faded away.
They were all drained and exhausted. Some went home to sleep; many slept there in the park. No one bothered them, as no one had bothered them while they lit their fire and chanted. Even if someone had wanted to stop them, no one had the strength to even consider it, or they were not close enough to care.
When they woke—some that day, some the next night, some not until the following morning—they were still drained, but they could open their eyes and move around. They could interact with the world again.
The night of their bonfire, many thousands of houses had burned. But the following night, there were no supernatural fires. The only fires lit were lit by arsonists and killed no one.
The morning after the morning their offering bonfire had burned out, the witches knew that they had succeeded.
The world was still crippled and needed time to rebuild. Many of the witches considered claiming back their power to cast spells of healing. But they knew they could not.
They had found their solution, and they could never use magic again.
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World: other
Word count: 2,978
Rating: PG
Prompt:
allbingo apocalypse theme: magical solution; rainbowfic Antique Brass 16, You guys sound excited! Did I solve it?!; Hills of Iowa 1, We walk in the world of safe people and at night we walk into our houses and burn.Notes: This took a weird turn near the end that I did not expect. I guess that's what I get for not planning out the actual solution ahead of time!
The first house to go up in flames belonged, not to the president or to his family, or to the vice president or to one of the cabinet members, but to a minor functionary no one believed had anything to do with the scandal.
But his house still burned, and it burned hot and fast, with no time for him or his wife or children to escape. He and his family burned; only the dog made it out.
Immediately, most people assumed arson. The fire marshal promised what the president demanded: a full and thorough investigation. Their preliminary findings did not indicate human agency in the fire, but it had burned so precisely that it was difficult for anyone to believe it had been an accident.
The next house to go up, the following night, did belong to a cabinet member. The third house belonged to one of the president’s children. The fourth, going up the same night as the third, was one of the president’s properties, a house in another city—where the president happened to be sleeping that night.
Half the country was in a panic, whether they cared for the current president or not. After all, how could anyone be getting away with so many fires in such scattered places and so quickly? No one had been caught. No suspects had even been identified. There was still no sign of any actual human intervention, and resources had begun to spread thin.
Of course, after the president’s house burned, the fire marshals were able to bring in more resources, nationally and internationally. But that did not last long. On the fourth night of the fires, three houses burned at once in three different countries. International investigators returned to their homes; other travel was canceled or delayed.
The morning after the fourth night was when the first observers pointed out that the flames were following a Fibonacci sequence, of course. The morning after the fifth night, when five houses in four countries burned, there were few people who had not heard that the fires were following a Fibonacci sequence and learned far more than most of them ever wanted to know about what exactly the Fibonacci sequence was.
That didn’t help anyone catch the arsonists. Even bringing in volunteers, firefighters and engineers and those with no training but some ability to patiently sit and sift through ashes, the fire departments were baffled. There was no sign of any accelerant, any explosive, any human touch. None of the fires even had a single point of origin. They had seemed to catch the entire house at once, killing any humans unlucky enough to be trapped inside.
Pets, it seemed, always made it out.
Many claimed divine retribution, of course. Of the families and groups that had been killed, all had at least one that a significant portion of the population could agree were evil. But all had others who seemed to be innocent. Infants died just the same as their grandparents, wives the same as their husbands.
After another week, the world’s resources were spread too thin to make any headway on all the fires at the same time. A large body agreed to focus on one of the most recent fires, the one that seemed easiest to study. But no evidence to catch the culprits could be found.
That was when the witches got to work.
“All right, I call this meeting to order,” said Holly. “First of all, does anyone know of any magical significance to the Fibonacci sequence?”
There was quiet all around. Finally, Colin said hesitantly, “It could be considered sacred geometry. You could certainly do magic with it.”
“But that doesn’t help us find out who’s doing this,” said Arta. “The Fibonacci numbers aren’t exactly obscure. Anyone with mathematical knowledge can trot out the first few.”
“There must be some significance,” said Leah. “Why else would you use them? They’re up to hundreds of houses a night now—it will be thousands soon, if they’re not stopped—so they could obviously have just started with thousands at a time, if that’s how many they wanted to burn. Or all of them, if that’s what they’re going for.”
“Maybe they weren’t sure how many they would do at first,” suggested Quentin. “They thought they would burn a few, and as they haven’t been caught, they’ve been getting bolder and bolder.”
“But then why not a simpler mathematical progression?” Leah asked. “Or an exponential one? Those would be easier.”
“I think we’re getting off track,” Holly said. “Focusing on the why doesn’t help us, if no one can trace it to a specific magical use of the Fibonacci sequence.”
“Maybe they only have the power to burn as many houses as they did on the previous two nights,” another witch suggested. “It could simply be a practical limit.”
“But then how did they get started?” Arta asked.
“And has anyone actually heard of such a thing?” Holly asked. When no one answered, she shook her head. “Guessing games won’t do us any good. Let’s try another tactic. Does anyone know a spell that allows one to burn things without any trace like these houses are being burned?”
“I actually do know that one,” Leah said. “Or a version of it. It’s meant for ritual destruction—you can completely destroy the symbol without actually having to touch it or get close to it. But since I’ve been experimenting with the spell this past week, I haven’t been able to get it to be bigger than a fist or to start outside of my line of sight.”
“They must have found a way to add more power to it,” another witch said.
“What are the components of the spell?” Colin asked Leah.
“Dried sage and valerian,” Leah said. “And your hands have to be dry. It’s a very dry ritual. But there isn’t much else to it—you just rub the dried herbs between your palms and do a chant.”
“They could be using a lot of herbs,” Quentin said.
“They could be using a lot of people,” Arta said.
“That might increase the power of the spell.” Leah nodded at Arta. “But how many people could be working on this at once and keep it a secret? If they’re multiplying the power of the spell I know by multiplying people, they would need at least two, and probably more, for a whole house. I wouldn’t like to try it with less than a circle of thirteen.”
“Thirteen per night?” Holly asked.
“Thirteen per house,” Leah said. “Maybe a single group could do several houses in a row, but hundreds would be incredibly exhausting. They’d need a whole new set for the second night. And how could that many witches be working together without any of us, let alone the rest of the world, knowing?”
There was silence in response to her question. It was rhetorical, but she was right.
Finally, an old woman known as Hazel stood up. Her back was bent, but her eyes were bright. “We’re going about this backward. We don’t have to know who is doing this, or why, in order to stop it.”
“But how can we stop it without knowing the source?” Holly asked.
Hazel shook her head. “Not with logic, but with magic. Go to the houses that have burned, and cast a seeking spell. Start with the freshest. Then we all gather back here and compare notes. If we can triangulate, or if several spells point to the same place, then we know where to look for the source.”
Arta frowned. “That sounds reasonable. If we can’t get it at first, we can move around from house to house.”
“If the firefighters will let us in,” Leah objected.
“One person should be able to sneak past the barriers, with some help,” Colin said.
“No,” Hazel said. “Leah is right about one thing. We must make circles of thirteen, or our powers will be too feeble and scattered to do any good.”
“Agreed,” Holly said. “And we should focus on the freshest fires, but at least one circle should go to the first fire, as well. I don’t think they’re working as hard on that one—the fire investigators’ focus is on the homes of people they consider more important.”
Hazel smiled. “Very good. The most power will be there—that one may have been personal to the instigator.”
“But if we can figure out what’s personal to the instigator, we can figure out who they are,” Quentin argued.
The witches continued to argue and discuss the magic, the logic, and the possibilities for hours. But in the end, it was Hazel’s solution that they adopted.
Some of the witches had contacts or power within their home governments. Some of them had skills. Some of them had nothing but their witchcraft, and some of them had very feeble abilities indeed, but once they managed to organize themselves into circles of thirteen (those who had been solitary matching up with smaller covens, while large covens broke into pieces), they all balanced one another.
The first night, they begged, cajoled, and snuck their way into the houses, and they cast their spells. The second night, it didn’t seem quite as difficult to find their way inside. By that time, thousands of houses a night were burning, and the majority of them belonged to the rich and powerful. Some even belonged to the fire investigators themselves. Society did not know how to deal with the losses of so many of their leaders at once; it was beginning to come apart at the seams.
One of the circles died in a gunfight between the police and the area gang, both of whom had lost their chiefs. One of the circles was run out of the house by an angry mob wanting revenge. One of the circles never made it into their chosen house because of the Christian prayer circle around it.
But there were hundreds of the witches, and slowly, they began to find their way toward a solution.
Unfortunately, it seemed that the solution was… themselves.
Every time they cast a spell of seeking, it pointed toward one of the other circles of thirteen. They tried it night after night, and no two spells pointed the same place each night. They never pointed to any of the empty houses, no matter how long ago or how recently it had burned. They never pointed anywhere but a house that one of the circles had chosen that night.
“I call this meeting to order,” Holly said. She sounded tired. She was tired. So were the others. They were quiet, subdued. They’d been up half the night for several nights in a row; they were trying to stop the world from coming to an end, and all they could do was look at each other in accusation.
“If someone is doing this, if someone is burning these houses on purpose, step forward now,” Holly told them. “Tell us your reasons. You’re a fellow witch. We won’t… we’ll listen. I promise you that we’ll listen.”
There was silence—an uneasy, strained silence. The witches looked around at their neighbors, their friends. Each of them felt trust and kindness only toward those twelve other witches they had been working with the past few nights.
“It can’t be any one person,” Colin finally said. “The way this has worked, it has to be one person in each circle.” He made a gesture with his arm, pointing to the circle beside his. “It could be Arta.”
“It’s not,” said Jessica, one of Arta’s circle-mates. Her tone was sharp. “I would know.”
“And it’s not Jessica, either,” Arta said. “Our spell could easily have pointed back to us. But it pointed at a different circle each of the past three nights. I am certain of that.”
“No one is changing circles,” Hazel agreed. “It can’t be any one person.”
“Then it has to be many people. One person, at least, in each circle.” Holly shook her head.
“That just brings us back to the original problem,” Leah said. “How could so many people be working together in such silence without one person cracking? Without one person letting a sign be seen? Without one person changing their mind?”
No one answered that question, either. There was no answer for it.
“It isn’t any one person, or any many people, or anyone at all,” Hazel said. Everyone turned to her to listen. “If we kept going, kept casting the same spell every night, it would just go through all of the circles until each circle had seen every other circle accused. Because it’s all of us.”
There were indrawn breaths at that, cries of protest, sounds of anger. A few people tried to make arguments, but there were no real arguments to be made. No specific group of people could be accused. It was everyone or it was no one.
“But what are we doing?” asked Leah in true bafflement. “How could we all be doing this without meaning to and without knowing it?”
“And if it is us,” Quentin said, “is it really right to try to stop it? After all, we are targeting those who would harm us.”
“Maybe it is you, Quentin,” said Mary, a member of his circle, physically turning on him. “Maybe we can pin it down to one person. Because I can’t believe any witch would say that.”
“We all agreed from the beginning,” Holly said, frowning at both Quentin and Mary. “The targets may be those who would harm us, but there is too much collateral damage. Freedom from that fear is not worth the death of any innocent person, and thousands of innocent people have died.”
“Even if the families aren’t innocent, more people are dying now,” cried Chris, whose lovers had been in one of the circles that had died. “Society is crumbling at the seams, and if we are the only ones who can stop it, we must.”
“How?” asked Arta. And many of the others agreed with her, and asked the same question, until the word was echoing throughout the hall, not intelligible language anymore, almost a spell in itself: “How? How? How?”
“By giving up,” Hazel said, her clear voice cutting across the cries and moans. “By giving it all away.”
“Giving what away?” Holly asked, turning to her, almost begging for the decision to be made.
“Our power,” Hazel said simply.
Leah shook her head. “That’s not possible. Our power is part of us. Any person could be a witch if they cared to. It is not an externality.”
“Maybe it should be one,” Hazel said.
“How can we separate it from ourselves?” Arta asked.
“We are witches, are we not?” Hazel said with a tired smile. “If we can do nothing else, we can do this one last spell.”
The arguments continued, but after an hour of speaking in circles, the witches once again agreed. Hazel’s solution was the only one. They sadly buckled down to the work of designing their final spell.
Perhaps it was luck, perhaps it was design, perhaps it was the mysterious workings of unconscious powers that none of them could claim or understand—but the next night was the night of the moon’s dark phase, the night when banishing spells are strongest. In the day the witches mourned those who had died in the continuing fires; in the night they gathered one final time.
They built a pyramid of sticks in the center of the park where they were holding their meetings. Each witch added one stick to the pyramid until it was a vast edifice. Each witch had brought a candle; they each lit their candle in the way that they thought best, then each placed that candle under or, when they ran out of room, around the pyramid of sticks.
The flames were already beginning to catch on the wood before they had finished placing their candles. They took hands and made a circle, all of them facing the growing bonfire, and with one voice, they began to chant.
Goodbye to their Gods. Goodbye to their Goddesses. Goodbye to their spirits, their anima, their fae. Goodbye to their Craft names. Goodbye to their hierarchies, their covens, and their solitude. Goodbye to their special status. Goodbye to their connections.
Goodbye to their power.
They chanted while the bonfire blazed up and illuminated the sky; they chanted while it died down; they chanted until it was no more than a few scattered embers and a large pile of ash. By that time, the sun was coming up. Finally, their voices faded away.
They were all drained and exhausted. Some went home to sleep; many slept there in the park. No one bothered them, as no one had bothered them while they lit their fire and chanted. Even if someone had wanted to stop them, no one had the strength to even consider it, or they were not close enough to care.
When they woke—some that day, some the next night, some not until the following morning—they were still drained, but they could open their eyes and move around. They could interact with the world again.
The night of their bonfire, many thousands of houses had burned. But the following night, there were no supernatural fires. The only fires lit were lit by arsonists and killed no one.
The morning after the morning their offering bonfire had burned out, the witches knew that they had succeeded.
The world was still crippled and needed time to rebuild. Many of the witches considered claiming back their power to cast spells of healing. But they knew they could not.
They had found their solution, and they could never use magic again.
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