"Now then," Moonsilver says, gesturing with an engraved wand of what I'm pretty sure is pure mahogany inlaid with more silver, "I call on the powers of the wilds, of fertile things and growing!" She rises, gesturing to use each in turn, calling us by our witch-names to rise. "Sisters, let us cast off these burdensome veils, to see and be seen!"

It's a good thing it's a warm night, because everyone gets very naked very quickly. I keep waiting for Moonsilver to start more incantations, but by the third time I glance back to her, she's busy making out with Morrigu. Oh. Great. So I negged the coven leader's girlfriend on my first night. Cool. Amazing. Fantastic. I love being a social genius, I really do.

"Come on, Carrie," Morticia breathes in my ear. "Time to get all those layers off you. You must be absolutely burning up."

I actually get cold really easily. "Uh, sure," I say, starting on the ties of my mantle. Morticia puts a hand on my shoulder, and I'm increasingly sure I don't want it there right now.

"I, um," Hannah says, standing up very quickly and stepping back from the fire, "I'm sorry. I have a boyfriend, and I do like girls too, but Tomas and I haven't had a chance to talk about polyamory. I'm sorry. I should've thought about how witches do, um… do sex rituals." She speaks to no one in particular. "I'm going to text him to come pick me up, so I'll just… I'll just be waiting by Morticia's rental if…" She trails off. No one's looking at her. No one except me. "If anyone needs me."

"Okay, Hannah," I say, pouring every single ounce of cheer I've got left into my smile. What the hell is wrong with everyone? We invited this girl here as a guest, she's obviously uncomfortable because she didn't know this was going to be an orgy, and everyone's too busy playing naughty college girls to reassure her that it's okay and she's not losing her "girl cred". Morticia's fondling me now, which I will deal with in just a second, but solidarity comes first! "I'll see you on campus tomorrow, alright? Text me as soon as your boyfriend picks you up. I'm taking a shine to you, so I guess I'm a little paranoid."

Despite however I hurt her earlier, Hannah's so relieved the poor thing visibly sags. "Thank you, Carrie," she says. "You're a good, um…" she trails off. "You're good." She smiles and hurries to Morticia's car… which is only fifteen feet away, so she's still going to see and hear everything, but at least it should stop the other girls from dragging her back in.

That's fair. We just met. Probably a bit too soon to be throwing around the F word. Oh, and on a tangentially related note: "Uh, no boyfriend here, just," I say, and push Morticia's hands away: one off my shoulder, the other off my cleavage.

I have to tug for a second to get my hawk-skull pendant back. Not sure what she was thinking--I could totally have sex with that on. It'd be really hot, I mean… I've done it before. But I'm not feeling very sexy, so I continue, "Look, I… I'm having some really weird feelings right now and I'm not sure what to do."

"If you're feeling something, you should go with it!" Morticia says, leaning in and trying to kiss me.

"My feelings aren't telling me to go with them, they're telling me to understand before I act!" I snap, scooting away from her. She's giving me a hurt look before I have time to feel angry, so I skip straight to guilt. God, I'm such a terrible person. I didn't have to blow her off that quick. Why don't I ever think of anyone else's feelings? "Sorry. Look, if you all want to have a Sapphic orgy, that's really cool! I'm happy for you!" I fiddle with my pendant. "But... I thought we were going to, y'know… summon the Devil?"

Moonsilver sighs, shaking her head and standing up. Morrigu scampers off to make a threesome with others while the coven leader steps over, curves swaying and glinting in the firelight. Damn it, this does make me feel things, but this isn't how I wanted to learn! I didn't get to feel things out or set my own pace, just, BOOM, 0-100, find out you're bisexual by getting dumped right into a girls-only sex party you're too shy to participate in!

Moonsilver starts talking in her calm, instructive, knowing voice, and my anger slips away from me in the tide of her words. "Carrie, the Devil is a tool of Judeo-Christian propaganda. Real witches do not consort with demons. Demons are not real."

I have to take a full minute to muddle through that. Not that I've never wondered whether my beliefs are nonsense. I'm a girl made of flesh and blood in a world where the science of industry can raise cities out of deserts in a matter of years and send them right back in the blink of an eye. The cold iron of human rationality--more often than I'd like, it feels like Faerie never stood a chance. I've never seen magic do a single concrete thing.

I have tried, and tried, and tried to call it. I've wept, I've pleaded, and I've threatened and bargained and bled--and I don't mean period blood. I figured that wouldn't mean anything because it happens on its own. Knives burn when they dig in.

Worse than any burning, though, was believing so, so hard, each time more sure than the last that I could feel a true answer coming… then silence. Nothingness. Stagnation. Having to convince myself that somehow my failed magic wasn't really failing. That the still disdain of the unchanging world didn't prove there's nothing supernatural in it, even though before the ritual when I was confident and full of an errant witch's courage I said to myself that's exactly what nothing would mean.

All that pain of body, mind, and spirit has never bought me a single spell as solid as the changes I can make in the world just by stamping my foot. Or at least--anything that couldn't have been done with smoke and mirrors, a well-timed costume trick, a little suggestion. Or hypnosis. Or hallucinogens. Or just a plain-old bout of sleep paralysis.

You don't argue for the existence of an internal combustion engine, or the geological cycle and plate tectonics, or the code of a computer. You don't perform rites or cast wards to keep it running. These things just exist because they birthed from the turning soil and molten womb of Earth itself, or because someone leveraged the solid power of hands, mind, and beating heart to shape them out of things that already exist.

Testaments to their own making: once made, they simply are.

Well, okay, my friend in coding would argue about that computer example. Point is, you can point to what they do as proof that they are. Magic… all we really have for magic is this cringing, dorky sentiment of, "I need it to be real because I'll be sad if it isn't. I need it because I just really, really want to see some magic."

Anyway, it's well and good for me to remind myself of these things. To think about them. But there's no point talking about any of it out loud. We're all witches. We've all been through that stuff--Moonsilver way more than me, I'm sure. Credit where it's due, she's waited patiently while I think my slow, slow thoughts. Let's cut to the chase.

"You believe in spirits, right?" I ask.

"Of course!" Moonsilver says. "But look… Carrie," she pauses, nods over my name as she says it like she's tripping. Why did she do that? Is there something wrong with my name? Oh gods. It's not the name of some famous witch-hunter I don't know about, is it? Fuck, pay attention! Coven leader's still talking, you idiot. "There's no need for us to chain ourselves to the bigotry and superstition of a bunch of old, white men. I know it's frightening to cut ourselves loose from the beliefs of the past. Familiar things can feel reassuring just because they're familiar."

She reaches over to squeeze my shoulder. Her hand feels neither cold nor warm. It's pressure crushing the padding of my coat. Like a, well… a blood pressure sleeve. "But the new ways are better. Healthier. And you'll like them more once they're familiar too, I promise."

"But…" I start to say. I wanted to say that I want to believe in demons because I like the idea. Fire and brimstone and nights of thunder sound cool. I'm drawn to them. I had something I wanted to say about how that was related to spirits, and the other world, and possibility, but it's slipping away. I've been alone piecing things together by myself for so long. It was inevitable I'd pick up a lot of wrong ideas.

A group is smarter than any one person. I know that. I knew I would have to give up a lot of the things I've held onto, that more experienced witches would have to talk me out of clinging to my mistakes. But this one still really, really hurts.

"And really," Moonsilver says. I feel her words like a kick in the jaw before she says them. "Aside from the Devil, a typical male power fantasy except that he's on the losing side, which is the only real reason Christians hate him, what's our best example of a Christian demon? Lilith. A succubus. A negative, objectifying stereotype of female sexuality."

Oh. I guess I knew that already--that being a slut just makes problems for other women. Better women, who have something to offer besides their bodies. I know liking succubi is problematic, just like I knew giving myself to any boy I felt attracted to was problematic. I was just too weak to confront it until Moonsilver pushed me to.

So, yeah, I know why I'm shrinking. What I don't get is why, when I glance back over my shoulder to where she sits against Jenuthra's rental, Hannah does too. She seems like a really good, level-headed girl. Definitely a better person than me. Oh… oh, wait. I can see how a lot of the stuff in the Maleficarum would hurt a trans girl more than anyone.

I'm such a horrid person. Why did I ever think it was okay to read that terrible book?

"Lilith isn't a Christian demon," Hannah says quietly. "She's from Jewish mysticism. Maybe older than that." Wow. She really is a better person than me. This conversation hurts her, but she's still looking after the group. Trying to give them something they need.

Moonsilver sighs. "True, but we have to be honest with ourselves--whatever the original conception of Lilith looks like, it's all been wiped away. There's no point holding on to the pieces given us by the enemy. That's what they want us to think, isn't it? That maybe we can find a little truth in it? That's how they hurt us, and get into our heads."

She nods firmly. "True witches make their own truths."

I want to say that the Alb of alpine mythology, a clear inspiration for the succubus since most of our modern conception is based on Heinrich Kramer's witch-hunting ur-text the Malleus Maleficarum, might actually be one of the few surviving examples of a pre-Christian notion of demons. After all, the Alb and the succubus have similar key traits: sitting on a sleeper's chest, causing dreams and nightmares, levels of sexual allure or threat that seem to change based mostly on who's writing about them…

I've already put all these thoughts together in the past, so it wouldn't take long to say them. But then I get caught up in how this is a bad example because it also really sounds like a fantastical interpretation of normal sleep paralysis. I've never met a succubus--I've tried, once, to get her to make my period cramps stop. I see now how stupid that was. There's nothing in the succubus mythos about healing or helping, even if they were real.

They're just evil. Beautiful and evil, using allure to control people. Take what they want. Sexual parasites.

"Now, Carrie," Moonsilver says, "it's alright to be nervous. It's your first Sabbath. I understand that. But that's no excuse to gaslight others about your true feelings. If you don't want to have sex, you can just tell us that. I mean," she winces in a way that really, really doesn't help me believe she means her next words, "it's okay if you're not attracted to other women. That isn't a prerequisite to being a witch."

"I…" I open my mouth to say I think I do like other women, which I'm just realizing, which is why I'm not ready to act on it because that opens up so, so many questions I need to know my answers on before I risk carrying my unsorted baggage into sex with other girls, but… what will Moonsilver say? She'll say I'm lying to avoid a difficult conversation. Trying to make myself look good. And everyone else will believe it because, in their minds, Moonsilver is not capable of being wrong about something. So if there's ever a disagreement between her and someone else, they'll side with her.

I know I'm not lying. I know I'm not trying to be a coward, this once. I at least know my sexuality. I wouldn't be so turned on if I didn't want to join in, only…

"I'm sorry," I say, "but whether I'm into it or not isn't the point. I thought we were going to do magic, I mean," I gesture around me. "We're in north Germany, surrounded by all these old forests, so far from all the tourist traps. This clearing, this site, feels so old and unknown--someplace off the beaten path enough there might really be spirits here!" I gesture at the wild night outside the little halo of our campfire. "Doesn't it feel primordial? I feel like if I called, just about anything might answer! I want to try something big--"

"There's no reason we can't call down the goddess," Moonsilver says. "All the feminine energy of our unions is a ritual." She beams. "There. That should do it!"

The goddess. It's always a goddess. I'm a girl. I should like that. But I don't--why?

Hm… I think… I think it's because I don't want to default to some abstract feminine ideal. I want to let the sights, the sounds, the scents of the forest night seep into me, I want to flow with them and call out to the being that coalesces in the deepest regions of my psyche. I don't care if it's male or female or another gender, non-binary, or no gender, or every gender. I want to experience this land, learn about its spirits and devise new spells in harmony with them, not just cart around the same cosmology to every ritual!

"So…" I feel less horny. This doesn't feel like it's about magic or sex anymore. It's… weird. I'm sure some of it is a little internalized lesbophobia, but this surprise orgy feels almost, well--gross. I mean, that's the problem, isn't it? People are messy, flawed, complex.

We have both good and bad reasons for thinking, feeling, and doing everything we do. If you force yourself to pick one reason as the only true reason at any given time instead of looking at all your reasons together and seeing which ones have the most weight, you can always cherry-pick whether you're a good or bad person in your own mind.

Right now, in balance, I… I'm a witch, and I would be struggling with the same questions as a witch whether I had the internalized lesbophobia or not. I do, so I need to temper my emotions, but my reasoning is sound either way. I'm a witch who feels betrayed, deceived, manipulated, and needs to figure out why so she knows what to do. "So," I say at last, "once everyone climaxes, the goddess will appear?"

"Her spirit will enter us and move with us, I am sure," Moonsilver says.

"Will I see her?" I ask. "Feel her touch, maybe?" I sound desperate. Naïve. Or… no. No, that's how I'm going to sound to Moonsilver. How do I sound to me? I let my mouth run a bit, and this time, I just focus on how I perceive myself. "Please, I'm so ready to believe, just give me any little sign to look for that isn't… you know… something that could just happen for non-spiritual reasons. I'm sorry if I'm pushing for coven leader-level secrets, just… please."

Oh. I do sound desperate, but not naïve. No, I'm in denial. I'm a girl who's lived a hundred versions of this moment already, and is bending over as far as she can to stop this one from happening too. If we're supposed to be talking about calling the goddess, then why is Moonsilver the one I'm instinctively directing my pleas to?

"You need to learn to have more faith," Moonsilver answers. "Don't ask for grand gestures when subtle ones will do." A wag of her finger. "A very important lesson for a witch."

But subtle ones won't do! More faith? I'm the only one here whose faith can survive the strain of acknowledging there's no hard evidence to support it! How dare you impugn my reputation as a witch, you two-bit conjurer?! Okay, Carrie, dial that anger back. It might be fair, but this contest of ideas isn't. Moonsilver has the advantage. I have to adapt to that. If I start raging, they're not going to see a traumatized loner who's lashing out because she's afraid. They're going to see a blond wannabe starlet with her head up her ass.

Deep breaths. I'm in this mess now. Let's see what I can learn if I stick with it.