The circle of knowledge
© Gerlinde Kenkel
They were twelve.
Just as much how necessary was to hold the ritual.
Everyone was there!
Conny, the young student, with her black hair who fitts well to her red Ritual gown, and
which even was going to get the red and white candles out from the jute bag.
She wasn't in a hurry and this disturbed the other women.
Particularly Nadine, the oldest of the women, the "Crone", the wise old woman of the group.
Her cropped white gray hair lay narrowly at her oval face, and concealed her many folds only insufficiently, which makes her weathered face to seem so interesting and erotic.
She wore a red ankle-length ritual gown like all women whose far sleeves her bony fingers made seem even thinner.
She streched the drum, lashed and tied into a knot so tightly, that the tones of the drum rang like a thunder or a thunderstorm.
"Can't you check the drum a little more more quietly", she heard Doris?
She disliked it to be criticized so but she didn't dare to tell Doris frankly what she thought. She looked at her.
Doris was a beautiful woman, no question!
Her big slim figure, her brightly red hair matched each other well. No make-up took
advantage and no-one also needed of her! There was a time, she had seriously fallen in love with Doris.
But since she noticed, how very much heavy it was for Doris to make compromises, and since she saw how she avoided with her lovers, this love cooled down fast.
Her eyes walked to Gaby, this silent woman, who never spoke about herself.
Gaby was never allowed to know that she loved her, that she longed after her kisses, after the touches of her hands.
Gaby was anything but slim but this didn't seem to disturb her.
Without saying a word she put differrent stones with Louise to a circle, to which all women for this ritual will go.
Nadine's eyes watched Gabys and Luises movements and jealousy increased in her.
She hate it to see, how well this two women understand each other!
"Is everything prepared for the ritual", asked Doris?
All women answered in the affirmative, and Nadine saw, that all ritual objects of the cakes of the goddess and the wine for the ritual were for everyone available.
Sisters, then led us have started, ", said Doris in her defining way of a high priestress.
She saw how Doris stood at the northern edge of the stone circle, the Althalme, the sacred ritual knife in her right hand; and each of the women who wanted to enter the circle, sacred with the five holy kisses, welcomed the sisterhood, and blessed them with the Althalme.
Also Nadine stepped into the circle.
She felt a little uncomfortably, she already felt the whole day anyway, that something would happen.
"A full moon is today, sisters of the goddess, and we will start with the appeal to the goddess now. I would like to ask all students to start with the invocation ".
Doris voice sounded steady and certain.
Four young women broke loose from the group of the women, took hold of each other at their hands, formed a circle and raised her voices.
"All of us come from the goddess, return to her. Like a small raindrop who falls into the
ocean". They repeated the words again and again, her voices got pure and the other women invaded the song.
Nadine felt more strongly how the energy became charged slowly in the air and got stronger, till they had achieved the point where enough energy was for the ritual there.
Doris raised her hand and the song stopped.
She took a bowl away with aromatic smoking stuff, and went to the four sky directions, to call the protection spirits of the elements water, fire, air and earth. With slow, rhythmical steps she went to the altar, which was built up on a big stone and adorned with candles and flowers, she added the bowl and said: "The goddess blesses her children. The circle is closed now".
"The circle is closed now", repeated all women.
Nadine's eyes followed the movements of Gaby who approached the altar with slow steps, and take artistically a Rose to the altar, as a sign of the presence of the goddess in this circle. Nadine's eyes walked along of Gaby's orpulent body, She loved Gaby's luxuriant busts, her smile and the way she handled other women in the Coven.
Gaby looked to her over and as thereyes met each other, both smiled, what didn't remain
secret to Doris.
"She likes me", a thought flashed across Nadine, when she noticed, that Gaby still gave her a smile, even, as she had returned to her place.
"Sisters" started Doris to speak. "We have come together here today to celebrate a ritual to honor the goddess. But unfortunately is a woman here, which should not be here!"
Everyone looked at her!
"Because one among us isn't a woman. She has been once a man!"
All women felt on filled with consternation asking themselves who could it be? So also
Nadine whose eyes roamed to and fro between the individual women but nothing discovered what could give any clue.
"Who is it", asked Karin, a woman who was in the Coven only for a short time and who just had separated herself from her wife, because she didn't bear the alcohol excesses any more?
"Gaby" Doris answered briefly and full of disgust to them all!
"Gaby?"
All women talked in a mess as confused. Nobody wanted to think nobody could think that this soft woman was once a man!
Gaby got up of her place and went and stood to the middle of the circle.
"Sisters of the goddess. Please have let me said to it a little!"
"Yes, have this man said a little before we expel him from our middle".
Doris voice was full of hate. Nadine didn't know why this hate was in her, but her experience of life told her that still more must stick behind this. But what?
She looked to Gaby whose eyes were lowered to the ground.
Goddess, it is true, what Doris had told about her, she went through a thought!
She had fallen in love with a woman who was once a man!
She went through one thousand thoughts. Doubt on her feelings, loathing of herself and
loathing of it to have fallen in love with a man!
"Sister of the Goddess", started Gaby.
"Yey sisters, it is true, I was once a transsexual woman! But this is past! I live and love as a woman and am a woman just like all of you!"
She looked at Doris, and Doris eyes anwered with hate and contempt. She wanted to tell Doris a little, that was it was Nadine saw at her eyes but no word came over her lips.
She silently left the middle.
"You have heard it by yourself, sisters, and all of you know what this means!"
Doris voice was so full of hate, so full of rage, and Nadine felt, that there was something still which was unsaid between Doris and Gaby, something which was the true motivating for Doris!
"Please, goddess help me to understand!"
She sent a quiet prayer to heaven.
Her look deserted the circle and she heard remotely the voices of Doris and those of the other women. She looked to the clear night sky as if she found the answer there which was looking for her.
Nothing but also nothing at all saw or heard she.
Her look wandered to the circle of the women who just were about to vote on the exclusion of Gaby once more. All women wanted it, begun by the young students, up to the Crone, the wise women she also was a part of.
"Nadine, what is your decision", she heard the voice of Doris?
"My decision? Honestly said, I don't know it! Gaby has on the one hand confessed that
she was born as a man, what would permit an exclusion perhaps due to the rules. On the other hand I feel, however, this a little still gives it there, what we should know, before we make up our mind once for all!"
"Nadine is right , I also have the feeling that there is still more what we should know", threw Louise in.
"You only say this because you love her... him!" Doris was furiously and so full of hate.
Why?
She moved herself with a soft melody she buzzed this one in her innermost, into trance.
Pictures climbed in her and she saw the truth!
And she suddenly understood!
She understood the hate of Doris for Gaby, she understood the restraint of Gaby to all women, and why she never wanted a relationship to another woman? And she also understood why she had fallen in love in Gaby!
She fetched herself back from the trance and looked at Doris with a firm look.
"Doris, I know now the truth about you and Gaby! Shall I tell it to everyone or rather you?"
"You know nothing at all, my dear", said Doris mockingly.
"If you think so? But this has to be proved easily! Doris, I take my right as Crone, to call here and now a Tjaling, a court negotiation, because justice is more important than celebrations!"
"I refuse you the right to demand this as your high priestress of the goddess".
Doris sweated.
Was it cold sweat?
"Why not", Louise asked and other women were correct in her reputation?
"Because ... because I ... think that such a Tjaling would split the group".
"How can the truth split a group, if the motto is to harm nobody? How can the knowledge harm around the backgrounds of the group, Doris? Do you know why I have demanded the Tjaling? Because I know the truth and I know now, that you do her wrong consciously because she had hurt you in your feelings. Well, you want to talk now, Doris?"
"I have nothing to say!"
"Doris, if you have nothing to say, then I will ask some questions to Gaby, if the other women have nothing against this!"
She looked at every woman and everyone nodded agreing apart from Doris and Gaby.
"Gaby, please, get up and go to the middle of the circle. Don't be afraid even if I like you, I don't bite". A quiet trace of a smile flashed across Gaby's face.
"Gaby, I know how you love the goddess very much, and that you wanted just to say to Doris something, what do you didn't could say to her. What was this? Please think around what for you goes and that you may say only the truth in the face of the goddess".
"So I wanted to tell her that I understand her and that I am not angry with her".
Surprised all women looked at Gaby, also Doris!
"And what do you understand of what she has done?"
"She had confessed to me last week that she had fallen in love with me, and when I told her that I cannot share her feelings, since gives somebody a different one I love the one who, however, knows nothing about it,she get furious, and threatened me to betray to you what I had entrusted to her among four eyes during a private and spiritual conversation once. And she had done this today, too!"
Teares ran down at her fleshy cheeks. Nadine felt sympathy for her, and wanted to hug her, she, however, knew that she might not this now yet! She had to be objective as Crone, and it was not allowed to allow this feeling till her task was filled!
So Doris allready knew of the transsexualism of Gaby for a long time and has used it because she had rejected her love. She looked round in the circle of the other women and saw in her faces as they were very ashamed to have been abused by Doris.
"Gaby", she turned the mentioned once more. "Why did you want to become a woman and a witch?"
"I wanted to become a woman, cause I am a woman", replied Gaby.
"I always felt that I was different not "normally" what may always does that mean. And when the puberty knocked on me, and certain physical reactions manifested themselves, I felt only disgust in front of this and I felt fear for that. Many years later, as I understood, that I was a woman, caught into a males body, and that only a sex change by surgery can give me healing, I did it. I became a witch because I have grown up in a fundamentalistic sect, who are oppressed women, and noticed later that this is more or less available in all patriarchal religions. I should write once an story about my former sect and found a book at my enquiries about modern witches, and discovered very fast, that I felt the same feelings, thought and believed like her. And so I became a Wicca!"
But, what I cannot understand, why you haven't told us at the beginning who you were",
Conny, the young student, asked?
"Cause I'm a woman, Conny! And because I think, that nobody concerns such private and intimate things, only the woman with whom I have a relationship!"
Nadine saw to Doris who suited with the Althalme, the sacred ritual knife in front of the altar of the goddess, which she kept tightly enclosed, so firm that the veins of her hand got visible.
She was furious!
Furious about it, that her manipulation was uncovered, furious with Nadine who did it, and on Gaby who considered her the cause of all problems.
"You are to blame for everything, only you", she was yelling at the moment when she rushed at Gaby. Her raised hand buzzed towards Gaby's heart, the hand in which the knife was. Her eyes shimmered murder chandeliers, full of the empty gleam of a dead soul, the body still worked. She stung. Once, twice, and then again and again, buzzed down the blade with breathtaking speed on Gaby. Blood shot from Gaby's chest and her neck. Nadine threw herself on Gaby protectively and looked to Doris. She hummed a song, a song which she had received from the goddess by trance years ago. A song, that Doris calmed, and she got to abandon Gaby.
"I have loved her so. Why she couldn't love me either", were the only words which heard all women of her when she left the circle; and disappeared in the darkness of the night on the search for something she had already lost for a long time.
As paralyzed, the women were in the circle incapably to do or say something.
"Call an ambulance, Conny, by your mobile telephone! Julia, a first-aid box is in my
bag, please fetch him to me. But fast!"
Nadine was quiet when she addressed these requests to the other women. But her innermost one wasn't quite the reverse as quiet as she seemed external!
A gigantic volcano at feelings raged in her. Fear of losing Gaby, Feelings of guilt, because she hasn't seen the danger coming, and the rage of Doris who had caused all this from injured vanity.
Julia brought her the first-aid box, a cushion made of synthetic material in which all this lay embedded what she needed to Gaby's sore supply. She got gauze bandages and compresses out and locked the cushion. She put it under Gaby's head and as well as she could, bandaged Gaby's wounds.
"Quiet, my sister. Help for you amounts at once!"
" Nad ..., ine, ", it came, from a renewed blood fall interrupted Gaby's mouth.
"Quiet. You mustn't speak now, Gaby".
She cried when she remarked how helplessly Gaby lay on the bald forest soil.
"Don't cry, Nadine", Gaby whispered, so, to her for it only she heard it. "The woman I was just telling about, which my heart belongs to it, are you. I couldn't allow this feeling since I wanted to be never injured again in a relationship. Please.... forgive.... me!"
She closed her eyes, ... and died.
Nadine pressed her eyes shut and got up. She fetched her coat and covered up Gaby's lifeless body. She turned around.
None of the women said a word everyone was too filled with consternation and shocked about what they saw. "Sisters, let us close the circle in which we ask the goddess for our sister Gaby. Is there one under you which wouldn't like to follow this request?"
None of the women was excluded!
They called the goddess, to lift this circle, and asked for her sister Gaby, and for forgiveness for their behavior.
Everyone depressedly left the circle but no-one wanted to be alone apart from Nadine.
Two policemen who had just come took the testimonies of the other women together with other colleagues, while a team of the securing of evidence searched everywhere and took plaster casts of Doris shoes.
She said goodbye after the emergency doctor had come of the other by ambulance and asked the driver whether she could come along.
"Are you a relative of her", he asked?
"I am her partner", she replied tenderly when her eyes felt at the body of Gaby.
She got in.
She had arrived at the destination of her journey approximately half an hour later.
The driver and his helper unloaded the body and took her to roles pulled at into the pathology.
She got into the waiting room for pathology in front of the entrance and thought what had happened in this circle today.
Gaby was dead!
The woman who she loved was dead!
Murdered by a woman who couldn't bear a removal which was such full hate on a woman which she allegedly loved!
And she?
This had learned, that Gaby was once a man, how she had reacted there?
She had disgust and feels disgusts, and only when the goddess gave her understanding and wisdom, she began to understand, that Gaby wasn't a man, had never been a man!
A stout woman in a far dark gown and from the trifle got coming, besides her. She had long black hair and was without make-up.
"Nadine!"
She looked at the woman.
Where did she know her name from?
"I knew you because of the first day of your existence". The words of the strange woman
without saying a word penetrated to her.
She can read my thoughts it flashed her across!
"Yes and I was it to help you to understand Gaby and to understand what went between Doris and Gaby. I also knew about your secret love to her, daughter!"
She was the goddess !!!!
With each of her words it got clearer to her! the goddess visit her!
"Gaby", the goddess spoke furher to her without saying a word. Gaby did know that she
would die, Nadine? She wanted to die because a life without love wasn't worth living for her. She became acquainted with many women, women who fell in love with her like you and Doris; and, if she talked about her past honestly, the women went away without saying a word every time, or they pursued with her hate, like Doris!"
"What is with Doris? Is she already in prison?"
"Doris was already dead long time ago although she moved. Her soul was dead because the love doesn't demand, she already had lost the love which gives from herself for a long time. She want to have power, want to determine about the souls of other women, and what still comes toward her, it cannot be so bad like the punishment which has chosen to her : Being without love!"
"Why do yo come to me", Nadine asked the goddess without saying a word?
"You are chosen to lead this coven further so as I want it! It is your job to show the way to all women who want to come to me, and rejecting nobody, unless I tell it to you!"
"Also women like Gaby?"
"Yes also women like Gaby! Because they are also my daughters just like you and Conny, and all the other women who act in my name"!
With slow movements the goddess got up and turned to her. She leant down to her, hugged and gave her the five sacred kisses of the goddess, while she quietly said:
" Blessed Be, my daughter!"
Suddenly, like she had come, she disappeared from Nadine's view.
Nadine was alone with her thoughts.
The shaking of a rolls and the steps of two men could be heard. They got closer and had a zinc casket with them.
The older of the two men, a baldheaded stout man with untidy brown shoes knocked at the door. A woman in a white overall opened the door and the casket was taken in, while the second man small and slim, gave a form, to another woman, with the remark: "female corpse, suicide by a funny knife".
He presented her a transparent plastic bag, and Nadine discovered into this... the Althalme, the sacred ritual knife which Doris held in her hand after she had killed Gaby.
She prayed silently: "Peace of your soul, sister".
She got up and went to the exit of pathology into a new life!
The End
