Bonfires and Herbs

There was a betrayer in our midst. We had no way of knowing, for they kept their evil deeds cloaked in deception. Our little village of Hampshire was taken entirely by surprise when they committed their traitorous acts. We had no thoughts to predict that at the time of our celebrating the Sun's ascension to the highest point in the Northern Sky, they would strike with a most diabolical blow. A blow that has undoubtedly left a mark burned deep into the pure white light of our hearts.

Wait... Dear reader, I must apologize to you at this point. For I'm afraid, I've put the cart before the horse. I've told you where we've ended up before I've told you where we began and how this spat of darkness was thrown upon us. So let me go back now.

The Summer Solstice is one of the most memorable times of the year. The whole village comes alive with the celebration. Wooden pires are built throughout the city. Bonfires are lit. Herbs are used to ward off evil spirits and bless the season's coming crop. Of all the celebrations our Pagan religion asks us to partake in, the Solstice celebration is this narrator's favorite. Nothing compares to the jubilation that fills our cobbled streets after we link hands and sing the songs of the Goddess Anie.

My name is Samantha Breslin. I come from one of the oldest Druid families in our village, but there are all walks of people in Hampshire. Wiccans, Shamans, Sacred Ecologists, Odinists, and Heathens all travel down the streets and paths of our village.

This year's festival of the Solstice was to be the most special, for it was not just the yearly passing of Anie's, the Goddess of Midsummer and the Queen of the Faires, Solstice but also the centennial passing of her love. All winter, our quaint village was alive with vibrant talk of celebrating our summer's pinnacle. In our hearts, we knew that this year's honoring of Anie's love would bring the most bountiful crop to our table, and more importantly, our goddess would bring her biggest blessings to our lives.

Summer flowers to ward off evil spirits were gathered and spread everywhere the eye could see. Feasts were spread out in the village center along long wooden tables, kept just for these kinds of celebrations. Cheer was heard from around every corner. Bonfires were lit to honor the sun's highest arch with golden flames. Energy flowed from every direction with our people's good feelings, but unbeknownst to us, one of our numbers was not of a pure heart and was set to turn our celebration calamitous.

There are many wicked spirits trapped in the nether world who love nothing more than to weave chaos among the living. Occasionally, a misguided soul falls deep into the enchantment of the whispered false promises and pledges these spirits give. One such soul secreted their desire to worship these dark figures from us under the mask of a smile they used to conceal their lies.

As our precious sun reached its pinnacle in the sky, the strange occurrences that would happen that day began to appear. Tobais Johnson stripped from his clothes and danced naked in the streets. Wendy Argault began to sing in a chorus of profanities that would make the most hardened sailor blush. James Poshing, the most uptight citizen in our ranks, began to swim in the fountain standing in the center of our village park proclaiming he was a fish. And our celebration devolved from there.

Even under the influence of the debauchery, excess, and downright unruliness that was taking place, we, village-goers, began to become aware that something untoward was afoot. As we discarded our clothes in the streets. As more and more of us lost our ever-loving minds. As we were turned into fools who ranted and raved. A large number of us began to realize that even through our haze, there was one of us who seemed unaffected by the mischievous spirits that had overtaken our usually boring village.

Alexander Tom stood wearing a smile more genuine than any we had ever seen on his face. Amid the chaos, we surrounded him with. We watched as he walked from where he had been standing, and seemed to begin a tour of the show we were putting on. He would occasionally stop to look at particularly lewd displays when they captured his attention as if he were looking at animals in a zoo. Many of us reached out to him with our hands and voices in hopes of understanding what was happening. To which he would give but a nod of his head before he moved on to the next display of rude behavior.

Alexander, who had lived in Hampshire his entire life, had not fit in almost from the time he was born. For reasons no one could ever understand, he seemed to carry an open disdain for his fellow villagers. Despite effort after effort, we could not bring him into our fold and make him one of our own. And, as year after year of his childhood passed and ran into his adulthood, Alexander's dislike for us did nothing but grow.

As I danced out of control while others did the same around me, I thought of what it must have been like for him to never fit in. With these thoughts a sadness began to grow in my heart that pushed back on the evil spirits until they were forced into the nether worlds they had been called from, and I fell on the ground in a deep sleep, where I stayed until morning.

When the morning sun broke over the fields surrounding our little village, I started to wake along with my fellow villagers. Rubbing my eyes and stretching my joints, I moved through the streets, taking in a full account of what happened on the day the Sun reached higher than it would on any other day of the year. Discarded items littered the streets. Tables sat overturned. Windows in shops displayed broken panes. All around me, in the crisp new day air, I began to hear whispers from mouths that asked where our unaffected Alexander Tom was.

Unspoken, I moved with the rest of Hampshire over the cobblestones under our feet, searching for him until nearly our entire village came to stand on his doorstep. A few of us went inside. Walking through the rooms of his house, our eyes searched in every nook and every cranny. We found no one in the kitchen, the living room, or the bathroom. Finally, we came to look in his room, and there on his bed were his clothes. His entire outfit sat undisturbed with one leg moved up as if he had been sleeping in them and vanished somewhere in the night without ever stirring their position.

After the fateful celebration of the Goddess Anie and her centennial Solstice, Alexander Tom was never seen in our village again, and as days passed and months came and went until they turned into years, the story of Alexander's disappearance became a fable. A warning against calling dark spirits. A cautionary tale of what can happen when you play tricks on people. Most of the citizens of our little village have no sympathy for what must have happened to him. But I do. I don't know why he never wanted to be one of us. But I know what it's like to be lonely. I know how it feels to be completely alone. I know how easy it is to lose yourself when no one is there.

I hope wherever the spirits Alexander called have taken him, he has found a way to be happy. I may be the only one, but I hold no ill feelings for Alexander. And, in the years since his misdeeds of that never-forgotten centennial passing of Anie's love, the Summer Solstice has remained my favorite celebration. I even look forward to hearing the children who play in the park when they sing his song while jumping rope.

I know a little bitty guy

His name is Alexander Pie

He plays with spirits

To get your knickers

Take fair warning

In what we're concerning

Or you'll dance naked

And be completely buggered

On the day the sun

Cooks us like a bun