Water and salt cleansed, fire and incense purified, and chanting had sealed the Circle. Around it stood the other High Priestesses at the Quarters, for this was a greater rite; Signe in the South for her tiger-sign, grape-mistress Sumina in the West, Melissa in the North for the hearth-home, and BD in the East, for Helios of the Clear Speech. Between them the shapes of the Initiates in their dark cowled robes were lost in shadow.

Fire crackled and snapped in the shallow hearth in the center of the circle, sending sparks upward to join the starry Belt of the Goddess and the new-risen waning Moon; the clean hot-sweet smell of the burning applewood joined the strong musk from the thurible and the sap of the dew-cool forest. Red flickers underlit the shifting leaves above, turning them into rustling strangeness. The night-black woods seemed to wait, as if the forest itself held its breath.

Juniper stood before the hewn-boulder altar that bore the bowls and the Chalice, sword and athame, the Lamp of Art and Book of Shadows. She raised her arms and cried:

"Ye Guardians of the Watchtowers of the North! Oh, Lady of Earth, Gaia! Boreas, North Wind and Khione of the Snows, Guardians of the Northern Portals, you powerful God, you Goddess gentle and strong.. ."

Then the Calling. She had felt that as a oneness with all that was, or a blessing like a hand upon her head. This time it was as if she rode the storm, amid a darkness where lightning flickered and winds beat at her with clubs of hail-ice.

"We ask You for the wisdom to understand the storm that breaks upon the world and the troubles that beset Your folk," she said softly. "Show us Your will for Your earth, and our place in it."