2005 Story Archive

Rejuvenation Considered as a Helix of River Stones Around a Cold Campfire

A story by Jennifer Lorraine

A Trip to the Faire and a Day of Reckoning

Jimmy appeared to be a perfectly adorable baby boy with his chubby pink cheeks and brightly glistening, intelligent eyes. He was twenty-six inches long, and weighed nineteen pounds. As he lay on his back, with his legs in the air, he seemed strangely nervous and jumpy, as he twitched at every sound. Occasionally he stretched his legs out flat against the mattress of his crib and twists, attempting in vain to roll over to his stomach. Then he relaxed his knees again before raising his legs into the air again so he could view his little feet and toes that hovered in front of his face.

The baby lay placidly while his eyes darted rapidly back and forth as he surveyed the room with the unfocused eyes of early babyhood instead of playing with his feet or sucking on his toes as would be expected of an infant his age. Once baby Jimmy had finished his visual search pattern, he raised his arms above his head, then rotated his legs outwards and flattened against the mattress as much as his unstretched muscles and tendons would allow as he repeated his visual probe of his surroundings.

In the crib across the room from Jimmy slumbered a softly snoring baby girl who was approximately the same age. She lay on her stomach with her knees drawn up to raise her little innocent diapered bottom in the air above her as she slept with her flaccid-muscled arms tucked beneath her chin like little, soft, warm pillows.

Few people knew the carefully kept secret that the infant called Jimmy had been in fact been a full grown man who had been six foot, three inches tall and who weighed two hundred and twenty pounds before his transition into babyhood.

The daily session that the former adult James had with a Nautilus training machine would no longer be necessary. Little baby Jimmy would get all the exercise he needed by merely trying to roll from his back to his tummy.

Of course, baby Jimmy could not enjoy his former self's preference of clothes. The charcoal grey business suits with the red regimental ties that had been his hallmark and which he had worn five days a week were given to go charity. His new stature and position in life required a considerably less formal (as well as less gender specific) daily attire than the corporate power suites that had been his virtual uniform in the past. His new attire was chosen on the basis of practicality as well as comfort for the baby boy. Onesies, shortall jeans and sleepers with snaps up the legs and crotch made it easier for his caretaker to change his wet or dirty diapers. Since he shared a crib with a baby girl of the same size, the two of them could wear the same soft, pastel-colored, fleecy-textured, whole-body, sleepers of infancy.

None of James's friends would have recognized him after the change. Aside from the transmogrification of his body from a strapping six foot man into a nineteen pound seven-month old infant, his facial appearance had changed drastically. His manly jaw with the cleft chin had receded and had disappeared into weak-jawed infancy. James's middle aged, marled gray mixture of thick dark hair with the fine silver patina of male maturity had been replaced by the fine, wispy auburn curls of early infancy.

Before his transformation, James lived with his second wife in Indianapolis and made his living as a sales director for a large food distributor, offering a line of specialty products to grocery stores and restaurant chains in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana. He had been extremely successful and had made a very good living before his transmortifigation into infancy. His career had him on the road several nights a week and he enjoyed the opportunity to travel that his job gave him.

He had met his second wife, Pam, ten years before on one of his sales trips to Indiana and had fallen in love with her, even though he already had a wife and young daughter waiting at home for him in Milwaukee.

Pam worked as an assistant buyer for one of Jim’s biggest clients. She was young, sexy, and vibrant, with intelligence that belied her beauty. She was fairly short, with large breasts that seemed slightly too big for her body. Pam had to fight to keep her weight down. Pam happened to be winning the battle of the bulge when she met Jim, but the war was far from over. Pam had married him largely because of his smooth line and remarkable physical resemblance to her beloved but wayward father.

She wore her light brown hair short, in a kind of pageboy cut that made her look much younger than her twenty-five years. Her eyes were an unremarkable brown, but her perky nose gave her an elfin look that James found extremely attractive. Although Pam had an acute sense of style and enjoyed wearing the most feminine of skirts and dresses when the right occasion presented itself, she spent most of her free time at home in jeans and loose sweatshirts. Pam's newest acquaintances were not a bit put off by her unkempt appearance at home, they thought that she was attempting to put on a stylish nouveau "grunge" look if they chanced to meet her shopping. Her slightly older friends thought that she was merely a bit of a slob. Only her oldest friends understood that she didn't care about dressing up on weekends and that she only wanted to put aside the fashion demands of the weekly workplace and simply be comfortable. She was happy with herself and her life, but then she was an Aquarian and could find a peaceful pool in the most troubled waters.

In contrast, James was a true Capricorn with an impeccable sense of fashion that was with him from dawn to dark, twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. With chiseled facial features and a body sculpted by daily workouts, Jim did not look like he was pushing fifty. He maintained a formal air about him, preferring friends and colleagues address him as ‘James’, not Jim and certainly never ‘Jimmy’. For him, what people called him was a matter of personal "style". James had "style" in spades and wouldn't allow anyone to encroach upon it. After all, "style", rather than hard work or loyalty was his particular venue of excellence that he offered the world.

James gave friends and associates the impression that he did not enjoy the familiarity of being touched. He never extended his hand in business, offering an abbreviated bow instead that gradually became a bit of a trademark. His distance even extended to Pam. While he made it quite evident that he enjoyed sex with Pam, he could not abide the idea of extended foreplay with her and always showered thoroughly after making love with Pam as if sex had somehow "dirtied" him. An astute psychologist with expertise in analyzing a personality using his sexual behaviors would have known immediately what he was; an introverted anal retentive narcissist with little concern or sympathy for anyone who couldn't gratify his infantile needs. An intelligent Mother of a two-year-old would have recognized him for what he really was; a spoiled, constipated toddler who needed to be taken in hand, scolded and spanked until he began behaving himself so he could start learning to become civilized. Diapers and laxatives were optional re-socialization training methodologies that could be used with some degree of success on a recalcitrant toddler of that sort.

To his credit, James was honest with Pam from the very beginning and never hid the fact that he had a wife and child back in Milwaukee. James claimed that his marriage had been dead for years and it was time to move on. He turned on the charm, and won her heart; they were married just months after the divorce was final.

James's career as a bold-faced liar, bigamist and a silver-tongued charmer had begun early in his life when his father had abandoned the family when he was twelve-months old and left little Jimmy in the hands of his two older sisters as his erstwhile mother went out and got drunk every night with her boyfriends. Years of poverty, maternal beatings from a drunken mother, near-starvation on the WIC and food stamp program as well as the weekly beatings from public school bullies whose administration recognized a perfect target in the fatherless young boy took their toll. Everyone, including his family and the government had proved that morals or ethical values were merely skins that manipulators used to cover their misdeeds. Government had taught him his lesson perfectly; if you were young, ignorant, male, and without protectors, you were less than nothing. Government was only biding it's time to add him to the tally of those whom it incarcerated as state slaves as an example to it's wealthier citizens. In the long run, James was fated to lose and spend the rest of his days with every daily action dictated by an authority figure. The privilege of choosing his clothes as well as when and where he voided himself had always been doomed to be in another's hands. Freedom was only a temporary condition for James before the dark wings of his fate brushed him and pulled him back to his pre-prepared doom.

As the years rolled by Pam gained an average of ten pounds a year. Although she was not the best of housekeepers, Pam was basically a good mate and demanded little of her husband. Because James was an excellent provider and money was never lacking, she never questioned his extended business trips or his secretive ways. Her only disappointment was that, after years of marriage, she remained childless. She longed for a baby to hold; a tiny person that was hers and hers alone, to cuddle and to care for.

Pam sought solace in food as well as the Internet. She spent hours on the Internet, gradually developing an interest in the occult and black magic. There was something about witchcraft and the occult that fascinated her, and the more she learned, the more she wanted to know.

Pam’s idea that James was somewhat disinterested in sex was incorrect. He just wasn’t that interested in sex with his wife. The truth was that James had a tremendous sex drive, with unusual sexual tastes that ranged from mild sadomasochism to ‘age play’. James considered these concepts of sexual play beyond his bourgeoisie wife's mundane understanding.

James cheated on Pam from the very beginning. In that, he was very much like her father. Pam's father had been a traveling salesman who took up with another woman, divorced his wife and went to live in another city. When Pam married James, she was symbolically bringing her father home again.

Actually, James felt that it hadn’t been that hard to fool Pam lately; she was constantly busy with her group of strange friends on the Internet. For years, it seemed like he could get away with anything.

Then the day of reckoning came.

James wasn’t positive if Pam’s sister had observed him enjoying lunch with his newest young female acquaintance, because the pair of them left the restaurant the moment he spotted his sister-in-law. The party continued at the girl’s apartment and lasted well into the wee hours of the morning. His semi-private restaurant rendezvous and subsequent exercise session with his current paramour was copiously blessed with what the Irish called the "waters of life", i.e., whiskey. Though he was as "drunk as a skunk" (which was indeed the best description of his moral state), he managed to drive home without causing an accident or getting a ticket. He had had a lot of practice driving drunk and was quite skilled at not attracting attention from the police.

Timing was James’s undoing. Bonaparte at Waterloo, William Wallace at Falkirk, Erwin Rommel at Normandy were all undone by problems in timing. It was highly unlikely that a mere narcissistic, over-promoted salesperson who lacked the vision and planning abilities of the world's greatest historical warriors and generals would possess the insight to plan ahead and conceal his actions appropriately. So naturally, James didn't.

The next morning, just before Pam’s sister Lisa delivered the news of Jim’s apparent infidelity, Pam had discovered some old insurance papers in a storage box in the garage revealing that he had had a vasectomy several weeks prior to their marriage. James was sleeping off the drunk from the night before. He had told her when he got home that he had a meeting with an important prospective customer who he had taken out for dinner and drinks ("a good time", as he put it) to seal the deal. Pam had believed him, since it was a time-honored technique for landing new customers in most businesses. If the IRS allowed it as a business deduction, who was she to question the ethics of the practice?

After Pam's morning discovery of James's secret vasectomy, Lisa's eyewitness testimony put the final nail in James's coffin. From Lisa's excruciatingly detailed description, there was no question of what James had been about. He and his young paramour had been seen holding hands across the table by her sister and her sister had witnessed the young redhead give Jim a kiss as she got up to go to the ladies room.

Pam might have been able to handle either of these issues if they stood on their own, but together, they were impossible to ignore. Pam was livid! In a fit of rage, she aggressively searched the Internet for an appropriate revenge.

She found it almost immediately at an occult Website that had descriptions and directions to making sixteenth century magikal potions and elixirs. The recipe that she discovered was perfect for her needs. The transliterated name of the potion she found was the "Babymaker" Despite what most people who are not schooled or have no prior exposure to Medieval magickal practices and techniques would believe, the recipe was really quite simple; it called for heavy cream, garlic, and red wine in very specific quantities to be added to individual drops of blood, saliva, and urine from a childless woman in addition to a verbal wish.

At first Pam thought that the whole concept seemed silly. The medieval promise of rectification of her problems was almost certainly too good to be true. She didn’t really expect the concoction to work. Still, the basic ingredients were already in her kitchen and she could supply the samples of blood, urine and saliva herself. There was a small footnote at the bottom of the page that indicated that if the samples of the childless woman's body came from the magikal operator herself, then the spell would be more potent by a factor of tenfold. She would begin immediately. Unless James was too drunk and too sick to object, he'd never let her foist off some homemade anti-hangover cure on him, on the other hand, if he was really suffering, he wouldn't be picky about any remedy she might offer.

The next morning, Pam found her chance and chuckled to herself as she combined the ingredients in the top of a double boiler and blew a kiss of good luck at the herb-filled "Kitchen Witch" poppet that hung from a ten-pound fishing line from the ceiling at the side of her kitchen range before placing a tiny, hand-dipped one-inch long, one-eighth-inch-diameter, one-hundred percent beeswax taper in the little candle holder mounted in the bowl of of the highly carved spoon and made her wish as she lit it.

The "Kitchen Witch" poppet was an extremely unusual and more than somewhat expensive handmade item that she had purchased at a small Renaissance Faire booth the year before. The proprietress, who was both young and extremely fair of face, wore a black costume that was intended to give the passerby as well as her customers the impression that she was a medieval witch who was selling her magickal wares.

Strangely, ever since Pam had hung the poppet in her kitchen, she hadn't had a single recipe or dinner go wrong as long as she placed and lit one of the tapers from the plain, flat, used Owl cigar box filled with exactly nine hundred and forty-five (3x3x3x5x7) tiny, beeswax, taper candles that were supplied with each poppet.

"No, Madam, extra candles are not available," the Mistress of the booth repeated tiredly for the thirteenth time that morning to an overdressed mature woman who's extreme wealth and boredom with the Faire were patently obvious. The Mistress of the booth had dropped her medieval manners after the irritating woman had made it plain that she didn't appreciate the polite language of the Faire nor the look or temporary nature of the booths of it's merchants. The wealthy woman would have much rather shopped at Neiman Marcus instead of browsing like some peon in a public marketplace. The woman wondered just what her husband had been thinking of when he forced her to come to the barbaric Faire! For God's sake, they didn't even have paved paths! Granted, the main street was cobbled, but the cobbles hurt her feet. Esplanades weren't meant for streets paved with rounded stone. Imelda Marcos need never have put up with such a shocking shopping experience! With her Esplanades, the wealthy woman needed level ground and a flat floor to be comfortable when she walked. Moreover, a good half of the side streets were only common dirt! She'd have to bathe for hours after they returned to their hotel room at the Mariott to remove the dust and filth from her body! Merely talking to these lower class merchants made her feel dirty as if she had been dealing with some gypsy plying questionable wares to an argumentally gullible public. The wealthy woman would not have been shocked if the streets had been littered with animal manure as well as human excrement! She had imagined that she could smell the ammonia reek of spoiled urine coming from the sanitary porta-potties as she walked by them.

The Mistress of the shop answered the woman's query with a hint of emotional exhaustion after dealing with the over-wealthy psychic vampire for over fifteen minutes with no hope of a sale. Frankly, she didn't want to sell anything to the fatuous refugee from a fat farm which catered to the whims of ultra-rich and supremely-spoiled women who insisted upon being decorated with the furs and skin of rare animals. The Mistress continued in a slightly peeved tone that implied her patience was wearing thin, "Yes, I suppose you could use a birthday candle in the spoon, but it wouldn't be the same. Why? The artist who makes the spoons and dolls also makes the candles and they're a matched set. I guess that if you don't respect the wishes of artist and the love that's put into these Kitchen Witches, than it makes no difference. If you think of my Kitchen Witches as a mere decorative knickknack, rather than high Art, it doesn't make any difference what you do, now does it? Yes, they're expensive, but so is most high Art. She flipped her black hair back across her shoulder with one hand in a motion of feminine dismissal as she declared, "Purchase my wares or no, an it please you! Excuse me, Goodwoman, but I have other customers awaiting me that I must to attend to!" The wealthy lady left the booth immediately, positive that she had somehow been insulted, but the corpulent nouveau riche matron lacked either the education or perspicacity to understand how the déclassé Mistress of the booth had dismissed her by calling her Goodwoman rather than Milady. It was a medieval sneer at her poor breeding as well as her uncouth and pretentious display of her wealth.

To Pam, who had enjoyed the ambiance as well as the spirit of the Faire and had been interested as well as very polite as she attempted to play the part of a medieval housewife on a shopping trip with her husband in the marketplace, she said in honor, "Ahhh, I see that you have a true sense of high Art, Milady! I'm sorry, the purchase limit is one Kitchen Witch to a household. To be fair to the public, I am only allowed to sell one Kitchen Witch to each household. I'm sorry and I truly sympathize, but it is a rule from which I am not allowed to deviate. Would you like to examine one more closely? Milady will note that each spoon is unique, which one would you care to examine. Here? Oh, then this one then? Here it is, take your time and get the feel of it. Look carefully at the intricate knotwork. Run your thumb over it to feel it's texture. Does it please you? Did you say that you wish to purchase the Kitchen Witch that you're holding? Ahh, it's an excellent choice, Milady! Yes, it is indeed gorgeous, isn't it? May one ask a personal question of Milady? Does Milady enjoy the Art of Cooking? Yes? Then I foresee a period of good fortune and good food for you and your family. The ritual for using the Witch requires that you place one of the candles provided in the witch's spoon, light it and make a wish before you start creating your 'special meal' for your loved ones. Yes, it does sound silly, doesn't it? But lighting a candle in church and praying sounds silly too unless it's one of your beliefs or customs. An it likes you, think of it as a way to relax your mind before you create a new culinary treat for your family."

The Mistress of the booth tossed her black hair back with a particularly feminine Irish flip of her head, smiling gaily as she laughed with a hint of the sound of light, airy bells mixed with her pleased voice as her green eyes glistened with the positive glow of the last words of a nearly forgotten Irish blessing, "An you will, tis but a merrythought to please and not harm. There will be no ill thereby, I trow!"

Then the Mistress's tone changed abruptly as she assumed the polite attitude of a modern merchandiser and said, staying in character, "Prithee, Milady, allow me to wrap it for you, lest it be injured on thy return journey to thy household."

As she spoke to the customer, the shadow of Brigid fell on the ground inside the right corner of the booth, while the opposite corner had a shadow of an Irish Bog horse with a proud tail. Under the correct weather conditions, split shadows are not unknown, but the presence of two different shadows, neither of which matched the silhouette of the subject, defied all logic. As she turned to place the Kitchen Witch in a box and wrap it, the Mistress noticed the odd phenomena and smiled. As she readied the Lady's purchase for travel, she began to hum a very ancient and haunting Celtic melody that had not been heard for over a thousand years. Within seconds, a cool, dark cloud appeared and hung overhead, bringing a pleasant five-degree dip in temperature as well as very effective muting of shadows. The double shadow phenomena disappeared within moments and never recurred throughout the day.

A graying portly man in the costume of an Irish noble of the Dark Ages who was quaffing his first morning Stout while sitting on a bench in front of the tavern across the street, caught the change in aura around the Mistress of the booth and smiled fondly in memory of the ancient Horse Goddess. After forty-five turns on the Wheel of Samsara, he had been blessed with the returned memories of his past lives, which had spanned nearly two thousand years of existence and over four thousand years of human history. He grinned at the Mistress in approval, then finished his cup and held it up to her in salute, before getting up to order another. He knew that she knew who he was and that she knew that he knew who she…"Enough!", he chided himself mentally. The bilateral recognition of common knowledge had been instantaneous. As a human who possessed the experience and knowledge of the ages as well as being extremely psychic, he knew the danger of interfering with an "old one's" sport.

It had pleased him to see that the Horse Bitch Goddess was still around and having fun with humanity. Life had gotten a bit boring after the Catholic Church had burned the ancient temples and built cathedrals to their Sun (son) god with the wimpy face on the hallowed ground of the Gods and Goddesses that had formally been worshiped in each area. He had always been a warrior and had no liking for worshipping a God that looked like some kind of over-mothered queer. "For God's sake," he muttered to himself for the millionth time since the Christians had first appeared. Why can't these people recognize that their God was a carpenter and that ancient carpenters, like blacksmith's, lived by their hands and their muscles? What could possibly motivate a religion to create such a poor image of their God?"

Nearly every time he would take another pull on his Stout and continue muttering to himself quietly. He would point out to himself that their God had really been a leader of strong hearty men consisting of Jewish sailors, who pulled sword in the Garden of Gethsemane with every intention of attacking vicious Roman regular troops who had been put on punishment tour in Rome's most rebellious province. Jerusalem had been a fly and flea infested, leprous, waterless, dung hole and a thorn in the side of the Roman government and army for years before their living God had appeared on the scene.

The most vicious, nasty and most uncontrollable soldiers in the Legions were sent to the province to allow them to become proper soldiers or sweat their lives out with the most uncompromising, unrelenting and religiously uptight people under the Caesar's sway. It was very bad duty for the Legionnaires. Short-changing a public prostitute in Rome might get you a slap in the face, but short-changing a Jewish or Arab whore often meant joining the ranks of the eunuchs. Once the unfortunate legionnaire got over his close encounter with a sheep gelding knife, he was subject to Legion punishment for "allowing himself to become unfit for duty". The legionnaire was taken to the Provost Marshal and then sentenced to a number of "strokes" across both feet with canes by burly fellow legionnaires. The execution of sentence was immediate; the prisoner was secured to a vomit-stained, rough planked table with heavy leather straps that had darkened with the terrorized sweat of hundreds of legionnaires while his feet were secured in "U" shaped cuts in an upright plank that was roughly nailed to the base of the punishment table. Once the prisoner's ankles had been secured, the beating began.

Ten strokes was considered a very light sentence which meant two weeks of inability to walk. Twenty-five stokes with the canes broke the strongest men into pleas for pity and shrieks of pain; often these men would wet and soil themselves in anguish. Fifty strokes would break every blood vessel in the soles of the legionnaire's feet and make him unable to walk for at least two months (which would be spent in a dark hole underneath the guard house rather than the jail proper) and one hundred strokes would cripple him forever. After the physical punishment, came the judicial punishment. Was the legionnaire worth retaining as a warrior for Rome or could he better serve Rome as a galley slave for life. If the Provost Marshal was really pissed, he could have the ex-legionnaire sentenced to a (very short) lifetime in the mines of Crete or Greece. If one had been emasculated by a whore of Judah, one's record with the Legion should be as clean as possible to survive. The Vigils didn't care one hundredth bit of a bent counterfeit denarius if one beat a whore of Judah, or for that matter short-changed one, but it didn't serve the Emperor to have his legionnaires cut down and emasculated by the whores of Judah. It made everyone look bad as well as easy to kill in combat and that idea led to rebellion against Caesar. The lesson got out quick, in the closed, hot society of the Legion. A legionnaire could do anything he wanted with a whore of Judah, except let himself be touched by a gelding knife.

The poor sod of a soldier named "Jacobus" was a perfect example of what could happen to an unwary legionnaire; after getting drunk on date wine and consorting with a number of "nightworkers" of Judah for games that were "highly unusual" for Legionnaires, his purse had proved insufficient to meet their fee. Since the women's services did not involve his manhood, nor their womanhood, per se, but a "special service" that he had apparently contracted for verbally, the Provost was in a quandary as to what to do when his blood-soaked body was brought in without his manhood. No sex, per se, had taken place, but when the Provost heard what the Legionnaire had commissioned, he gave the prostitutes one hundred denari to keep their collective mouths shut under pain of death. Jacobus was removed from the court while the Provost Marshal entertained them with fine red wine from the Isle of Lesbos and had them seated on chairs of honor while one-hundred heel-crippling stokes were delivered to the errant legionnaire in the dark, dank basement beneath them. When the weeping, soiled and wet legionnaire was returned to them on a leather stretcher, the Provost's sentence was pronounced. The legionnaire was to be stripped of his citizenship as well as his freedom. He was a slave of Rome to be auctioned to the highest bidder. As a slave, he knew too much, so the Provost's executioner/torturer was summoned. After the miscreant's tongue had been removed and the bleeding stanched with a red-hot iron as a lesson to the assembled women on how Rome guarded it's smallest secrets, the bidding from the Lady's on the newly created slave would begin. As a special measure of Rome's distaste for the former legionnaire's activities, the torturer used a razor-sharp filleting knife to cut both Achilles tendons to insure that no measure of healing powers would ever allow the half-man to walk again. It was a closed auction, open only to the women who had brought charges against the legionnaire. Within minutes, the bidding began with the Provost's own money to buy the emasculated, tongue-less and crippled slave. The only woman who bid was the original courtesan who had accepted the legionnaire's strange commission.

He was sold for a single silver shekel and then carted whimpering to the home of the courtesan. After a time, he became a special attraction at the upscale bordello in Jerusalem; no other Temple devoted to sex had a man-baby to suckle, clean, or punish for the amusement of the clientele. His name had been changed to the Hebrew Jacob upon the direct orders of the Provost. His sexual proclivities as an adult baby were beyond the tolerance of the Roman Empire for it's Legionnaires. His name was erased from the roles and he was forgotten. Aside from the Provost, no one in the Legion knew what his crime was. No scribe had been called and no record had been made. He was anathema and beyond the pale of Roman Law. Within a few short years, Jacob became a mewling, nursing, speechless sexual object of choice who was caged in one of the small rooms in the back of the best bordello of Jerusalem. Jacobus, whose original name changed frequently over his period of service in the bordello, was always clothed in swaddling clothes like every other crawling, speechless infant in the ancient city, except for winter, when a woolen tunic was given him to cover the swaddles and to keep him warm. He died one night after a Sheik of Araby bought the services of the entire bordello for a week. The Sheik, who hated the Romans with a passion, was delighted to find one of their discarded legionnaires under his power. He paid the proprietress heavily for the ownership of the slave and set his men to work on destroying the crippled, enslaved ex-legionnaire's last vestiges of ego. After the Sheik's guards had raped the adult infant repeatedly, he drowned after being forced to drink ten gallons of sheep's milk from goatskin bags. When he died, the Wheel of Samsara ground slowly forth. Never again would that entity pay to be treated as a baby by prostitutes. Still, the entity's need to be an eternal infant was not satisfied. He would return again.

The graying, portly one took a sip of his Stout in his mouth and spat in remembrance of the tale. The Romans had been bad enough, but they had been as harsh to their legionnaires as to the countries they had engulfed with the power of the Legion. When the power of Rome began to slip away with the rise of the worshipers of the Son of God, things got much, much worse for the common wheal. The stout's bitterness had matched his memories of very bad times in the past with the self-pious followers of the Son of God. He had always been more comfortable with the old Gods. They didn't burn books, have auto-de-fe's, witch burnings, nor did they have Inquisitions in their God's name. Nor did they try to exterminate entire peoples in God's name as Hitler had.

Sure, some of the old ones demanded a human sacrifice or two each year, depending on the God or Goddess, but their followers never decimated or annihilated a whole countryside in their God or Goddess's name. Since that dark time, the largely Christian police in every world state seemed to make multiple sacrifices of men that they patently knew were innocent and which they had railroaded into execution for the edification of the populous. Ritual human sacrifice wasn't dead, the governments had merely removed respect for the Gods out of the equation.

Government had become the consuming God; Eater of Money, Lives and Souls. This God demanded not merely a tenth or tithe of one's increase in fortunes, but multiples of a tenth part. Worst, when it wished to wage war, it enslaved the poor and uneducated as cannon fodder while allowing the sons of the rich and powerful to remain free. The laws of taxation were modified to keep the beloved of the Government God, i.e., the rich, rich and to keep the poor, poor. If the poor revolted or rioted, the civil soldiers of the state were sent in to discourage further revolt by use of terminal force, much as the Legion had when Sparticus had led the revolt of the slaves. If that weren't enough, fifty or sixty of the poor were selected as judicial sacrifices every year (guilty or innocent) in each province and executed. Since the execution of the poor was done in private, it was obvious that the stated goal of using sacrifices' death to cow the masses into servility with an object lesson was false. The real reason was to feed the blood lust of the Government God. The portly one had become a functional anarchist long before the term was invented.

Seeing Brigid was a good omen. When the crowd cleared from the booth, he would go over and quietly make a small purchase. It was the least he could do. He hadn't sacrificed to Brigid in nearly one thousand five hundred years; the old lady deserved a bit of change from his pocket. Besides, it looked like she was selling something that had supranormal powers. The Witch dolls that she was selling had an ultraviolet aura. The portly man smelled a wishing poppet in the wind. If he was careful, perhaps he could get the Goddess-creatrix to bless one for him and increase it's powers ten-fold.

After his purchase, he would open his fortune telling booth called "The Time Master's Portal". The ancient warrior had been enchanted by the development of computers that could calculate the position of the planets and moon to within a second of arc. He was running copies of the Windows version of Matrix Software's WinStar and all it's report add-ons. He could produce modern reports as well as reports in the Renaissance style for natal chart interpretation in addition to medical problems. He also could create predictions in I Ching, Numerology, Runes, or Tarot in full color from an excellent HP Bubblejet printer. Of course, everything was printed on "antique parchment" paper using medieval fonts to increase the visual effect of his reports. As sidelines, he sold leather document tubes made exclusively for him by the leather crafter at the Faire. He also carried scrivener's kabootles with quill pens, ink, parchment paper, a sanding shaker, fine white sand, a small scrivener 's knife and a leather tube container for traveling and storage. His second line of merchandise was more esoteric but still within an Astrologer's purview; he carried a number of sterling silver astrolabes mounted on heavy silver necklaces, a number of different styles of reproductions of ring and necklace sundials from the Roman period up through the Renaissance periods as well as a true oddity, a sterling silver medieval "moon dial" to determine the hour of the night from moon's position (it worked much like an astrolabe). Just for fun, he carried a line of "crystal" balls that he had lapped and ground from eight-inch cubes of obsidian, malachite, rose quartz, and jasper.

He also marketed two creations which he kept under strict control. The first was a rather simple design that was fashioned to look like the fish symbol of the early Christians, but aside from the shape, all resemblances ended there. The material itself was odd. He was a registered rock hound and mineralogy dealer which gave him enormous discounts on gems, minerals and ores. Aside from his need for obsidian, malachite, rose quartz, and jasper for "crystal" balls, he bought large quantities of siderite (nickel-iron meterorites) and had them fused together into "workable" nickel-iron "square wire" by the Faire Blacksmith.

In the off seasons, he'd do the work on his own forge at home, but the testimony of the Faire Smithy as well as the fiery, fountain of sparks as the nickel-iron was processed gave perfect verity as to the origin of his Viking Compass and was spectacular advertising the portly one could hardly pass up. The display became so popular at the Blacksmith's that he had signs made and had it scheduled as a Faire Event. His sales went up, the management of the Faire was pleased and the portly one got a reduced rate for the work from the Smithy. Everyone was pleased with the arrangement, especially the visitors to the Faire.

After being heated to cherry-red (but below the "Curie Point" where later magnetization was impossible) on the Smithy's forge, the wire was hammered and bent into a fish shape on a small anvil that had been the gift of the portly merchant to the Blacksmith. He had also given the Smithy a small set of tongs and hardened punches of his own forging as a gift for a final inducement to the contract. Before the metal had cooled, a hole was punched through the center-of-mass with a hand-made, very thin hardened-steel punch and then the piece was quenched.

The portly one finished off the piece himself, smoothing the bottom side of the hole with a fine Swiss needle file, adding a tiny amber bead from the Baltic which was affixed to the bottom side of the hole of the fish with a tiny ball-headed pin cast from pure copper crystals that led through the pin and nickel-iron to bent into a double-loop at the top and fused together with the fine tip of a jeweler's torch. Once the metalwork and assembly was finished, he stroked the fish three times with a lodestone for veracity's sake and chucked the piece into a heavy-duty industrial electro-magnetizer for an hour. When the piece had completed it's final treatment, he attached it to a light silver chain and marketed it as a Viking magnetic compass made from meteorites, with a bearing made from Baltic Amber pinned with a pin made of the purest copper cast in the ancient "lost-wax" technique from native copper specimens from Finnmark, Norway and magnetized with a Scandinavian lodestone.

Of course, modern archaeology had never discovered a Viking magnetic compass, nor was there any mention of them in surviving Viking sagas. But that made no difference to the portly merchant, he had been there at the time and had had the good fortune as a supplier of amber, copper, tin, silver, gold and iron bars to the magician-smith who had made one in front of his eyes. Even though they had been good friends, he'd have probably not been allowed to witness the process if he had not supplied the rare siderites that the spell called for. It took humanity almost fourteen hundred years to rediscover the magnetic properties of nickel-iron alloys.

They sold like hotcakes, even to the Christians who were unmindful of what an historical treasure they possessed. The heavily magnetized nickel-iron alloy of the compass worked perfectly, pivoting freely on it's amber bearing to point the nose of the fish towards magnetic north. More than one Nordic navigator kept the secret of the iron fish tucked safety in his woolen tunic. The price of the iron fish would have purchased a medium to large-sized farm, complete with a plow, farming tools, horses, Christian slaves and livestock and as such was a very valuable commodity among the cut-purses of the wharves and nearby alehouses. In other terms, a single iron fish could have been easily bartered for five finely made full suits of small linked-chain mail, complete with shields, bows, arrows, spears, bearded axes and steel swords. Because of the intrinsic magical value of the iron fish, they were never mentioned and the secret was lost except for the fat merchant-warrior-who-could-not-die.

His second treasure, of which he only displayed one in two different formats (but always had ten in stock), was an item he called the "Eye of Odin", which was a chunk of Swedish calcite that had been cut to his exact specifications by a master rockcutter and polished to perfection. According to legend, the "Eye of Odin" could be used by Viking navigators to "see" through the clouds to find the Sun. Because the Viking navigator's wooden instruments were based upon observations of the Sun's position, this was truly a magical item. (He had several reproductions of wooden Viking navigation instruments in stock as well.) Archaeological researchers had discovered that crystals of Scandinavian calcite, if cut properly, could form polarizing filters which would filter out the fog-scattered rays from the Sun and allow the Sun to be viewed through heavy fog. Armed with this data, the portly one had contracted with a Swedish firm to produce a limited number of calcite crystals cut as polarizing filters and then shaped to have the outline of a three-inch long crescent-shaped "eye". He'd mount each crystal himself in a sterling silver frame with a Viking motif that he'd commissioned from a Silversmith in Texas and either clip it to the heavy silver chain he bought from a national jewelry supply or mount it to a spiral-cut oaken "Wizard's Staff" (made for him by the Staffcrafter at the Faire) so he had total control of his "work of Art". Certainly, it wasn't really magickal in the sense of Brigid's work, but an unknown scientific principle always carried the "patina" of magic. Members of the SCA (Society for Creative Anachronisms) went absolutely nuts over his "Eye of Odin", especially the ones who's adopted personae were Viking. Some of the wealthier members of the SCA walked away with enough historical recreations of ancient astronomy and navigational instrumentation to sail the world around, if they had been of a mind to mount an expedition. They were invariably the one's who eschewed any fortune telling.

At the Booth of the Kitchen Witch, the proprietress said to a slightly befuddled but interested male of the married kind, the Mistress of the booth said, "Yes, Milord, this would indeed make a fitting gift for thy Lady. Look at the exquisite carving on the bowl of the spoon. Can you not see that every spoon is completely unique and different from each of the others? The artist-craftsperson who creates these makes sure that each spoon is an individual creation, there will never be another like it in the world. No, Good Sir, I do not jest nor do I speak aught but sooth! These are handmade items and are not mass produced. You'll take it? Very good, Milord, it will just be a minute. No Milord, I don't take credit cards or checks, cash only. Milord, if I may be so bold, there is a wonderous machine called an ATM next to the House of Robert the Jeweler. Where? Robert's House is but down this street in that direction and to the right. Be sure to take the first street you see on the right. Thou cannot possibly miss it! The ATM machine is just beyond Robert's House. If thee cannot find it, seek assistance at Robert's House. Yes, there is another ATM machine at the entrance to the Faire, but Milord is aware that's at the opposite end of the Faire. Certainly, Milord, I can hold it for you for a maximum of four hours. Milord, I can assure you that not only will your Lady be pleased, but that thy thoughtfulness portends many, many excellent meals from thy good Lady in the future! Yes, Milord, I shall be open. I shall abide anon until thy return."

To a number of passerby she quoth tirelessly throughout the day at the Faire, "No, I don't have a Website or a shop! What I sell is before you; many years work of a artist-craftsperson who produces items like these for love of the Art, rather than money! This is your only chance to buy these! Upon the morrow, I shall depart, taking my wares with me. If you wish to buy a Kitchen Witch for thine own, do not tarry or ponder! I cannot promise to be here next year, nor the year beyond. All I can promise you is that by the morrow, I shall be gone to another place as yet unnamed and undecided."

She was patient and bore the vicissitudes of her assumed role stoically. There would be ample time to rest. She would not return that year, nor the next, for she had only appeared once every three years for nine years, it would be five years before she appeared at the Faire again and after that they would have to wait seven years for her next appearance. Then the cycle could begin anew.

Pam and James walked on, enjoying themselves at the Faire when Pam espied the portly one's booth. "Let's see what he has!", Pam demanded excitedly like a small child.

The proprietor of the "The Time Master's Portal" was feeling mellow after two mugs of Stout. He had, as he had intended, purchased a wishing poppet from the Horse Goddess while uttering a plea for Brigid's blessing in ancient Irish Gaelic as he passed a one hundred dollar bill with his right hand over the counter, adding that his small monetary sacrifice to Brigid be passed along to her temple. The pseudo-witch grinned broadly and asked him to bow his brow for a moment so she could kiss it. Shocked by the Goddess's benevolence, he did as she ordered immediately and received a light but loving maternal kiss of the Goddess on his brow. Before she passed over the Kitchen Witch, she muttered to it in a version of Irish that was more Proto-IndoEuropean than Gaelic. The portly one's abilities allowed him to see that the wishbringer's powers had been increased beyond his wildest imaginings. Unfortunately for him, he could never fully exploit its powers. The single kiss had enabled Brigid to delve into his heart of hearts and see his innermost feelings and secrets. He was simply too good and too wise to abuse the powers of the magickal instrument that she had given him.

When Pam and James came to his booth, he got up politely and asked, "Blessings upon you, Milord and Milady! Is there aught I can do for you? I am the "Time Master" and have many wares. Would Milady be interested in a ring or necklace sundial today? Or perhaps Milord would like a moon dial so he would not miss his planned trysts with Milady? Do you wish to see what the stars portend for you? Or mayhap you're more interested in the mystery of the Runes, Tarot or I Ching. Or have you journeyed long and far to find the single purveyor of the magical "Eye of Odin", which has the power to see through any fog. If you're interested in finding the positions of the stars and navigating on your own, mayhap I can interest you in an exceedingly fine sterling silver reproduction of an ancient astrolabe (corrected for errors by some of the world's finest mathematicians and astronomers, the proprietor muttered softly as an aside.) or the Viking version of a Chinese magnetic fish compass forged from a nickel-iron Scandinavian meteorite and magnetized with Scandinavian lodestone before being pivot-mounted on a silver chain."

James was a bit taken aback. Surely the man was lying through his teeth. Yet there was an earnestness that gave James the uncomfortable feeling that he was telling the truth. Pam, his wife, had gotten all giggly like a mere schoolgirl, she loved the Faire and the courtly speech of the booth owners. She looked up at James and said with pleading eyes, "Can I have my fortune told, please? It won't take long, I'm sure!"

James rolled his eyes heavenward in near exasperation and said. "Yes, if it doesn't take too long!"

Pam jumped up and kissed his cheek, saying, "Thank you, thank you, James!"

Pam turned back to the portly man and said, "I'd like my fortune told, please!"

The portly one nodded and asked, "Would Milady prefer Astrology, numerology, a Rune reading or a Tarot reading?"

Pam asked in confusion, "Uhhh, which one is more thorough?"

The proprietor smiled and answered, "Without a doubt, Astrology is the most thorough!"

"Then an astrological fortune it is," Pam replied gaily.

The gray-haired one nodded and said, "I can produce a report in two formats, modern and Renaissance. Should you chose Renaissance, you can have either a Natal report or medical report made."

Pam was surprised by the choices offered her and answered in an uncertain tone, "Uhhh, modern?"

"Certainly, Milady!", answered the proprietor cheerfully as he continued, "Will that be a simple Natal report, or does the Lady want to read of possible futures?"

"I thought I said I wanted my future read!", Pam protested impatiently.

"Ahh, this insignificant one merely wanted to be sure of Milady's needs. Please take no offense. I presume that you want a full Natal report with a Timeline report for the future. Did you want to include Milord on that?", inquired the portly one with an eye to doubling the fee.

"No!", James ordered curtly.

"Very good! If Milady would fill out this form so I can begin?", said the proprietor as he placed a short form on the top of the glass display counter.

"James, could I borrow your pen, please?", Pam asked politely.

"I suppose," James answered boorishly as the proprietor rushed to provide Pam with a pen. Before James could remove a pen from his inner jacket pocket, Pam had been given a pen by the proprietor and was filling out the form.

When Pam had completed the form, the proprietor disappeared behind a sound-deadening, thick, medieval-motiffed wall hanging/tapestry to input her name, date, location and time of birth to allow the astrology program to run.

As the program printed out it's calculations, the proprietor returned to the counter and offered the Lady a seat within his booth to rest herself while she waited. He politely escorted her and James into his booth and brought forth chairs for them to rest themselves. Since he was feeling so mellow and the woman had been so nice, he offered to read their palms for free while they waited for the fifteen minute long printout.

Both James and Pam agreed (After all, it was free!) to a free palm reading. After a few minutes of gazing down at both of Pam's palms, the proprietor asked to see James' palms. After looking at James's palms, the proprietor "ahem'ed" like a physician and asked to see Pam's palms again. He made an "hmmm" noise followed by an "ah-ha!" and then asked to see James's palms again. After a careful examination of James's palm, he offered, an "uh-huh" to the couple.

Pam was excited and asked, "What does it mean? I know that you've seen something!"

"Well," the proprietor began slowly, not sure of how to message what he had seen. Pam's husband was unfaithful as Pam would discover in her future. Yet she would find a solution that would please both of them after a long period of adjustment. The proprietor began again, saying, "I see familial discord in both of your futures, yet they are resolved after a long period. Pam will find the perfect solution to the problem after she expends much mental energy and sorrow. James, you won't like her solution at first, but after you adjust to your wife's solution to your marital problems, you will be completely happy and content for the rest of your life!"

"Is that it?, James demanded.

"Certainly not!", the gray one answered as he walked back to collect the color output from the printer. When he returned with a sheaf of parchment papers with multicolored graphics, he handed it over to Pam and said, "That will be twenty-five dollars, Milady."

"Twenty-five dollars for that?", James inquired indignantly.

"Aye, Sirrah!", quoth the proprietor angrily as he put his hand on the hilt of the Irish short sword that he carried, "You have been given full measure and more! Milady ordered a full Natal horoscope with a reading, plus a timeline report as well. This was done and delivered as promised. I gave the two of you a free palm reading worth twenty-five dollars each as well! Are you challenging my honesty, Sirrah? If so, complaints about the vendors at the Faire can be made at the Master of the Faire's Office! Good morrow to you, Sirrah!"

As James stalked out, Pam delayed and thanked the vendor privately for his work and the special insight he had provided for their future. Knowing that Pam was faultless, both at that time and in the future, the proprietor was gracious and bowed to her as she left.

Pam caught up with James a few minutes later and asked him where he wanted to go next. He petulantly decried his dislike of the Faire like a two-year-old who had been disappointed by being denied his tinniest whim and expressed his desire to go home immediately. After a few minutes consideration after decamping the "Time Master's" booth, he had realized that his anger had been produced by the forecast of the future, rather than a case of being conned or gypped.

Back at Home

Although Pam was no gourmet or expert cook by any means, after lighting the candle and mumbling a short prayer to the poppet that her attempt at cooking would go well (according to the instructions supplied with the poppet and candles), she had discovered that she suddenly had acquired the instinct for seeing what was wrong with a recipe or using the correct technique for cooking it, even though she had never learned or read of it.

Like most "Kitchen Witch" poppets, the witch rode a spoon instead of a broom. Since the majority of "Kitchen Witches" were made by women, rather than men, the orientation of the bowl was correct. In most Halloween art, witches are depicted as "riding their brooms" with the brush or tied-sapling group to the rear. This is incorrect. Witches have always ridden with the "whisk" portion of the broom in the front, in which they can insert a "Candle of the Art" which will light and guide their way during the dark hours of their astral travels through the planes.

Pam's poppet was a magnificent creation of a true Mistress of the Craft; the spoon was hand carved in the traditional Welsh fashion for lovers and marriage. The highly polished and waxed, nut-brown, stained bowl of the spoon had been carved clear through with an intricate Celtic knotwork design that used the negative spaces created by the holes through the bowl to accentuate the highly detailed knots that had been incised through the Elderwood bowl. It was obvious that the creator of the spoon had never intended for it to be used for dipping liquids from a pot; the holes that were part of it's original construction gave mute evidence to the contrary. The tiny candle holder that had been carefully pegged to the bowl of the spoon from beneath with tiny wooden "spikes" of hot young ashwood sapwood had been cunningly carved and crafted from a small piece of hard ash heartwood with three short, squat legs that rested and mated perfectly with the curve of the interior of the spoon. Had Pam been aware of the symbolic meanings of the spoon's triple Goddess motif, she would have recognized immediately that the spoon was which was imbued with magickal powers of it's own and was actually a type of wishing wand that could only be wielded in the kitchen.

Unknown to Pam, was that the poppet's body had been stuffed with magickal herbs and then been enchanted to awaken the potential magickal mandrake that lay dormant within the poppet. The poppet and spoon acted together to watch over Pam's kitchen and assist her kitchen activities if one of the especially prepared and spelled candles provided were used. Once the nine hundred and forty-five candles had been burned, the poppet would loose it's powers and become a mere decoration in the kitchen.

While nine hundred and forty five wishes might be considered extravagant, the reality was that virtually no one ever took the powers of the poppet seriously. Most housewives put the candles in a safe storage place and forgot about them. The herbs in the poppet, even though magickally enchanted, had a maximum life of five years. The minority who used the candles and realized the poppet's powers in the kitchen, where able to create perfect meals either nine hundred and forty-five times or five years, whichever came first. Only a tiny faction of one percent of any women who bought the poppet ever tried making a potion or elixir in her kitchen and discovered the true power of the poppet. Since a maximum of one poppet was ever sold to a single person, the Mistress of the Craft who had bequeathed the ability to have wishes come true for a few lucky housewives had very effectively minimized the social impact of her largess. The poppet was an artificial intelligence that had been created on the aural plane to interpret and activate the spoon's powers. It was a user-friendly sort of magickal device that could offer protection and assistance without the necessity for the end user to have formal magickal training or psychic abilities. If it had been created by a Unix programmer rather than a witch or Goddess, it's proper name would have been a daemon.

Pam cooked the heavy cream slowly over the double boiler, thickening it to make it suitable for a medieval posset. She really didn't understand why she should cook the cream and thicken it, since the recipe hadn't mentioned it, but she instinctively knew it was the right thing to do. When the cream had thickened sufficiently, she removed it from the heat and set it on a side burner. Pam added what was called her mummia in the text, i.e., samples of her blood, urine and saliva. Although the recipe hadn't given the order of addition of ingredients and the mummia had been given last, she knew that she was right in adding it before the wine. She allowed the concoction to rest for a few minutes before she added the final ingredient; red wine. The wine that she had on hand was perfect for the spell, Marsala, which was heavy and sweet as well as red as fresh heart's blood. Although Pam wasn't aware of it, the spirits within the wine were considered by alchemical standards to be a form of the "Water of Life" and thus gave life to the potion. Had she cooked the wine in the recipe and driven off the "spirits" it would have been a dead and useless potion. She stirred the mixture slowly as if it worked, it would be the perfect revenge.

Under the guise of a hangover remedy, she enticed him to drink the potion. As he groggily downed the brandy glass of oddly-colored muddy mixture in an attempt to sooth his pounding headache, he grunted and muttered that the potion tasted better than it looked. The warm alcohol in the magickal posset had an almost immediate relaxing effect on her husband. The lining of his stomach absorbed the spirit instantly and prepared his body for the spell's effects.

She had promised that the drink would make him feel better, which it did, almost immediately. His head stopped aching and the nausea which made him want to puke up his toenails disappeared almost immediately. He put his head back down on his pillow, drew his sheet up over his body, and drifted back to sleep.

Nothing happened at first. Then Pam watched incredulously as the wrinkles disappeared from her husband’s face and his gray hair turned thick and dark. Pam ran to get her video recorder to catch the transformation on tape. When she tiptoed back into the bedroom, she was shocked to realize that she’d already missed most of the process. A young child’s head rested on the pillow and the little body under the sheet looked like it was perfectly proportioned to the young child's body that lay beneath.

Jim continued to regress at an astonishing rate over the next minute, worrying Pam that he might disappear altogether. Pam held her breath as the small lump that was dwindling under the sheet suddenly stopped shrinking.

Jim was completely covered by the sheet. Pam was relieved to see the fabric moving up and down with each little breath that he took. Pam turned the heat up in the house and waited patiently to hear the furnace kick on. She wanted to take a good look at her husband, but didn’t want him waking up just yet. When the room had warmed enough, she pulled the sheet away as she trembling in anticipation. He was completely tangled in a pair of oversized men's boxer shorts and a huge white T-shirt. Pam gently stripped her former husband's adult clothes away without waking the baby before her. When she had finished, the fruits of her spell lay nakedly on the bed. She was astounded by the radical change in her husband's appearance and how sweet he looked. His preciously tiny, pink, fingers and toes as well as his rosebud lips were the quintessence of infant beauty and left her breathless in admiration.

Her thoughts raced as she touched him tentatively, worshiping the perfect little body of the infant he had become. She was frightened that she might awaken him, but his head merely turned over towards her hand in his sleep without opening his eyes. She gently brushed his soft round cheek wi