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How if I told you that there is a place—not Narnia, not Oz, but a real, truly live place—where animals talk?

How if I told you that you could talk—really talk, face-to-face talk—with the Beast-Lord, King of Animals, Himself?

Now, through the spiritual technology of the ancestors, you can.

All over the world, people tell stories about talking animals. All over the world, people remember a time when we could speak with the animals. Then, say the stories, something terrible befell, the Great Rupture, and now we no longer can.

It is, perhaps, the most poignant longing-dream of the human heart: to undo that terrible divide between the other animals and ourselves.

All parts of the Master are sweet and good.

Rituals are messy events, and the old-time Sabbat—that Grand Master of rituals—preeminently so.

So the morning after, the priestess goes down to the grove to wash off the altar.

Really, you might as well put up a sign: The God of the Witches Sat Here. In the center of the altar, two shapely white ovoids. Directly in front of them, two more, but smaller, and red.

Around these, coursed down from his body, a wash of red: liquid ocher, though it still looks like blood.

Welcome to the rite that remakes (in small) the People, and (in large) the World.

The priestess smiles. Here before her, imprinted on the altar-top, is written (for those who have eyes to see) the entire rite in microcosm, perhaps the entire Craft.

A surprising amount of witchery comes down to clean-up. Lovingly, she begins to lave away the signs of the night before.

The dead god lies stretched out on the altar. Mine is one of the knives that killed him.

Tears run down my face. In the hunter's immemorial gesture, I dip my fingers into the pooled blood on his chest and paint it across my forehead.

We're witches, of the Tribe of Witches. What we do, we own. I've been vegetarian for nigh on 50 years now, but others still die that I may live. Acknowledging this, owning this, the hurt that I do in the world, I take the blood. On myself, I take it.

It's called responsibility.

The gore rills down, over my eyelids, my nose, my mouth. The face that I present must be one of red horror.