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The guy coming toward me on the sidewalk is clearly not pagan.

“Hey, your skirt is torn,” he ingenouses, friendly-wise.

Well, he's half-right. My Utilikilt opens over the leg. In this breeze, with a cooler hefted up onto my shoulder, I'm probably showing a little more thigh than is generally considered polite.

“I hate it when that happens,” I ingenouse back.

He gives me the eye-over: boots, kilt, petroglyph hoodie, torc, baseball cap. Standard-issue pagan festival dress.

“You here with a group?” he asks.

“Convention,” I say.

“Which one?” he asks.

Oh well: in for a penny, in for a pound. I set down the cooler.

“Paganicon,” I say.

“Spell that?” he asks.

“P-A-G-A-N-I-C-O-N,” I say. “It's a pagan convention.”

“Oh,” he says, not unfriendly. “Are you guys, like, devil-worshipers or something?”

Oh gods. Time for a little public relations management.

“More like Nature-worshipers,” I say, gesturing toward the woods across the street.

“So 'pagan' means 'worshiper'?” he asks.

A favorable omen: he's listening and thinking, both.

“Actually, it comes from a Latin word that means 'country,'” I answer. “Back when the New Religion came, the cities converted first. Meanwhile, out in the country, we were still sacrificing to Zeus.”

He looks thoughtful.

“Do you worship Zeus?” he asks.

“Not personally,” I say, “but I know folks that do.”

He quirks his head.

“But Zeus doesn't exist,” he says.

“Depends on what you mean by Zeus,” I reply. “To the people I know, it's just another word for Heaven.”

There's a pause. Time to redirect.

I swear, it's the same every time I get back from a pagan festival.

Next morning, I get out of bed. I go downstairs to put the kettle on.

I get out the teapot and load the tea ball. Then I head for the back door to get a sprig of mint from the garden.

(Nothing says “Summer morning” better than fresh mint in your tea.)

Suddenly, contextual awareness kicks in.

 In Which Boss Warlock, As Usual, Doesn't Have a Clue

“They walk among us.”

Hey guys, check this out.

This is my new cowan drag.

(Models.)

Pretty good, hunh? Makes me look just like a cowan, doesn't it?

Oh, hey, and listen to this.

(Mugs.)

“Blessed be, my fellow cowans.”

Sounds just like one, doesn't it?

(Smiles modestly, looks at feet.)

I've been practicing.

Jeez, block's really parked up tonight.

Yeah, it's the Witches.

Witches?

Yeah, first day of Spring today. One of their big shindigs, first day of Spring.

It is?

Yeah, it's like this every year, first day of Spring. That's what they do, I guess: make the seasons change, and such.

Sure wish they'd got around to it a little sooner, then. Been a bitch of a Winter.

Tell me about it. Swear I just about wore out the snow shovel this year.

You and me both. Witches, hunh? Who'd a thunk.

Yeah. Well, see ya round. Hey, happy Spring.

Hey, everyone has a stuffed Himalayan mountain goat's head hanging over the fireplace.

Don't they?

“So,” says the plumber, “all these symbols...are you into the occult or something?”

Goat's heads, Green Men, clay Goddesses. You don't have to be in my house for very long, or have much in the way of a flame between the horns, to realize that there's some pretty High Strangeness going on here. Still, when the kitchen drain became intractably plugged, this wasn't exactly the conversation that I had expected to be having.

“Not really,” I say, which is no more than truth. There's nothing arcane, or particularly esoteric, about the Craft. It's all completely natural.

“Oh, I thought you might be Wiccan or something,” he says.

“Now that I could tell you something about,” I say.

“Isn't that occult?” he asks.

“For me, it's largely a matter of tribal identity,” I say.

He looks thoughtful, and starts to tell me about about the novel, clearly a favorite, Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch, which for some reason—Terry Pratchett “gets” witches better than just about any other contemporary writer, including many who call themselves Wiccan—I've never read.

“...so she publishes this book of prophecies, which doesn't sell very well, but really she just wants the free author's copy,” he tells me.

“Sounds right,” I say.

Clearly, he's been thinking. Several hours later, he asks in passing:

“You reeking cowan,” I say, fondly.

My friend grins back. He's no more a cowan than I am; he's been pagan for most of his life. Long enough to get the joke, anyway.

COW-an: first syllable like the animal, and no, that's not a dig. Pagans like cattle. (Hey, we domesticated them, didn't we?) Nor does it imply that they exist only to be milked. In the old days, when the family cow could spell the difference between thriving and starvation, she was virtually kin.

Of course, the proper venereal—collective—term for a group of non-pagans, is—as for bovines—a herd. “Gods, there's a whole herd of cowans coming down the street!” Draw your own conclusions accordingly.

Every people has a name for those other people: you know, the ones that aren't us. To my ear, it beats mundane (not to mention muggle) all hollow. They may not be pagan, but can't we leave them at least some dignity?

Hey, cowans can't help being cowans. Virtually all of us number at least a few among our friends and relatives. Yes, the name is an exercise in alterity; but it can also be, as it is here, a playful term of affection.

Well, affection of a sort.

My friend's grin grows broader.

Dear Boss Warlock,

Just out of curiosity: Is there such a thing as a half-witch?

All-Witch in Albuquerque

Dear Al:

No.

Oh, the word halwich—pronounced HAL-itch—exists, and has existed for a long time (it comes from the Old Hwiccan healf-Hwicce), but it exists as a term of schoolyard invective only. Witch kids, alas, can be just as nasty as any other kind.

If you have one witch parent, you're a member of the tribe. That's Witch Law. “The Old Blood will out,” the old ones used to say, sometimes adding: “One drop is all it takes.”

Usually, of course, they would cackle as they said this.

Oh, you can opt out, of course; or you can try to pass.

(Cartoon: Boss Warlock Tries to Pass. Scene: Boss Warlock standing in convenience store, surrounded by puzzled-looking crowd. Boss Warlock: “Blessed be, my fellow cowans.”)