The Transformation Of Amy Lunaro: Chapter Twenty Two. {fiction}
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The gown had burned down to black ash in the white snow.
Amy sat up still naked in bed, but didn’t long for any clothes; she was getting more and more comfortable in her naked form, more in love with her body as some sort of natural creature. It felt sensual, free, natural, to be naked.
She didn’t know how her body looked in the mirror, but it felt beautiful, and that felt more powerful than anything a mirror could tell her.
The clock on the wall said four pm, and as usual she was pressed with the question of to read or to write. But she felt too tired to write, although there were still so many more stories to be told, about how she ended up in that bed on the island, sober and single with plaster casts for legs.
But she was daunted by where she was in her diaries; she was finally delving into her relationship with male power figures in her childhood and career. She had twisted dark tales to tell, of how she had used and been used for her sexuality in a male-dominated world. But she hadn’t the energy to look back now.
Instead she reached for Starhawk’s The Spiral Dance — her obsession with the Goddess was becoming more insatiable than her thirst for white wine ever had been. Maybe the absence of the Goddess was the very hole she was always trying to fill with all that intoxicating liquid. Well, one of them.
Amy had begun to feel as if she could actually hear the Goddess, some strong loving feminine voice, inside of her. Not outside of her, like in Church, but inside, as if that divine power lived in her womb — where, she was learning, sat the very source of life itself. Reading about the Goddess made her feel in-powered.
It didn’t feel like homework to read, instead she was hungry for this feminine wisdom, and she flew through the pages. The discoveries took her breath away, the word Witch — not an ugly warted hexer, but an autonomous woman aligned with the earth, moon, and Goddess — unlocked endless portals within her.
Each book felt like uncovering hidden mysteries, tombs of truth, that she somehow knew, but it was as if they had been buried within and without. She was re-membering herself. Piecing herself back together with each book.
She opened The Spiral Dance to a Beltane ritual just as Leanne came storming back into the house and burst into the bedroom. She picked up the lavender blanket and wrapped it around Amy’s naked frame.
“Leanne,” Amy said, “I need to rest.”
Leanne ignored her and clumsily plopped Amy into her wheelchair by the side of the bed.
“Leanne,” Amy protested, “what in God’s name?”
“You haven’t properly done it, you haven’t let him go.”
“I have, I swear. He let me go, a long time ago. I get it. Please leave me alone.”
“Exactly. He let you go. You didn’t let him go.”
“Leanne, I’m tired of talking about James. Honestly. I’m at peace, I’ve surrendered.”
“You need the fresh air anyway,” Leanne said. “Come on, baby. Do this for me.”
She wheeled Amy into the living room and stopped at the hall closet. She tossed a big black puffy coat over Amy ‘s lap and pushed her outside, crunching over the snow, stopping at the ashes of nightgown.
“Welcome to the Funeral,” Leanne said.
Amy sighed heavily and shuddered in the frozen yard.
“He’s lying in front of you. James is dead. In your life, anyway. Now what do you say?”
Amy couldn’t say anything. She was shivering and angry, but she wouldn’t say anything. She was mad, but didn’t want to make Leanne mad. So she bottled it up and she felt it stewing in her body.
“If you can’t do it for you,” Leanne said, “do it for all the women who stay huddled in their shells waiting for and dreaming of the man who has long gone. One man rejects them and they feel rejected by the whole dang world.”
Amy felt a pit in her stomach. That wouldn’t be her. She shot a look at Leanne. She was so tired of literally being pushed around. Worse, she could tell Leanne knew she was angry, but didn’t care.
Her teeth chattered.
“Do it,” Leanne pressed, “and we’ll go back by the fire and watch something trashy.”
She bit her lip. Maybe she could use a tiny break from her spiritual studies. A part of her wondered what was shaking on Lifetime. She wouldn’t mind watching a good jilted woman seeks revenge tour de force. But she wasn’t in the mood for whatever this was that Leanne had forced her into yet again.
How weary she was growing of this weakness, how restless she was growing of rest. Her dreams were forming inside of her and she was impatient to act.
“Please,” she said to Leanne.
“That’s your problem,” Leanne hollered. “You’re a pleaser. It’s not your fault, all women are programmed by the patriarchy this way. God forbid you’re a strong passionate unapologetic woman. That might not be sexy. Men might not want you. Other women will be threatened. People will talk. People you don’t like might not invite you to their parties.
Fuck that. Are you angry? There’s a lot to be angry about. Anger is your change agent. Feel it. Let it burn. Are you sick of being sick? That’s when you heal. Are you mad at me? At James? Show me! Trust me, baby, I can take it.”
Amy looked down at the imagined coffin.
“James,” she whispered.
A silvery black crow circled over head. Leanne looked up.
“That’s some fine company for ceremony,” she said.
“Go on,” she gestured at the ashes. “He’s in the coffin in front of you. I’m here mourning with you. This is your time to say Goodbye, so you can let him go for good. I offer my condolences. But death brings birth.”
Amy shook her head. “I’ve done this,” she said.
“Not with power, not with belief,” Leanne said. “The only way things become real is by believing them. Believe it this time. He’s gone, it’s over. He’s dead. And the only way you’re going to truly live is if he’s truly dead. Otherwise you’ll wait at your life’s window forever, waiting for him to return like sad ol’ Wendy in Peter Pan. And he. Never. Will.
And that will have been your sad lonely life.”
“Maybe tomorrow. I’m freezing.”
“Girl, you know I don’t believe in no tomorrow,” Leanne snapped, growing cold herself and pulling her black sweater up under her chin. “Can’t do it for you? You said you wanted to grow up. Growing up is about your story becoming the collective story. Growing up, it’s no longer just about you. It’s about serving the other and realizing the other is you.
This is not just about you. It’s all the women hanging out in their broken heart with the shutters closed, not letting life’s light in, not letting new love in. Still hearing his voice in their head when he is long the hell gone.
And as long as they stay tiny inside of themselves mourning some man, they can’t use their powers for bigger things, outside of themselves. Like healing the world. So go on. Don’t do this just for you.
And I’m talking really trashy TV. Lots of sex.”
Amy thought of the way he left her, without remorse, about the unreturned text messages, as if she had not only never even mattered to him, but never even existed. About the affair with Cassandra, and all those horrible tabloids, and then of the last two and a half months in bed. Her blood began to boil, and the air began to stir around her.
“Can this be the last naked crazy outside ritual I ever have to do?” she asked Leanne.
“Hell no. But this is the last skyclad ceremony ever about him,” Leanne promised. “If you make it real. If you make it count.”
Amy closed her eyes and raised her arms into the air, the blanket falling from her body.
“James,” she said into the wind.
“Excuse me? I don’t think he could hear you in the Underworld,” Leanne said.
Amy took a big deep breath in.
“JAMES!” She screamed, reaching her arms even further to the sky.
The trees around her seemed to dance in the breeze, like Goddesses huddled around her for ritual.
Amy opened one eye and stole a look at them, it was almost as if they were leaning in, inching closer for ceremony.
“JAMES!” she bellowed to the ends of the earth. The wind moaned and the crow descended from the air, landing by her chair in the snow.
Amy could hear Leanne’s ragged, heavy breath.
” I RELEASE YOU!” she cried.
“I FORGIVE YOU! I FORGIVE ME! WE DID OUR BEST. WE WERE WOUNDED CHILDREN PLAYING AT LOVE. WE DIDN’T KNOW ANY BETTER! I’M SORRY I LOST MY LIGHT. I’M SORRY I LOST MY FIRE. I’M SORRY I DROWNED IT IN SUBSTANCE. I’M SORRY WE KILLED OUR LOVE.
I’M SORRY. I’M SORRY. I’M SORRY!!!!!” she screamed.
Suddenly the once cold dead ashes burst back into flame. The crow screeched. The tree branches crackled in the wind.
“Holy shit,” she heard Leanne whisper, but Amy kept going, taken by that fierce feminine force deep within her. Inside, the light she’d once lost rose and swelled with the flames in the snow.
“I RELEASE YOU INTO THE LIGHT. I RELEASE ME INTO THE LIGHT. WE ARE BOTH FORGIVEN. WE ARE BOTH FREE. OUR CONTRACT IS OVER. OUR CONTRACT IS SURRENDERED. IT IS DONE.
BY THE POWERS OF THE EARTH, WIND, AIR, FIRE, WATER, SPIRIT, BY THE POWERS OF GOD AND THE GODDESS, BY THE POWERS OF THE ANGELS AND THE ANCESTORS, I RELEASE YOU. I RELEASE ME. WE ARE EACH FREE TO LIVE THE FULLEST LIFE AS SPIRIT INTENDED. WE ARE HEALTHY WHOLE AND FREE.
AND FOR ALL THOSE WOMEN LEFT WAITING TO LIVE, LONG AFTER LOVE LET THEM GO, FREE THEM NOW — MAKE IT SO. FROM THE DEPTHS OF MY ANCIENT SOUL, I IMPLORE YOU — HEAL THEM! MAKE THEM WHOLE!
GO IN PEACE. BLESSED BE. FOR THE HIGHEST GOOD OF ALL, IT IS DONE!
AND SO IT IS.”
Amy’s hands dropped by her sides. She sucked back in her breath, her heart still beating madly like a shaman’s drum. The fire died its final death. The wind stopped. The trees were still again, the crow took flight.
She looked over at Leanne, whose jaw was on the ground, in the snow.
“I choose the movie,” she told Leanne.
“Fuck me,” said Leanne. “You’re a goddamn Priestess.”
This is an ongoing series from a forthcoming fiction novel by Sarah Durham Wilson of DOITGIRL.
Tune in weekly for the next chapter in ‘The Transformation of Amy Lunaro’.
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