The Best of Eternal Haunted Summer: A Thirteenth Anniversary Edition

By Rebecca Buchanan, Kim Malinowski, Shannon Connor Winward and 43 more

Hekate and Diana. Odin and Apollo. Freyja and the Witch-Lord.

Eternal Haunted Summer was born in the late summer of 2009. It was created as a place where Pagans and polytheists and witches (and non-Pagans with a love of the old myths) could feature their short stories and poems and essays with those of a like mind and similar beliefs and practices. EHS has grown steadily over the years, due entirely to the wonderful contributors whose works fill its digital pages. Without their creativity and talent, EHS would not exist; it would have disappeared long ago.

This thirteenth anniversary edition is a celebration of their work. I love every piece that appears in Eternal Haunted Summer, and I just wish that I could have included them all here. These poems, essays, and short stories range from tragic to triumphant, from exciting to despairing, from comic to horrific, from grotesque to sensual, from erotic to subtle; here you will find odes to terrible Gods, exciting tales of adventure, melancholy meditations on creation, and wonderings at the nature of human and divine hearts.

These are the best of Eternal Haunted Summer. I hope that you find them as inspiring as I do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: May 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781312629882

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Eternal Haunted Summer was launched thirteen years ago, in the late summer of 2009. I had been a writer my entire life, but only around 2009 did I find the courage to begin submitting my work to book publishers, magazines, and journals.

I should not have been surprised at what I found. Fantasy and science fiction and mystery and romance venues were (and are) plentiful. But venues geared specifically towards Pagan, polytheistic, and witch-related fiction and poetry were (and are) few and far between. Sure, I could release a Pagan-friendly fantasy tale through one of those venues; no one bats an eye at Gods and Goddesses striding across a fantasy landscape. But the assumption on the part of the publisher (and likely the reader) is that everything in the story is make-believe — even the Gods and the Goddesses and the spirits and the hero’s faith.

And the other genres? Even less likely to take a story featuring a non-traditional spirituality. Religion, in most science fiction, is for aliens; the Others, not rational humans who have embraced science. Magical cozy mysteries are fairly common, but not many publishers will look at a set-in-the-real-world murder mystery featuring a coroner who is also a priestess in service to Anubis. Or a romance where one of the characters is a devout Heathen who makes regular offerings to Frigg and Freya.

And so Eternal Haunted Summer was born. A place where Pagans and polytheists and witches (and non-Pagans with a love of the old myths) could feature their short stories and poems and essays with those of a like mind and similar beliefs and practices. EHS has grown steadily over the years, due entirely to the wonderful contributors whose works fill its digital pages. Without their creativity and talent, EHS would not exist; it would have disappeared long ago.

This thirteenth anniversary edition is a celebration of their work. I love every piece that appears in Eternal Haunted Summer, and I just wish that I could have included them all here. These poems, essays, and short stories range from tragic to triumphant, from exciting to despairing, from comic to horrific, from grotesque to sensual, from erotic to subtle; here you will find odes to terrible Gods, exciting tales of adventure, melancholy meditations on creation, and wonderings at the nature of human and divine hearts.

These are the best of Eternal Haunted Summer. And I hope that you find them as inspiring as I do.

---

      Rebecca Buchanan

Editor and Founder, Eternal Haunted Summer

Winter Solstice 2022

BEGINNINGS AND ENDINGS

Seasons

A Masque of the Four Seasons by Walter Crane

AT THE CROSSROADS: BELTANE AND SAMHAIN

KIM MALINOWSKI

Rooted at dusty crossroads, dirt in palm,

I caress and coo to it, set it to the wind.

I stamp in rusted nail at the center. Sacred duty.

The Wheel is turning, Samhain in lower hemisphere, Beltane in upper.

On this road they meet and mix. One foot in summer, one in Autumn.

Veil thin. Shades pass, man tips hat, I courtesy. Left with whisper.

I turn the Wheel. Lay branches of lilac in sacrifice.

Burn myrrh and olibanum. I chant and sing,

mourn the dead, comfort the dying.

Even in jovial celebrations, the ancestors must be remembered.

I see scraps and ribbons tied to one half of the road.

The other, cobwebs, and withering flowers, leaves as colorful as the ribbons.

I call to the wind — may blessing find those who yearn for it.

May they find balm. Let them cry — but dry their tears.

The Wheel finally turns with a great heave. Let us dance and feast.

There is much to celebrate on both sides of the crossroads.

I go down both roads, slipping into ether.

BLOOD AND OTHER FRUIT

SHANNON CONNOR WINWARD

We’ve done the final walkthrough of the apartment. We’ve spackled the walls, vacuumed the carpets, and hauled out the last of our stuff. The only thing left to do is turn over the keys.

Finally, this sad place is no longer my home.

I’m here to dig up my flower bulbs, maybe some of the spearmint that grows by the front door.  That’s about the only reminder of this place I’d like to keep.

It’s not that this was a bad place to live. We’ve been safe here. We’ve had abundance. We had two bedrooms, 1.5 baths, a washer/dryer and, though we lacked storage space and natural light, we did have a field of wild flowers right outside the slider door.

The blood-red maple in the middle of the field has been my altar for the past four years. Its leaves remind me of embers, of Brigid. Goddess of the hearth, it was She who led us here when we needed a home. I’d prayed to Her, offered my devotion in exchange, and in the way of these things, life swept us up and delivered us on this doorstep where the wild mint grows.

We’ve been blessed here. We just weren’t always happy – at least, not together.

I think we’re past all that, now. We’ve found a new place, a house with lots of light and a fenced-in yard. I can start a real garden, not just this tiny patch of ground where strangers toss their cigarettes.

One of the things that Brigid asked of me was that I start a garden. She told me color was needed here. So I’d tried to turn this little space between the sidewalk and the hedges into something beautiful, with meh results. My hyacinths did well in the spring, but my grandmother’s gladiola bulbs did not. The catnip got unearthed and the peppers succumbed to rot, but the first year’s tomatoes went crazy. They keep coming back. I gave the neighborhood children permission to pick them, as they will.

Now I dig up bundles of mint and lay them on the stoop. As I consider their spindly, thirsty roots, I feel like there is something more I should be doing. Some ritual or gesture to show thanks, or maybe just mark the fact that I was here. He broke my heart, but we got through it.  We did all right. I survived.

I had planned to do something ceremonial before I left with the blackberries in the freezer (stashed for years since our first summer — I’d meant once to bake a pie), or maybe the white candle that I’d used to perform two cleansing rituals that never seemed to take. But in the craziness and frustration of moving, we tossed those things out with the rest of the rubbish.

Now I am here for the last time. I have nothing with me but a cardboard box, some paper towels, and a garden spade. As I step up to the door (barefoot), I think I’ll just have to make a silent prayer and hope that’s enough, because aside from thanks I have nothing to give back. Then I stub my toe on the threshold, drawing blood.

I say some colorful things and reach for a paper towel, but then I stop. What can you give the Goddess who has everything? I think, and I laugh.

How about a sacrifice?

The other thing that Brigid had asked of me was that I learn more about my heritage. I’d been a solitary pagan for years, but without direction. With Her push, I spent my time here learning what I could — what we can deduce — about the religion of the Celts. I researched Brigid, of course — a pan-Celtic goddess so beloved by Her people that they transformed Her into a saint and brought Her into Christian lore — but I’ve studied their archaeology, as well. Their iconography. Their folkways.

I know that sacrifice was part of worship to the Celts, be it in scraps of cloth tied to branches at sacred springs, votive statues and weaponry sunk into bogs, or even — yes — living things propitiated to the Gods.

I do not believe that living sacrifice is necessary in our modern age, but clearly there is something deeply intimate and symbolic about blood. I have fought many battles in this place. I bear scars.

I am not the same woman who was led here. I have been transformed. And yet, part of this apartment will live in me, always. And part of me will remain.

After I stow the uprooted mint in the trunk of my car, I make a bundle from the detritus of my garden; black bell pepper stems, strewn tomato leaves, the dying stalks of my gladiolas. Then I walk, barefoot and bleeding, into the field of wild flowers.

This is my offering. Blood and other fruit of my garden. I lay my bundle at the base of the blazing red maple tree, and say goodbye.

For the next family that She brings to this doorstep, I leave the wild, tenacious tomatoes. Oh, and the hyacinths, which I decide not to dig up after all. They are sleeping now, but in the spring they will come back again — little well-wishes of color to surprise them after the long, dark months of winter.

CAVE PAINTING

BRAN KEANE

I remember giants,

Striding in across the plains,

And dwarves who lived deep under the mountain,

And from the forest, lithe elves came

To splinter bone and sup on marrow

By flickering, dancing firelight;

Before we had a word for Human,

Before the hills had names

We gave each other comfort in the dark.

We left our handprints in the flame-

Red ochre of the stained-rock windows —

Our cathedral lit with leaping hunters,

Gods and prey entwined

Upon that living rockface,

Still running

In your electric torchlight:

A world you never knew,

Yet half-remember when

You close your eyes

And place your palm on mine

Across ten thousand generations

Of slow time.

EQUINOX (AFTER BLODEUWEDD)

ALISON LEIGH LILLY

Nobody thinks of balance in the spring.

Even the fair flower-maiden who betrayed the king,

who asked her bright young god to stand just so — one foot

on the lip of the bath, one foot on the back of the goat,

neither inside nor outside, but on the threshold of the porch,

looking out into the rich, wet dusk between night and day —

the only way he could be killed, they say — just to prove

just how difficult it would be, how unlikely — asked him to stand

there naked in the breeze (and how he laughed so sweetly

at her fragility, her feigned concern, as if he knew) while in the secret

dark places of her heart, her lover was hiding, waiting

with the quick, dark, holy spear already in his hand.

Even then, it was not balance she was thinking of,

weighing duty against desire, passion against love,

the freedom of power against the freedom of joy — No,

it was only the rough hands of her lover pushing her soft body

into the soil, the tawdry mess of springtime thrumming

through her, every pulse of blood a petal, parting lips and parting

hips in welcome and the tangle of limbs like branches breaking

into bloom — it was her coming home again to herself,

the ninefold elements that made her with their noisy dance

of making, in which there is no privileged, pregnant pause

from which to say, This moment, this breath: center here, and stay.

Nobody thinks of balance in the spring.

Even the god-king with his half-bright body wholly open

and exposed to the whipping winds of March, who laughed

so sweetly that his innocence itself became a shield

to guard his heart, even as he stood before the howling

spear approaching, and thought, Yes, this is good,

there can only be so much life that we can bear.

MAKE GARLANDS AND NECKLACES OF MY FLOWERS

MICHAEL ROUTERY

March’s green studded with a cosmos

of your suns, petals thick and furry,

a child’s gold, shining teeth of miniature lions

jousting on emerald banners of fairy queens

and yet at night how quickly you fade

in the birch cup bled of your gold, in

pale and withdrawn mood, for plucked once

you will not reopen. I don’t have that hope

but on the lawn you will sustain another morning

casting yourself in weird symmetry with the great

ball of fire round which we ever revolve;

reviver of tired spirits, I drink you in warming

my fingertips on a chill morning, juvenescent and

singing lightly of forgotten lines of communion

between heaven and earth, between

worlds seen and unseen. How sad those that think

you but a weed, you who adorn a Goddess,

Brigid thrice blessed!

NORTH: A RAGNAROK

TRISTAN BEITER

A wolf grows larger as you go north.

Fenrir rises; joints pop and crackle,

slow, pounding, heavy on the ice.

As his eyes open, steel green and frozen,

---

ice-gray merfolk flash their knife-nails

through the necks of polar bears,

staining pelts brown and scarlet and hot,

oceanic vampires, as much bear

---

as the bears they kill. They live

in a city of lamentations — Ninety

is rising and rising and rising and rising

and the rising waters lift ninety small icebergs

---

from their beds. The merfolk wait for steel

and ice to get acquainted, the screech

and scream of breaking, an agonized

echo of merspeech and the walrus-tusk horns

---

that signal war and the approach of

Jormungard. They know what surfaces

from deep, that death is rising ninety times

over as the Serpent wakes and the seafloor creaks

---

dirges played on whalebone and bear teeth.

But a wolf can freeze itself a bridge.

He stalks the city pushing into frigid air

with a name the number of wrecked

---

tankers whose oil ruins the bear-flesh.

Jormungard wraps herself

around her prey, keening

the same awful note as their fortress

---

that neither she nor her brother can break,

built as it is, of the same stone and shipwreck,

the same cold-glass blood,

as themselves.

A TRIBUTE TO THE FERRYMAN

NGO BINH ANH KHOA

Veiled from the mortal eyes, there is

A lifeless, shadow-drowned abyss

With landscapes wrapped