Devil Dead by Linda Ladd Page B

them anywhere at all.”
    â€œYes, my precious one, they are always with you. It is time that you learned about our religion and what we believe. It has gone by many names before. But we call it Wicca, and we, you and I, are true-born Wiccans. Those outsiders who are uninformed about our religion and know nothing about us, they like to call us witches, but we are not witches. We are good and never hurt anybody. Others who believed as we do came before us, long before we ever walked on this earth. They worshipped in a faraway and magical place called England.”
    â€œWitches are bad and hurt people and have ugly warts on their noses and wear black robes and are wicked.”
    â€œSome of that is true. But we are not witches. We are good people. We only do positive things. That’s because we follow the Wiccan Rede. Would you like to hear what it says?”
    The little girl smiled and nodded, eager to learn about these strange gods and goddesses that were all around them, even if they couldn’t ever see them. She wished she could see them. She bet they were very beautiful creatures, like angels or fairies with white hair and white robes.
    Mommy smiled as if very pleased and hugged her child’s back tighter against her. “The Wiccan Rede says this, my love: ‘An it harm none, do what ye will.’ What do you think that means, sweet child of mine?”
    The little girl thought about it for a moment. “I think that means that if we don’t hurt anybody or do anything wrong, then we can do whatever we want. Is that it?”
    Mommy smiled again. “Very good, my love. We never hurt anybody, never do harm to anyone. We just pray to the spirits of the rivers, and trees, and bayou, and commune with their spirits and the spirits of the animals that we hunt for our food and livelihood.”
    â€œWill you teach me, Mommy?”
    â€œOf course, I will. But you must never tell anyone what we do out here in the Sanctuary. You must never tell anyone that you are a Wiccan. Do you understand me, dear one? People around here don’t understand us. They will think we are evil like the bad witches you’ve seen in your storybooks. But we are good Wiccans. We follow the right path, the path of good.”
    â€œI won’t tell anybody. I promise.”
    â€œThat’s a good girl. We will have our spirit names, too, child. From this day forward, I will call you Diana and you will call me Luna. Only the two of us will know these secret names. We will pray together, and I will teach you all the rituals, just like your Gram taught me, and her Gram taught her.”
    The little girl nodded, okay with being Diana. It was prettier than her real name. But she really didn’t understand what Mommy was talking about. Nothing was making much sense to her, but that was okay, everything was just always so hard for her to understand. She always just forgot what she learned and had to learn it all over again. She sure did hope that her mommy wouldn’t go into one of her quick rages or start crying so hard that she couldn’t stop until she fell exhausted onto her bed.
    Right now, in this place, inside the Sanctuary, Mommy was very calm and happy, and that’s the way Diana liked her to be. Truth was, she kinda did like all this new stuff she was learning, but right now she was cold and shivering. She’d rather take her regular kind of bath instead of sitting in cold milk. She liked the tub with the claw feet up in their bathroom and the nice warm water running out of the tap and making lots of bubbles from her Mickey Mouse bubble bath. She wondered if the milk would make her skin turn white. Mommy’s skin was really white; maybe it was because of sitting in milk all night.
    â€œNow we will get out and I will perform the ritual of Beltane. You will not remember this, but you had your Wiccaning when you were a little tiny baby. Gram performed it for you, but now that you know