Today is the Celtic festival of Imbolc, known to some as Candlemas, or St. Brigid’s Day. Large North American rodents also figure in celebrations of the day. It is a day for renewal in darkness and prophecy. Being the first to draw water from a well or start the fire on the hearth was reputed to give a young girl a vision of the man she was to marry.

As my gift to you, here is an excerpt from “The Ren Faire at the End of the World” which shows an Imbolc meeting in a graveyard.

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Marc followed the trail through the slush left by yellow-suited crime scene technicians. In one of the older quarters of the Arcanum cemetery, yellow police tape was strung from yew tree to yew tree to cordon off the ruins of the Stone family mausoleum. Photographers and deputies slipped under the tape going back and forth.

Brenwyn stood at the outskirts of the activity, wrapped in a gray woolen cloak. She was poised as if listening carefully to something no one else could hear. As Marc came up beside her, he could see that her eyes were closed.

“I should have known that we’d wind up in a graveyard at some point,” he said.

“We all do,” she replied, her eyes still closed.

“Cheery.” He sighed. A graveyard is a tough room for comedy. “Picking up anything on your radar? Besides the police calls, that is?”

Brenwyn opened her eyes. They were a flat grey today that nearly matched her cloak. The three vertical scars on her cheek seemed even darker against her olive skin for some reason. She drew closer to Marc.

“There is something behind this, something that goes back before Jeremiah’s death,” the young witch said. “It is vast and dark and hidden.”

“Isn’t that pretty much what ‘Arcanum’ means?”

He at least got a lopsided smile out of her for his efforts.

“Do you know what today is?” she asked.

Marc did some quick calculations in his head.

“Our three-and-a-half-month anniversary?”

“Possibly.” She acknowledged that with a nod. “It is also Imbolc today.”

“And that is?”

“One of the eight Great Sabbats, it is a time of renewal after Midwinter,” she said. “You would know it as Groundhog’s Day.”

“So, there’s a chance that we’ll go through this morning over and over again?”

“Not likely. But Jeremiah did say something about the groundhog seeing his shadow this year.”

Marc knew that the last message from Brenwyn’s ex was just a trick of modern phone technology, recorded as he stood with the noose around his neck and left on her answering machine two weeks later, but the thought of that little Goth weasel coming back from the dead still made his skin crawl. There was only one rational response:

“Rat’s ass.”

“Rat’s ass, indeed.”