Jason had barely begun to direct his family into the house when Rowan arrived, no more than a half an hour later than she was meant to, so almost early by the officiant's reckoning.
Toni had met Jason in Rowan's backyard, where he was the only man to come to the peace drumming -- peace seemed to be a more feminine trait among local witches. He had not drummed and only barely sang, but he had the confidence to walk up to Toni and say hello as though they were old friends in the making. Toni liked to believe that, without drumming in Rowan's backyard or rituals at the local Universalist Unitarian church with a shot of appropriated Native American flavoring, she still would have found a way to have met Jason. She did have to admit that she couldn't figure out how. She could see the individual fine threads of this story that could feel like destiny in the right light, but she couldn't weave them together to find him afresh.
In a sense, Rowan's professional Paganism had been the best excuse for Toni to have met the man about to become her husband. Toni didn't have the confidence to approach any man. Jason would spend their relationship doing all he could to remediate this -- the confidence, not specifically improving Toni's acumen with meeting men.
Rowan had long, sun-bleached curls with silver spirals going almost to her waist and an ambiguous ancestry that rendered her skin perpetually tan. Her hazel eyes had green flecks but never seemed to be looking directly at you, instead inches below your skin. It always made Toni uneasy as a woman who did not like making eye contact under the best of circumstances. All these seemed reason enough for Rowan to become a religious officiant, the permanent uniform of someone born to be holy and wise. To complement these, Rowan wore long, flowing clothes composed of infinite layers of gauzy scarves. She wasn't the person one called when one wanted a proper church wedding, but neither Jason nor she inclined toward proper churches. Rowan was a woman who decided one day to commit herself to an unconventional religious path and made that her life's work, succeeding where most gave up, too embarrassed or not devout enough.
Rowan's appearance now relaxed Toni. As an officiant, she sufficed. What was required of one beyond saying a pretty speech and asking the couple to admit that they wanted to marry still despite a weekend of premarital anxiety?
As a fairy godmother, Rowan could excel.
Toni wasn't sure that Rowan has been born with that name or if she had anointed herself with it once she understood that she looked enough like a Rowan to get away with it. She couldn't cut it as a Carol or a Margaret anymore. She certainly would have made a poor Cathy.
Rowan did not knock on the door. Why would she bother? Rowan could see cars enough to justify that this was a wedding, to say nothing of the large white tent looming like a gargantuan mushroom beside the house. Knocking on the door would have been a needless gesture when she was invited, as though she operated by the logic of fairies.
She burst into the kitchen in a cloudburst of scarves, patchouli, and the ghost of sage smoke. It was commanding enough that conversation dropped at once as all turned to this potential interloper, this woman who should possibly be redirected to wait under a tent with the few other early birds. (Who showed up to a wedding early?)
Rowan didn't bother introducing herself to those milling about the kitchen and living room. What would be the need for that either? They knew there would be an officiant, and she could be no one else.
Toni had practiced being a Wiccan with Rowan, finding her bravery kindled a little in a circle of witches. She only fell away from that when Rowan made her group women-exclusive and accepted that, pretty though he was, Jason irredeemably lacked the right equipment. But this flaw could be forgiven when it came to joining two people together in holy matrimony; filling her dance card only with lesbian weddings wouldn't be enough to sustain Rowan.
Toni could fathom no one else as the officiant for this ceremony, and Jason didn't bother suggesting differently -- who would they have chosen if not the witch who gave them a reason to meet?
Just as Amy took a step toward Rowan to escort her away from the wedding party, Rowan spread wide her arms in a way that was half a mystical being appearing from the ether and half cribbed from Stevie Nicks (the mistress of wearing scarves).
Amy stepped back. Rowan, despite her crunchy Earth mamma vibe, assumed an authority even Amy respected on sight.
Rowan dropped two bags on the floor, "Who is that?" She directed this question to the room, but her gaze fell first on Charlotte, who, out of habit and a few years in a private school with nuns, had ample practice trying to evade the notice of anyone charged with supposed sacredness.
"You," Rowan prompted, a sound like impatience at the edges of her words. "Who are you to this wedding?"
"Ex-fiancee?" Charlotte guessed, sounding unsure of the answer herself. Indeed, she was, her russet hair messily coifed, her mouth drawn in a worried line. A glittering of perspiration from cutting wood remained on her brow, though she was otherwise dressed again in suitable -- though not final -- clothes. Jason loved her as one could only love a lesbian ex, and she was as welcome at the wedding as any.
Rowan gave one nod as though she had already known this and was asking Charlotte to confirm. "Toni's or Jason's?"
"Jason."
She narrowed her eyes, a slight "hum" issued through her nose. "In the wedding party?"
"No."
"That's for the best, I promise you." Rowan nodded to the tent through the porch windows. "I am sure you can keep those in the tent reveling in the beauty of the day."
Charlotte, head low, left the room, whispering an apology for existing. It was the first time this weekend that Charlotte had seemed so humble, which was a sort of magic in itself.
"Anyone else unrelated to the marrying couple or who are not in the wedding party?"
Everyone else stayed put, though Toni sensed a few twitching legs that wanted to either follow Charlotte in her ignominy or dash upstairs to avoid the direction of an authoritative woman in her middle fifties.
Rowan sized up the rest as though casting a play or picking the fatted calf. She stepped toward Nathaniel.
"Best man?" she asked.
"Yes?"
"Oh, thank the Spirit," Rowan said with a sigh. She embraced him like her reunited son, despite Nathaniel's dismay, his eyes wide in a panicked request for intervention.
Jason spoke fluent "Nathaniel's worry" and with more feeling behind it. He stepped toward Nathaniel before the hug could squeeze panic from him and stood close enough that Nathaniel could slip out.
Rowan shifted her embrace to Jason, no less fervent for it.
"I thought you had brothers." Everything Rowan said had the air of stating the obvious so someone would confirm it.
Jason was good enough to meet Rowan's hug with equal energy. This was far from his first encounter with her. "I do. Over there."
Rowan released Jason without another word, stepping before his brothers. Toni tensed, expecting Rowan to pull them into a hug neither of them would want. They did not seem to have so automatically met with Rowan's approval. "Neither of you wanted to be the best man?"
"Jason did not ask us," Jim, the older, said for both of them.
Jason winced. "I didn't want either of them to feel I had picked favorites." This was not an excuse he had the previous occasion to rehearse; at no point had it occurred to Jason that one of his brothers might be his best man.
Rowan looked back at Jason, her eyes twinkling, either with love or mischief. "And you consider this man a true brother to you in a way more potent than blood." Again, said as though it were apparent, indifferent to any family drama this might have provoked on one's wedding day.
But, even if they hadn't been asked the honor of being Jason's best man, his brothers knew him well enough not to take any offense. More than that, they understood the nature of Jason and Toni's flighty friends and that this moonbat's sincerity, while accurate, was also unimportant. With the role of best man came duties neither one would want, not when they could otherwise just drink beer and have barbecue chicken.
Rowan stepped to each person in the party, making them all affirm their roles (though Jason's and Toni's parents did think it strange that they had to admit to having offspring).
Rowan wanted the lay of the land and, though she moved toward Jason or Toni to get it, Amy roused from the stupor of a higher authority and took Rowan's hand to take her to the site of the ceremony.
There was still much to do now that Rowan had been brought into the fold and refolded it. Toni slumped onto a couch.
Getting married was exhausting. Toni hoped that she would not have to do it twice.
Thomm Quackenbush is an author and teacher in the Hudson Valley. He has published four novels in his Night's Dream series (We Shadows, Danse Macabre, Artificial Gods, and Flies to Wanton Boys). He has sold jewelry in Victorian England, confused children as a mad scientist, filed away more books than anyone has ever read, and tried to inspire the learning disabled, gifted, and adjudicated. He can cross one eye, raise one eyebrow, and once accidentally groped a ghost. When not writing, he can be found biking, hiking the Adirondacks, grazing on snacks at art openings, and keeping a straight face when listening to people tell him they are in touch with 164 species of interstellar beings.