"What's with the red thread?" asks the cashier, eyeing my left wrist.

Och, now, there's a question and a half.

“Family reunion,” I tell her. “Bloodline kind of thing.”

When you first arrive at Grand Sabbat, they ask you the question that any witch can answer.

Respond correctly, and they knot the red thread around your wrist.

(Spun by hand it is, from the wool of a ram named Gandalf, and dyed red with sumac berries.)

I tie this knot in Old Hornie's name, aye till he fetch thee home again, they say.

It stays in place until you get home safely thereafter. (We haven't lost one yet.) They say that if you leave it on until it comes off of its own accord, he'll grant you a boon.

A rede to the wise: ask carefully.

Five weeks on and counting, I'm still wearing mine.

Even when wearing nothing else—toweling off after the shower, say—I'm wearing my red thread.

Every time that I see it, every time that I feel it, I remember.

Why are some people witches, and some not?

Easily told.

We're witches because he sires us himself, overshadowing our fathers at the moment of our conception.

Witches too, you see, have two daddies.

This year's was a Grand Sabbat memorable for its intimacy and intensity.

Now, when I'm with other thread-bearers, there's an odd kind of camaraderie among us that I can't recall from previous years. Now, proudly displaying our bound wrists, something shared, something deep and unspoken, passes between us.

And you, and you, and you were there.

Bloodline kind of thing.

Cicero derives the Latin word religio, source of our word “religion”, from re-ligere: “tie back to, bind back to.”

Aye, till he fetch thee home again.