Witch Clan: Matriarchs by John Stormm (best beach reads of all time TXT) 📖

to worship one?"

"Well, chances are that no one would let you live long enough to explain that little fact to them." Emma drained the hot water from the potatoes and pulled a large bowl from the cupboard to mash them in. "They would only believe you were lying to deceive them and steal their righteous souls anyway. So the first step would be to try and starve you out of their community."

"I get it," she supplied. "So we'd go and get our food from the woods so we wouldn't starve, right?"

"That's right," Emma said. "But that wouldn't be the end of it. When everyone was poor and hungry and we failed to starve to death, it was assumed that we were using our dark arts to conjure our food, and stealing away fat little babies to eat."

"That's awful," she said, shocked. "That's like that Hansel and Gretel story where the witch puts them in the oven."

"Exactly," her grandmother said, adding milk and a lump of butter to the potatoes as she mashed them. "The early church, after it got a foothold in the land, spread all kinds of evil stories about us so that people would obey them and not return to the old ways. Where once having a witch around to counsel the king and deliver the babies and heal the sick was a good thing, now everything that happened that was bad was because God was angry at the witch in their midst. So many of us were forced to go into hiding, and we hid in the wilderness where superstitious people feared to go, or we hid in the cities and never let on who or what we were."

"So that's why we're not permitted to talk about this stuff to outsiders," she surmised aloud.

"And it's also why you're learning herbs, medicines and wild foods as part of your craft," the older woman added. "Because if and when it should ever happen again, you will not starve or get sick because no one will care for you. Danu takes care of her own."

"The Danu of the Tuatha De Danaans?" Leona brightened.

"It means 'the people of Danu' in the Old Language," she said. "There's even a river named after her in Europe."

"Would that be the blue Danube?" she asked. "Like in the waltz?"

"One and the same." Emma covered the mashed potatoes and grabbed her pot holders for the meatloaf. "Before our ancestors fled the Romans to the British Isles, we lived throughout most of Central Europe. In some places, the Old Ways are still practiced today by people the Roman Empire never got around to completely ruling."

"So there are more of us than just us?" Leona asked.

"And where once we shared our wisdom with the kings of the earth," Emma said, covering the meatloaf. "We survive now by keeping our secrets to ourselves."

"That's sad," she said. "I learned in school how some people are starving in some places in the world. We could help them better than the Christians."

"Well, even so," her grandmother said. "That would depend upon how much of their land is blighted. Sometimes even the wild food and medicine is affected in a drought."

Willard came into the kitchen carrying a brown paper sack like a prize. Known for his sweet tooth, he often brought home a treat for after dinner.

"Save a little room," he said cheerfully. "I brought some ice cream for dessert." He opened the fridge and pushed the quart container into the icebox.

"We can all have homemade root beer floats," Emma said.

With Johnny's help, Leona set the table for dinner. They spread out the tablecloth and set the bowls heaped with mashed potatoes and acorn biscuits beside the vegetable and mushroom laced meatloaf and the sulfur shelf gravy on top of it. The place settings were added and Willard said a brief word of thanks, then everybody dug in.

"This tastes like white meat chicken," Leona remarked at the piece of sulfur shelf dangling from her fork and popping it into her mouth.

"Not surprising," said Willard. "My brothers and I used to call that stuff 'chicken-o-the-woods' when my mom used to send us out to find it."

"Your mom was a witch?" she asked wide eyed.

"Not likely." Willard shook his head. "My folks were good Christian folk and we were very poor. Back during the Great Depression there wasn't a lot of money and few jobs. When you got enough for a little bit of meat on the table, you stretched it as far as you could, like this meatloaf here. My mom used to stretch hers with a lot of bread, but your grandma uses acorns with vegetables and mushrooms. You almost don't know she didn't use much meat at all."

"I like it like this," she said.

"It's yummy," Johnny agreed.

"Being poor never tasted so good." Willard laughed gruffly.

"We're poor?" Johnny asked.

"No, silly," Leona chided affectionately. "If you were poor, you wouldn't have all this neat stuff and a nice house and the TV and all."

"Oh," said Johnny, still looking like he didn't understand.

With dinner finished and the dishes washed and put away, Johnny took the garbage out to the shed. Her grandmother and Willard pulled out a glass gallon jug of sassafras brew from the fridge and shook it up until it made a fine pinkish froth on top. Leona brought over the soda mugs and helped pour each of them a tall mug of the brew. It was further sweetened with a scoop of the vanilla ice cream that Willard brought home and they retired to the living room to watch "The Honeymooners" together on the television. Johnny insisted that she help him spoon a little of his into a shallow china bowl and setting it out in the garden before relaxing with the family. An extraordinary amount of fireflies lit up the backyard. All in all, it was the end of a perfect summer day.

The Itch

Emma drifted invisibly through the night time wood like a specter. The moonlight searched through the trees to the forest floor below, allowing her to recognize the trails and landmarks. Some teenaged boys had decided to camp overnight in one of the many hollows where their campfire would be hidden from any authority figures who might object to their private party in the park. There were many stories that parents would tell to keep their children from this wood at night and the truth of the matter was far more to be feared than the fiction. The boys were sharing some of these stories around their campfire.

"...and his blood stained jacket was all they ever found," a tall boy in slicked back hair and a leather jacket finished his tale of terror for his comrades.

"You've watched too many Lon Chaney movies," said a pimple faced lad with false bravado.

"I'm turning in," said another.

"You think I made that up?" the tall boy said. "You need to learn to read the papers more often."

The boys had built a couple wooden lean-tos from all the dead branches and poles available on the woodland floor. Their campfire provided most of the light as the warm summer night required no real heating. Each had brought blankets and a pack with some sandwiches and bottled soda to drink. It was just to be an overnighter to impress their other friends with their bravery. The sound of something heavy snapped a large dry branch over the ridge of the hollow and the boys looked at each other with wide questioning eyes.

"Tim? Mikey? Is that youse?" the pimple faced boy called out. "C'mon guys, quit clownin'."

The groan and crack of splitting wood preceded the large dead tree that came crashing down the slope of the hollow. A deep throated canine howl reverberated through the campsite as the boys tore out of their makeshift bed gear in a hysterical dash for the opposite slope. A large section of log landed and crushed one of the lean-tos. Blankets and packs lay scattered as two creatures that vaguely resembled the Egyptian god, Anubis, with a hangover tramped into the vacated clearing and howled after the long fled boys.

Not fearing discovery in her spectral form, Emma followed the boys' progress through the woods and passed near where Elvyra's home intersected with the forest. Drifting closer through the trees, the clearing in the woman's backyard nemeton was bathed in silvery moonlight. The dark witch was laughing hysterically at the events she saw unfolding in her gazing bowl. Her laughter cut off suddenly as Elvyra's eyes grew wide and she looked about in near panic.

"Who's there? What do you want?" she insisted, her head snapping back and forth searching for something she couldn't see, but perceived. She tossed the liquid out of her bowl into the woods beyond and hurried back into her house, looking over her shoulder.

The forest fell silent again to the normal night sounds of crickets and owls. The jackal headed monstrosities