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

we‘ll see. Kano, being the rune of Opening, tells me the entrance is that way.” She pointed in the direction they came as the field or the road were no longer visible to them.

“So, all spells aren’t magick?” Leona asked, looking a little more comfortable in the normalcy of being taught her skills.

“Almost no spells are really magick, dear,” she said. “Anything people don’t understand, to them, is magick. The way a light bulb lights a room. How a radio or television make sound and pictures from so far away. It’s all magick and none of it is. When you understand why something works and make it do so, to some, it is magick, but to you, it is merely another craft. In a strange place, how would you keep from getting lost?”

“Maybe do like Hansel and Gretel did and leave a trail of breadcrumbs?” Leona guessed.

“Ah, but that didn’t work,” she said. “Birds ate the breadcrumbs and they got lost anyway. They also wasted valuable food, and we might have to be here a while. Johnny remembers landmarks by names he gives faeries of that area. This stone he might call ‘Frumpy,’ and he knows that several yards to Frumpy’s right is the trail entrance. But neither of us knows the spirits of this land, nor can we trust they will help us in any way. So, I’m relying on an Indian trick my father taught me by marking my trail in subtle ways like setting up sticks and stones to point my directions and leave me clues should I have to pass this way again. You can tell that this sharpened stick didn’t break off and just happen to fall there. The rune was my own personal touch and if Johnny comes by this way, he’ll know what it means too.”


“Now I understand what my mom meant when she said you make your own luck,” Leona said. “I thought it was in a potion or something.”

“That too.” She winked. “Now, let’s get moving and every few hundred feet or so, we’ll mark our trail.”

Emma coped with the panic that threatened to well up in her by keeping her mind focused on the steps she could make towards progress, instead of the things she had no control over. When she had done all she was capable of, she rested in the thought that she had done her level best and that more could not be expected. She didn’t fear for Johnny’s immediate safety because madwoman, though the Vough may be, she had a use for the Sidhe boy and needed him alive. This gave her time to close the distance and find a means to rescue her grandson. She didn’t give in to fear. Like the Itch, in her mind it was the Vough who needed to be afraid for her safety. Very much.

The day grew steadily darker and Emma began looking for a shelter to spend the night. A rocky outcropping of slate and shale below a ridge they had crossed appeared to be their best bet for the night. On a large, flat slab of slate along the trail she scratched Eolh, the crow’s foot shaped rune of Protection so that it faced her resting place. Her and Leona then gathered all the dry wood and kindling they could find, into a pile next to the rock overhang they occupied for the night. Being in a wooded hollow, it would be out of the wind. Not that there was any. Using the kitchen matches, she built a campfire at the entrance to their stone shelter and together they ate fried egg sandwiches and washed them down with a few swallows of water from the skin bag. They huddled together, with their backs to the rock face and listened to the crackle of the fire and the night sounds in the forest beyond.

“I keep thinking of Johnny,” Leona said. “Out in these spooky woods all alone and afraid.”

“I know what you mean, sweetie,” she said. “If it will help you rest any easier, he is probably neither of those things.”

“How so?” Leona asked.

“For one,” she explained. “Whatever coaxed him into these woods is with him, to get him where they’re going. The Vough wants him alive. For two, Johnny is not afraid of things he doesn’t understand. He’s much too curious. If he saw a real, fire breathing dragon, he would be too fascinated to run away. The last thought through his silly little head would probably be something like: I wonder what he does to make the fire come out like that?”

“He spent a whole afternoon watching ants carrying a dead bee to their hole,” Leona interjected. “He knew they weren’t going to get that big thing down that little hole, so he watched while they took it apart and carried it down, piece by piece.”

“And no doubt,” Emma said. “He was satisfied at the end of all that, that he knew how they done it. I would always tell him: ’Curiosity killed the cat.’ and he would reply: ’Satisfaction brought him back,’ with that mischievous smile of his. He will miss us as much as we miss him. But he is probably safer from danger than we are right now. We should try to get some sleep so we can go after him at first light.”

Part way through what was only a fitful sleep, Emma was startled by the sounds of rocks sliding down the slope she was camped on, and the sounds of clawed feet scrabbling for a purchase on the loose talus. Quickly she tossed a few dry sticks in the dying fire and watched as the light flared back up fully. Several sets of red eyes winked at her out of the inky blackness. A dark form made a little progress up the slope to her and came within the lighted boundaries of her campfire and she could see what she was dealing with.

"Rats!" she shouted, rousing Leona from her sleep.

They were rats the size of beagles. They tried throwing stones at the large crawling rodents, but it would only be a short time before they would be too tired. She needed to find a way to discourage them. A means to make attaining this cliff the least attractive idea in their greedy little minds.

"Are you scared?" she asked Leona.

"Yes," Leona admitted, tossing a saucer sized piece of slate at a rat.

"Good. Don't waste that feeling," she said. "Send it out to them."

"I'll try, Grandma," Leona said, sobbing.

"Don't try. Just do it." Emma tossed a couple firebrands down on the rocky slope, and touched an ember to the back of Leona's hand.

"Ow!" Leona whined. "What's that for?"

"Remember, if you can feel it, you can send it. Send them the pain from that too," she said. "Fire, smoke and pain are things they understand and fear."

The forward progress of the rats trying to climb up to them was halted. It was easier for them to sit in their overhang, behind the fire and send fear and burning pain to anything they became aware of scrabbling through the loose talus slope. Within the hour, the rats had left for easier victuals elsewhere. Anywhere else. Morning came, cold and gray, with a little bit of fog. A few more sticks in the fire warmed them, and a quick breakfast of an acorn muffin apiece and a couple swallows of the invigorating sassafras brew got them on their way.

The Dark March

"Lost, lost" came the pitiful crying.

Johnny tried peering through the hedge, but he just couldn't see what was making that sound. He walked to the opening where the walkway met the road in front of the house, hoping to spot the creature that needed help. Glancing back at his grandmother and cousin, they were busy trying to get into the front of Elvyra's house, so he took it upon himself to just peek around the hedge to see if there was something he might do to help some little person in need. He wouldn't go very far.

About thirty feet down the road along the hedge, a shaggy little creature was limping away from him and across the road, whimpering its lament of being lost. It looked like it might be injured as well. Perceiving that the entity was certainly not human, and probably some fae creature he had not met as yet, he tried calling out to it in the manner of the pixies he knew.

Picturing himself and his grandmother holding and nurturing the shaggy individual he projected the scene at its back as he followed it across the road and through the field towards the twisted woods. He was about to enter the wooded trail when it occurred to him that his grandmother might not approve if he strayed too far out of sight.

He turned to call out to her, but in so doing, he discovered he couldn't see the house, the road or the hedge. He couldn't have gone so far. He hadn't walked very long. Just across the road a little. Where could the house have gone? The house was a strange one. Existing here, but not there. It wasn't a thing that could be trusted, so he tried reaching out from his heart to find his grandma and his cousin, but he couldn't