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

“Yes, I had to check up on my boy,” she replied cheerfully.

“I was bad again, “ he said regretfully, “and did something stupid and hurt myself. I’m sorry, Grandma. I didn’t know what I was doing. I was trying to be a good boy. I don’t know how this happened to me.” He pointed at his feet.

“I know, dear,” she said. “There is someone out here, like the Vough, who doesn’t like you and he is doing things to hurt you.”

“What can I do?” he said in despair. “I’m only a little witch, even smaller than Leona.”

“There was a man, not so long ago,” she explained, “that said that the bad things that happen to people, that don’t kill them, only serve to make them stronger. Well, you‘ve always wanted to be a real hero like Davy Crocket or the Lone Ranger and all those guys, right?”

“Oh, yes,” he said with a bit too much enthusiasm, his eyes lighting from within.

“Well, my boy,” she said. “If you can get through all this mess in good shape until I can come and bring you home, you can pretty much bet that you’re going to grow up to be some kind of strong man. Don’t you think?”

“I will?” he asked with a note of wonder.

“I promise,” she said as he faded from her view and her own dreams rushed in to overtake her.

Iktome's Dance

Johnny woke up with his head feeling clearer than it had for a while. His feet were healing well and itched as the blistered skin dried and shed itself for the newer layer beneath. His bandaged feet fit his slippers alright, but it would be a couple more days until he could get them back into shoes again. He looked over his book work that Diana had brought him from school and he was appalled at the stuff he had written there. He crumpled up the paper and began his assignment afresh. He was going to show his grandmother how good he could do. School work was easy and he liked to learn new things. The more he could read, the more he could learn. He just couldn't get enough. He worked quietly in his room, until Dave looked in.

"I hope you're hungry, kiddo," Dave said, cheerfully, "I made you breakfast."

A bowl of Maypo, a glass of orange juice and a couple slices of toast and jam later, the world around Johnny shifted into a subtler gear. By this time his mother looked in on him.

"Hey, Sonshine," his mother said, "Why don't you get something on those feet and get out to the patio for some air for a while so I can clean your room and make this bed." He put his slippers on over the bulky white socks and went out into the backyard.

"Aren't you a little young for this?" asked a small voice in the leaves climbing the patio trellis.

"Who are you, in there?" he asked, trying to peer through the leaves.

"I am Iktome, the Spider," said a handsome, fat tarantula, stepping forward.

"What am I too young for?" Johnny asked, standing back a little ways.

"You are too young and too pale to be a Mescalero brave," Iktome said. "Or of any of the other tribes I can think of. What tribe or clan are you from?"

"I'm a Celt," he said, "of my grandma's witch clan."

"I've never heard of them," the Spider said. "Still, far away tribe or not, you are much too young for this quest."

"Quest?" he asked in amazement. "I love quests. Our most famous heroes did quests. I want to be a hero someday. Grandma says I will be a very strong one if I live through all the bad stuff."

"Then you must dance," said the Spider.

"Dance?" he asked. "Dance for what?"

"Yes, dance," Iktome said irritably. "Didn't your medicine man explain to you how any of this works? Braves older and stronger than yourself have died on vision quests, and you get left out here with no instruction on how to dance? What kind of witch clan do you come from, boy?"

"We're good witches," he insisted, "and I can dance good too. Everybody in my neighborhood says so."

"The little sun headed brave is a witch too?" Iktome asked, laughing.


"I'm still learning from my grandma," he said defensively. "She's our clan matriarch."

"Hoka hey, a witch warrior," the Spider exclaimed. "and so young and small. It is too much what they expect of you. You probably don't even have a death song. I shall sing you one, myself."

"You sing for me," he commanded, "and I will dance my dance. I will live and I will be strong as my grandma said so. You sing, Spider, and you will see."

He danced as Iktome sang. First, the Spider sang in the pulse of a beating heart, and as Johnny's dance swelled with his zest of life, the handsome arachnid quickened the pace until he was dancing a merry, eight legged, jig along with Johnny under the patio trellis. Stomping, whirling, leaping and strutting, not many braves had ever danced with such a wild medicine as this!

* * *

Dave watched Lorry put the finishing touches on Johnny's bedroom. It was good he got outside, as the room was beginning to smell of a boy cooped up too long. She brought the tray with the empty bowl and juice glass into the kitchen to put in the sink.

"Did he eat all of his breakfast?" he asked.

"It looks like it," she said. "I sent him out back for a while. He could use some fresh air and his feet seem to be less tender for walking."

"I'll say so," Dave said, peering at the spectacle out the back window.

"What's happening out there?" she asked, moving closer to see.

"The idiot is dancing his fool butt off out there," he said.

"This can't be good," Lorry said, pushing her way out the back door.

Dave watched from the window, as Johnny continued dancing energetically and completely oblivious to his mother's abrupt presence in the back yard. As she approached the patio, the sight of something scurrying in large circles on the flagstones gave her pause to return with all speed to the safety of the house. Upon seeing the instantaneous conversion of a concerned mother to a wild eyed, thrashing harridan on a collision course with himself, Dave threw open the back door and stepped back to allow her in. He continued backing up, as her forward momentum remained unchanged upon entering the living room and both of them tumbled over the hassock onto the couch as he struggled to calm her down.

"My God, woman," he shouted. "Get a hold of yourself. What has gotten into you?"

"Spiders!" she said breathlessly. "There's huge spiders dancing on the patio."

"What?" he said, looking about for any sign of arachnid activity. "Have you been eating the boy's Maypo?"

"No, I haven't," she said in exasperation, "and what does that have to do with anything?"

"Nothing," he said, a little too quickly. "Nothing at all. I was just wondering if you were becoming as loony as he was?"

"Listen, there are tarantulas all over the patio," she said, with a shiver of disgust, "and he's out there dancing like a maniac. He may have been bitten. Now, you go out there and get him."

"What?" he asked incredulously. "Oh, you've got to be kidding me. The kid boils his feet and I take him to the hospital, and as his feet get better, he dances in a nest of tarantulas and I have to go get him. That kid is going to be the death of me."

"If you don't get out there," Lorry screamed hysterically, "and get him away from those spiders, I'm going to be the death of you!" She emphasized her point by hefting a table lamp as a club.

Dave swallowed hard, grabbed a golf club and headed out the back door into pandemonium. The back yard was rapidly filling up with tarantulas, snakes, ravens and all sorts of vermin. Johnny was still dancing about like a little maniac. When the boy whirled and locked eyes with him, standing with his golf club in hand, his whole world shifted into another gear. A strange music filled the back yard and the spiders were stomping to its rhythm, and the boy continued his wild dance, never once losing eye contact. Dave's knees began shaking and he moved his feet forward to try and get control of his terrified joints. Looking down, there were spiders dancing about him and he high stepped, picking his feet up higher to avoid contact with the arachnids. The music was taking him in its rhythm and his hips and shoulders began moving of their own. He forced himself to stop and not