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

said defensively. “Except for that watchful eye of his, ..Oh look, his hand is black where he grabbed my crucifix when I changed him last. I never guessed it was so tarnished.”

Emma licked her thumb and rubbed the mark off the baby’s hand. She figured that the crucifix wasn’t tarnished until the boy had touched it. Creatures of the darkside and silver don’t mix well. Without loving guidance, his inclination would be that of the dark Sidhe. He was smiling and his gaze never left her eyes. More than ever, her heart tugged for the child.

“I’ll come to visit him as I can, if it’s alright,” she said. “When his mother is ready, we’ll be down to start whatever proceedings are required. Will that be okay?”

The nun looked genuinely relieved. Johnny even smiled at her when she took him back from his grandmother. Emma hated to part from him. She promised she would come back soon to visit and play with him. As the nun put the baby back in his crib, he rolled onto his back and grabbed his toes and rocked and laughed.

“Gamma love it,” He chortled and rocked happily.

She had to leave quickly or never leave at all.

* * *

It took her another five months to convince Lorry and the rest of the family to retrieve the baby. She had to stay away from drinking in excess, which wasn’t really a problem now that she had priorities. There were always spirits in the house, to be used with various home remedies. She simply had no need for them and a much greater need to help her grandson. Her daughters in the craft were adamant that the child was a cursed thing whose entire, if short lived existence, was to bring sorrow, death and destruction. They could not be swayed. Fortunately, they had husbands and lives of their own. Their favorite pastime was divining who of them would bear the next clan matriarch. They didn’t agree on that either.

As the family wasn’t Catholic, the baby would not be baptized as such. They would have to prove they were able to care for the child. Lorry, being the birth mother, had uncontestable rights to her son. Interestingly enough, it was Lorry who argued privately with her, over the care and raising of the child. She feared that it was beyond her abilities to do. Emma laughed and insisted that she had an experienced, built in babysitter in her own mother. She wouldn’t dream of letting anyone else raise the boy. She reminded Lorry that she had already raised a fine Johnny of her own. Against the sisters’ wishes, Emma had every intention of raising this boy in the family craft. As she was undoubtedly the next wisest in line of her deceased mother, no one could overrule her. She was matriarch until the next adept was born. That might be another three generations down the line for them to wait, because the male child, soon to be in her custody, was very much an adept. He needed to be trained or risk being consumed by his own power. It was just a little scary, how much force of presence that baby boy had. She would have to be strong for the both of them. The will and the word of a witch were unbreakable.
Lorry took some time to convince, and Emma did so very gently. Lorry loved Lee very much, and she could never reconcile what he really was, with what she saw. Emma empathized, because she too, was bespelled by Lee’s Otherworld charm. Had she not loved her husband Edward so much, she would have fought her own daughter for the young man’s attentions. Not that she thought she had a chance, it was just how overwhelming the charm was.

* * *

Eventually, Emma got Lorry to go with her to visit the baby at St. Brigit’s. As it was a particularly dark and stormy day, Emma worried that Lorry would equate this with her experience with Lee. There was a moment when her heart turned to ice, when they got to the baby’s crib to find him looking out at the storm. The dark clouds and occasional flashes of lightning reflected in his calm eyes. When he was aware of his grandmother’s presence, it was cheerful blue eyes that turned to the women and a cherubic smile.

“Gamma love it?” he asked merrily.

“Grandma loves Johnny.” Emma smiled and held out her arms to him.

Just to be sure things were all right, she discreetly touched his arm with his silver amulet. There was no sign of tarnishing. Emma was silently relieved. There would be no problem introducing him to his mother.

“Johnny?” she said as the boy looked at her expectantly. “Grandma brought your mommy with her to see you.”

The boy looked at Lorry and then back at her.

“Come closer, Lorry, and meet your adorable son,” she insisted. “This is Mommy,” she cooed to the baby and then handed him over to Lorry, who looked as if she might cry.

“You love it?” The baby took Lorry’s cheeks and pulled her forehead to his and looked into her eyes.

“I love it very, very much,” Lorry gushed and held him tightly.

Emma's New Family

Emma circled the herd of mustangs on her great bay stallion, watching the progress of the unicorn foal in their midst. A lovely, dapple gray mare had accepted the strange, silvery white foal as her own. The unicorn was gamboling around the pasture as happy as any child at play. In the distance a long, serpentine column of smoke wound its way into the gray skies of the Otherworld. On a nearby hill a winged man in bright silver armor touched down lightly and began removing armor and weapons. In this realm, such things were rare, but not terribly so. What was strange, was the angelic vision looked to be but a youth in the early stages of manhood. Downy, dark hair graced a noble chin, and he was dressed as a postal worker, complete with a brown leather mail pouch over one broad shoulder. The gleam of a zealot lit his blue eyes as he strode towards the herd. She dug her heels in her great mount, to intercept the intruder.

“And who might you be?” she demanded.

“I am George,” he said simply.

“What are your intentions for this herd?” she queried.

“For the herd; nothing,” he replied. “I am here to help protect the unicorn.”

“The wolves are gone,” Emma observed. “What will you help protect him from?”

“From the dragon, of course,” he said, glancing back to the smoke rising on that distant hill.
Emma looked too. The twisting column of smoke had taken on the form of a great, black writhing wyrm with fiercely glowing eyes.

“I think you should have kept your armor on,” she said, uneasily.

“No man approaches a unicorn, dressed for battle without the unicorn’s permission," George replied matter-of-factly. "I have to introduce myself first, lest he destroy me as surely as the dragon would.” He walked past Emma and her mount, straight into the herd.
The gray mare was enjoying the attention of the herd stallion, and the foal was rolling in the grass alone, as the young man approached.

“George,” the baby squealed delightedly and startled Emma awake in her rocking chair. Little Johnny had been home for almost six months now. He would be two years old by the end of this month. He was playing contentedly in his playpen while Emma sat nearby, doing needlework and dozing occasionally. His ruckus had roused her, but he seemed in no present danger. As she had been trained to do, she reviewed the dream sequence in her mind, before its memory could fade. Did the foal, or the baby say ’George’? No matter, they were one in the same, the dream and the real. “As above, so below,” the adage went. It would seem, that besides herself, the child would have an additional protector. She was a formidable woman, rather tall and thin, a touch of silver mixed into to her iron black hair and eyes, was the single testimony to her age being in her early fifties. Nothing seemed threatening at the moment, but she was a worthy witch, who knew things were rarely what they seemed at first glance.

“Well, young man.” She stood and stretched. “It’s high time that you and I load up your stroller and visit your mommy with some lunch.”

A thermos of potato soup and some biscuits were the fare of the day, as she packed Johnny in his stroller for the three block trek to Speedy’s Dry Cleaners, where Lorry worked. It was a fine day for a walk. Some of the neighbors were out on their porches, calling greetings to passers by. Johnny seemed to have his favorites among them. Who’d figure any child would like grumpy old Ian MacGregor? But Johnny called him “Uncle Scotty” and would watch for him as he passed his porch to call out to him. His very favorite person, was most understandable, a heavy set negro woman, named Geraldine Smith, who had grandchildren of her own. Her warm smile and kind heart would