Witch Clan: Matriarchs, John Stormm [great reads txt] 📗

Who?" Leona asked.

"Elvyra," Johnny replied as though it were all normal to him. "She's not really our auntie. I was being polite. Grandma likes that and she hates it." He giggled mischievously.

"She sounds dangerous," she said.

"Grandma says never let her get her hands on you," he said, sitting next to her. "Don't worry, George and everybody likes you. We'll protect you from that wicked ol' witch." Leona sat on the bench and looked around in awe. Would she now wake up in a strange bed to find she had been dreaming?


Witch Blade

Emma arose and wound her way to the kitchen to find Willard had arisen at the crack of dawn and made the coffee. That in itself was not unusual. Nor was it strange that Johnny was not in his room but out in her garden, probably communing with the faeries. What was unusual was that Leona was out there with him so early in the morning after such a long day yesterday. The lass was never known to be a morning person. She peered out the back window and found the cousins were quietly sitting on the bench in her garden having an animated discussion of gods knew what. She grabbed a skillet and some leftover boiled potatoes from the fridge, then dropped a dollop of bacon grease in the skillet as it heated. She took her long knife with her as she walked out to the garden for some fresh chives to go with breakfast.

"My, you two are certainly up early today," she said to the children as she sliced off a sprig of chives.

"I wanted Leona to meet the pixies," Johnny volunteered.

"And did you get to meet any pixies, Leona?" she asked.

"Grandma," Leona asked. "Did you ever have a dream while you were awake, or while you were asleep and thought you were awake?"

"I know exactly what you mean, sweetie." She smiled at the children. "But somehow, I'm pretty sure you didn't dream what you thought you were dreaming."

"Elvyra is real?" Leona asked.

Emma stood and looked over her shoulder.

"Elvyra was here?" she asked.

"Don't worry, Grandma," Johnny boasted using his cowboy voice. "Me and George sent that varmint packin'."

"Speak respectfully of your elders, Son," she admonished. "Did she say what she was doing here?"

"She said she wanted to get a good look at the two of us who crossed over into her realm," Leona said. "Like she owned your backyard or something, and Johnny and George made her leave like he said."

"I've got breakfast going into the skillet," Emma replied nervously. "You two need to come in and get washed and we'll talk some more about this when your Grandpa leaves for work. I don't want him fretting over something he can do nothing about."

* * *

She didn't like serving the children strong beverages, but Leona had been up since well before dawn. Her granddaughter looked as if she needed the stimulating effects of a cup of black tea with some milk. Johnny had the energy of any three children but she couldn't let him feel left out. She put more milk than tea in his cup and they all had tea with some toast and jam.

"Did we do anything wrong out there this morning, Grandma?" Leona asked, looking askance at her little cousin. Johnny was licking jam from his fingers and trying hard not to be messy.

"Not that I can think of, sweetie," Emma replied. "I remember my mother could crossover. Elvyra lives in a crossover place, and I knew Johnny could crossover. I didn't know he could take anybody with him though. You and Grandma have to try that little trick of yours sometime, Son."

"Wanna go see the faeries, Grandma?" he asked, looking like he would go right now.

"Not quite yet, honey," she calmed him. "But we'll try it real soon. I want to know what Elvyra's so all fired possessive about there to call it her realm. Is that the word she used?"

"Yes, ma'am," Leona said. "And she called Johnny a little gate master and said if you weren't careful we just might disappear, and then she disappeared. What kind of witch is she, Grandma?"

"The worst kind, sweetie," she said. "The kind that doesn't care about anything or anyone but what they can get for themselves. Sooner or later the Threefold Law catches up with them no matter how long they think they can stop it from happening."

"So when it all comes back on her, it's going to be really, really bad." Leona surmised.

"That's right, dear," she said. "You might not know all the spells and have quite the power, but you're turning into a brighter witch than her already." Her granddaughter blushed at the compliment.

"I'm helping her, Grandma," Johnny said proudly, looking up from his teacup.

"That you are, boyo," she said. "You make sure she learns how to stay safe too. Don't the two of you crossover without your Grandma in tow. Eventually, we are going to have to take a little hike to the woods to pick up a few necessities and pay that wily witch a little visit."

"Are you gonna thrash her, Grandma?" Johnny asked with a little too much enthusiasm.

"I certainly hope not," she replied, appalled at the idea. "Listen well, youngsters: It is a serious thing when witches war among themselves. As you can see, the world is not particularly friendly with us as they don't understand our ways. If we don't look out for each other, we are in grave danger. Elvyra has said some things, that on the surface would appear to be threatening. She is a very powerful adept and it would be foolish of me to go charging after her in offense, when perhaps no offense was actually given."

"But she said--" Leona started.

"I know what she said, dear," she interrupted her granddaughter with a finger raised. "But with many people, words can mean many things. Perhaps she was warning of something she had foreseen through scrying, or maybe she has something not so nice in mind. But we should not persecute her simply because we want to believe the worst in her or we are as bad as the folks who hate and fear witches, and we bring the worst aspects of the Threefold Law upon our own heads."

"I hadn't thought of that," Leona said contritely.

"Ooooh, bad thing," Johnny agreed with a solemn shake of his head.


* * *


For once, Emma arose before Willard would stir. Today she would meet Johnny's fae friends. She got dressed, gathered some salt, a small china bowl, a fruit jar with some cream, her witch’s long knife belted under her apron and went to awaken Johnny who was already dressed and sitting quietly on the side of his bed waiting for her. They went out through the back door of the summer kitchen into the garden. Emma took her box of salt and spoke her prayers and invocations to the four quarters and tossed a dash of salt into each to cleanse the area of any unwanted influences. Figuring her grandson’s proclivity for faery folk, she poured a generous splash of sweet cream into the china bowl on a central stone in the middle of her garden and then used her knife to scratch runes of blessing and protection on the posts of her fence.

As she carved, yet another piece of the brittle iron blade chipped off the home made atheme. Her father had made it for her many years ago when she was but a little older than Leona. He heated and hammered the twelve inch, double edged blade out of an old worn out file. He carved the handle from a piece of white oak and burned her name into it with a magnifying glass in the sunlight and made the sheath out of a scrap piece of cowhide. It was a homely old thing, but she treasured it for the memory of her father who was so accepting of her mother’s foreign ways as a Celtic witch woman. She was thinking she had best retire the old relic to a chest and get herself a proper atheme, but it would be like leaving an old friend behind.

The sun was nearing the horizon and the twilight time beginning. In the old days past, it was known that the between times and between places were the best used for certain magickal operations because then the veil was thinnest between the Otherworld and this one. She nodded to Johnny that he could begin his procedure.

He stood towards the middle of the garden and leaned back his head with his eyes closed and held out his arms from his sides as he turned himself counter clockwise. Fireflies that had been winking intermittently in the hedges near the back of the yard came forward and swarmed over him and lit him up like a Christmas tree. For only a moment, they stayed with him before they spiraled up and away as the ambient light of the