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

were no where to be seen. Emma frowned, perplexed. What was that witch up to?

* * *

The next morning, during the breakfast dream discussions, Leona voiced a barely remembered dream of large barking dogs, but no more than that. Johnny spoke of a dream where he scared some big kids into wetting their pants by pretending he was a big, mean dog. Though he and Leona giggled over that oration, given her grandson’s connection with the Otherworld, Emma didn’t like the inferences this dream gave her. Was Elvyra manipulating the boy’s darker fae nature through his dreams to create wraiths to keep trespassers out? Somewhere there was a connection between Johnny’s ability to crossover and Elvyra’s unusual home, as well as the woman's vague threats towards the children. She had to discover what it might be before it became more than just a warning. But worrying herself to a standstill was not constructive time spent. It was a rainy summer day and she had to occupy the children with something productive. Like itching.

The children were playing out of the rain on the front porch, and she brought them each some paper and a sharpened pencil. On Johnny’s she drew a face and a crude body as he couldn’t write or spell very well.

“Now here’s a game you can play almost anywhere,” she said. “that will improve your abilities as a witch. We call it ‘The Itch.’ First you imagine you feel an itch, like on the left side of your nose. Leona, you will write that down on your notepad, and Johnny, you will make an X on the left side of the nose on your picture. When you can feel it on yourself, you will then imagine that same itch on the other person. You will not scratch your own itch but promise yourself that you will not feel relieved until the other person scratches the itch on the left side of their nose. When they do that, you may show them your paper so they know how good you are and check off your example as done. Johnny, you will draw a circle around the X’s you have been successful with. Got that?”

For the first half hour, Emma sat with the children as they tried to make each other itch and scratch. It was worth the entertainment just to see them making faces as they tried harder to concentrate on sending an itch.

“Kids,” she said, “straining the muscles in your faces will do absolutely nothing to help you. It is not a muscle thing, it’s a mind thing. Relax your face and your body. The only thing you should feel is the itch, and then you pretend it is not on you at all, but on them. It is not even your itch. It is their itch and they need to scratch it. You could probably just close your eyes and take a nap, but then you’ll miss it when they scratch it, and that’s the fun part.”

Johnny sat there pensively as Leona reached up and scratched behind her right ear. Like a jack-in-a-box, he jumped up and shown Leona his X on the right ear of his picture and drew a circle around it.

“No fair,” whined Leona. “I was busy thinking of an itch somewhere else.”

“Where was that?” Johnny asked, scratching his left knee.

“Right there!” Leona jumped at him, showing her notepad triumphantly.

It was off to a good start, and Emma thought she might get some laundry started and a little cleaning done in the house. The cousins were battling with itches and each trying to out do the other. At lunchtime she called the children inside. They came in giggling merrily as they went to wash up. When they sat down at the kitchen table, both of them appeared as if they had both broken out in hives on every square inch of uncovered skin.

“Okay,” she said. “We’ll call it quits with the Itch for today before the both of you scratch your skin clean off.”

“It was fun, Grandma,” Johnny protested.

“But how will it help us to be better witches?” Leona asked.

“Well, anything you can feel, you can transmit to someone else,” she said. “Did you ever feel it when someone was looking at you?” The children nodded thoughtfully.

“For one, you can be sensitive to other people’s scrutiny,” she added. “That’s a helpful thing sometimes. Or let’s say a big mean dog is barking at you and you feel afraid. What would happen if you took that feeling and sent it back to him?”

“He would run away instead of me running away and getting bit,” Leona said, smiling.

“I could make him run away and pee hisself.” Johnny giggled.

“As well as you two witchlings do those Itches,” Emma agreed. “I’ll bet you could frighten away just about anything. But suppose you wanted to make friends with the big dog?”

“I’d make him feel like he wanted a pat on the head or a scratch behind his ears,” Leona said.

“It sounds like something you’ll have to make a point of trying someday,” Emma told them. “But never promise them anything you won’t or can’t give them.”

“The will, the word, and the Threefold Law works in all this too?” Leona asked.

“Indeed it does,” she said. “As it does in everything else. It’s called a ’universal truth’ because it is always true, no matter who does it, and not just witches. When you learn them, you’ll understand more about how the world works and why and how you can affect changes in a positive way. The more of these you know, the better a witch you’ll be.”

"You must know a lot of these, Grandma," Leona observed.

"That's why your mother sent you here for the summer," she pointed out. "She's hoping you'll learn most of them."

“Did you learn the Itch when you were little too?” Johnny asked.

Emma stood there thoughtfully and the children burst out laughing.

“I was just thinking what a silly question that was,” she said smiling.

“I was going to ask if you were any good at it,” Leona said, giggling uncontrollably. “but it was just too silly.”

Johnny shrieked and fell off his chair laughing.

Dreams Amok!

Emma harvested mandrakes by the light of the full moon in her backyard garden. The pixies provided additional lighting with their luminescence. Leona and Johnny were dancing a merry jig in the yard past the garden gate. It occurred to her that she had never planted mandrakes in her garden, nor could she ever expect them to grow there if she did. Was she dreaming? With this knowledge, she looked back to the children with new eyes and a will to determine what the dream's symbology might mean. In the shadows of the far end of the backyard a cavernous maw opened up.

"Johnny," it called.

Displaying his curious fae nature, her grandson cocked his head to one side contemplating the new cave entrance and began walking towards it. Where he could see like a cat in the pitch blackness, Leona was ambiguous about walking into the dark entrance.

"Johnny, come back." the girl called.

"I told you not to let them out of your sight," Elvyra said, her hysterical laugh reverberating painfully in her head and filling the yard.

"Don't go in there," she yelled, an ominous chill filled her.

Only Leona heard her and the girl dashed after her wandering cousin to try to stop him from disappearing down the dark tunnel. Emma dropped her mandrakes and charged out of the garden after the disappearing children. Johnny was already out of sight down the tunnel. She had managed to lay one hand on Leona's shoulder as she called out to her cousin. Even for so close, her voice seemed to be coming from another room.

"Johnny, come back," Leona's voice carried from her bedroom upstairs.

Emma rolled out of bed and donned her slippers and housecoat. Willard was already in his robe and moving towards the door.

"I'll check on Johnny," he said, and headed towards the boy's room.

Emma took a hard left and up the stairs just as Leona stumbled out of her blankets onto the floor and scrambled to her feet and ran towards the hall, only to bounce off the wall in the dark and fall sprawling and crying to the floor rubbing her head.

"It's okay. It's okay, sweetie." Emma sat on the floor beside the girl and held her trembling body close. "It was all just a bad dream," she assured her hysterical granddaughter.

"It was so awful," Leona said through her sobs. "Johnny and I were playing and we saw this lovely fairy cake, and when I went to get some a huge metal bar came down and held me so I couldn't breathe. Like a really big mousetrap. And when I looked for Johnny, he was stuck in one too. Only his mousetrap had him by the neck and his eyes looked really awful and he started