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

We change over time.”

“Are you happier now?” Leona asked.

“About this?” Ella said incredulously. “Oh, no. My great grandson is in the clutches of a ruthlessly mad fae woman, and my daughter and great granddaughter are risking their lives to get him back. If you don’t get him away from her before she can unleash her madness, our clannadh won’t survive another year. If you can get him away, but she turns him dark, our family will be cursed beyond imagining. Which is not a happy thought either. I’d have to say I’ve seen better days than this one, dearie.”

“What can we do, Mom?” Emma asked. “It sounds like we’re damned if we do and damned if we don’t.”

“What did you have in mind when you came here?” her mother asked. “How are you prepared for this?”

“This and a heart full of magick my grandson gave me.” She patted her sheathed atheme.

“Let me sort this out a minute,” Ella said. “You are about to charge the very gates of hell with a rusty old knife your father made for you?”

Emma drew the blade for her mother to see. The wonder that registered in her mother’s eyes gave her hope that she just might be equipped to do this.

“Well, it is, but it isn’t the same blade at all,” Ella remarked wonderingly.

“Johnny’s fae friends reforged it as a gift for me,” she explained. “It seems to cut just about anything now.”

“And more than that, I’ll wager,” her mother said. “But still, it will not serve you in an absence of wits. You will need a strategy to win.”

“I only know he’ll be in a dark tower, on the edge of a cliff to the west of here,” she said. “I also know she’ll keep him alive as long as she has a use for him, and she wants him to draw the black lightning to her tower to transform something called Behir to do her dirty work for her. Elvyra is doing her best to keep it penned up in a locked room in her house. If we can breach the tower, stop the Vough and rescue Johnny before he can be made to call the lightning, and get him back home across the flood, I have a reasonable chance of raising him as a respectable witch.”

“There’s an epic sized ‘if,’” Ella said. “for a pint sized witchling. And then there’s this matter of all the ‘we’ in this assessment. Leona, how do you feel about all of this?”

“I’m afraid of what might happen,” Leona admitted. “We’ve been through so much already. He’s my cousin, and I love him. He tries so hard to be a good boy, and he listens to everything Grandma tells him. If we can save him, I think he’ll be a very fine witch. If we can’t, I’m not sure I want to leave without making the Vough pay dearly for this. We’ll never be safe. I’ll do my best. I know he would do as much for us if he could, and he would try even if he couldn’t.”

“It’s settled, then,” Ella Mae concluded. “I would suggest we divide and conquer.”

“How so?" Emma asked.

“Send Leona inside to influence Johnny, if she can,” Ella Mae said. “And you try to draw the Vough away and stop her any way you can. I would suggest a spell of binding, but this is her world, and not ours. But she must be stopped. Dividing her from our grandson is the only way to conquer her.” With this, Ella faded into shadow and dreamless sleep ensued for Emma and Leona.


The Black Tower

It was late in the evening when they arrived at the Vough's home in Dun Cruachan. The black tower was a place of wonders that rivaled Grandma’s summer kitchen. He had no interest for what might have been bubbling in the cauldron in the hearth, but the myriad of astrolabes, bottles, vials, crocks and beakers that sparked, flamed, sputtered, bubbled, boiled and smoked of their own accord was almost torture for him not to investigate. He was determined not to do anything to get himself in further trouble with his grandmother. The Vough had gotten them into the structure by touching the orb on her scepter to a raised plate next to the door. She had put her scepter away in a drawer under some shelves and was busy fiddling with a series of levers on the far wall.

In the center of the room a series of iron bars descended from the unseen apex of the tower to make a circle within a circle of silvery glyphs embedded in the polished ebon stone floor. With the exception of a twenty inch gap, the bars were about five inches apart and enclosed a ten foot cell that contained a cot, a commode chair like the one he had seen stored away in his grandmother's attic, and a bench. It looked like a circular jail cell without a door, or even a place to put one.

“That will be your room until your grandmother comes for you, foul fae,” snapped the Vough. It may have lacked for privacy, but it gave him an unrestricted view of all the fascinating happenings within the eldritch tower and he couldn’t possibly miss seeing his grandmother when she came. It suited him just fine. In spite of the Vough’s waspish invectives, with a tired sigh, Johnny went in and took off his daypack and laid it on the bench and tried out the cot for comfort. Indeed, he had been up for two days and the rest was welcomed. He never even got his shoes off before he fell asleep. The sound of three iron bars clanking into place were not enough to raise any suspicions in him and he slept soundly.

* * *

His sleep was almost dreamless. Dreamless, because there was nothing to hear or see. Almost, because he was still there and aware there was nothing to hear or see. He reached out of himself, into the darkness to find someone. Anyone. In the distance, just beyond his reach, was a vaguely familiar presence that wished him well. Try as he might, he couldn't get any closer to it or identify it. A coldness met him that permeated his bones. He sat in the darkness alone and wondered when someone would come for him. He was trapped there. To move only a few feet in any direction, he met with a cold black wall that he couldn't perceive anything beyond.

He remembered another time, so far away, when a spiteful elder, male cousin had locked him in Grandma's basement and shut out the lights. Even in the darkness, he could make out the rough hewn stone walls, the furnace that had been converted from coal to oil and the rough, old, wooden bin the coal used to be delivered to. He knew where everyone was in the house, and who was in the house. Even though they were hidden from his eyes, his soul could reach out and embrace their essences. He could even perceive the tiny lights of the spiders and the mice that shared the basement with him. He was never really alone, and had no reason to be afraid in the darkness there. Help, should he need it, was always near.

He awoke. At least it seemed like he was awake. The difference being only that his human half was cognizant and there in the dark place were the three pieces of furniture of his circular cell. He could not see the iron bars or beyond them as all was blackness from that point outward. He could see around his area well enough, but had no idea of where the light came from. His first feeling was that he was cheated of the opportunity to watch events unfold in that remarkable tower his cell occupied. His second feeling was anxiety that he would not be able to see his grandmother when she came for him. He could not feel her anywhere. Could she find him in this dark place? He reached out of himself to find out who might be near and was met with a rushing coldness that circled his living space. Trying to touch the formless wall that encircled him, his fingers met with a cold, so severe that it burned to the touch. He jerked back his hands and sat on the bench and considered his plight.

For lack of anything else he could do, he emptied out his daypack and laid out his belongings on the bench. He counted two whole and one half eaten sweet pears from Grandma’s backyard. Two fruit muffins that she had made for them the day Grandpa taught him how to shoot at Sea Breeze, and a warm bottle of grape Nehi Soda. There were a few odd twigs that turned out to be bits of sassafras roots. The smell of these gave him warm memories of home. There was also a four inch long, rectangular shaped piece of red sandstone that he had scratched some runes on with a small nail, and the nail that he had used to make them.

He tried to slip the point of the nail up under the cap of the soda bottle, but it was too thick around. Perhaps if he flattened the nail, he could make it into a bottle opener of some sort. He placed the bottle near the wall-that-wasn't-there to chill while he looked about for something to play blacksmith with. His piece of sandstone and the stone floor appeared to