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

the labor pains made sleep impossible. Robed nuns bustled in and out of the room to check on her, but there was really nothing to do but wait.

“Everything will turn out just fine, Lorry,” Ella Mae said. “You have to believe that, dear.”

“Grandma, you came!” Lorry gasped, seeing her standing at her bedside.

“Of course, dear,” she reassured her. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

The head nurse came in that moment to find Lorry was fully dilated and quickly had her wheeled into the delivery room.

“Don’t leave me, Grandma!” Lorry called out.

“Don’t worry, dear,” an elderly nun replied. “I won’t leave you.”

* * *

It was shortly after sunrise, on Midsummer’s Eve, when the doctor rushed in and delivered Lorry of her baby.

“It’s a fine baby boy you have here, Lorry,” the doctor said merrily.

“A WHAT?” Lorry gagged deliriously. It was a long night and she was fatigued beyond words.

“It’s a boy, see?” he said holding the infant closer.

“Ugh,” she said, as the child was opening his eyes. “Get that goddamned thing away from me.”

“She’s delirious,” said a nurse. “Let her rest a while and we’ll clean up the baby to present to her later. It may be just a reaction to the drugs.”

The doctor however, didn’t look so sure. Was it a trick of the delivery room lights that flashed across the child’s stormy gray eyes? It sounded like thunder outside.

“Oh great,” he said. “I didn’t even think to bring an umbrella.”

* * *

Johnny had gotten his mom as soon as he heard his sister was going into the delivery room. He had dropped her off at the hospital on his way to go pick up his grandmother. The ambulance and medical examiner had left the house and Johnny made his way back to the hospital, sleep deprived and numb from the whole night’s events. It was hours later when he arrived back in the maternity ward.

“Here he comes,” Emma said to her girls. “It’s about time, son. You have a nephew. We’re naming him after his favorite uncle,” she chortled, and then looked closer at her son’s face and then down the hall for yet another familiar face, but seeing none.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “And where’s your grandmother? She should be here for this.”

Johnny broke and sobbed his story.

“I got to the house to pick her up.” Johnny continued to weep. “She didn’t answer the door when I knocked, so I went in and found her.” With this, his sisters and his mother all froze in place and stared expectantly at him.

“I found her dressed and sitting in her sewing chair,” he continued. “Her eyes were closed as if she fell asleep there. Mom, she was dead. They took her body away not a half hour ago.”

Emma dropped to the floor as if pole axed. The family and hospital staff rushed to help her.

* * *

Lorry heard the news first from her sister, Evelyn.

“It’s that cursed spell, it is.” Lorry insisted. “It was supposed to be a girl, but we were all cheated, and Grandma paid with her life, as well as Grandpa and Daddy.” Evelyn and the sisters agreed that the child was an abomination caused by the dark fae, and Lorry had no doubts the child should be put up for adoption as no single mother could be expected to raise it. For weeks to follow after the funeral, her mother drank herself into a stupor. For the rest of the clan, lives went on, albeit dismally.

* * *

At St. Brigit’s convent, a blue eyed baby boy cooed and gurgled merrily at something fluttering around over his crib. But whenever a human face appeared over the railing of that crib, it was cold, gray eyes that glared suspiciously at the intruding visitor.


Emma's Story

Emma rode the magnificent bay stallion bareback. Her long, iron black tresses streaming in the wind behind her; she raised her arms to Heaven and held on with her legs. As they reached the crest of a grassy knoll, she spied a herd of restless mustangs. Looking about to see what might have stirred them so, she spotted a pack of great dark wolves that were circling the perimeter of the grassy plain. But closer inspection showed it was not the wolves that had them restless. It was something within the herd itself.

She directed her great mount forward to get a closer look at the disturbance. The horses were moving away from something bright in their midst. In so doing, they were opening their tightly knit defenses to the wolves, but they didn’t seem to care.

Getting closer still, Emma could see a silvery white foal, trying clumsily to approach a mare, any mare to suckle, but no mare would let it near. The herd began to scatter, leaving the strange foal behind, unprotected. The surrounding pack of wolves howled in triumph and were moving in for an easy meal. The foal, beginning to realize its danger, wheeled to face the first of its attackers. Then Emma understood why the foal was shunned by the mustangs. The tiny silver nub of a horn on its forehead revealed that it was not a horse, but a unicorn. The pack closed in hungrily as the stormy eyed foal lowered its head to make its first and last stand…

“No,” Emma screamed, bolting upright in her bed, tears streaming down her face from eyes already puffy.

She remembered that she had cried herself to sleep that night and had drank far too much wine. The loss of the clan matriarch, her mother, made her very heart want to stop beating. But as broken as it was, it would not stop. There was unfinished business. It had been how many weeks since they buried her mother? She couldn’t recall, but she did remember her mother saying something about being willing to pay for her dreams. At such a great price. First there had been her husband, Edward only months before, and her father only months before him. That was 1953 and a great year for death, and a lousy year for an unwanted baby boy out there somewhere. The unicorn foal. She knew dreams well and understood what must be done.

“It is dangerous to offend the Sidhe,” her mother had told her before.

Here was a fae child, alone in the world of humans. Who hadn't asked to be brought into such an alien world, but was called into existence by her and her mother. Her daughter, Lorry, had put the infant up for adoption. An unwed mother could not be expected to bring up such a child. Christians could not hope to comprehend the boy in their midst, in light of what they knew. But a witch would understand that human values might not come naturally for such a child. If they thought him possessed of devils because of his fae nature, they would bring down an impossible wrath upon them all, and the clan would be ultimately responsible for this. Her mother’s dream would be their nightmare, and then their ending.

“I can fix this, Momma,” she cried. “He’s not what we expected, but I can make this work. It was a good dream. I won’t let us down. As my word, so mote it be,” she gave her witch’s vow and bond.
* * *

That morning Lorry came downstairs looking perplexed at the sounds and smells of breakfast being prepared. The kitchen was spotless. It certainly hadn’t been left that way last night. Johnny and the others were off trying to pull their lives back together and had left them to their own devices. Edward Junior, who insisted on being called Sonny, was spending more and more of his time running the streets with his friends. No one had seen him for days. Not that anyone was worried. He needed to learn life's lessons the hard way.

“Are you okay, Mom?” Lorry asked, sitting down at the kitchen table.

“I’m remarkable, dear,” she said gaily.
It was a saying Emma's mother always used. Her daughter winced at that answer. Lorry's concern that her mother’s grief might overwhelm her yet again was written plainly on her face.
“Coffee’s perking, home fries and eggs are in the skillet, the sun is shining brightly, and my lovely daughter is here to share them with me.” She smiled as she sat down across from her daughter and brought her coffee mug to her lips. “So tell me, dear, what sort of dreams did you have last night?”

“I don’t remember,” Lorry replied. “Something about horses, I think.” She visibly relaxed at what was normal family breakfast conversation since before she was born.

She watched her daughter eat, thoughtfully sipping her coffee. The dream of horses was an indication to her that she had much productive work