Chapter 18 Peachy Headlines
"What can we do?""Once again, here we sit, minding our own business while someone else uses magic and points the finger at us.
" Jen was talking around a mouthful of blackberry tart, and her left foot was tapping wildly against the wood floor.
Tilly laid a gentle hand on her thigh, though her anxiety was rising.
"Are they targeting Eloise or all of us?"
"What is with targeting me?"
"It's because you're pretty and the funniest of us," Kelsea whispered, drawing a laugh from her.
"I think it was a message for all of us."
"Any chance Carmen did anything to the peach tarts before you got there?" Carol had her journalistic eyes on this.
Eloise snorted as she reached for another tart, her hand colliding with Jen's dark hand. She waited for Jen to take a tart before she answered. "Carmen may be mean, but she's not diabolical. You have to be smart to be diabolical."
"Rude," Ursula pointed out.
"Fine," Eloise conceded. "I'm not saying Carmen isn't smart.
But I don't think she has the time to cook up something like this.
" She bit into the tart as she frowned and then added, "And besides, she's so averse to magic, can you see her finding a way to hex the peach tarts just to point a guilty finger at us? "
"Yeah, that feels more in the Cassie area of expertise."
"Who is locked up," Jen pointed out. She had successfully eaten four blackberry tarts, the stress of the day wearing on her shoulders in a particular way.
She'd started her day with a dirty chai from The Black Cat, odd looks from people making her pause, but continued until she walked to her nutrition and lifestyle store, where a poster calling for a vote to unseat Cora was plastered to the glass door.
Once peeled off, her anger piqued, she sat in her office, about to call Cora when two of her clients texted in that they would be canceling their memberships and urging others in town to follow suit.
A quick search and she found the article.
Someone had hexed the peach shortcake at the Fourth of July festival, causing anyone who had taken a juicy bite to fall madly in love with whomever the first person their skin brushed against.
The accusations were not veiled.
Then came the fallout.
A warning to the town was posted on Salem's official site; wherever there was a town building, there was a poster of what to look out for.
Jen knew what it was.
They were bullet points on how to discriminate.
She'd shrugged off her light blue jacket as her skin heated and her anger rose.
Cora didn't pick up the phone, but then she imagined she and her team were in battle mode.
She sent her a text and then got through her day, with the few clients who had decided to stick around, some loyal and others mostly out of curiosity.
And now here she sat, nervously eating tarts without tasting them as they discussed who might be out to get them.
It was familiar.
It was tiresome.
"Can we finally talk about what we haven't been talking about?" Jen blurted. The words had been buzzing around, bumping against each other for days with an energy that she'd only contained through busyness.
Shifting in seats, eyes darting to catch others' nervous glances around the room, a clearing of a throat, and then a strong and commanding voice from the doorway.
"I believe what Jen means is, can we finally discuss what I know about The Covenant."
The air of the kitchen stilled around them all as they stared at where Crystal stood, her cream-colored cape hanging on her shoulders regally as she held her head in a way that spoke of a woman who knew how to speak ancient secrets.
"You know Astra and the others, don't you?" Jen asked.
"No."
She frowned. Tilly shot Jen a look.
"But I know who they represent and why they are here.
And I do know about The Covenant." She pulled in a deep breath as she looked around the kitchen, her eyes touching each of them before she finished.
"They are here on behalf of The High Priestess Margaret Lowell.
" She bent down to scoop Lady Macbeth up into her arms.
"So you knew the High Priestess of all of the witches?" Eloise asked. "Which," she added, "is a pretty badass title, by the way."
"Yes. She was my best friend. Before she usurped me as High Priestess."
Silence and wide eyes met Crystal.
"I knew it," Jen whispered to Tilly, who was putting firewood into the pit as the other women gathered blankets and chairs, tea, and their wits. "I knew there was a story she was hiding."
Tilly gave her friend a look of admonishment. "I don't think it's fair to say she was hiding anything until we hear her story."
"She was the High Priestess of some grand coven that, like, oversees all covens," Jen's arm swung out dramatically.
"Yeah, and maybe we hear her out before we burn her at the stake," Tilly's eyes bore into her friend's, who took on a shocked look before her shoulders sagged and she let out a breath.
"Point taken."
The usual July heat was covered in a chill as they lit the bonfire. Blankets were tucked around legs and shoulders, and mugs of tea were filled by Bess.
"Many years ago," Crystal started before she was interrupted by Eloise's raised hand.
"How many?"
"Shhh," Ursula bumped her leg against Eloise, who rolled her eyes and then made a zipping motion fingers to her lips.
Crystal smiled. "Many," she emphasized. "Witches can be born or created.
It used to be that witches were born more than created, a way to distinguish hierarchy.
Creating witches was a practice heavily frowned upon, as you can imagine, and just like any cultural group, there was a certain level of," she weighed her words carefully as they sat still and waiting.
"Well, disagreement on pedigree is what I will say. "
"Is this like a pure-blood thing?" Bess asked.
Crystal smiled. "I suppose you could think of it like that. Anyhow, the high priestess is to bring covens together for rituals, to collaborate ideas, and to keep the peace."
"Why haven't we ever been invited to a large coven ritual?" Ursula asked.
"Same question, but asked nicer than in my head," Jen added.
Crystal laughed softly. "Because there haven't been any for many years.
There came a movement of witches that believed created witches should be outlawed and born witches should be under strict law and surveillance.
They twisted the theology of The Mother Goddess," she shook her head.
A look of worn-out disgust covered a face that, for the first time, looked like it carried years in her cheeks and the way that her eyes dipped.
"They believed that only born witches, which were few and rare, should have power and that they must use and limit their magic for the Holly and Oak Kings. "
Bess sat up, running a hand over Casper's head in her lap. "Oh yeah, those guys that like bring in winter and summer, right? We learned about them in my humanities class."
Crystal nodded. "Our magic is of this earth, to serve the earth. It's a celebration of what the earth gives and takes. We bring in the seasons, and we put them to bed. But this group believed, believes, that we serve the kings, not the earth."
"Ew," Eloise and Bess said in tandem, bumping fists as the women around the fire discussed how this seems to happen so easily; the dissolution of community and culture of a group into the armed and elbowed acquiescence of bowing to the men with their boots on necks and trampling on flowers as they take and take.
"And then you left," Tilly said to Crystal, who was sitting in her Adirondack chair quietly amongst the feminine rage, bringing the conversation back around.
Crystal nodded, her eyes on the fire. A look of remembering it all.
Jen leaned forward, her words soft, her heart no longer demanding. "And your best friend, she was one of them? She believed whatever this covenant group believes?"
Crystal's eyes turned up to where Jen watched her, and she nodded again slowly.
The sadness there, the heartbreak could have been grabbed with hands and felt like a piece of cold marble.
Betrayal was a thing so heavy that when a person was willing to let another see it, uncover it from where it had been hiding inside of them after years of pain, moving on, new love and the occasional visit with fist-to-heart, there was a communion.
Crystal passed that communion to Jen, and Jen took it gingerly, understanding the intimacy of this. The fire turned green, and the sky above them matched in a marbling of green and blue with starlight diamonds.
"They're here because we aren't supposed to be," Ursula's voice cut through the chatter and the moment.
"Wait," Kelsea held up a hand. "Are we made witches?"
"No."
"Then, they're just scared of us?" Carol guessed.
A great breath was pulled and held inside of Crystal before she nodded and replied. "I think so."
"And they are going to wreak havoc on Salem until what, we disband or agree to not do magic?"
"I'm not sure," was her soft reply.
Crystal was a strong woman. She was only soft in how she touched, but in every other action this woman would not be described as soft or uncertain. She did not love softly or with uncertainty. And she did not speak softly or uncertainly. Until this moment.
It was felt amongst the women. They bent closer, their eyebrows furrowed and hearts wrenched.
Fireflies flickered close around her, and the vine of honeysuckle that trailed up the kitchen window curled closer, wrapping around her chair leg as the trees bowed their heads lower.
Portia and Cleo took to closer branches.
Jen clapped. "Well. Fuck them."