Chapter 25 Magic in the Graveyard #2
A raging wind would circle him so that all he could do was find cover.
But he didn't wish to harm her. And he wasn't sure what kind of spirits the woods had but knew they were not to be trifled with. So he would leave her small tokens. A wind-catcher made of red hawk feathers and a bowl he carved from a fallen birch.
Once he left her a small pendant of onyx wrapped in thin willow twigs like a delicate cage.
She saw him across a rushing river one day, her clear blue eyes catching his dark blue gaze and she knew him to be the one who had been following her.
Never was she scared. Never had she considered he would harm her.
So she left him a small vial of syrup tapped from a maple near where she had pulled together a hut made of sumac trees and burlap.
They fell in love, slowly and purposefully.
They lived around each other in the forest for a time, her foraging and bringing out the magic of the world, and he would find her in patches of sunlight, laying with her, intertwining their hands, marveling at the way that her slender fingers softly tangled with his rough ones.
The women listened to Crystal speak of this falling in love as though it was the most honest and gentle memory that she had harbored inside of her.
They could tell that she protected those memories by not speaking them out loud until now.
How long had it been since her love story had been touched by the breeze and passed around to ears that would now collect the story in their own pages?
The way that she smiled spoke of him building them a house, holding her fiercely and gently after they first made love. Dust brushed off those memories with her smile.
And then their story turned a corner into something darker.
When he came back to their two-room log cabin after days of being gone, trading in different towns, he found it empty with a cross painted on their door in black paint with a piece of parchment condemning their house of witchcraft.
Devil worship.
She said the words like she was spitting out poison.
He tore through the forest to the town, this town, where he found her in the stocks; head and wrists held captive by wood, face and hair covered in mud and rotting food. Taunting, laughing townspeople would keep a wide berth.
By the time he got to her, she was weak.
She said he found an axe and split the wood but she didn't remember that part.
She only remembered that she woke in his arms as he carried her limp, rumpled body through the woods back to their home, stopping in the gentle-lapping creek where it wasn't too deep.
The water took care of her, making sure it wasn't too cold as it washed away what they had done to her.
Animals gathered along the banks to watch, giving her their tributes in their ways with feathers and collected acorns and smooth-rounded stones.
But when she woke in the warmth of their bed he was gone. And she never saw him alive again.
She knew that the town had come for him. And she knew that the town would come for her again. So she called to the full moon and the stars, reaching up with her magic and asking for a blessing to soothe her broken heart and protection from the cruel world.
Along came a woman named Horaith. She was old, but she could never pinpoint how many years she had lived.
There was something wild and untethered in her spirit.
Long black and gray hair with violet eyes that saw everything, she took a grieving Crystal to a new town further north, a sea town where she learned about The Grand Coven.
Her gifts were strong, stronger than any witch Horaith had met.
There was a story in between, but they didn't have the time and the important part was years later when Crystal became the Grand Coven Priestess.
"I quite liked the title, and I can admit that now," she said, clearly back in that time.
"It was meant to be a coven that helped maintain balance in the world, helped create a bridge between this world and ours.
Rule and order. Celebrations and bringing in the seasons together with our magic and gratitude.
But there were some who believed we needed more control.
They were small and few, only the idea of their theology a one-off amongst the many.
Until," she paused, shaking her head. They watched as her blue eyes clouded, a memory of pain taking hold.
"There was an entire movement. Enough of them with the right witch leading the charge to challenge how we did things.
They believed that our population should be fewer, easier to control, less power, less magic.
That no place in the world should have too many of us living together.
They had a great leader. As powerful as me.
" Her eyebrows raised when she added, "More powerful because they slowly, silently took power from others. And they formed what it is now."
"The Covenant," Jen said, and Crystal nodded. "Their leader, the priestess, was your best friend."
It was a guess, but she had said something before that had lingered in her mind. Anyone who had experienced great betrayal picked up on the energy left behind.
"Margaret Lowell," Crystal answered. "We could talk for hours about nothing and everything.
Friendship truly is one of the most romantic things you can experience.
But she fell in love with a witch, one who came from a line of witches who had a history of twisting magic to their will, ripping it from its roots and forced to grow how and where they wanted. "
"Dark magic," Tilly whispered, afraid of its power.
"Dark magic. Of course, Margaret said her lover never dabbled in it herself.
Dark magic, when caught being used, had a high price, one she wasn't willing to pay.
However, her ideology was the thing that was twisted.
She got inside of Margaret and got her to believe that witches were meant to exist at the service of The Holly King and The Oak King.
That they were the true heads of magic, ushering in our seasons with their power.
The lore is long and it is believed differently depending on who you ask.
Different points of importance, different goals and hopes, different rules. "
They listened, understanding this kind of abuse of belief into power.
A small raccoon that had taken a particular liking to Carol popped out of the hood of her jacket, pulling a smile from Eloise as she offered him a grape.
"They took what was once beautiful about being a witch, the freedom and magic created between us and the world. They twisted it into something to be controlled and placed at the feet of powerful men."
"And Margaret is still the priestess?" Kelsea asked.
"Yes."
"You said before that you think the three from The Covenant are here because there are too many of us in one place," Carol said thoughtfully. She was tapping one finger on the rim of her glass. "How do we get them to leave?"
Crystal tipped her face up to the the black sky.
The moon was hiding herself from them but there was a power still there that they could feel.
Once she had taken a few moments, a few breaths, she looked at the seven faces around the graveyard, only illuminated by the jars of glowing moonlight sitting around the circle.
"I don't know. I wish that I did.""You said was," Bess had her sweatshirt-covered arms wrapped around her knees, hugged to her chest and the hood up warding off the autumn chill in July.
Ursula laid a hand on her arm. "What do you mean, sweetheart?"
But where everyone was giving Bess curious looks, waiting for her to finish her thought, Crystal was giving her a knowing look.
"I did," was Crystal's simple reply.
"What are you talking about?" This came from Tilly who rolled a piece of mint between her lips.
Every head swung to the older woman, who they now knew was indeed old.
"My magic, when Margaret usurped me, was bound. I do not have magic." She smiled a little smile. "Or much. The land here lends itself to me when most needed. Mostly for special invitations to certain women that the magic of the world recognizes." Her eyes connected with Ursula and then Tilly.
Ursula was taken back to her Midwest home with her rusted mailbox and empty life.
Tilly remembered the closet and the sparkling blueberry festival invite.
"Why didn't you tell us? We could have-"
But Crystal cut off Tilly. "What, dear? What could you have done?"
The helplessness of that question filled enough space that they all, for a few moments, felt alone and not at all like they were a coven sitting in a circle facing other women with magic in their bones.
Loneliness was such a powerful thing. Add in helplessness and anyone who could forge the two and place them like a mantle over a group of people held a power that could seem unbreakable.
But that was the trick. It only seemed that way.
Getting lost in helplessness makes a person first feel and then believe that they can do nothing to alter their circumstances.
It is often the precursor to loneliness, which is a powerful poison.
It creeps into the veins and spreads the lies that they are unlike others, unwanted by others, and all alone.
But the truth is this: one moment of recognizing that you are not alone; without connection, perhaps, but not without company as there is a world full of beings that are looking around for the same things as you.
And that's the first step. Find others. Connect. And then tackle the helplessness. Because one person might not contain everything needed to make a catastrophic difference, but a few? A handful or ten or fifty?
We are not helpless. We are not alone.
And once we stop believing those lies, the darkness that used them as weaponized immobilization will know fear. They no longer have their greatest ally: darkness.
"What do we do now?" Eloise asked the question at the front of everyone else's mouth.
"We speak out loud to the world that we are not alone. That we are here to bring light to whatever darkness has been brought by The Covenant to our town. And we listen and go from there."
They joined hands and Crystal spoke about inviting the world to open its eyes, people who might have covered them to drop their hands and see truth.
She gave the sky words of unity that could be carried on the wind and dropped by starlight to break apart the division that The Covenant and Rob had instigated.
Crystal spoke those words over them as they rose, hands linked in a perfect circle along with the spirits that had joined them.
There was no light of the moon, but still, a brightness glowed from nowhere.
Cleopatra sat watching over them high in the trees, along with Portia.
There was a war here. Each woman could feel it.
Every tree, bush, and every fern frond pressed themselves closer to the earth in hopes of being cloaked in the magic that would keep them safe.
Black shadowy shapes fluttered high above, barely discernible against the dark sky, but their clicks gave away their nocturnal identities.
Worms started wiggling out of the dirt, and black-spotted toads singing their trilling songs hopped along gravestones and the feet of tree roots sticking out of the ground.
Once they had finished their call to the world's magic, they opened their eyes and looked around. Cockroaches covered the jars of moonlight, the glow just barely getting through the cracks between the insects. The stars were hidden, too, by the bats swooping overhead.
Magic had been called and answered.
And so too did the darker side of magic answer.
This was indeed going to be a battle.