Behind her someone no one expected to see came into view. She looked at them with a critical eye, her nose turned up just the slightest.
"What is she doing here?" Tilly murmured to Kelsea who shook her head slowly, her expression in awe.
Jen was never one to hide her thoughts from her face and that was no exception here.
And Ursula felt a particular pang of anger, something she didn't readily lay out in public often, but today her best friend was in handcuffs and her friends were being targeted, so this was different.
"I am going to give you one chance to give us a reason to let you walk into our circle, Carol. Because your words and assumptions have hurt us and turned a bad light on us, when we didn't deserve it. Now my closest friend is locked up, and we have to clean up a mess that isn't ours."
Carol regarded her, that critical edge never leaving her face.
Breaths were held. Even the cursed starlings quieted.
"I invited her, and her flock of birds," Jessica said. "You once all took a chance on me, even though I had also hurt you. And being given that chance changed my life, for the better. I talked with Carol and she's agreed to give this a chance."
Jen's burst of laughter shot through the sun-streaked fog. "Oh yeah? How benevolent of you," she said sarcastically. "I lost half of my business because of your articles."
"And I lost a lot of credit and have been pulled back at the station," Tilly added.
The forest erupted in morning sounds again.
All women stood there, at a standstill, no one moving and no one talking. The cry of starlings settled down until the low croaking hum of the bullfrogs was the only sound.
Then Carol lifted a clear wine glass, and said, "I am a journalist, and I hold myself to a high standard of ethical storytelling. Which I do not believe I adhered to in the last months. There's more to the story and something came to light to make me question myself and the things I wrote. I still don't know what to make of you, and whatever this is, but I want to find out for myself. If I eat my words, then I eat my words, no matter how bitter." She looked up into the tree branches then back at them. "And the horde of birds following me everywhere is getting old."
Ursula smiled and Jen snorted.
They slid looks around the graves, silently speaking, silently making a call. But ultimately they looked to Ursula, who had the most at stake. She turned to fully face the woman and walked toward her with careful, steady steps. She pulled the gold hawk from the top of the bourbon bottle, aplunkloud, and filled her glass.
"Then welcome to our coven, Carol Weatherby. I do hope you enjoy the taste of bitterness."
Carol smiled, the first friendly thing Ursula had experienced from her yet, and she clinked her glass against Ursula's before they shared a toast.
"We'll see," she remarked, her tone still sharp.
"To bitterness," Ursula replied, her eyes not wavering from Carol's as she took a challenging sip.
And then seven women circled around the graveyard amongst unsettled souls and birds who sang their fury. They raised their glasses to the sun who praised them with her light.
Crystal spoke in an even, dulcet tone as she spoke of the ancient magic that lived there between the snapdragons and the blades of grass, in the rings of the trees and the fog that had come to visit. The souls that they had laid to rest not long ago had found their home here and stayed, but now they joined these women in a song that is so bold and so feminine that it is its own language: ushering in healing while holding a line of defense against darkness that would see them divide.
Different generations held hands tonight. Different beliefs and different fears collided to create a powerful circle of one thing: a fight for hope.
The powers of the world have spent so much energy in the division of women, because when they come together, regardless of age or background or beliefs, something beyond understanding happens and it's dangerous. It's inconvenient.
Inconvenience is a powerful thing.
Like a hair stuck to your shirt, tickling the back of the arm.
A gnat circling your head when trying to find a moment of peace in the garden.
A woman speaking truth and unfurling herself to no longer be small.
The murmuration of starlings quieted and a watchful hawk sat high above them as something was created there on that hallowed ground, as the fog swirled and danced with found souls and women who knew the cost of not uniting. It was magic. The magic flowed out of that place, traveling the way magic does; with intention and purpose on the wings of birds no longer caught in a hex, in the twinkling stars unseen in the sunlit sky, and in the thick fog that wove its way through town touching those going about their days who fell into the crosshairs of an angry, vengeful witch.
"What now?"
"Now," Crystal replied sagely, "we invite a certain witch to claim what she thinks is hers."
