"You have always been empathetic," Jen said thoughtfully.
"Okay, sure, but not like, touch someone and give them my emotions," she countered. Or touch someone and see pictures from someone else's mind, as she suspected happened with Astra, but she kept that to herself.
"You live in The Lost Souls House now, dear." This from Crystal. "Any magic in you awakens in this hallowed place."
A familiar note of uncertainty rang in her mind.
Tilly cleared her throat of the uncertainty as she said, "Okay. We know that Crystal has more understanding and experience with what we are up against than she is telling us." This boldness from Tilly, pulled a nod from Jen. "Crystal," she said softly. "We need you to help us, lead us. Like Jen said, you are a powerful witch."
"Was," Crystal's first word punctuated the air, and everyone gave her their attention. "I was powerful. One of the most powerful witches. Many years ago." With a deep sigh, she nodded and gathered them closer, everyone having a seat on the cool, soft ground of the graveyard, where spirits came and sat among their circle to listen.
And then she told them her story. A story about a young woman who came to understand she had a special kind of power inside of her. She could call to the magic in the world around her easily. Plants would grow wherever she asked them to. Animals found her presence home, following after her wherever she went. Back then, when oddities like geese flying in perfect V's in the sky above her, and the gray fox following her through the forest were considered a deal with the devil, she learned to hide herself.
She hid from the town, making her home in the forest where she felt her most true self.
Back then, a woman alone was enough to cause suspicion and cast finger-pointing accusations.
A man caught sight of her when hunting one day. She was an enigma to him, with flowing gold hair like a waterfall down her back and a face that seemed to always be golden and smiling. He started seeking her out instead of white-tailed deer and rabbit. Hours he spent following her through the forest, which seemed to love her so dearly, that it would close off his view of her if ever the trees felt she were vulnerable. The canopy of trees above would close rank against the sunlight, creating darkness for her protection.
The river that separated them would rise unnaturally high so that he could not cross.
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 witha 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.
