Page 65 of Woods of the Raven

I grunted. “You’re missing the point.”

“No, you are. It’s history, whatever that is.”

“Yeah, but that’s not history,” I insisted, smacking the journals on the table beside me. “That’s mythology.”

“In every story, there’s a grain of truth.”

“Myths are stories to try and make sense of something. Like Persephone being taken from Demeter, which explained the seasons to the Greeks.”

“Certainly, but isn’t it possible that there’s something that makes a good story last for thousands of years?”

I folded my arms on the table and put my head down. “You really think someone back in the day met a goddess and got turned into a bird?”

“I do. Yes.”

“Because Grandpa told you that story about his family.”

“Yes.”

“Isn’t it far more likely we’re mutants?”

“You’re trying to use science to explain what those in your hereditary line can do. Doesn’t that seem like a cop-out to you?”

I groaned. Loudly.

“Isn’t it far more likely that it’s a blessing of magic?”

“From a goddess?” I said, huffing out a frustrated sigh. “Really?”

“It makes far more sense than your mutant theory.”

At the time, all of ten, I wasn’t convinced she knew what she was talking about. Even when I was branded by a god, magic still wasn’t accessible to me as a belief.

Five years later, when my grandfather and I lost her to cancer, I understood that magic was stupid and useless if it couldn’t save the ones you loved. Blessings from a goddess were of no consequence when weighed against cells inside your body that wanted to kill you. I lost my love and interest in my craft and abandoned it that long, hard summer after we buried her.

Then high school started and I was thrown into a blender of emotions, being the weird kid without friends that everyone made fun of. I was sad and broken, an outcast with nothing. But then the following year, at sixteen, I got a reality check when my grandfather and I took in Amanda. Suddenly there was magic in making tea and having long talks on dark nights, and in knitting things that kept you warm when the wind came rolling off the ocean through the forest to our back door.

I rediscovered my power, and in so doing, found my grandmother again, and eventually my whole line of people that ran all the way back to Branwenn on the bank of the river, trying to offer aid to a stranger. Our line had been blessed, and now I was in possession of thousands of years of that gift, strengthened and honed to the power of flight that took me home to my land.

The iron ball hitting me in the chest was not a surprise. Of course Rulaine would try and shoot down the ravens. Witches, unlike the fae, were as susceptible to being killed as any other human being. Every raven was me, so harming them would hurt me. The thing was, though, much like the time a peregrine falcon came out of nowhere and caused me a moment of excruciating pain, it took me a moment to refocus, and then I was back, the magic regenerating another raven in flight.

My grandfather believed that every bird would have to be killed at the exact same time for me to die. He was certain of that because many in our line could turn, as he could, into a huge bird, something the size of an Andean condor. He was always careful when flying because many a witch was lost from being shot out of the sky with an arrow or killed by an owl or set upon by trained falcons. It was when we were most vulnerable. Except for me. I was different. I was many, never just one. The first time I shifted, at nine, my grandfather was overwhelmed, and when my grandmother went to our library, hunting for answers, she came back empty-handed, with only a supposition: “I don’t think he’s a mage like you,” she’d told my grandfather. “I think he’s something different.”

When they eventually discovered I was a witch instead, he’d been so happy. “What an amazing adventure you’re going to have.”

I wasn’t sure about that, but now, in the present, as I flew at a blurring speed, I was thankful that the forecasted rain had yet to materialize, and though I could hear more shots, nothing hit me.

Landing on my cobblestone path, I shifted back to human, then ran up to the front door, touched the knob so the house knew it was me, and went inside quickly. I asked for light as I ran to my bedroom, and the house illuminated, oil lanterns sparking to life as I made my way through. Once I had on sweats, a T-shirt, and an oversize sweater, I felt better. It had been freezing outside. Heavy wool socks completed the outfit, and I got a fire going, catching glimpses in the windows of things circling my home, the ancient glass making everything look scarier than in daylight. I threw a few pine wood logs in the hearth, stoking the fire, before finally taking a breath, opening the front door, and stepping onto the porch.

Thunder boomed, and the lightning gave me a view of the vargrs in my drive. I could hear one close, to my left, breathing in the darkness. But I was in my doorway, so I leaned against the frame and waited.

“So certain of your power, are you?” a woman’s voice came from my right. She wanted me to step out and look for her. I wasn’t the brightest bulb, but I wasn’t stupid enough to do that.

“To whom am I speaking?”

“Did you kill the faun yourself, or give him to the nymph?”

I remained quiet.