____________________________________________________________________________

CHAPTER ONE

___________

“IT ALMOST GOT ME! WHATEVER IT WAS, IT NEARLY HAD ME!” the grunt shuddered to herself, stomping down the winding stairway of the tallest tree in the Sacred Hollow.

When the full moon centered in the sky like this night, the tree’s blooming shadow stretched across the expanse of the hollow like a guardian monolith of old. The Grand Watchtower had been carved into the pillar of a maple tree, its body soaring past the clouds on stormy days, with a spiraled wooden staircase and several open decks on every few levels. It was gifted by the Root during the early days of the clan’s settlement and served as the perfect encompassing lookout station in the hollow, day or night.

The steps of the Grand Watchtower helixed around the thick chestnut-brown trunk that was as wide as a house and seventy brooms high. As she descended the gargantuan tree, her head ached with the final echoes of malicious, teasing laughter before she had escaped the river house just minutes earlier. She thought about shouting again but kept her lips sealed.

What am I doing? Noa thought to herself. The head guards would turn you into a fat tick or snail if they caught you without your broom! I can’t believe I left it planted at the gateway! Oh, curse anyone that finds it before I do. But someone will see it first! And I’ll be blamed for whatever happened in there. But how do I explain it? I heard the dark laughter and something screaming in my head to enter Mismra’s room. Lay on her bed and sink myself into the covers. Even the ground seemed to sink in, like it wanted me to stay. Is there any other answer than a call from evil?

She lifted the thistled observer’s crown above her forehead and wiped beads of perspiration from her clammy skin, golden flakes melting in her palm. The row of quartz crystal shards around the crown shimmered a cherry red along the threaded blue line that strung them together. The crystals were usually cloudy white in color but she had seen them glow with pulsing yellow light on nights of the waning moon. But the moon was in full display tonight, yet cast next to no moonlight against the trees. As if the Hollow was starving for it. She felt uneasy, flicked the excess goldmist into the night air and kept on her way.

Halfway down, she stopped for a gulp of air on the Grand Watchtower’s fourth level, a thatched-roofed open deck pod that circled the tree and led to its inner structure. Orange-bright torches soaked in fire honey sizzled and thumped against the chilling wind, placed along the outer railing of the deck pod and showering Noa in comforting, primal light. Her cheeks billowed red, the wind biting with such icy indifference that her belly started to fill with a seeping sense of doom. It didn’t matter how bright the torches burned, the open-air night and looming darkness began to constrict her lungs and gnaw deep into her bones.

She spotted the nearest spotter cabin a hundred brooms below on the forest floor. The bedroom light of guardkeeper Grizzle was still wavering—she’s probably my best chance for not getting in trouble for the broom. She cupped her hands around her eyes, the red light from the crown crowding her vision.

The invading winds began to wail in rhythms from inside the watchtower, howling like a hurt animal lost in a forgotten cave. As it traveled through pathways of wooden veins and spilled out through spider-webbed cracks in the tree or carved symbols from the Mendac script, the howls stretched into the distraught screams of a woman. Noa slammed her eyes shut.  

The innately chilling sounds, referred to as banshees by her sisters, would ripple their way into every Mendac witch in the Sacred Hollow. They had a way of snaking into the hardest of minds, followed by the sensation of being choked to death, all while blaring like a human kettle whistling from Hell. They were an alarm—but instead of alerting for dinner or training periods, every Mendac knew the banshees signaled the arrival of a great threat. Noa had heard the banshees six times this year. Six times too many.

Cold autumn night had just dawned in the Sacred Hollow and so, arose an ancient power.

. . .. . .

IN AN UPPER MENDAC POD nestled high in a wide oak that mirrored the Grand Watchtower, the Mendacs’ supreme commander, Root Mother Cindra was already half-dressed.

A thick bearskin blanket and a set of black lace nightclothes flew into the far corner closet before slamming shut. The tired leader appeared to be a woman in her late thirties, tan skinned, ever-piercing wet yellow eyes, and straight raven hair that cascaded to her shoulders. She leapt from bed without a creak, zooming past shelves and podiums of ancient tomes and journals that covered the whole of the cavernous room.

Like sandpaper, a small palm-sized journal slid off the polished wood of a display shelf and spun weightlessly like a baby bird’s feather catching the breeze. The dark blue pad flapped its thick pages about the room as a blanket of soft light spilled out from just-lit candles. Cindra held out a hand, now gloved, and her bare fingers snatched the whizzing journal with a snap.

Before leaving her treetop abode, the Root Mother took an unhappy glance at herself in the mirror next to the patio doors. She wasn’t quite half-dressed. Only armed with her satchel of goldmist across the shoulder and unsocked ankle-high boots. She rolled eyes at her always-creeping senility and allowed the inner mind to finish the armory spell for her.

In the blink of an eye, her first layer of clothing billowed from beneath the skin fiber by fiber, segmented in fine strips and sealed onto her form. The tan undershirt was crisscrossed with several blue and yellow straps of leather and as she left the silver mirror stand, six blue tendrils that resembled wet moss coiled under the arms and across her flat stomach. The silent tendrils flattened into a cloth, with Mendac sigils glowing through the fabric in a deep yellow that matched Cindra’s eyes. In the short walk from the bedroom to the open deck, a brown-green trenchcoat with the texture of sandstone and a wide-brimmed hat, of the same color and steepled to a point, faded onto her.

The banshees of the Grand Watchtower called out again with a high-pitched shriek of urgency. Cindra gripped the fungal railing with tight, calloused hands and stared out into the night, her magic sight gliding across the Sacred Hollow like a bird of prey surveying its domain. Soft trails of torchlight showed no witches walking the paths and most of the houses, even of the upper Mendacs, were dark. The clay-and-mud domed ground huts for the younger witches, or grunts, as they chose to be called, were the same. But the Hollow was aware. Cindra’s eyes scanned the lit towers dotting the entire fifty-mile forest until she spotted the Grand Watchtower more than three miles ahead, the tree towering above the grove huddled around it like pine-needled pikes.

Cindra grew queasy and furrowed her brow, a sudden lump shuffling in her throat. She felt off balance. An epiphany ran through her, sending her chest over the railing at an unwelcome invitation to vomit.

But she held back. And the horrible feeling persisted. Something beyond the power of the Mendacs, the Root, or logic itself continued to manifest and pulse about her head like thunder. The awful feeling, long simmering in the dungeons of her mind, had bubbled to the surface. It came forth as natural as an introductory spell.

It has come! The shadowed fear I’ve been waiting for all my life, even if I didn’t realize it. The thing that has haunted my dreams since I was a child. The dark cloud peering over my soul, or whatever is left of it! Despite all I’ve done… this is the moment! The seed of darkness that wants hold over this world... And I will be forced to sacrifice all, watch it wash away in a black flood... Yes! This is that doom!

 . . .. . .

NOA, THE WATCHTOWER WITCH was halfway down the tree hugging stairwell, heaving out pure panic in her aching two-steps. But she still had enough breath to scream when the Root Mother flittered in front of her, the smallest trails of golden mist flaking off the elder’s back. Cindra closed her eyes from the high-pitched yelp and softened her annoyed face before gently grabbing the young girl’s shoulders.

“And where is your broom, child?” she asked, noticing her virtually naked appearance for the role of watchtower guard, armed with an empty goldmist satchel and a pitiful overcoat. No telescope. No provisions. No broom. She would have been unprepared for a pee break.

“I-I left it at the last circle, Mother Cindra. I’m so sorry!” Noa sorrowed, holding her hands in a ‘plea’ gesture.

Cindra held up a calm hand with two bent slender fingers. “Are you alright? What has happened?”

“I heard screams coming from the Shapely Bend and I rode down from the tower to take a look around. I saw the den fire of the River House still alive and several shadows moving about. But then, the river house began to… moan. And I could smell fresh blood. Just as planted my broom down and rushed toward the door, a storm of tiny voices nearly knocked me off my feet. They... they were begging me to open the door.”

The young witch sighed and a teary look of confusion hardened on her face. “The whispers wanted me to walk into the back bedroom and bury myself under the covers. I could see the blankets folded neatly in a chest in one of the girl’s rooms. But something inside me said to stay back. So I ran from the house, used the circle, and realized I forgot my broom. And I have no more goldmist! And I’m sorry!”

She began to cry and Cindra grabbed her by the chin, peering into Noa’s green eyes. “You’re fine, my dear. You did the right thing by alerting me. Now, here.” Cindra said, unclipping her own satchel and placing it over the grunt’s neck.

Cindra walked to the edge of the plank and looked out to the Shapely Bend, a comma-shaped peninsula of pine trees that bloomed rose red and sun-kissed in summer. Bordering the beachside coast of the Bend, the surging river presented as silver blue in the moonlight, a wavering reflection of the River House in ripples. The house within the tiny valley was a pitch black shadow, with no candles or fires lit despite what the young witch said. An unnatural stench had invaded the air and Cindra stiffened.

The witch gripped the goldmist satchel in both small hands and looked toward her leader. “What would you like me to do?” The red light in her crown faded, returning to a balanced cloudy white.

“Go wake the Mothrunnners and tell them I’ve said to rouse the saplings. You’ve done well. Now go.” Cindra ordered. The grunt nodded and ran further down—missing the sight of the Root Mother stepping off the tall wooden stairway and vanishing into a mass of golden sparkles.

 . . .. . .

“PAAHHHH! CHAAAAA! work…” was the raspy final groan of a thirteen-year old grunt named Mismra, only one year into her training at the Hollow.

The guttural phrase had ran its course through the other members of the river house when Cindra arrived as a nervous flurry of dissipating goldmist in mid-air. She quickly descended to the sacred, crunchy soil in front of the River House. She darted through the searing-hot travel circle, its sharply angled Mendac sigils still glowing a glassy yellow, and eyed the negligent young witch’s broom still planted in the knee-high grass. She shook her head and continued across the wide bridge that led to the home of forest-trained witches.

The roaring Green River frothed and bubbled beneath the arched bridge that kept the Shapely Bend connected to the rest of the Hollow. Cindra couldn’t help but shiver at the flashes of white-hot memory. It had been long ago, in another time, where the river’s sea-green waters ran red with the blood of colonizer and native alike. This small valley, nestled in the western edge, had been home to such much horror and blood. But stains could stretch through time. Just like the New Spells.

Cindra saw a quaint lantern light twinkling from the shuttered front windows of the River House. All seemed peaceful. But Cindra could smell it in the air. She walked forward. The light snuffed out. The crooked outline of the niad training ground’s main attraction was just slightly off to the right. The white-barked window frames a bit off center. The dark brown logs that made up the walls were trailed with cracks and appeared soft like peachskin. The two-story structure, like an isolated wooded home from a dream, had been struck with some kind of awful illness. Most houses in the Hollow had a cold or light fever come wintertime, but the River House seemed swollen, bursting at the meldpoints.

She kept on walking.

The haunting phrase greeted her in bubbled screams before the door opened. It was an unwelcome friend in a time of relative peace. But that peace was shattered after inhaling the stench of fifteen rotting bodies.

Upon opening the door with a concentrated blast of wind at the corner, a long-festering swarm of flies and several mice vacated the river house’s main entrance. The Root Mother was greeted by a dense wall of filth and faint whispers that sent her to the side of the doorway, her senses wraggled by fresh death. She collected herself, pushing away tears and images of smiling young faces after hearing the common woomph! sounds that accompanied an activated travel circle. Several sprinting witches planted their brooms and were quickly approaching the house. She sparked the dead torches on opposite sides of the front door into flame and her yellow eyes narrowed once again. She puffed out her chest before braving the sight of the main room.

The door creaked open, the twin torches showering the river house’s interior in flickering light. A pale foot appeared in Cindra’s vision as her eyes moved across the expanse, the foot rigid and the only lively color being old blood collected at the heel. Then three witches huddled together under the dining table, their faces purple and tongues swelled with their bodes rigid at panicked angles. Another witch was crouched and faced the far corner near the dead fireplace, the head tilted and white bone peeking from underneath the thinning hair and rotting flesh of a week-old corpse. The whole cursed room was full of death. More than fifteen young women in twisted states of mortis across the main room and the long hallway down the center of the house.

“Mother!” a witch yelled from outside.

Cindra jolted from her stare into the lowly room and greeted the warmth of torchfire as opposed to that of decomposing gases.

One of the Mendac’s brightest, Levidia emerged in the doorway with her stark-white wand in hand, emitting a calm light spell from the tip. She was the tallest of Cindra’s apprentices, although eons younger, towering a head over the Root Mother herself. Her upper Mendac robes radiated a dark sky-blue in the torches, the golden frayed edges rippling in the night breeze like the river beneath their feet. Levidia’s beautiful chalk-white hair was tinged with streaks of corn yellow, the bangs of which cupped around her heart-shaped face, which was always kind even in the face of danger. That included now.

When she tried to enter the house, Cindra motioned her back and sprinted to the doorframe. “No, my dear! Do not enter! Stay by the door and I will speak to you here!”

“Oh no…” Levidia said with a gasp, pulling the silk undershirt under the robe to her nose and lighting the room with a traveling light spell.

The blue light grew white and lifted off the wand’s end, washing over as it floated to the center of the main room, paling the girls’ frozen faces like winter frost. Cindra’s eyes were nearly shut from the spell, the light unveiling a frozen hand sticking out of the doorway of a room down the hall. Levidia’s heartbeat thumped out into her throat and Cindra lowered her head.

“It was the emergence of a New Spell. I felt it.” she minced through grit teeth, her head blaring with voices and ringing in her ears.

Levidia’s heart skipped. “If that’s true, what is the procedure? Do you want me to consult with the Moths? We need to guard the area, yes?”

“No! I sent the witch who alerted me to wake them and prepare the saplings. But I need you to dissuade the elders and quickly. The Spell is very fresh. Violent. Uncontrollable. We can’t risk anything until we find the-.”

“The Tend of Root.” Levidia answered with a nod, her back straightening.

Cindra flashed a quick grin, despite the grisly omen behind her. “Yes, dear. So, you know what to do?”

“I’ll settle down the elders, ready the Endels’ volume on New Spells for you, and alert the squibbers, only giving them the briefest of detail. I’ll let them know they can signal me when the time comes to decontaminate.” Levidia listed without a wasted breath.

The Root Mother smiled, a twinge of pride in her heart. She nodded for her apprentice to move along. “That’s right. Decontaminate. I like that word.”

Levidia ran off the bridge and solemnly consulted with the three witches in her group, who all roomed together at the Home of Wormhill. She detached her broom’s end from the muddy ground at the start of the grassy yard and compelled it between her legs. The broom’s end lit up bright yellow and cold white sparks showered the ground with seeds of the Root. Levidia tipped her wide hat with a warrior’s salute and the broom rose silently, with her on board, through the breezy air. The young witch faced forward and hunched down, her chin almost touching the front end. Her gloved hands gripped the fungal leather wraphold and the broom shot off into the inner recesses of the Sacred Hollow with the other witches close behind.

Cindra breathed deeply. Levidia is one of my few saving graces. The best of girls.

The thought made her want to face the house of innocent, somehow rotting girls she had sent to bed only hours before. But she waited until the band of squibbers arrived. In the meantime, she wept softly in shadow for the girls she loved—the downtrodden she had sworn to protect.

On the squibbers’ arrival, Cindra informed them of a suspected magic illness and to treat the dead like those killed by necromatic blood magic. In short, the corpses were absolutely not to be touched until further notice. The squibbers’ job was to observe, take note of areas that needed specialized attention, and keep other witches from the River House. A single squibber stayed outside to stand guard, a particularly sleepy witch who Cindra remembered had accidentally set the training arena on fire two summers earlier. Although since then, she had made the effort to pay more attention in her studies.

The other three entered with the Root Mother, their faces protected by a scarlet wrap and their wands casting a foggy purple sweep over the room. Blood and other body fluids spewed from mouths and open wounds shined an unearthly green in wandlight, cleansing the main room of small, ever-present invaders as Cindra always referred to them. Levidia, since her apprenticeship, had educated her on the more modern terminology—germs, bacteria, viruses. Different words mattered not to Cindra, as long as the intention was received.

After the squibbers initial cleaning, Cindra was not surprised to notice the spell’s persistence. She had watched them during their ritual and they showed obvious signs of stress and sullenness, but that was to be expected. But the influence of the New Spell had not acted upon them yet. Perhaps it took its time to simmer within the body. Cindra believed that she would be safe, blessed by the Mendac’s creator and God-On-High, the Root to be immune to most magic, preventing their enemies from taking her power. That, could only come of her own will.

The cleansing continued to the dining room and the entrance to the hall, where Cindra started a steady walk, fixated on the pale blue arm sticking out of the doorway. Her boots creaked along the floor, the river vibrating the aging panels and rolling across her teeth like swished ale on a night of celebration. The reveal behind the door was unsurprisingly tragic, with a bunkmate of Mismra’s fallen dead by the doorway and the first victim herself sitting up in bed, her head twisted against the headboard with bulging eyes and scratches at her bruised, swollen neck.

Cindra paused and grieved the little witch, a purely innocent player in a game no one was privy to understanding. She fought a growing anger in her heart, forcing her fists to unclench as the squibbers approached the doorway, wands at the ready. Then, the whispers began again.

Paaaaa. Chaaaaa. Wakkkk.

A tingle in the back of her head sent waves of ice shards into the back of her eyes and a distant whisper blew in her ear. She whipped her head around, observing the sudden predatory nature of everything in the bedroom. The half-open door, the bulbous wax still dripping from the candlestick, the rumpled bedsheets. They all seemed to stare at Cindra. And they whispered in agreement with one another and hungrily beckoned for the innocent squibbers.

The thought was insane. But true. It was spreading. Something Levidia called an infection.

The whispers became sharper, crisp as dead leaves.

PATCHA! WAKK!

Cindra’s hat tightened. Her cloak wrapped itself firm around her shoulders and waist.

PATCH.

WORK.

At once, Cindra’s eyes widened and she held out both hands flat, freezing the squibbers in place. The warm floors creaked under their slow statuesque recoil into a calm, relaxed pose. Cindra watched their panicked, still conscious eyes roll wildly, trying to emit the scream that a frozen throat could not. The Root Mother bent down to the scrap of dirty, damp-smelling linen and hooked the embroidered edge with the tip of her wand. She brought the rotten cloth to her ear and a burst of vicious screams, laughs, and taunts in a language unknown but understood rang out. She dropped the scrap and it dropped to the hardwood, suddenly heavy. Cindra stoop up sharply, holstering her wand.

“Varis temena.” she said softly.

The squibbers relaxed from their stone positions and drew shuddered breaths while turning to the Root Mother who had spun open the top of a long glass vial containing near transparent golden jelly. The jar rested in her palm and she went first—she dipped two fingers into the syrupy liquid and smeared globs in and around her ear before turning her head and performing the ritual on the other side.

“A spell has been released. Once the host dies, it spreads. The newborn curse leeched out from her body after she passed and latched onto anything with value to her. The jelly will protect you from the whispers until morning—after that, it’s useless and you will join these witches in death.”

The River House hardened in retaliation. The hollow stone shingles on the roof flapped about, the shutters slammed open and shut, and all the metal forks, spoons, knives, and candlesticks melted into mercury. The silver remnants of their cutlery and shining mementos curdled into sizzling trails of glimmering predation. The spools of liquid that collected on the floor from bookshelves and tables began to group in a circular formation around the witches. Within the walls of the main room, the squibbers watched several oily black fingers poke through and wiggle about, in a ‘come over here’ gesture. Cindra held out a hand toward the squibbers who had stopped working with the jelly and shook her head at them. They tried to reserve their discomfort and the youngest of them began to shake, her eyes fluttering to splash away a tear as it blotted the red scarf around her face.

But the squibbers stood determined. And Cindra was silently proud, although she wanted to burst into a fountain of tears as well.  

“There’s another body here, Root Mother. The entire cabinet seems to affected.” a squibber with bun-braided red hair said from the kitchen, feeling along the edge of the cabinet’s open door with a gloved hand after placing the jelly.

“We’re dealing with a haunting, right?” another squibber asked, staring at the heap of bodies and reaching into the vial as it was passed amongst them.

“No. A true curse. A haunted house… with unresolved spirits and all? That is troublesome, but manageable with the right witch. But a cursed house is a danger to all.”

“Yes, mother.” the squibber responded before quietly casting a lighting spell under her breath and resuming her observation.

“How long will this spell last?” a stout squibber of eighteen and gifted with flowing white hair asked, smoothing out the jelly inside her ears.

“The curse will spread until we locate the Tend of Root. It’s on everything. The bed. The tables. The walls. The dishes. Their wands. Every bleeding pustule and mark on their bodies. In the weaving of their wares. Everything. It’s about to sink into the foundation—look at the sigils.” Cindra fired off, pointing to the wall above Mismra’s bed.

The wall was once a honeydew yellow but since the New Spell’s birth, a black and viscous mold had bloomed in dozens of circular fleshy patches inside widening cracks—in their center were faint glowing carvings from the incomplete and very ancient Speech of the Root. A similar growth had developed on the near-mummified corpse of Mismra, a particularly aggressive sigil of curved almost-angles and an unusual, elongated slant had seared onto the bare flesh near the heart, ember-hot.

Cindra noticed something. The grotesque burn had started from within.

“It looks like it’s… marking territory.” the red-haired squibber pointed out quietly.

It was worse than that. The threat was a New Spell, without a doubt. The conjoined sigils were a combination of three words, amended with a new character that jutted out the right side. That character had no substitute for her to translate. And Cindra had wrote the guide on the first scriptures. The New Spells were forewarned in annals old and new to the Mendacs and the numerous Root Clans as a whole—a spell and its vessel that could upset the natural balance of the world if given the proper training.

A foreboding warmth brewed from the depths of Cindra’s chest. In it, came the horrendous and damning realization that she would need to find this chosen witch.

Cindra brought the squibbers in close and conjured what Levidia referred to as ultraviolet light to rid the room of impurities. It sang to blood, viscera, and animal fluids alike, making them shine a deep blue. The volius aspectum spell seeped through the room in a billowing rich purple haze that forced the spell sigils to glow like hot coals at the bottom of a firepit. The spidery crosshatched invasive magic cut through the cleansing light, lining the interior of the river house like a knitted blanket of luminous death.

“As I said, the jelly will dull the whispers until sunrise. You have until then to locate as many sources of the spell as you can. Please. Before the whole clan suffers.” Cindra said.

She walked out of the River House with a freshly putrid weight sewn onto her heart. The squibbers would not make it to dawn. Within a few minutes, their final screams would echo out like the banshees as they wilt into decaying corpses, same as the others. Panic would ensue. Many witches would die. Rumors would fly wild like a singing sparrow. It seemed as though nothing good would come of the Mendacs—not until she found the one with the Tend of Root nestled inside, conducted the summoning ceremony, and hoped that the unlucky witch could comprehend the spell. If not, everything would unravel.

I’m sorry…. Cindra thought, giving a hawkish glance to the waking hollow that knew not of the chaos that would unfold.

You have a long road ahead.

_________________________________

CHAPTER TWO

___________

FRANCIS GATES CHOPPED THROUGH A WALL OF BRUSH thick as a bull’s neck, proud of his machete bought off a merchant at a muggy Jamaican port a summer ago. The merchant, a yellow-toothed hermit had laughed in giddy delight after being tossed two shillings. Gates wanted it mainly for the bright brown wood-carved handle. The blade was of standard quality and according to the old man, had been a slave’s tool. At the moment, Francis felt much of the same.

The never-ending mesh of intertwined thickets of dead vines and thistled bushes had started to wear him and his troop down. They had been trudging through a large patch of forest two day’s journey from the Kentucky state border, the terrain getting worse with every step. The hikes through leafy lakes of clover and fluffy green moss were often interrupted by pot-bellied hills to twist an ankle in. Angry arrowhead rocks never relented, poking through the leather bottoms and reminding Gates to keep his steps light. Skinny oaks, chestnuts, and maples were erected like omnipresent guards, stamped along the ground and packed close together like townsfolk gathered for a local hanging. And the group’s target, a creek marked on the map by their superiors as a swished circle and labeled with ‘follow until creek meets the Kentucky River” was nowhere in sight.

The nineteenth century had begun and America was a newborn in the ancient international stage of affairs. Despite the success of the revolution and the founding of the country, the thirteen colonies turned states were a chewed-up hangnail on the financial green thumb of whatever lie west of the Mississippi. By finding vital sea ports in the South—New Orleans and down the Florida coastline—river trade would become the Americans’ greatest advantage. Thomas Jefferson’s fifteen-million dollar purchase of an obscene amount of territory from the French had been three or so years earlier, a strategic master plan to force the Indians and other savages into submission. By claiming the land in a court of law, America’s top political and military heads, land solicitors, and any respectable man with heavy pockets had free reign to bountiful farmland and resources. They just had to fight their way through it.

Gates had been summoned to the home and personal office of Colonel Malcolm ‘Heyday’ Gates, his father and twenty-eight year veteran of the Navy. Heyday was in charge of Maryland’s navy force but brushed shoulders with Alexander Hamilton (who favored the creation of a better reformed Navy) and President Washington, with whom he shook hands following the signing of the Naval Act of 1794, which allowed Heyday to take a position of power not seen in the Gates family since a generation before the revolution. Being the richest veteran in Maryland by a few barrel-fulls of gold coin and military medals, Heyday was almost immediately installed as the head of Maryland’s naval command.

Heyday’s bushy gray eyebrows were particularly twisted on the day he commanded his only son to navigate the terrain west of the current Kentucky border until reaching a spotted creek with possible passage to the river. The two men migrated from his official desk to his study after a casual, meaningless conversation every son was forced to have with the father. Heyday sat in a crinkly leather chair and drank brandy from a tumbler, not offering his son a glass. The fireplace was not lit. The only light came from a sliver of folded velvet curtain in the window behind the desk. Francis thought he might have seen true sadness or fear in his old dad’s eyes. But Francis would never speak of it. He supposed the struggle to hold back fear was the best way Heyday could show love.

Gates had hoped his father had finally assigned him land and slaves for a plantation in the Carolinas or Virginia but no luck. He was assigned to organize an exploration party of five including himself from an approved list from the Navy, the Army Corps of Engineers, and President Jefferson himself. The troop was to collect information on any tribes along the predicted path toward the creek, with a surveyor, three Navy heads, and an army engineer assigned to observe possible port or harbor locations. Gates was ecstatic. The realization that the president himself had assigned him to lead another adventure like Lewis and Clark was beyond a dream come true. It was a new life.

Unfortunately, his troop was on their third respite of the afternoon.

“You fools are about the laziest sacks of tar I’ve met since my shipyard days.” Gates mused, taking the moment to stretch his legs.

“How the hell do you get tar in a sack? Wouldn’t it burn up?” Caplan, the brooding blond surveyor replied with a yell, his back turned as a heavy stream of golden urine splattered the bright green. Gates hoped he didn’t ruin their only map which was currently shoved in the back of his greasy trousers.

Mr. Caplan had been the first man selected, picked up at the Yellow Stone Farm Depot in the town of Ripley’s Way, Virginia. Caplan was a Maryland native overseeing the town’s bridge rebuild, needed for important army supply lines. The brash surveyor had prospects of reaching the actual Yellowstone territory in the far reaches of the West, donating two hundred dollars to the elder Gates’ failed the year previous. Francis came to the modest horse feed station with a contract promising Caplan eight hundred acres past Kentucky and the deal was done. The rest of the men joined the group based on similar pieces of paper, but Caplan got the best deal thanks to his generous contribution.

A burp echoed out from beyond Gates’ view, shuffling his mind to the present.

His second, a burly man of thirty named Richard Rolfe had impressed only himself—five slain foxes draped over the log he sat on, all that meat at the cost of his entire supply of lead ammunition. Rolfe unknowingly wore the leaky purple entrails around his neck like a cursed royal cape. He was lounging on the overturned log and munched on the collection of tasty-looking yucca plant buds and some bright purple berries that were staining his hands with the same color as the foxes.

“The way I see it, we’ve got a week… at the very least. The land here is somewhat transitionary.” Lieutenant Mallory said, standing up to explain. “There is a tremendous amount of flooding and no tribe of Yah-hoos or mosstroopers are living in this slop. Once we get ourselves on the other side of this mountain range, I think we’ll find the river. By the looks of the plant life, we have stuff rooting in the loose soil, most likely runoff. I say we seize the moment to rest while the weather is good.”

Lieutenant Mallory was famous with military buffs for fighting Barbary pirates in black waters off the coast of Libya at the turn of the century. Mallory had been in a fierce naval battle that had his crew nearly blowing away the criminal-infested Tripoli ship with the U.S.S. Enterprise, a fourteen-cannon schooner with untouched plaster white sails bigger than most buildings. Mallory came back a hero, despite the fact that Francis knew the war was still raging on and that the crew of the defeated Tripoli had been allowed to live and retreat back to the mainland. Perhaps it was the noble way, but part of Francis wondered if he would have held back the urge had he led the charge against some savage rapers and thieves. But, he relented nevertheless.

Gates kept his military hat in one hand and leaned against the tree behind him. He spun the machete around, dropping his hat and readying a palm to catch the blade on its flat side. He looked at the canopy of trees above, the sun slowly trailing across the unseen sky but yellow beams winking through the leaves. Precious daylight was burning and his men were ready for bed. His mind drifted to the famous explorers Lewis and Clark, braving the western edges of the country in canoes across swampy marshes and dangerous foamy white rapids with a capable Indian girl guide. Gates was one of many young rich men out here, making their way with muskets, ale and tobacco, and at least two men with swift hands at trade. Besides Mallory’s military combat expertise and Rolfe being capable with a rifle, they probably wouldn’t make much of a dent in history. And no miracle Indian girl wouldn’t be helping this mangy lot. The real countryside was too vast and primal—he had seen testament to that fact in the last few weeks.

The wilderness, the true wilderness, not the parks and local forest he frolicked in as a boy, was unforgiving. Every step provided new unfelt sensations creeping around the sides of his bootheel. He could sense the vast amount of dead creatures that fell to the ground and every slimy worm lurching or slithering to devour them. Animal and plant became one in the wilderness. And that made him feel alone. While animals leaped from tree to tree with grace or hopped silently over fields of moldered leaves, Gates and the others stomped and bumped into every slight inconvenience, a boot sunken into mud or hat snatched by some lucky twig.

It was hard for him to feel unimportant in the land of men. After all, his family name was stamped on most business licenses in the city of New Parish, Louisiana. The Gates plantation owned more slaves than half the South and provided more than six thousand dollars to the city’s public funds every year. Slaps on the back and handshakes in the street were routine while working for his uncle’s law office on Luray Street, sending heaps of twine-wrapped documents to bondsmen and the two courthouses downtown. During the annual Gates Family Festival hosted by his grandparents on Kisser Avenue, in the gleam of fireworks bursting red, Gates would get a free drink or two when some drunk shopkeeper recognized him. Things were good in New Parish. But out here, in the truly dark nights of endless western Virginia forest, Gates felt utterly useless.

“So,” he snided. “Should we make a fire? Hm?”

Rolfe scarfed down the rest of his picketed goods and stood up, dusting off the yucca seeds. Through a full mouth, he replied, “What are ya so eager for, Captain?”

Gates looked at the ground, an unknowable labyrinth of muddy green within the tiny fields of clover and weeds twisting tightly throughout the ground. He was in a maze of his own. Rolfe was right. But he didn’t have to like it. What was the bastard’s question? What was he eager for?

“More than this.”

He put on his hat, in full military fashion, and stormed away from the troop. He walked to the west, hacking through the brittle trees with his machete until he met some dense brush. Some time passed as he made a new pathway through the waxy, prickly leaves of a massive shrub bush. Needle marks dragged across his sweaty face and hands, succumbing each with a quick shake of the head as he spotted a clearing. He chopped faster in his right hand, using the other shoulder and the top of his hat to push away the brunt of the needles. In his inner mind, he was somewhat baffled and a child version of him giggled.

The last eight years, Gates had worked his way through Maryland’s Navy, beginning his career as a pitch pine splitter on the dockyards. His job was to swing an axe for ten hours a day at logs upon logs of the precious pitch pine after they had been drained of the blood colored sap that could be melded into anything from butt salve to butt-burning turpentine. Gates would prepare the long pieces of pine wood for the ship frame with several other boys, usually fitting a schooner for naval practice runs. Although he didn’t have to, Gates often assisted the older shipwrights in laying down the pine pitch between open spaces in the planks—it was repulsive, tarry black and thick as mud but the sludge armored the ship from leaks with a tight seal.

He enjoyed the woodwork but during one of his final days at the yard on a lunch break, he learned that three of the ships he helped frame and seal had sunk, two of them during practice runs. The disheartening conversation passed his cohorts by like a love letter drifting out of a window on a windy night. No qualms here or there. But to Gates, a petty bitterness soured any further self-gratitude when it came to building ships.

And now, here he was, chopping down wood for days on end and the only man in his group with any sense of honor. He stopped his mindless hacking and gingerly brushed himself free of splinters and those pesky needle-covered burs that stuck to fabric like true love’s kiss. He looked up at the bright rays of sunshine breaking through the canopy, closing his eyes once the white-hot tendrils of light stung like being poked by a child. Gates relented and basked in the whizzing colors inside his eyelids, light blue trails that swam around his dark vision like sea creatures. But a sharp SNAP! stole him from the quiet moment.

Gates opened his eyes, decided it was a deer, and harkened back to the group.

On his return, the troop had begun engaging in the condemned and absolutely forbidden act of eating so-called ‘magic mushrooms’. And they had taken his joke to heart. A crackling fire sat proudly in a thin ring of stones and dirt. Rolfe was still sitting, but now held a wet cloth bag full of soft, red stems with strange wrinkled mushroom caps still attached. There were a lot. Where did the brute get them?

“-nita muscaria is the elder one. You need to bake it over coals for an hour or so. But this,” Rolfe was saying, mid-conversation and holding out a palm-sized toadstool mushroom, flesh-colored and fanned at the edges like an umbrella. “This is supposedly a different kind of gift from God.”

 “Of course, Rolfe. Ahh! Francis! Look what Richard has been hiding up those giant sleeves!” Caplan sneered with a laugh.

“I leave you alone for a few minutes and you pull out poison mushrooms.” he huffed on his return.

“They aren’t poisonous...” Mallory said, staring at his hand in a queer way, waving it back and forth before pointing to Caplan.

“These are magic.” Caplan said.

Gates stared at the gruff man now smiling like a bright-eyed boy getting that rare slice of apple pie at Thanksgiving. He didn’t even know the fool was capable of saying more than a sentence a day. The mushrooms were almost supernatural. Terrifying. And interesting.

“These little things are mad! You could almost—.” Rolfe said, flipping the biggest mushroom around and placing it on his tuff of sandy gray hair. He flicked his chin up and giggled. “How’s it look?”

“What on Earth are you—?” Gates began before Rolfe suddenly stood, the mushroom fixed to his matted pile of black hair.

“Give it a half hour and then you’ll start feeling the Earth in ways you never imagined. Colors are brighter. The trees almost sing to you. Take one, Captain. You’re the skinniest of us. It should come down on you the fastest.”

“Come down on me?” Gates repeated with a raised eyebrow.

“Don’t be afraid of what ya never seen before...” Rolfe urged on, smiling and taking the mushroom off his head.

“Aye, captain! Don’t be afraid of the truth!” Caplan said.

Gates watched the mushroom unfurl its wet umbrella structure in Rolfe’s dirty palm. He debated. But he knew they were right. The Promised Land or its river were not showing up in the next day or week. They were stuck out here. And his troop were not going to shut up.

”Just give me the bloody thing.” Gates snarled.

A series of half-hearted hoots and hollers echoed out in jest. Mallory clapped for the captain’s disregard of duty-bound authority. A barrage of soft afternoon thunder boomed off in the distance, sharing in the applause.

Rolfe removed the mushroom from his head and tossed the doorknob-shaped thing to Gates. He caught it on instinct, instantly repulsed by the cold, rigid, yet fleshy object now resting in his palms. It was bright red in color, with flattened fins upward along the edges. As he moved the knob around, droplets of paint-like yellow liquid squeezed through tiny spaces in the red and began to grow.

“Where did you find this?” he asked his second, putting a hand down and wiping the excess liquid onto his sweat-drenched trousers.

“A few miles back at the bottom of that hill with the dogwoods. That’s the perfect place to find beauties like these. Besides a cow mound. I think there was a whole patch of them underneath the leaves. They love to root in the dead stuff.” Rolfe answered, pulling several fresh knobs from the bag, all wedged between his large fingers and dripping with mustard-colored nectar.

“Really?” Gates asked, holding the knob to the fading ray of sunlight. It didn’t look appealing. But perhaps that was the point. Part of him could almost believe it was some enflamed removed organ from the body. It was fleshy, not only the color of so. Within that gross, forgotten organ of the Earth was… according to an army engineer and two Navy captains, the key to life itself.

Francis had never found it in a book. Certainly not the Bible. It was nothing but a woven-together collection of cut trees. So what was so different about a mushroom? Both had the power to make you think differently. He looked down at the knob and plopped it into the side of his mouth. Without a second to hesitate on the rumpled texture, he bit down and chewed quickly. A frothy curdle popped up in his throat and he ended the hearty chews.

Rolfe began clapping and slapped the red-eyed, gagging Gates on the back in a brotherly way.

“You’ll see, mate. It’s just a plant. No different from the yucca. Or those berries from earlier. It just helps you see a bit clearer… just until the sun goes down.” Rolfe said, sitting back down on the log and stretching his arms.

“Really? Only ‘til the sun goes down? Is that how these things usually… proceed?”

A smile slipped past Rolfe’s response. “Of course, mate.” 

_________________________________

CHAPTER THREE

___________

SHE HAD CONSIDERED SAVING HIM.

Keziah, a foraging grunt, had picked up the scent of a severely injured Rootbase mushroom while on her usual barefoot patrol along the Mendac territory easternmost side of the Hollow. Three days had passed on her latest excursion and she had finally admitted to loving the seclusion. Seventeen years old but more unsure of herself than some of the young orphans, Keziah was conflicted. A forager like herself didn’t seek adventure. They were happy with their hands and feet in the arcelium dirt and nesting seeds in the soil all day long. She enjoyed it, of course—it was almost entirely a one woman effort and she was left with her own thoughts, unless she wanted to speak to the plants, which usually helped them grow.

But, not entirely enthralled in the careful disassembly of pollen from a meat-eating netchifier plant on behalf of her best friend Mismra, she chased after the scent trail to assure herself a human had not ingested the powerful essence.

After a short trek, the scent became a wiggling sting in her nose and through columns upon columns of skinny trees with bark that shed off like curled sheets of paper, she saw the pretty man. She had seen several beautiful men and women not of magical inhibition, mainly in the cover of trees and bushes or in shadow past a town’s lamplight, but this particular man made her insides flutter like few witches before. He was a man. The first man she had ever seen in such wonderful sunlight. The rest of his troop were not so pretty and smelled of greasy hog butter and many cups of barrel-crusted drink.

Keziah wanted a closer look at the man. She mouthed the pilari spell—her feet lifting from the dirt beneath without a sound, her body rising as her hands followed up the bark of the tree. Frayed twigs, bug-munched maple leaves, and tiny globules of mud rose with her in a gentle vortex. She was several brooms higher than the afternoon campfire when she came to a stop, her mind hardly making the effort. She wrapped a slender arm around the full maple tree in front of her, sinking into the crown as the leaves and branches parted, letting her nestle inside through smooth pathways like a wicker basket.

She watched him take off his hat, locks of thick brown hair falling on the side of his sweaty face. His face was flush red, perhaps the same color when he was an even cuter boy. They had the same hair. But he was in danger. All of the dancing, clapping, shouting men were. Their newest forage haul was the Rootbase Mushroom—the gift she had ingested at eleven years old, soon after her first menstruation. The gift came with great pain and the endowment of cosmic purpose beyond the thoughts of human minds. In order to receive its gifts, the person had to be blessed. And as far as Keziah knew, these men were not blessed by the Root Mother and the essence of the Root Itself. That meant danger and certain death.

So, she had considered saving him and his group of unsavory explorers.

Until she peered into his pretty head and traced around the whispers of despicable recurring words fluttering in and out, words glazed with malice and ego. They were quiet, as she could never read humans minds well and was cut off completely from hearing the thoughts of her other Mendacs. But the man’s emotions were racing and after taking the Rootbase, Keziah was able to locate the bulk of his thoughts and did not like them.

SLAVE.                        FOOL.                         SAVAGE.                    PITY.                        

Therefore, the young witch watched in a half-guilty state of morbid glee as the man chewed on his large portion of the mushroom with hearty bites full of fleshy fibers and the bitter aftertaste of old wine. Within the shimmering shadows from the canopy above, the witch crept closer. It was a damn shame, her lack of talent in ama, or reading minds. She inched closer and their names became clearer.

The man’s partners smiled in agreement, having already washed down their portions with swigs of rum that sparkled scarlet in the dusty bottle tied to the side of the loud bearded man’s horse. The handsome man, Francis, was struggling more than the rest. It was his first time. Unfortunately, his only time.

The second-in-command, Rolfe began to rub his belly while leaning back on the log. His midsection seemed to have grown twice its size since eating a half dozen of the Rootbase supply an hour earlier. He didn’t looked panicked. Just very sweaty. And just on the verge of screaming.

“Oh, hell! Kicks harder than a boot to the balls!” the second declared with grimace as he shook his head fiercely, disturbing his half-asleep horse.

“Ah! Something ain’t right, is it?” Mallory asked, suddenly sitting up from his hiding space behind a large oak tree.

“No, no. It was just a bad patch. Has to be. It should pass through… with haste!” Rolfe said pointedly, as if to convince himself.

“Oh, good. I thought my guts were coming through my mouth.” Gates replied with a gravelly scratch as the rest of the mushroom went down.

Francis’ storm of gastric pain was so great he tumbled over, his legs high in the air. Keziah’s hand gripped the tree and nearly summoned her broom to swoop down. She wanted to help. But something inside her wanted to watch more. And besides, what could she do?

“You’ll be alright, mate! They ain’t the killing kind! I’m sure of it! I just wanted ya to see for yourself! It doesn’t help if ya know how it works the first time!” Rolfe argued, peering over the tree where Francis had buckled.

He shook his head, burying his face in his hat mashed into the mud. His groans reverberated out from the tricorne hat in a muffled whimper that droned.  

Keziah continued floating, tiny worker ants along the maple branches tickling her feet as her skin turned clammy with shame.

As Francis cradled his stomach and rolled around, Francis’ insides were churning. And burning. And a feeling similar to pounding a block of chalk into the ground. Something was pushing itself through him. The mushroom was more than a simple plant, a fleshy little red animal not meant for the body of man.

Not meant for the body of a man… Keziah thought to herself, leaping down to a smaller tree and landing on a welcoming branch—the perfect perch for a grim forest watcher like herself. The next part left her curious but vigilant of her future. She had read the scrolls and heard rumors of a failed Rootbase ritual. But to witness it? She would be forever changed. The witch retreated from inside the cover of foliage, sorry for his good looks but ultimately feeling little for a short-sighted proponent of slavery. With unblinking eyes, she watched Francis pull the collar of his shirt loose and she took a deep breath with him, prepared to see the unseen.

Francis wailed in terror. His groin blasted apart through his trousers and blew the connected viscera of testicles and penis into the forest green like tied stockings full of rocks. He fell to his knees as blood gushed forth, the slave’s machete swinging wildly in his free arm. The blade whished back and forth through the groinal waterfall and when he fell, the machete dropped straight down next its dead master’s head.

“Dear God, Rolfe! Our pricks are blasting-!” Mallory cried out while holding his exploding privates, showered in his own blood and collapsing to the ground in a silent struggle.

Caplan ran off into the shrubs behind the fire, his shadow vanishing over steep ditch. A shrill cry rang out with the pop! of a grotesque explosion.

Keziah winced at the men’s final sounds. The Mendac’s books and all the whispered rumors couldn’t bring those awful kind of screams into being. They had to be witnessed. And she was ready to leave.

She watched the shocked, wide-eyed Rolfe stare into the fire. The moments passed by in a strange wave of visceral calm. Birds began tweeting. They had been silent all morning. Now Keziah knew why. The Root have found balance. Rolfe’s back quaked with fear, his eyes focused on the ever-changing flames while his hands went white. His stomach rumbled and he held the Root back. His heartbeat pumped through the log, across the forest floor, and up the tree she perched on.

A thunderous roar snapped across the air above her and Keziah jolted, her neck shooting up. Through the blanket of thick leaves and tuffs of needles, she spotted three witches flying fast across the cloudy skies, spiraling down on their brooms as they sniffed her out. They were searching for her. This wasn’t a friendly warning. She looked down at Rolfe, who had heard the arrival.

“What in God’s name?” Rolfe said to himself, following the blackish-brown blurs in the sky.

The tree canopy grew in height, snapping off smaller limbs and unfolding like a blooming flower. The branches crackled as they softly split into hundreds of feathery strands, their shed leaves blowing downward to reveal the witches circling above the smoldering campfire. The skinny smoke trail began to twist as the wind picked up. Keziah followed a spotter thread dashing through the thick air onto Rolfe, seen as a bright green strand from within the spinning witches’ flock. The thread was invisible to the human eye but was easily be seen in darkness by Mendacs, a divine green glow trailing behind the soft spell. The thread was like a ghostly rope being held at the conjurer’s waist, connected at the base of Rolfe’s head like lassoing a free-roaming horse. Rolfe didn’t notice the spotter thread’s bite, too distracted by the opened forest and sharp pains jabbing his stomach.

Keziah leapt off the tree branch, blasting through the canopy and floating to the ground as the witches closed in on the bewildered Rolfe. He held a hand in front of his reddened eyes, the loose bits of forest whipping around him as the glowing seeker thread began to flicker red. Keziah spotted Daire, the bravest and most stubborn of her friends through the whizzing leaves, catching her blood-red hair that curled along her shoulders like ribbons. She was eighteen, a year older than Keziah, one of the most gifted witches when it came to a fast task. That meant she had always figured herself as the headmaster of the friend group. Keziah loved her in a way. Noa was in a continuous argument since the Britter Party last fall. Noa’s cousin Bonnie never complained, even when Daire attempted to overtake the conversation and add a new grisly tidbit to her latest troll kill story. Privately, the three of them called her Snare.

Daire detached the seeker thread from Rolfe’s neck and rocked her speckled birchwood broom into a slow hover just above him. The thread’s green glow faded from view, spooled back into Daire’s long brown coat, frayed at the ends like a horse’s tail. The rest of the blurs slowed into recognizable shapes, four winded witches in total.

Something was very wrong—and the gory experiment was over. When the Mendacs didn’t take every precaution to avoid human interaction, there had to be a serious reason. And she had never seen her sisters show so little concern. She started to feel ill.

Her feet touched the ground, now layered with fresh soil and ripped-up flowers or baby trees from the windstorm. The campfire and the men’s supplies had vanished from view, all but a bewildered and cut-ridden Rolfe, unmoved on the log with his mouth grimaced. The ever-predatory Daire approached Rolfe from behind, lowering her broom like a black widow spooling down from its web. Keziah hopped toward Rolfe, now shaking and immobile from the Root. His heartbeat pulsed through his temple, a firelit bead of sweat getting lost in his tussle of hair.

“Who… who are-?” Rolfe asked tearfully, looking into the young witch’s deep blue eyes before Keziah placed two fingers on Rolfe’s forehead.

She closed her eyes and quickly began to picture her doama, the peaceful grist mill station just outside of the Hollow. On most foraging journeys to the eastern edge, she would stop by the edge of the Hollow, spending hours dazing at the clouds or watching river trout flop their tails against the bubbling brook. The mill had been abandoned for a few generations, the settlers long moved on from grinding flour to better prospects or back to England. The mill felt alive when the creek was active, filling the air with the lulling rhythm of the water wheel turning. Sometimes, Keziah would lay back in the furry creekside grass and listen to the millstone turn on its own, as if ghosts of grainmakers yearned for the endeavor after death. She loved the Hollow. But the mill always felt at peace.

With the doama spell, a witch could influence a mind of weakened spirit and shower them in a state of bliss. Rolfe was not long for this world as the Root would have its way, even the grandest of Mendac magic useless against the ritual. But a few moments of calm at the mill was all she could offer him.

“What are you doing?” Daire shouted, nearly breaking the doama. Light flooded Keziah’s senses and the mill vanished. Rolfe’s heart began to thump again, skipping around as his blood started to heat up.

Keziah remained silent and returned to her inner mind, grabbing the soft grass on the creek’s edge and watching the continuous waterfall over the creaky old water wheel. She found footing at the mill and placed Rolfe inside. When she opened her eyes, Rolfe was slowly falling to his side against the log, a calm expression on his face and his rocky wrinkles softening. Keziah breathed deeply and flicked her eyes at Daire.

“Three others are dead. They found the rootbase.” Keziah said before grabbing the back of Rolfe’s head and lowering him to the ground.

He was like a sleeping child. His body began to twitch, starting with the veins in his neck protruding like a pack of angry dew-worms searching for a way out. His fingers and hands outstretched as twisted puffles and cracks turned them soft, followed by a blast of air exiting his mouth. It reminded her of the banshees as it ended, the vapors expelling in a squeal like a rabbit caught in a barbed snare.

Keziah looked up, done with the world of men for now. The witches looked horrified. But their focus was still elsewhere. Daire stood in front of the rest, snuffing out the men’s campfire with a kick of her boot before climbing on her waiting broom.  

“The Hollow is under attack. It’s… very bad. Ten witches are dead.” Daire said, staring at the ground.

“What?” Keziah’s heart started thumping. “From who? Animals or other witches?”

Daire shook her head. “There’s some kind of sickness and it’s spreading. Root Mother needs all of us back, even if we haven’t been at home recently. The Moths don’t know what to do and demanded an inspection with every witch in the Hollow.”  

Without a word, the flock of witches took off for the skies. Keziah looked up, now seeing the massive cloud tower swirling miles above, ready to carry them to the Hollow’s domain. The lump in her throat grew. The Moths were the eldest of the healing witches, coming from a fog-ridden era in the time before All Time. They always had the answer. And if they could not find a solution, that was why the Root Mother existed. A conduit between the gifted and the Root itself. Did the Root not have an answer? Or did it simply not respond?

She manifested her cloudslicer in a puff of golden sparks, her spoon-shaped broom that was improved by the best Mendac weavers to continuously pick up speed and collect wind drafts in a wicker base melded near the golden fiber end. She climbed on and shot off toward the opened forest, leaving behind the pretty man and his unfortunate friends to help save her own.

Damn it all… Keziah thought to herself. She forgot to grab the netchifier plant for Mismra. But she would understand.

TO BE CONTINUED…