Witches, please

There’s something endlessly fascinating about witches.

Whether they are fairy tale villains or femme fatales; maidens, mothers or crones; mentors or conspirators or everyday women being persecuted for their uppity attitudes, witches make for great stories. And, across years of reading, I’ve met some fantastic witch characters.

Lolly Willowes. Eva Ernst. The Gale women. Paige Winterbourne. America’s Routewitches. Granny Weatherwax and Tiffany Aching. Baba Yaga. Diana Bishop. Gillian and Sally Owens. Minerva, Courtney, Agnes, Nahri, Jadis, Miryem, Penny, Ekaterina, Jane, Alexandra and Sukie. Mrs Fairfax and Madame Olympia. I could go on, but I’d better stop.

No, wait… I finished reading Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir last night (hot damn, what a book), and I must add Harrowhark Nonagesimus to this list. I mean, necromancy is a specialised kind of witchcraft and Harrow is… well, she’s horrible and she’s awesome. The best kind of witch.

Doubtless, you’ve got your own favourite fictional witches – please share because I’m always open to reading recommendations. And today’s final recommendation from me is a foretelling of lovely witchy things to come.

It’s a toffee-dipped apple, seeping poisoned juices from its rotten core.

It’s a cold wind blowing no good, whispering words that curdle on the edge of comprehension.

It’s a lonely road and a sullen, flickering light, glimpsed through dead branches, bone-bleached by the full moon.

In short, it’s GOOD SOUTHERN WITCHES.

Editor J.D. Horn of Curious Blue Press has assembled a clever coven of tales about witches from the south-eastern states of America. As the blurb says:

This collection is a love letter to the witch, in all her glorious and fearsome incarnations, because—you have to admit—even when she’s wicked, she’s still damned good.

You want witches? Good Southern Witches has “Baba Yaga reimagined as a Southern socialite, Kentucky granny witches, Texas water witches, Tennessee tricksters, North Carolina guardians, Georgia killers, Mississippi virgins, and Louisiana whores.”

What’s more, this anthology has Tace Bolley, my very own southern witch, who has a tale to tell about Uncle Amos Polkinghorne’s apple orchard which, as she puts it, “ain’t so sweet, neither.”

Publication date is 13 April 2021 and you can pre-order your Kindle copy on Amazon and your paperback copy soon.

I’m looking forward to seeing Tace in company with her southern sisters and reading the hell out of this anthology to discover a new batch of fabulous fictional witches.

 

(My banner image was cropped from a photo by Susann Mielke which she shared on Pixabay).

The Jam Jar

B_flower blueAnother month, another piece of Furious Fiction. July’s challenge was 500 words which 1. start with a question, 2. end with a BANG (literally) and 3. contain the words jackpot, jam and jungle.

You can read the winner and shortlisted entries on the AWC Furious Fiction site.

Here’s what I wrote:

“What’s the difference,” I said, “between an eccentric relative and one who’s just garden-variety crazy?”
“Asking for a friend?” Great-aunt Hypatia’s glare scorched me, but she was bound by blood and seal and covenant to answer my questions, however frivolous, so she said, “Aesthetic classifications of the relevant aberrant behaviour are dependent upon observable misalignment within age, wealth and tannin consumption.”
She wasn’t bound to give answers I could understand.
“Huh?”
Her smile widened. She wasn’t bound to answer questions she couldn’t understand.
“Tell me what that means, auntie.”
I pushed aside the jungle-dense drapery of vines and unlocked the door into the smallest of the gardens. She followed, still smiling like an overfed sphinx.
Nor was she bound to answer polite demands.
“What defines eccentricity?”
“One isn’t eccentric–” She made the word a sabre-rattle of syllables. Hypatia was always strongest amongst the plants she’d tended. “–unless one is old and rich and drinks a lot of tea.”
I knelt in front of the monkshood and began to clear the patch of earth I’d marked last autumn with a hawthorn stake. The Morency women had tended these gardens for two hundred years; if most of us were happier making poisons than jam, what of it? There were benefits. Hypatia was no more than a glimmer of light except to one of us.
I dug my strong fingers into the soil, questing down.
“So, Cousin Ransley.” I watched Hypatia’s lip curl. “Is he eccentric or dangerous?”
Fox-fire whirled in the abyss behind my long-dead great-aunt’s cornflower blue eyes as she realised I’d not asked my questions to vex her.
“He styles himself eccentric.” She weighed her words against the truth. “His mother was a Morency who took her luck with her when she left. She won the jackpot and married a millionaire. He’s rich.”
I brushed dirt from the unearthed jam jar and waited.
“He is not old enough, though. And he drinks filter coffee.”
“Not eccentric.” I sighed. “Dangerous?”
“Yes,” Hypatia hissed.
Her gaze followed the delicate brown tracery inside the jar.
“Then I’ll deal with him.”
Cousin Ransley stood beneath the fig tree, frowning at the wall.
“All alone, Illysia?” he said.
I glanced at Hypatia’s feral smile and didn’t answer. He gestured at the vines, set swaying by our exit.
“What’s in there? I’d have a wonderful water view from here without all this.”
“It’s a witch’s garden, Ransley, and safer if it’s walled.”
He threw his head back and laughed at the sky. Hypatia sneered as if she contemplated tearing out his exposed throat with her teeth.
“Witches? Do you know any spells, cousin?”
“Oh, yes. Your mother should have warned you.” I twisted the lid of the jar. “Abracadabra.”
He laughed harder.
“Abracadab.” Another twist. “Abracad.”
He jerked his head. Frowned.
“Abra.”
His mouth opened in a silent scream as I said, “Ab.”
I lifted the lid to let my cousin into the spirit jar and slammed it shut behind him.
BANG.

Flash fiction* – Autumn Witch

autumnwitch

She preferred maple leaves of fiery orange and yellow, or heart’s blood red. Sometimes, she found a perfect bruised purple leaf, veined with red-gold arteries.

She placed them all on her wide, white windowsills, for the sun to dry. Their memories of moisture evaporated, and they became brittle and bitter. As they baked, she seasoned them with regret.

No more dancing in the fresh breezes of Spring. No more whispering through Summer’s lazy heat. They crinkled, arthritic and crabbed, as she crooned to them of lost vitality, and stolen joy.

By the time the trees were bare, she had an army of clawed furies, which her winds could send to do her bidding. Their desiccated hearts yearned to scratch at tender flesh, and spill the hot blood which might, she promised them, be as sweet as the sap they remembered.

 

*Last week I mentioned writing some flash fiction for a Tiny Treasures event at Noted Festival. I thought I’d share my pre-prepared tiny stories here, rather than have them whirled away and lost, like fallen leaves…