The Witches of Snyder Farms (The Wicked Garden Series)
Read The Witches of Snyder Farms (The Wicked Garden Series) Online
Authors: Lenora Henson
The Witches of Snyder Farms
LENORA HENSON
Copyright © 2013 Lenora Henson
All rights reserved.
ISBN-10: 061588153X
ISBN-13:
978-0615881539
DEDICATION
For Mom and Dad.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Special thanks
to my amazing editor, Jessica Jernigan; you get it. Thank you to all my soul sisters, especially Michelle Galyon and Joanna DeVoe. Thank you to Craig Hart, your open mind continually inspires me. Thank you to cover model RaeChelle Leiken, you are the best. Thank you to Jennifer Adele and Christal Finch for inspiring me with your leadership and creativity. Thank you to the fans who keep me perpetually enthused. Thank you to Sophia and Jack for keeping me laughing. Thank you to Jim Murphy for everything.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
Scotland, Early 1600s
The crone dragged her granddaughter through the forest, as quickly and as quietly as the girl’s struggles—and her pregnant belly—would allow.
Then she stopped, listening. She looked to the earth below and felt the shake of hooves.
“They’re coming, Mage!” the old woman hissed.
Terror pulled the young redhead away from the horror she had just witnessed. She swallowed her tears and—eyes wide with fright—buried herself in the undergrowth.
erShe
Her grandmother followed, fear granting her an agility she hadn’t known in years. Burrowed deep into the hillside, they closed their eyes as horses thundered past them.
The women waited.
And they waited.
After what seemed an eternity, the crone pulled her granddaughter up out of the weeds.
“Grand Mama, ye should have let me go.”
“Ye cannae be talking like that, girl. You’ve a babe to think of. You’ve yourself to save, too. Nothing’s worth taking yer own life fer.
Nothing
. No guilt. No man. There is no act that cannae be forgiven. Do you hear me, child? No act that cannae be forgiven!” The old woman was stern. She gave her granddaughter a piercing look and shook her head. They had no time—and even less inclination—to contemplate such niceties as Christian morals.
“They’ll be coming back around for us, Mage! You
must
go. Take this bundle. Beer. Food. Herbs for healing and herbs that will help ye when yer time comes.”
The girl shook her head ferociously. “I cannae go. What about Reid?”
The crone sighed. “He’s fled, child. I sent him on his way.”
“No!” the girl screamed.
The crone clapped a wrinkled hand over Mage’s mouth and cringed. “Quiet!” she hissed. Then, more gently, “They be huntin’ us all.”
The girl pulled away from the old woman and scurried back onto the forest path, her grandmother following behind. “Mage, ye mauna go that way. Heed me! He said for ye to wait for him by the water, by the—”
She saw the black horse emerge from the forest before Mage did, but the young girl turned around when she saw the terror in her grandmother’s eyes.
The rider caught his breath and pulled back on the reins when he saw who stood before him. Surely, this was the same lass he had seen burned at the stake just that morning, the same lass that he… She had gotten no better than she deserved, in life and in death. The fact that she was standing here before him proved it.
“Witch!” He shouted the word, hoping that other men would hear his cry and come to his aid. “What kind of creature are ye, that hell’s fire cannae contain yer evil?”
He reached over his shoulder for an arrow and knocked it to his bowstring.
Mage, her fear gone, stood to her full height and faced her attacker. “Finish yer work, ye bastard. I’ve nothing more to lose!”
She closed her eyes and began to whisper. Her hands moved before her, weaving intricate patterns in the air.
The crone gasped. She recognized the magic her granddaughter was clumsily working, and she knew what might happen if her casting went awry.
“No!” the crone cried.
The horse bucked and whinnied. Its rider tried to take aim at the old woman.
The air around the three began to swirl, whipping dead leaves and dry dirt into a maelstrom. The ground shook with a fierce rumble.
The crone, the author of this chaos, stood still. She couldn’t let Mage unleash the curse she was weaving. There would be no redemption from that. The old woman crafted a curse of her own, one that captured the dark power Mage was raising and added the possibility of salvation. She stilled her granddaughter with her open right hand while she pointed one gnarled finger of her left at the man on the horse. Then she spoke.
Violence and shame ye have sewn,
violence and shame ye shall beget.
Your children’s children willnae be redeemed until
my child’s children are redeemed.
So mote it be.
A wolf’s howl reverberated through the forest as the curse was sealed.
An arrow thrilled in the old woman’s heart.
The wheel will turn, and turn, and turn.
Violence and shame will be the fate of their descendants,
generation after generation.
The water will take them under.
It will take their daughters,
and they will not be redeemed.
Even when the water takes them,
they will not be redeemed.
Then the huntress will have a son,
and her son will have two loves.
The first will be a girl with hair as dark as blood
and scars that go deep beneath the surface.
He will give her the stone that saves her,
and she will give him despair.
When he finds the stone again,
He will find his heart,
and all may be redeemed.
The first and the second and the psychopomps
will follow the Horned God to the underworld.
Amethyst is the key that will open the buried box.
When the spirits are set free,
all will be redeemed.
Look to the twenty-first to find the second.
Find her, and all shall be redeemed.
Part One
Scotland
, 1960s
Epona stood on an old, worn path in a dense Scottish forest. The morning was cool and ominously still. The billowing fog felt clammy on her skin. She shook herself, but the chill clung to her as stubbornly as her growing sense of apprehension.
She was staring at a flat stone. The Celtic knot carved into its surface was the most complex she’d ever seen. The green moss grown into its grooves looked like a tangled riot of branches, but Epona could
feel
an order that she couldn’t quite see. This was a symbol of protection. There was something else there, too, something just beyond her comprehension. The stone was speaking to her, but she couldn’t quite hear what it was saying.
Frustrated, she swept her long red hair up into a quick chignon, hitched up her favorite pair of dungarees, and sat down next to the stone.
First, she let her hand hover an inch or so above the carving to read its energy. It was both urgent and weary. She closed her eyes and nodded, acknowledging her understanding and thanking the stone for trusting her. Next, she gingerly rubbed her hand over the knot. She pulled her fingers back almost instantly. They crackled with electric messages, too many for her to make any sense out of them.
“Aye,” Epona said soothingly. “I know that you have things that need saying. But I am just one woman, and it might take me quite awhile to decipher everything that you say. Have patience with me, wise ones, for I have patience, too. If nothing else, surely I have patience.”
She was right. She
did
have patience. Patience with the laborers on the 2000-acre farm she had inherited; patience with the weather, which could be the difference between a bountiful harvest or a ruined crop; patience with her too-passive daughter, Elphame; patience sufficient to endure her own guilt; and patience enough to confront the ancient curse she had spent most of her life trying to eradicate.
It was true she’d had had no patience for the dirt bag she’d married, but that was for the gods to deal with now, and she hoped they dealt with him swiftly and justly. But, over all, Epona
was
a patient woman, and she would wait until the end of her life if she needed to see her family free from its terrible legacy.
Patience.
Epona touched the stone again. She felt electricity surge into her fingertips as she traced the knot, and then it dawned on her: It
was
more than a symbol of protection. This mass of tangled fury was a map. The labyrinthine detail was becoming clear as she followed the path it made.
She pulled out her Cannon SP 35mm and took several shots of the stone. Then she pulled out paper and a piece of charcoal and traced a rough copy of the knot.
She had seen the pattern before, of course. Mainly in her dreams, but also on a box that her mother had possessed. She had seen the stone itself, too, in visions guided by her ancestors.
Epona put her things back into her knapsack and settled in next to the stone. She stared at the path for a while, and then she turned to look into the deep ravine behind her. She closed her eyes…
… and felt a sharp thump.
Epona looked down and saw the ghost of an arrow trembling in her chest. She looked up and saw the specter that had loosed the arrow, sitting astride his horse.
She gasped and choked as blood filled her lungs. Then she shook herself and let the phantom pain dissolve.
Epona stared the ghost in the eye. “I even have patience for you, bastard. You may be dead, but you’ll see justice for what you did to that girl.”
The lordly spirit simply stared at Epona in shock, just like he’d stared—dumbstruck and confused—when he’d killed the oldest witch in the countryside several hundred years before. It was a look of raw fear. It was a look of regret and pitiful cowardice. Epona almost felt sorry for him—almost. But then, no. Not at all. She’d seen more courage in a boy of ten. This was no man. He had no honor, no dignity. He had nothing but family name and wealth.
“You’re running out of time, you lily-livered cur. This has gone on a few centuries too long for my liking. You’ll have to deal with me now. Visit the Wicked Garden if you’d like to know the wrath of Miss Poni,” Epona growled. She raised her spread hand, directed her energy outward, and the phantom’s mist dissipated into the already wet Scottish air.
Epona’s anger lingered even after the offending ghost left. She closed her eyes and centered. This wasn’t the time for anger.
She pulled a dried poppy from between the pages of a journal and laid it on the stone.
“For you, my ancestors, I offer a poppy in remembrance. They bloom no more at Snyder Farms. It is my wish that my daughter and my daughter’s daughter, and her daughter’s daughter, and her daughter’s daughter, might see them bloom again as I once did. I’m listening. Please keep guiding me.”
Epona was still for a moment, letting her prayer sink into the stone.
Then she watched as a poppy bloomed in a place where poppies had never been.