The disclaimer from the previous chapter holds true for every chapter.
Thanks to 22bluefic, lulu1709, wytchwmn75, amieforshort, & IG for their help with this.
~ . . . * * * s a n d a l w o o d * a n d * j u n i p e r * * * . . . ~
~Bella Swan, age 14...
Living as a witch wasn't something that happened over time; it was just who I always was. For as long as I could remember, the tingle of magic stirred within me.
Of course as we grew older, my sister Rosie and I learned the ways and rules of the craft, - the dos and don'ts, per se. Sometimes we learned accidentally, like when I was six and Jessica Stanley spit on me, and I made her fall off the balance beam just by glaring at her. I knew it was my fault because Jessica never, ever fell. Or when Rosie began to run a fever and I wished she would get better and that someone else would be sick instead, and Ben Frye was in the hospital for months.
That's when I knew to never point my finger haphazardly and always be extra, extra careful.
In the beginning it was simply amazing to witness the simple power of magic. How I could just think of the littlest thing and it would happen. Pages of a book would turn, or lights flickered on or off. I eventually learned to open and shut doors. All it took was a little concentration. I could gently blow on the wick of a candle and the flame would begin to glow. Rosie sometimes grumbled because she didn't seem to have as much influence as I did, but every time she snapped her fingers, your ears would pop when somewhere a twig broke in two.
There was no doubt, being a witch was in our blood. We never knew any different really. Recipe books were shelved alongside spell books, and talk of potions and magic were everyday chatter.
Unfortunately, society had branded all witches as evil and demonic; to be avoided at all costs.
For over three-hundred years, blame had been pointed at us Swan women for anything that went wrong for miles. If too much snow fell late in the winter months, if a bridge gave way from the flood of a too-wet spring season, if a mare died tangled in the fence, or a baby was stillborn, there was always a Swan to blame.
It didn't matter if the problem could be explained by thesis, science, or even plain-ol' bad luck. The whispers of the townspeople always led back to the ladies in the big house on Forks Lane.
Through the years, the gossip became folklore and the folk stories became legends. In no time at all, the legends became myths told by the local youth 'round a small campfire under a full moon.
The fables never told the complete story. I mean, we witches don't always dress in black or wear wide-brimmed pointed hats. We only use brooms for sweeping away dust and dirt, and sometimes our cats are calico instead of black.
Anyway, we let everyone believe whatever they wished. Rosie and I knew there was too much evidence around us to deny our hallmark.
Like the house where we grew up with the Aunts. The wind would howl around the structure during a strong storm, loud enough for all to hear. The furniture never needed polishing or dusting, and the wood used to build the home, never lost its natural scent. The blue-tinted windows were made of plain glass, but anyone who was brave enough to stand on the wrap-around porch could peer into them for hours and never be able to see through the thick panes. And if you looked through the glass from inside, it looked more like a dream; as if you were floating amongst the clouds.
The interior of the house was always dark, no matter the time of day, and no heat or air conditioning was ever needed anytime of the year. The constant cool air lingered through the house and sometimes tickled your cheeks like a gentle winter breeze.
Alum powder had been mixed with red brick dust and salt, and sprinkled around the perimeter of the house for protection and to secure their secrets within the home. What the Aunts practiced was not meant to be spread around the town with constant gossip and speculation.
Regretfully, the powder didn't always work.
There was a black iron fence that encircled the house like a fortress, with vines that grew straight up and hugged the metal, creating a wall of privacy. Rose and I never really figured out if it was to keep unwanted people away, or to keep us inside.
The only rule the Aunts had in their home was that there were no rules. There were no bedtimes, or mandatory baths. You could eat sugary snacks all day long and drink Dr. Pepper when you woke up with a dry throat in the middle of the night. Toothbrushes were optional and hairbrushes were sometimes hidden in the cracks of the couch cushions, not to be found for weeks.
Even more proof of our existence, more so than our three-story house with three locks on each and every door, was the history of why we came to live with the Aunts. The true story of our father who was cursed to die because he fell madly in love with a Swan. The undeniable facts that our mother ignored the deathwatch beetle as it came announcing their fate, and after his passing, she succumbed to her misery and died from a lonely, broken heart.
Rosie and I knew all about the lingering curse of our ancestors and how no man had yet to love a Swan woman and live to defeat it.
There was one other thing the Aunts insisted upon: when there was a knock upon door at twilight hour, we had to hurry on up to bed. We knew that twilight was the hour of sorrow, and it was when shadows lingered and disguised your features so no one could recognize who you were. It was in this bewitching hour that my sister and I witnessed the frightening, yet awesome power of love and how it might control you from head to toe and all the parts in-between.
We understood that love was nothing more than an emotion, like sadness or joy, but what we soon realized as we watched the desperate women knock on our door night after night, looking for answers, that love had to be the strongest emotion of them all.
Love could make you hate and wish for bad, bad things. Love could make you crazy and mean, and jealousy was often love's best friend. Love could make you selfish and destructive, and change you so drastically that you'd argue with your own reflection.
Love could also make the sunshine brighter and the flowers appear more beautiful. Love could make honey taste sweeter on your tongue and the sky so crystal blue, it was almost transparent. Love could make you smile so much your cheeks ached and every step you took was more like a skip as your feet barely touched the ground.
From our hidden perch right outside the attic door, Rose and I watched love manifest itself in so many different ways that when we'd sneak back to our room, we'd be dizzy.
Rosie and I viewed these revelations of love differently. I feared the heartbreak and the loneliness that seemed to always follow it, and I wanted to avoid it at all costs; whereas Rosie only longed for the high of the passion, and the lust of the touch. She wanted to live in love everyday and fight the curse to the bitter end.
The aunts always said we were like night and day. Rose was the vibrant light and I was the still dark. We never laughed at the comparison, and deep down, we knew and understood the truth behind it. It was no secret that the day longed for rest and calmness, and the depth that the darkness provided. Just as the night was always jealous of the warmth, life and busyness of the day.
With our appearance, we might as well have been strangers; the only similarity being our light brown eyes, which all the Swan women had. The pigment was so pale it was as if sand from a remote island had been poured into our irises. My long hair mirrored the bark of an old oak tree, weathered for decades. Rosie's even longer hair was the color of hay cut deep into the harvest that the sun had gently kissed.
Sometimes the Aunts referred to us as shapes, and I was the square. Everything in my world fit neatly into a box. I hated clutter and mess, and spent my free time cleaning and organizing. I always prepared healthy foods and rose with the sun. I was punctual and conscientious, and aside from magic, I knew never to believe in anything that could not be proven without facts or figures.
Rosie was a diamond, and a diamond never lost its worth. It would reflect and magnify the tiniest sliver of light. Rosie's skin seemed to illuminate and her complexion was always flawless, no matter how much chocolate she devoured. She was lazy and slept till lunch. She never did her homework and somehow always passed every class. A diamond could go through a fire and emerge stronger and more alluring that it ever was before.
We were only twelve months, twelve days, twelve hours and twelve minutes apart. I was technically older, yet the age difference never seemed to matter. The Aunts had even held me back a year so we could go through school together.
We were more like twins the kind that complete each other's sentences and share each other's pain, both emotionally and physically. We always knew what the other was thinking, and at night when we slept in each other's arms, we dreamed the same dreams.
We vowed to keep the other secrets with a pinky-promise and the chant, "Cross my heart, hope to die," and we both cringed when we recited, "stick a needle in my eye."
~Rosalie Swan, age 13...
I often studied the centuries-old portrait of Maria Swan that hung at the top of the stairway at the Aunts' place. She was beautiful, like me, even though her hair was dark like Bella's. Of course, her eyes were the same color as ours, but what captivated me the most was the sorrow reflected there.
This painting must have been finished after she cast the spell, the one so she'd never fall in love again. She'd made the regrettable mistake of falling in love with a married man. Regardless of the fact that the tiny embryo thriving inside her uterus was his, he did not return her love.
The Aunts told us the story of how Maria often felt it was a curse in itself to be as physically attractive as she was. Men had a tendency to fall at her feet in front of their significant others. Teenage boys lost their breath as she walked by them on the street, only to dream about her for months afterward. Men who shouldn't have fallen in love with her did so without a single touch or words exchanged. Sometimes they swore that she came to them in the midnight hour, whispering passions in their ear and igniting desires that been dormant for years.
I often wondered if this was their innermost dreams or more like their own nightmares.
The word "witch" was often spat when anyone said her name and the townswomen of Salem often accused her of casting a bewitching spell over every male on the east coast.
Maria refused to flaunt her beauty, and she tried to keep to herself as much as she could until a tall gentleman came knocking on the door of her small cottage asking for shelter for the night. That's when she lost her grasp on every bit of reason she'd ever had.
It has been said that for months he'd call on her unannounced and they tangled themselves in her black silk sheets and in the throes of passion, they moaned their affections. He'd slip out sometime during the night before the rooster crowed. In the morning, Maria would find that he'd left a valuable stone at her bedside table; a sapphire or an opal, and sometimes even a diamond. She'd pick it up and hold it tight to her cheek, and even sometimes sniffed the stone to remember her lover.
When Maria was three weeks late for her cycle, she knew the reason. She decided to travel to the nearby town of Sommersport to find him and announce the good news.
But instead she saw him traveling by horse and carriage through the small town with his lovely wife on his arm, and a small son at his side.
Devastated and heartbroken, she returned to her lonely cottage and cried for days. When he finally came to her again one warm May evening, she unleashed her pent-up rage. She wailed and screamed and asked how he could love her while he was wed to another?
He was unrepentant. He mentioned he enjoyed their short nights together, but love? Absurd. She was just an excellent lay to him and now he wanted nothing more to do with her or his bastard child. He left in a rush, while she was nothing more than a heap of a crying, pregnant, unwed, mess-of-a-woman writhing on the floor.
Tears always pooled in the Aunts' eyes whenever they retold that part of the story and Maria's state of mind. How in her mood of despair, Maria vowed to never love again. She pleaded with the gods to save her from the crippling pains of unrequited love. She begged for her heart to heal enough to carry on and raise her unborn child. Then she whispered phrases she was unfamiliar with. Ones she wasn't sure where they'd originated from, but somehow she had them memorized frontward and backward. She knew that when spoken aloud - they would change everything. For hours she chanted the spell that altered the laws of the universe, ensuring that her unborn child and any other Swan woman descended from her would never, ever be hurt by love again.
Little did she know that her spell of protection would soon become a curse, and every female offspring of Maria's would still feel its afflictions. There would never be any wonderful forevers or happily-ever-afters and from then on, men, love, and Swan women were incompatible in every sense of the word.
Days later, when Maria was finally able to stand up again, she stepped outside for a breath of fresh air. She almost stumbled over the small velvet bag of gems that had been placed on her doorstep. Once again she fell to her knees in heartbreaking agony.
He'd paid her to leave him alone.
In true witch fashion, every day she sipped on tea made from partridge berry leaves and walnut husks to protect her baby, and to help rid her of her past and her obsessive desire for a man who never loved her at all.
As the baby grew and the flutters in her stomach became more distinct, she packed a small bag full of clothes and left her cottage. All the valuable jewels of her lover were sewn into the hem of her cloak, and she set off to find a new home.
That evening before she left, she stood outside his house and wished evil things upon the man who had broken her heart and cracked her soul, and on his family for generations to come. Hearing that always made Bella grip my hand tighter, but I think if I were in Maria's boots, I'd do the exact same thing.
Then she fled Sommersport. Under the moonlight, she ran so fast through the town it's been said she ran through people's dreams as they slept. The next morning the towns' population awoke with a start. It was hard for them to catch their breath, and their thighs and feet ached as if they'd been the ones doing the running. But that same morning, her cruel ex-lover, he never awoke at all.
Maria soon found residence here, on Forks Lane. She pawned all the stones but one, and had this house built. Since then, it had been passed from generation to generation, always belonging to a Swan woman. Even after three-hundred years, it looked as though it had just been built.
Now when I looked at her portrait, what I find beyond the sadness and the beauty, is simply a reminder of what not to do. There was nothing wrong with falling in love; in fact there was nothing more that I'd rather do, preferably over and over again, but I just needed to stay smarter than it was and alwayd be in control.
It was laughable to be as far removed from the idea of love as Bella was. I foresaw her being cast as the lonely old cat lady of Newsburg. Women would pray before they go to sleep at night, "Dear God, please don't let me end up like that Bella Swan."
But then again, predicting the future wasn't really my gift. From what we understood from the aunts, it was our mother's.
For years our mother Alice, informed others of her visions and what was in store for their future. Even if there was an imminent death or a sickness forthcoming, she'd speak to them gently of the news.
Even with my father, she said she'd loved him before she even met him. She knew that the man in her visions was put on this earth specifically for her. When they met for the first time and their eyes locked, he brushed her long hair away from her cheek, and she saw them growing old together and her heart began to beat the sound of forever.
That's what love did for my mother: it made her deny and forget. She disbelieved the curse and ignored the visions she saw of their future and of her with two daughters living alone. The sight of her knelt over a solitary grave, clutching the cold ground as she wept. She imagined her future however she pleased, and let her knowledge of second sight fall to the wayside.
She cast every reversal spell she knew of. She even said her prayers backwards so that they were forever etched in time and took twice as long to reach the heavens.
Our mother even went so far as to never wed our father. She was trying to outwit the curse, but magic is bound to the intentions of your soul, and everyone knows you can't fool yourself for very long. So a witch that was cursed was who she was – nothing more, nothing less.
Even Aunt Renee and Aunt Esme hated to retell their own history of how they'd been affected by the curse which time after time seemed to claim the beloved of a Swan. They both fell in love with brothers at the prime of their teenage years. Brothers who returned their love wholeheartedly and couldn't stop their laughter whenever they visited the sisters. Brothers who stood on the steps of the huge Swan house almost forty years ago and promised to return the next day to take the ladies for a swim in a nearby creek.
With their hearts aflutter, the brothers ran away from the house as the sky darkened and rain began to pour from the clouds. They were brave and daring and only thought of the excitement of what the next day might bring. The aunts stood and listened to their laughter long after they disappeared out of sight.
What our Aunts learned that night was that lightning, like love, was unpredictable. Those brothers never made it home. The sky reached down and slapped them dead as they crossed the town green, melting the soles of their shoes to the blackened grass under their feet.
Sometimes, late at night, Aunt Renee and Aunt Esme say they can still hear the laughter of the boys they briefly adored running through the rain, their voices echoing youth and expectation, exactly as it was that night.
So I decided to always keep sage tucked in my shoe, to try and reverse the spell of my kin. Every full moon I'd soak in a tub filled with agrimony herb and pink Epsom salts to take back the hex and fill my life with love and passion, and last but not least, every year on my birthday, I'd bake a loaf of bread infused with the grains of paradise to ensure that my wishes of enduring, safe, true love would always be granted.
"Believe in love.
Believe in magic.
Hell, believe in Santa Clause.
Believe in others.
Believe in yourself.
Believe in your dreams.
If you don't, who will?"
~Jon Bon Jovi