Chapter 2: Incantations and Gum Balls
Over the next days, Violet worked to perfect the ritual she had created by modifying the one in her grandmother's grimoire. While she disliked the delay considering the alarming rate the blight was spreading, she needed all the power she could harness, and the new moon was the cleansing moon. In the meantime, she gathered the components she would need and prepared herself.
A witch's mental and emotional state was just as important to a ritual as the runes and spell components. The more serene and confident a witch was, the more successful the ritual. A witch full of doubt or negative emotions was a disaster just waiting to happen. It didn't take much for negative energies to find a crack through which to enter the physical realm and wreak havoc. In many ways, being a white witch was more difficult than practicing black or blood magic. The practitioners of the latter were taught how to use the negative energies with their spells. White witches were just taught how to avoid drawing negative energies to them; a task easier said than done.
The morning of the new moon dawned bright, a good portent, and Violet began to gather the few components she would need to bring with her for the ritual. The five crystals and stones she had chosen had been purified and charged during the last week; Amber heated in a fire burning with the wood of seven different trees, Aquamarine found in a clear spring soaked in the energy of water, blue chalcedony placed at the summit of the highest mountain in the region by Nori to gather the essence of air, the chunk of petrified wood gifted by the fae buried deep in the roots of an ancient oak for three days to infuse it with the energy of the earth, and finally the largest, purest clear quartz she owned purified using each of the four elements. A bundle of white sage and several white candles joined them and her grimoire in her backpack.
The rest of the components, she would gather along the way: the purifying wood of young birch, cedar, and spruce. The final component was a spring near enough to the area to be convenient, yet far enough away not to be affected by the blight.
Violet enjoyed a light lunch that consisted of fresh vegetables harvested from her garden that morning. For the last 48 hours, she had been mindful of what she ate, ensuring that her body was not polluted with any chemicals or death. Even her homemade soap and shampoo was suspect, being made from goats' milk. She had harvested a few bulbs from nearby soaproot plants to use instead.
The sun was behind the mountain when she set out for the blighted area of forest. The waning light filtering through the dense forest was enough to see her way. Nori flitted through the trees alongside her as she made the trek, a flash of purple here and there. While she adored the fae and appreciated the companionship, she still felt a pang of loneliness.
Witches were much longer lived than normal humans, partially due to their intimate contact with the energies of the natural world and their respect for the natural order of life that extended to what they put into their bodies. Mostly, though, it was because of the spark of magic that all witches contained. This spark was what enabled them to manipulate the energies that surrounded and resided in all living things. Barring an unfortunate accident like the one that took her mother and grandmother from her, Violet could expect to live up to 300 years. Spending the next two centuries alone did not appeal to her. Maybe she should break with the teachings of her two relatives and seek out a coven?
Dusk was quickly enveloping the valley by the time she reached the blighted area. In person, it was worse than it had seemed through Nori's eyes. All the vegetation touched by the blight was wilted and sickly, the leaves gray with black spots as if they had been scorched by fire. The trunks of the affected trees had patches on them that oozed trickles of a viscous gray slime. Even the ground was touched, with puddles of the gray slime and a sickly haze clinging close. The smell of death and rot filled the late summer air and the forest was quiet as if holding its breath.
Moving quickly before she lost all light, she circled the area, using the candles she brought to mark its boundaries. In the last week, it had spread further, and she could barely see the flicker of her candles from the far side. Worried that she had waited too long, she began the personal cleansing part of the ritual, first starting with her prayer to the goddess to be with her.
At the spring several yards away from the blight, she settled to the ground, finding a comfortable position, then she began to go through her meditations, purging negative thoughts and doubt from her mind.
I am a conduit
Touched by the Devine
Nothing I do will fail or succeed
Unless decreed by the Fates
Repeating her personal mantra, she relaxed and turned herself over to her goddess. She was never sure how she knew, but somehow, she always sensed when she was ready. Sometimes it only took a few minutes, other times it took nearly an hour. This was one of later. By the time peace descended upon her, it was completely dark in the forest.
Lighting the bunch of sage, she wafted the fragrant smoke over her body to dispel any negative energies that might linger. Then she rose and removed her clothes. Stepping into the cool spring, she finished her purification ritual by immersing herself completely. Chanting a cleansing incantation in the Gaelic spoken by her ancestors, she repeated the act three times.
Pure waters cleanse me
And release any and all
Thought forms, beings, and energies
That are no longer of service
To my highest and greatest good
Across all planes of my existence
Across all universes
And across all lifetimes
I ask that all energies
That are less than love
Be transmuted for the highest good of all
And so it is
After the third immersion, she stepped out of the spring and approached the blight. Walking slowly clockwise around the area she placed the charged crystals and stones she had brought at each cardinal point near a white candle. For each, she chanted an incantation that would release its energy for her use. Three times, she circled the area and repeated the chants. With each rotation, the current along her skin grew in strength almost to the point of pain. Only then was she ready to step into the blight.
As she walked into the diseased area, the wrongness struck her, clinging to her like invisible molasses, thick and cloyingly. It made her want to hold her breath, but she suppressed the urge. Dragging the branches of birch, cedar, spruce behind her, she searched for the heart of the disease. The deeper she went into the area, the worse the feeling became, threatening to make her stomach roll. She had never encountered anything quite so vile, but she had known what to expect from Violetta's grimoire, still, experiencing it in person was far different from reading about it in the comfort of her home.
Even though she could see little in the dark of the moonless night, she knew when she was in the heart. The oppressive feeling made it hard to breath and her skin crawled to the point that she was struggling to maintain her sense of peace.
"Goddess please be with me," she whispered.
She knelt and placed the quartz crystal, chanting her incantation for it. The blight seemed to swallow her words, not letting escape its perimeter. Louder, she repeated the verse two more times before piling the branches together over the quartz. She used her carnelian stone to start the fire and once it blazed brightly, she began to circle, again clockwise, dancing and singing the final spell.
Elements of the Sun
Elements of the Day
Come this way
Elements of the earth
Elements of growth
Come this way
Elements of air
Elements of breath
Come this way
Elements of water
Elements of life
Come this way
I summon thee
I call upon thee
I cleanse this space
Of bad intentions and
Anything that is not aligned with
Light and love
So shall it be
Three times she circled and sang in Gaelic, her dancing and voice becoming stronger with each repetition. Each time the fire burned higher, brighter, and hotter, hot on her naked skin. Another fire built within her that burned a pure, bright light. Violet felt that it should shine through her skin and light the night, outshining the bonfire. Around her, she could feel the sickness clinging to the trees and plants as they struggled to survive. Beyond the circle, she could feel the inhabitants of the forest still as the magic built, as if the entire forest held its breath. As she finished the final line for the third time with a shout, the light of both fires flared out, filling the blighted area momentarily, then flowing back to the center like a tidal wave receding, becoming just an ordinary fire once more.
Exhausted but confident she had succeeded; Violet sank to her knees beside the fire, her tie to the flora and fauna around her receding, leaving her alone in her skin once more. It was too dark to return home through the forest, so she'd have to spend the night here. Hopefully, the fire would burn long enough to hold the insects and predators at bay until dawn. Too drained to do anything else, she curled up in a ball on the ground and fell asleep almost immediately. Nori crept to her side, dragging her apron, and pulling it over her naked form. The Fae made a chirping noise and, after a few minutes, was joined by the sprite Violet had healed. The two settled down beside her still form to wait for dawn.
Violet's night was filled with strange dreams. In one, she was walking along a rock-strewn beach with her mother and grandmother who were explaining that she was the last of an ancient line of witches. That was no great revelation, since she had received the grimoires from Ireland, she figured there was nobody left to send them to but her. After that, the conversation became more bizarre. They told her that fae creatures were drawn to powerful witches, that is why they only had mundane familiars and she had Nori. The fae of the forest were all drawn to her and not just for the sweets she always left out for them.
According to her dream grandmother, the only thing that limited Violet was her confidence in her own abilities. The spell components, rituals, and incantations didn't really do anything but provide a boost of confidence for a witch. A witch confident in her power and skill could cast spells without any of it. The same went for a coven. Yes, a group of witches were more powerful than a lone witch, but the main purpose of a coven was to bolster the confidence of the individual witches.
Then her grandmother sat down, lifted her hind leg, and began to groom herself, which was really strange because her grandmother didn't have purple fur and definitely didn't purr….
Violet blinked the sleep out of her dark eyes as Nori came into focus, "well, that was not an image I wanted to wake up to."
Nori paused in her ministrations and looked quizzically at her witch.
"Oh, please," Violet grunted, pushing herself up into a sitting position, "don't let me disturb you."
Taking her at her word, Nori went back to her grooming.
Violet shook her head, smiling, the looked around at the forest in the bright morning light. The foliage and trees around her were all healthy with no sign of the blight. Even better, that horrible icky feeling was gone as well. Her ritual had been successful.
Standing and shaking the leaves and dirt off her apron, she made her way towards the spring to collect her clothes so she could head home. She was hungry and was looking forward to a lovely loaf of bread she had made yesterday filled with bits of fruit and nuts. Walking several yards, she looked around with a frown. The spring was nowhere to be seen. Maybe she had gotten turned around.
Going back to where Nori continued her morning cleaning, she continued past, only to stop a few moments later. The spring wasn't here either.
"Nori?"
The fae reluctantly stopped and chirped a question.
"Where's the spring where I left my clothes?"
Nori tilted her head and gave her a forlorn chirp.
Well, thought Violet, that was less than helpful. She must had wandered off after the spell and fallen asleep somewhere nearby. That's why she was disoriented. She shouldn't have gone far, though. In her mind, she pictured the area. The spring was up hill from the blight, so she turned and trudged up the mountainside.
Only to stop when she realized that there was no mountainside. The valley she lived in sprawled nearly 10 miles running east to west with her home at the west end. The patch of forest was midway up the south slope about five miles east. Instead of the steep mountainside, the ground rose in gentle hills around her.
That meant she was at the farthest east end of the valley, further to the east than her home, instead of high up the slope on the western end where the blight had been. There was no way she had got here on her own without being aware. Turning around, she picked her way back to where Nori lay stretched out in a sunny spot, her grooming complete.
Crouching beside the fae, she asked, "Nori, where are we?"
The fae got up and stretched her long, lithe body, yawning widely, exposing her sharp canine teeth that were too long to belong to a normal cat. Violet picked up the fae to put her forehead against the purple furred head. Normally, the chirps Nori vocalized were simple phrases that Violet had learned over the years. If she wanted to convey more complex ideas, Nori had to convey them telepathically, which required touching.
Before Nori could convey her answer, she stiffened in Violet's grasp and hissed, her eyes fixed on something over Violet's shoulder. Dropping the fae and spinning around, Violet froze at the sight. Hovering in the air about 10 feet from her were a pair of creatures that she struggled to identify. Appearing to be large mosquitoes with bat wings that spanned about a foot, the reddish-brown creatures eyed her with hunger.
Violet took a step back to put more distance between her and the pair. Her movement seemed to snap them out of their indecision, and they darted towards her. Panicking, she backed up quickly to get away from whatever the hell these things were. Her foot slipped on a root and she fell backwards, landing on her butt. Ironically, her fall saved her as the flying beasts buzzed past just missing her.
Violet twisted her body, rolling over onto her hands and knees to keep them in her sight as they made sharp turns to come at her again. Scrambling backwards on the forest floor, Violet used the only thing she had in hand, her apron. She flung it at the creatures as they dived at her. Both easily eluded the cloth. As the creatures swooped down for their next attack, a green and brown blur hurtled between them and their target, knocking one from the air and immediately pouncing on it. The other one kept coming straight at her, its pincher shaped extremities reaching for her bare skin. Violet's right hand touched a stick on the ground. Grabbing it, she swung it at the creature, uttering a quick prayer to the goddess.
The stick wasn't very long, just over a foot, but it was stout and knocked her attacker from the air. Before Violet could react, Nori leapt on it, pinning it down with her sharp claws and using her teeth to tear one of its wings off. Then she backed off and watched it intently as it flopped around on the ground. A few feet away, a wood sprite was still pounding the still body of the other one into the dirt.
Standing up unsteadily, Violet wobbled over to the sprite and placed a hand lightly on its woody back, "hey," she said gently, "you got it. It's dead."
The sprite spun around with its limbs raised, the blood and gore from the creature dripping from them.
Violet held up her hands and backed off a step, "easy. I'm not going to hurt you."
She recognized the sprite as the one she had healed. The arm that had the blight was still slightly twisted and smaller than the other, but it looked healthy now. Behind her, the flopping continued.
She turned from the sprite and glared at Nori, "go ahead and kill it already."
The fae sneezed and shook her head.
"I don't care if it tastes bad, I've watched you lick your asshole."
Nori sneezed again, then turned her back on the creature and walked away with both her tails in the air.
"Goddess give me patience," Violet muttered before walking over and smashing it with her stick. "What were those things?" she called after the fae. "I've never seen anything like them. Were they dark fae?"
Nori sniffed and her tails twitched.
"Well, you don't have to be rude about it. All you needed to say was no."
Sighing, Violet looked around again to get her bearings. If she headed west, she knew she would reach the end of the valley she was most familiar with. Resolutely, she started in that direction.
"Ouch!" she cried out, hopping up and down clutching her foot. She had stepped on something painful. Looking down, she spied something in the leaves that startled her. A sweet gum seed ball.
Releasing her foot, she bent over and picked it up, turning it over in her hand. Spherical and about an inch in diameter, it was covered with spikes around the openings for the seeds to escape. Looking up, she recognized the tree from which it came a few feet away. Beyond that were others.
Frowning, she turned in a slow circle, taking note of the trees around her. Instead of alders, aspens, Douglas firs, hemlocks and the other familiar trees that were commonly found in British Columbia, the forest around her was populated by sweet gums, mulberry, walnut, locust, and several different oaks typically found in southern climates.
"Toto, I don't think we're in Kansas anymore," she said to herself.