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Of the Ocean, in a Pond

CHAPTER 1: Pitchforks

By Dré PontbriandPublished 2 years ago 7 min read
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Photo credit: Paul Kerby Genil

There weren’t always dragons in the Valley. They arrived with a Full Moon midnight breeze, on the evening after we did. Unlike us, the townspeople are averse to their presence. So it didn’t take long for them to sharpen their pitchforks and show up on our doorstep.

A banging on the door jostles me out of sweet slumber and I recognise the fervour behind it. I hear my beloved cousin rushing down the stairs.

“Stay in your room, I’ll take care of this”, she yells through the wall.

I smirk to myself at how she pretends not to know me, pretends like I won’t be peering through the banister in 3, 2, 1…

The crowd is roaring outside, the glow of their torches cutting through the obsidian night. Ceridwen opens the door and the scent of wisterias floods the house, peppered with notes of soot and disdain. A group of villagers with daggers for eyes glares at my soft-mannered cousin and I recognise some of their faces.

“It’s your fault they’re here. They always follow your kind.”, Orson, the leader, trumpets

“Our kind?”, Ceridwen says

“You wayward women with your strange moon rituals who never stay anywhere long. You get to a place and darkness descends, your unholy presence like a smoke signal telling the loathsome creatures who to terrorise next.”

Yikes. That’ll teach us to be ourselves out loud.

“You really think we brought the dragons here?”

“Well, they stayed away until you arrived, so yes. Seems a little too coincidental, don’t you think?”

“But the dragons have alway—”

“Tread lightly. We’ll be watching you.”

As abruptly as they came, they disappear down the hill, flickering away until the night swallows them up.

I run down the stairs, leading a frazzled Ceridwen towards the armchair by the fireplace. Her hand is on her heart, gaze fixated on the dwindling embers, her normally rosy cheeks drained of all their colour. Deflated, she mutters:

“I thought I found a place for us, somewhere we could call home. I thought they saw us for who we are. But they don’t. They come for our cures in the night and curse our names in the morning—when they’re standing outside the lavish building they call God’s house. The one much bigger and more decadent than all their homes combined.”

The room tastes like heartbreak as she sinks into her seat. I wish I could take it all away, pour myself out at her feet, give her every last bit of hope that keeps me from drowning in this grief. I try to be as good as she is, to somehow know exactly what a girl who watched her mother die would need to hear right now. But I’m not that good. I’m not as good as the woman whose wings I’ve travelled on to Mars, who kept me when no one else could. I’m not that good so I put my hand on the back of her heart and I say nothing at all.

.

.

.

The air is thick with cedar and I’m on a mission. The sun beams down on me harder because he knows he can’t warm me in the place I’m going, where his rays go to die in the canopy. I wink at him for keeping my skin a sweet shade of cinnamon. I read over the list of ingredients Ceridwen sent me to harvest in the forest that brought us here.

-Reishi mushrooms

-Angel’s tears

-Chelidonium

-Hyacinth nectar

-A burrowing owl’s feather caught in mid air*

*Not as unlikely as you’d think, around these parts. These woods are home to the largest parliament of owls in all the land. An impenetrable canopy is all the rage among night dwellers.

I kneel by a log ripe for harvesting my first ingredient, lost in my thoughts, as I tend to be.

I, for one, love the dragons. There’s a kinship between us—beings who live by the moon, walk barefoot through the forest. They’re sweet creatures when you get to know them but to know them is to know yourself and that’s more than most can bear to be with. Yes, they breathe fire every now and again but I reckon the world might be a kinder place if we all breathed our fire instead of swallowing it.

A singsong voice I recognise shocks me out of my insightful internal monologue:

“Mr.Orson says that the dragons are creatures sent by the demons.”

I turn to face her, knees in the mud, hair some kind of wild,

“My sweet Callan. What are demons, if not fallen angels yearning to be loved into light?”

Her copper curls bounce as she plops down in the mud beside me,

“But if we love them, let them close, won’t they swallow us whole? Won’t they scorch us with their blaze until we’re nothing but the ashes from which we came?”

She studies my movements. I pick another mushroom to put in my basket,

“All they want is to be seen, to be told it’s okay to exist. The monsters under our beds are just the monsters in our heads. And when we’re brave enough to look at them, to really see them, they cease to carry chaos on their breath. Ceridwen and I have found loyal companions in the dragons, especially Macklyn. But so few will look at them and we know what that’s like, to be shoved into the shadows with closet skeletons and other selectively forgotten things.”

Callan looks to the ground, mulling over what’s been gnawing at her,

“Father says you and Ceridwen are like the dragons too. That I shouldn—”

A husky man’s voice bellows in the distance,

“Callan. Callan. It’s time to come home. Now.”

She throws her arms around my neck in a tight hug, springs to her feet and runs towards her father’s voice. She’s almost faded into the distance when I see her plummet to the ground, her twisted ankle, a victim of an elm’s unruly surface roots. Her scream pierces through the forest, rattling the leaves and I love this little girl and my own ankle booms with pain. Before I know it, I’m following my compassion right to where she is.

Her emerald eyes stream agony and I pull out a vial of aunt Guinevere’s healing potion. I put two drops on her swelling ankle that’s already turning shades of merlot and juniper berry.

As I finish casting the spell, her father bursts through the bushes. He glares at me, looking down at her ankle. Iridescent purple and blue lights dance on her skin, leaving her body, her ankle finding normality again. He shoves me away from her and I trip backwards.

“I knew it. I knew what you were from the moment I saw you.”, he whistles a code that’s echoed back tenfold from every direction but East.

My cousin communicates in lightning bolts and in a flash on the horizon, I see her on a heaven-bound platform, flames licking at her feet. She mouths: “Maeve, Run.”

And that’s exactly what I do.

.

.

.

Ceridwen is irked but stoic, edging closer to the cliff’s edge. They blame the dragons for the fire but they’re the ones carrying it on staves, cornering her with their flames while she did nothing but pick bell heather and bog asphodels.

The clouds are dense with electricity, the sky dark as her hair. It would be too ironic to be lynched while gathering ingredients for a love potion. No, not the kind to make people magically fall in love. We’re not that trite, or unethical. The kind that reminds them of their power so they don’t fear it anymore, so they start listening, stop sharpening their swords.

Orson (yes, him again) breaks the silence, “You’ve got nowhere left to run. Say it. Say what you are.”

It’s true that she has nowhere to run. Lucky we’ve got friends who fly. The mob closes in and Ceridwen loses her footing, the ledge crumbling under her weight. With a flick of my wrist, Macklyn takes flight.

For a thousand years they’ve been trying to burn us. Because we don't wear shoes. Because we worship the moon. Because we aren’t afraid of death. Because our unhindered power reminds them of who they might have been.

For a thousand years they’ve been trying to burn us. This time using stolen flames. But that’s the thing about witches—we always come back.

CHAPTER 2: Fireproof

Fantasy
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About the Creator

Dré Pontbriand

Writer. Alchemist. Freedom Enthusiast.⁂

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