The Sand Witches

Everyone knows, children, that the very best stories start out with "Once upon a time..." When you see these words, it usually means that it is going to be a very good story...

Once upon a time there were three witches. Now, these were not your everyday, fairy tale witches, mind you. Of course, they were warty and hairy and ugly as sin; they even cast spells (when their wands worked) and they were often crabby and ill-tempered. Especially Haggarth, but that might have been due to her name. Bathilda was the youngest, and she was usually sweet-tempered, as far as witches go. Periwinkle was the eldest of the three. She was the wisest, and her sisters knew it ~ because she often reminded them. But sometimes she forgot to be crotchety: a soft, misty spring morning might catch her off-guard and make her forget that her joints were rickety and her figure had never been what it once might have been.

No, these were not your regular, everyday witches. They were Sand Witches. They lived on the shore of what must have been an ocean, because it was so very vast, and they had heard that oceans were vast. Their home was as cozy as you could wish. It was a chambered shell that had been deserted by a hermit crab, and was half-buried in the wet sand of the beach. The sand and slime had been whisked away with a wave of a withered wand and then made into their home-sweet-home. The Sand Witches loved to travel up and down the coast in their Potato Ship. It was a willful old thing, and sometimes they had to cast sleeping spells on it, because it often spied intriguing little coves and bays with its many eyes; it would set off to investigate, and no amount of wheedling would bring it back on course. It was a very curious Potato Ship.

One evening the Sand Witches set out upon the sea, their red-and-white checked sail flapping and snapping in the breeze, to see what mischief and minor mayhem they could visit upon the creatures along the shore. The Potato Ship's many eyes had been closed in dreamy slumber by a sweet-dream spell, so there was no fear of being swept off course by the wayward sea craft. It was Bathilda who spotted it first: a bright, twinkling of lights in the tall sea grasses that swayed upon the sand dunes. "Well, and what could that be?" she whispered, her eyebrows crinkling together in puzzlement and perplexity. In all of her long, wise years, she had never seen the like of this. With a snap of her fingers, the trio sailed into the cove near the dunes and anchored the Potato Ship with a great pebble.

The Sand Witches walked into the forest of sea grass which parted magically with a few flicks of their wands as they slogged through the loose sand until they came to the place where the grass grew the thickest. There they stood, wide-eyed with wonder. Greenish-blue lights danced all around them; almost like the multi-colored fairy lights they saw hovering over the wild flowers near their home. They heard a tinkling, giggling sound through the thrumming of wings that surrounded them and saw, to their amazement, hundreds of flashing insects swirling and plunging through the summer grasses. Near them, low down and still, they saw a weakly blinking light, and heard a sad, mewling sound. Bathilda crept slowly over to the creature, and saw that it had no wings. It was slowly crawling through the trunks of grass towards her, looking at her with tear-filled eyes. "Please help me!" it pleaded. "A cruel boy found me last night and plucked my wings; now I can neither dance, nor fly, nor find food for myself and the others are too lazy to help me." "What is your name?" asked Bathilda, overcome with pity for the poor creature. "Lumina", he sighed. "But my light is dying and so will I if you cannot help me."

Bathilda called to her sisters, and they gathered and whispered and planned. Then they turned to the slowly fading Lumina, and Haggarth spoke with gruff authority. "We shall make a bargain with you. If you let us take you back to our ship to light our way in the dark of night, we will bring you food and drink all the days of your life. But if you fail to keep your end of the bargain, we shall cast you out to the fishes in the sea." Lumina gratefully agreed to be a beacon for their midnight sails, and so the three witches wove a soft and beautiful basket out of spiders' silk for the fire-fly to rest upon. Then they gently carried their new companion back to the Potato Ship and hung the basket from the high look-out tower and made their way back out to sea. The waves shimmered green and blue and silver as the light from the swaying basket mingled with the rays of the waning moon, and they sailed back to the sheletered harbor near their home.

True to his word, Lumina glowed brighter each night as he gained strength from the food and drink the Sand Witches brought to his loft. And they all lived a happy life together on the edge of the sea.