Page 12 of A Time of Witches

When morning finally came, she looked up Enchanted’s phone number. The phone rang several times before a gentle voice answered.

“I had a reading yesterday,” Lilith began. “I forgot to pay. And I… I also have some questions.”

“Yesterday? The man who does our readings on Saturday called out.”

“But I had one last night, around six.”

“Honey, we close at five. At least until I can hire someone new.” She paused. “Hey, you lookin’ for a job?”

Lilith frowned against her phone. “But I was there. Last night. The woman had feathers in her hair.”

“No one I know looks like that,” the woman said distractedly.

Lilith’s heart beat too fast. Her mind racing to keep up. She hadn’t imagined the fortune teller. Had she?

“But what she said was so real,” Lilith’s words were almost a whisper. “That I had to help someone…”

A soft whump came from the other side of the line, like something heavy being set down. “Look…” the voice was slower now, measured “…I don’t know who you spoke to or if you maybe had a dream and thought you were here, but the world speaks to us in strange ways, telling us things we need to hear.” There was a pause. “Maybe you should listen.”

Chapter Six

Sybil

The sweet scent of sun-warmed honeysuckle in the clearing hung incongruously amidst the bitter warning in the air. Sybil rode Brixton through the curtain of weeping birch trees, into the open clearing where the earth’s energy pulsed with an undeniable force.

The two women waiting near the honeysuckle ring were the only other ones the birch branches would part for.

“’Ere she is now.” The one with thick flame-red hair spilling from beneath a cap waved at Sybil. A swaddled infant lay in the crook of her arm, the newest of Kat’s brood. A squirrel chittered on her shoulder, his red fur blending with her brilliant curls.

Edith, the oldest of the three by a few decades, leaned forward, concern darkening her blue eyes like an approaching tempest. “Did you sense danger too?”

Sybil sank onto the ground, completing the circle. Brixton stayed at her side where he nipped at the grass. “Three candles blew out this morning with naught a whisper of wind.”

“I was sewing this morning, a lovely brocade I got my hands on,” Kat began. They all nodded encouragingly, knowing she could go on and on about the creations she stitched. “A knife I dropped landed blade first in the floor, straight as the stick stuck up the magistrate’s—”

Her daughter fussed and she broke off, jostling the swaddled infant.

“This one’s been following me around all morning.” Edith looked up where a magpie sat on a sagging branch, feathers iridescent in the sunlight. “Ever since I went out to my garden. Had a fine harvest of beans and parsnips today though.”

That harvest would go far in feeding the poorest souls in the surrounding area, the ones so often forgotten. Those too old to walk to the town, or too ill. Edith ensured they all had a full belly and a full heart. That they were never forgotten.

In The Book of the City of Ladies, Lady Reason taught that a kind woman is stronger than a roaring man. In that regard, Edith was the strongest soul Sybil had ever met.

Above them, Edith’s woodlark who had summoned Sybil earlier sat beside the magpie, chest puffed out and chattering bullishly at its stubborn companion.

They all knew the ditty about the magpies, taught to them since they were babes.

One magpie for sorrow.

Two for joy.

Three for a girl.

Four for a boy.

On and on the rhyme went to thirteen.

“It’s the witch trials…” Kat smoothed a lock of red hair from her daughter’s brow. “There have been other arrests. Three in Chattisham. Two more in Halesworth.”