BEFORE I TELL YOU what he told me, I want to give you the story of your kinswoman who burned at the stake for what she did in Scotland.
Your gran’s mother, my Nana Sorcha, her great-grandmother was named Eimhir. Eimhir, like many of the women of the MacPherson clan, loved a man who had to answer for his love, and rather than staying in town to risk their neighbors turning them in, they built their own home in the woods, and according to the story passed down through the generations, Eimhir bore her man two children. The firstborn, Sorcha, survived, while the son perished, as many children perished in those days. Though their hearts ached, Eimhir and her man held out hope for the day she would bear a third, for the number three carries much luck and good fortune in the Work of women with Celtic blood. Though Eimhir Worked all the fertility spells she could think of, though her family blessed a circle around her and she and her man loved each other very much, they had no success in conceiving a third child before Eimhir’s man was run down in the street, either by highwaymen or townspeople who believed him to be enthralled by a witch.
If Eimhir had gone mad, this would make the tale easier to understand. Grief causes all manner of turmoil in the hearts and minds of those left behind, and though Eimhir had her sisters to support her, and though her kin Worked all of the magick in their books to turn the tides in her favor again, Eimhir did not trust that the goodness of their magick was enough to overcome the greed of Death, and so she stole away into the woods sometime after her man’s burial. She toppled the caern placed over his grave, and she dug through the dirt with her own nails, and she dragged him back to the house they had built for their children and there she enacted magick so dark it has been recorded, sure, but those who recorded it would never speak of it.
Death is a natural part of living, but it is the end of life as well. Just as healing is a natural process, so is dying. All that you can do for a dying person is help them in their passage to the other side, ease their suffering that they may let go and leave behind an empty shell, rather than allow themselves to be fettered to objects or places or, worst of all, people who cause them to become tash. Ghosts.
There is nothing to be done for one who has ceased to live and has since become a body. Not unless you are willing to give up your own soul and become a shell that you might barter with the spirits on the other side. This is the darkness of the magick I considered after your father died, but my wits returned to me, and I convinced myself that your father deserved peace.
Necromancy is a forbidden practice, and for good reason. Your ancestor Eimhir bargained with spirits she did not understand, and she invited one into her dead man’s body, and when he rose again he did so with a thirst for blood. Somehow, the story goes, Eimhir did become pregnant by what had made a home out of her dead man’s body. When the witch hunters came to town and sent her man back to the earth to which he belonged and strung her up to burn for the sin she had committed, even her kin had no interest in trying to save her. That story marked the MacPherson women’s slow escape from Scotland. We all know it, and now you do as well.
Prior to reading the page I pulled from Aunt Griselda’s mouth, I did not know the history the witch hunters had with our family. What I know now has tainted the story as I knew it. As I knew it, Eimhir’s was a cautionary tale, a warning meant to steer my cousins and me away from blacker magick. I do not believe Eimhir caused the grief of which George Dalton convicted her, but neither do I believe he killed her for committing necromancy. Your gran can tell you the story as she knows it, knowing as she will what became of the fiend who burned her great-great-grandmother.