Mercy and Hunter, with Xena padding along somewhere beside them, followed their mother through their backyard and to the little iron gate that opened to a hedgerow that divided two massive cornfields. The family of four slipped through the gate and began walking along the hedgerow. It was late—almost midnight—but the full Pink Moon, named by settlers hundreds of years ago after early blooming wild phlox—made it easy for them to find their way.
“To set our intention let us begin by remembering the past. On July 29th, 1692, our ancestress, Sarah Goode, was convicted of witchcraft and sentenced to hang in Salem. Thankfully, unlike many of those poor, persecuted women, Sarah was, indeed, a powerful witch. Hunter, how did she escape?”
“She bespelled the jail guard so that he fell asleep. Then Sarah’s familiar, a cat named Odysseus—” She paused as Xena meowed loudly, causing them all to laugh, before continuing, “brought her the keys to her cell so she and her daughter, Dorothy, could escape.”
“Excellent. Mercy, how did Sarah and her daughter find their way to what would become Goodeville?”
Mercy and Hunter knew every word of their history. They also knew how to set their intention for a successful ritual, but they loved telling the story of their ancestress, especially because the telling of it made their mother so happy.
As Mercy answered she spread one arm wide and let her fingertips touch the slick, green edges of the nearby corn leaves that were already damp with dew. “Well, because Sarah had listened to omens of warning sent to her by her goddess, Gaia, she had buried money, clothes, and spellwork things outside town. The night she escaped Sarah made her way to her buried stash and, using a large opal, Gaia illuminated a path for her. So, she, her daughter, and her familiar started walking southwest, following a strong ley line of earth power. Eventually, they joined a wagon train that was happy to have a healer ride with them. The journey was long and dangerous, but Sarah kept heading west, following the ley line, and it kept getting stronger, until it brought her here, to what would eventually become central Illinois.”
“Well told, Mercy.” Her mother nodded appreciatively. “Sarah Goode stopped here, along with several families she’d become close with during the journey, because Gaia revealed that this was a site where five power-filled ley lines converged. Hunter, why was this beautiful, fertile land unsettled and avoided even by the aboriginal peoples?”
“Because they were freaked out by the monsters that roamed around here, slaughtering anyone who got too close to where the ley lines converged.”
Abigail smiled over her shoulder at her youngest daughter. “You are an excellent storyteller, Hunter. Mercy, why were there literal monsters loose here?”
“Because at the apex of each ley line was the entrance to what we describe as a different mythological Underworld, though that never made sense to me.”
“Why not?” her mother asked.
“Well, Abigail, if the Underworlds were mythological, the oogly-booglies”—she winked at Hunter—“wouldn’t be real. And they definitely were.”
“Are,” her mom corrected her. “We must never forget that what is on the other side of each of the Underworld gates is all too real.”
“Good point, Abigail. It also supports my point about those places not being myths,” said Mercy.
“I agree,” said her mother. “Hunter, what did Sarah do then?”
“Sarah used her witchy wisdom and figured out how to close each of the entrances with a kind of a gate. Each gate is marked by a tree she planted, and each tree is from the area of the world the oogly-booglies were from,” said Hunter.
“Correct,” Abigail said. “But never forget that the trees were steeped in magic from their inception. Sarah was a Green Witch.” She smiled at Mercy who grinned proudly back at her. “So first Sarah called forth the saplings magically. They were formed from the fertile earth below our feet mixed with her powerful magic. At the Norse gate the sapling that grew from her invocation spell was an apple tree. At the Greek gate an olive tree sprouted. For the Egyptian gate the magic chose a doum palm tree, and for the Japanese gate there appeared a very young, very supple weeping cherry tree. For the final gate, the Hindu one, a banyan tree lifted from the verdant ground. And when she was done calling forth the trees and casting the spell that sealed the gates with them, what did she discover, girls?”
Together the twins said, “That the trees created a giant pentagram!”
“Exactly! So she and the families that had stopped with her founded our town within the pentagram, and, in honor of their beloved healer, named it Goodeville. And every High Feast Day Sarah returned to one of the trees and performed a powerful protection ritual to be sure the gate remained sealed. During the rest of the year, what did she do, Hunter?”
“Exactly what you do, Mom. Sarah tended the trees to be sure they thrived and grew,” said Hunter.
“Yes. Then Sarah settled here and worked as a midwife and healer, and she lived a full life to a very old age. She trained her daughter, Dorothy, to take her place after her own body returned to the earth, tasking her and each female from the Goode line that followed with tending to the trees, which close the gateways to the Underworlds beyond. So, as Sarah did all those generations ago, we also do. Our intention for tonight has not changed. We shall use the energy carried through the ley lines in the earth to strengthen the apple tree that guards the Norse gate. As we do that we imagine that the tree is a gate, and its strength is what keeps the Underworld gate closed.
“In addition, tonight my beloved daughters will speak aloud the type of witchcraft they have decided to practice in the name of their goddess—and god.” Abigail smiled over her shoulder at Hunter. “Ah, and here we are! Right on time.”
The hedgerow had ended in a grassy meadow where four fields converged. In the center of the meadow stood a thick-trunk apple tree whose gnarled branches spread like an enormous spiderweb. Some of the boughs were so huge and heavy that Abigail had placed wooden posts with padded Ys beneath them for support. Spring had been unusually warm, and the tree had bloomed early this year, but even though most of the blossoms were already turning into hard little green balls, the air around the tree was still fragrant and sweet.
“Daughters, place your baskets in the center of the pentagram along with your shoes, and then put your offerings at the feet of the gatekeeper.”
The apple tree, like each of the other four magical gatekeepers, was positioned on one of the points of a pentagram. The Norse apple tree also happened to be the northernmost gatekeeper—spreading out from it, the other trees formed the rest of the points of a huge pentagram that encased Goodeville.
Before the trees were subtle markers that Sarah, and the generations of witches that had come after her, tended. They symbolized the invisible points of the pentagrams around the individual trees. At the Norse tree the markers were four large rocks, smoothed over by time and the elements. They were meaningless to anyone except Goode witches, who recognized them for what they were—symbols of the points of a pentagram.
Abigail’s graceful gesture took in the rocks and the tree. “And why do we use the pentagram as our magical symbol?”
“Because each point symbolizes one of the five elements, which is powerful magic,” said Mercy.
“Yeah, and our circle is traced around the points of the pentagram and includes everything inside it,” finished Hunter.
“Well done, my beautiful girls. Now, let us begin,” said Abigail.
The three women stepped within the pentagram and bared their feet. Then Mercy took the apple pie she’d baked for her goddess from her basket and placed it amidst the roots of the huge tree as Hunter opened her bottle of beer and poured it in a circle over the hard-packed ground. Then they returned to where their mother waited.
“Now we shall set our candles.” Abigail’s voice had become appropriately solemn as they were about to perform a powerful ritual that guarded all of them, and their cherished town, from unspeakable horrors.
When the girls had their candles in hand, their mother took out a long box of ritual matches and a tall white candle from her basket.
The three of them separated. Mercy went to the right and Hunter to the left, with their mother going forward to the great apple tree. Abigail reached the tree and then turned to watch her daughters place two candles each atop the smooth boulders that marked the other four points of their imagined pentagram. She lifted her candle and struck the match, saying, “First, I set the white candle in its place at the top of the pentagram. White symbolizes spirit. And with it I invoke the presence of my goddess, Athena, whose path I follow on my journey. This lifetime, that path has led me to be a Wise Woman and Kitchen Witch.” She lit the white candle and held it before her, as if offering it to the tree.
Mercy loved it when her mom did ritual work. She always looked so powerful and beautiful—and more than a little mysterious when she invoked Athena and opened the sacred pentagram with the spirit candle. Nerves roiled Mercy’s stomach. She could hardly believe that the night had finally come when she and her sister were joining their mother in Ritual—just like so many Goodes had done for so, so many generations. The night felt special—different. There was a listening quality to the earth and plants around her that tingled through her body. She wanted to ask Hunter if she felt it, too, and when she looked across the pentagram at her sister she saw that she was gazing up at the full moon with a rapturous expression. Hunter feels it, too! I know she does.
Abigail carefully placed the candle in front of the tree between thick fingers of roots. Then she traced the line of the pentagram to where Mercy was standing. She was holding the first of her two candles, which she lifted. Presenting it to her mother she said, “I set the green candle in its place on the pentagram. It symbolizes the path I have chosen to follow and the goddess whose service I am in.”
Her mother lit the candle and Mercy set it on top of the rock at her feet before she and Abigail together walked to her second candle, tracing more of the pentagram. Mercy liked the feel of the cool grass against her feet, but as they took their first steps her foot landed on something that was hard enough to make her ankle twist before it squished against her foot, like she’d just stepped on a raw egg that had broken and its goo leaked between her toes. Abigail instantly steadied Mercy by catching her arm while she righted herself.
“Did you hurt your ankle?” Abigail asked.
Mercy looked down. “No, I just slid on something—” She lifted her foot and under it was an immature green apple that had broken open—and was completely filled with worms. “Ugh!” She wiped her foot quickly on the clean grass, shuddering as the worms writhed in the rotten apple meat.
Her mother peered down, and then straightened abruptly. “It’s fine. Reset your intention. All is well.”
But Mercy noticed that her mother’s face had gone so pale that in the moonlight her skin looked like milk.
Abigail continued to the rock that marked the next point of the pentagram. Mercy shook herself mentally and followed her mother. She took several breaths to re-ground herself and then she lifted the candle that waited there and proclaimed, “And I set the brown candle in its place on the pentagram. It symbolizes the path I have chosen to follow and the goddess whose service I am in.”
Before Abigail lit the candle she asked, “Speak, daughter, and name your goddess.”
“Freya, the great Goddess of Love, Fertility, and Divination.”
“And which path will you walk with Freya?”
Mercy’s voice was strong and sure. “I am a Green Witch.”
Abigail lit the brown candle and bowed her head. “Welcome to The Path, Mercy Anne Goode, Green Witch and daughter of Freya.”
Mercy bowed, too, and placed the brown candle on the rock that marked that tip of their pentagram. Then her mother walked through the center of the pentagram to where Hunter stood with the first of her candles across from where Mercy’s first candle, the green one, cheerily burned.
Hunter presented a yellow candle to her mother. When she spoke her voice was louder than normal, and Mercy felt a little prickle of anticipation follow the line up her spine.
“I set the yellow candle in its place on the pentagram. It symbolizes the path I have chosen to follow and the god whose service I am in.”
Abigail lit the yellow candle, which Hunter placed on the boulder before walking toward Mercy as they completed the final line of their five-pointed star. She picked up the blue candle that waited there and turned to face their mother.
“And I set the blue candle in its place on the pentagram. It symbolizes the path I have chosen to follow and the god whose service I am in.”
Just as with Mercy, Abigail spoke the formal words before she lit the candle. “Speak, daughter, and name your god.”
“Tyr, the God of the Sky.”
“And which path will you walk with Tyr?”
Hunter’s voice was strong and sure. “I am a Cosmic Witch.”
Abigail lit the blue candle and bowed her head. “Welcome to The Path, Hunter Jayne Goode, Cosmic Witch and daughter of Tyr.”
Hunter grinned when she placed the final candle on the rock by her bare feet. She and Mercy exchanged excited looks, and then they focused on their mother, who had returned to the center of the pentagram and the baskets waiting there. She shook out three quilts, made two generations ago by their great grandmother. When the girls joined their mother, Xena padded into the pentagram, purring loudly. The three women, with Abigail’s familiar, sat in the center of the pentagram, marked by brightly burning candles, and wrapped the quilts around their shoulders.
From her basket, Abigail took out a stone bowl, carved with the triple moon symbol, and lit a charcoal cube, which she placed in the bowl and then sprinkled a mixture of herbs over. Instantly the smoldering herbs began filling the grassy area with fragrant smoke. She lit a piece of palo santo wood and wafted it over the three of them saying, “Incense and wood are purifiers. They change the energy around us and keep negativity at bay.”
The girls used their hands to move the smoke over and around them. Their mother placed the still-smoking stick in the burner with the herbal incense.
“And now we protect ourselves. I want you each to imagine a shield—a great, glowing shield. Close your eyes. Picture it.”
Mercy closed her eyes and imagined a huge round shield with a strong apple tree, much like the one in front of her, carved in the middle of it.
“Imagine it strapped to your back, so that nothing may harm you from behind.”
Mercy imagined that it wasn’t a quilt covering her back, but her shining shield.
“In your mind draw a circle around you, in which you are the center,” Abigail continued. “Repeat after me: This is my space.”
“This is my space,” the girls repeated together.
“I own this space,” Abigail intoned.
“I own this space,” they said.
“Good. Now we ready ourselves to be vessels through which the energy of the earth will flow and into the gatekeeper, strengthening our tree and keeping the gate to the Norse Underworld closed.
“Breathe with me, deeply, in and out, on a four count.”
Their mother led them in several deep, cleansing breaths.
“Clear your mind of thoughts. Then acknowledge your feelings, and as you do don’t question why you’re feeling something. Simply breathe in with acceptance of the feeling and on your next breath out, release that feeling.”
Mercy cleared her mind and then drew in a deep breath and immediately was filled with nervousness. She didn’t try to decipher her nerves. Instead she thought, hello nerves—I feel you—I acknowledge you—and now I release you! She let out a long breath and felt the tension between her shoulder blades relax.
With her next breath in Mercy was filled with fear—fear of not being good enough, smart enough, brave enough—or worse, being too self-centered to truly walk Freya’s path. Again, she acknowledged—I get it. Fear is here. That’s fine and normal and natural. Fear can be healthy. It reminds me to be smart and brave and selfless instead of selfish. And now I release you, fear. As she breathed fear out Mercy felt the sick knot in her stomach unravel and calm.
“And we begin. We are vessels, cleansed and protected, ready to be conduits for energy. Remember, we do not keep that energy. We only guide it. Visualize the gate before you, deep within the trunk of this ancient tree who has stood guardian for hundreds of years.”
Mercy kept her eyes tightly closed. She knew that Hunter’s eyes were open because every Feast Day of their lives until that night they’d practiced the ritual together from outside the pentagram while they watched their magical mother harness the energy of the earth and direct it to close the gate. Hunter always kept her eyes open to stare at the tree, but Mercy preferred to imagine the gate in her mind’s eye.
“When your image of the gate is set, reach through your bodies down into the earth—find the ley lines there—see them. What color is your ley line, Mercy?”
“Green!” Mercy said, eyes still shut.
“What color is your ley line, Hunter?”
“Deep blue!” Hunter said.
“And mine is silver gray, like the eyes of Athena. Draw your ley line up through your body and push it from the center of your forehead, like a beacon, to shine against the gate hidden within your tree. If the gate seems open at all, it will be closed. If the gate seems weary, it will be strengthened. If the gate seems small, it will grow and grow and grow until it is so powerful that nothing could possibly escape through it.”
Mercy imagined that when she breathed in she drew the beam of radiant green light up and into her body—along her spine—to blaze out of her third eye in the center of her forehead.
But nothing happened.
Mercy felt the pulsing power of the ley line, just like she always could. She could even feel it lifting to her, but instead of it filling her body with luminous energy, it was like a garden hose with a kink in it, and only trickles of power sluggishly moved up to her spine and hovered there with a little warmth, like someone pressed their hand to the small of her back.
She squeezed her eyelids more firmly together and focused, concentrating on the energy that was tantalizingly close. Drew a deep breath in as she called to her goddess. Freya, my goddess, help me. Strengthen me. Allow me to guide the energy of your earth.
Mercy felt the warmth along her spine expand a little, but there was no infilling of energy—there was no inrush of power. The pulse of the ley line had been replaced with something cold and strange and wrong.
Suddenly Xena hissed and began growling, a guttural, dangerous sound that wasn’t even recognizable as coming from the sweet, nosy feline Mercy had known her entire life.
Hunter gasped and cried, “Oh! Tyr! No!”
Mercy opened her eyes. Hunter sat beside her. They faced the tree, while their mother sat cross-legged in front of them with her back to the tree. Beside Abigail, Xena had turned to face the tree as well. The huge cat’s back was fully arched and her tufted ears flattened against her skull as she continued to growl menacingly.
The thick trunk of the mighty tree dripped with something disgusting—black and foul and thick. The center of the trunk quivered, like a horse trying to shake off a swarm of biting flies, but this was no horse. A snout pushed through the darkness and took form, melted wax becoming solid as it entered this world. Red eyes broke through the shuddering bark. The thing was huge—all sinew, matted fur, and claws. Its breath came in rapid pants as it pulled its body through the corrupted center of the tree. The fetid stench of it reached Mercy—thick with sulfur and rot. Mercy tasted bile as she gagged in revulsion and fear.
The creature looked directly at them and snarled, gnashing long, pointed teeth.