A Tended Garden

Excerpt

A Tended Garden
J.P. Jackson © 2022
All Rights Reserved

“So mote it be.” Alyssa repeated the mantra with the other women as the chorus rang out, signaling the end of the ritual. A gentle breeze wove its way through the near-barren trees. A shower of ochre and rust reds cascaded down upon the coven, the desiccated leaves remnants of what had been an overly hot summer.

Alyssa sighed with relief. The Mabon ceremony was over, and it played out just as Rachel had choreographed.  Rachel was their High Priestess and could be a raging harpy if things didn’t go as she’d planned.

It was sad, actually, because the holiday should have been a time to relax. In the old days, the festival was a celebration marking the midway point of the harvest. The majority of the fields would have been cleared off, as the hard days of working in the scorching summer sun came to an end. Autumnal temperatures settled in, and nights had a crisp bite as the trees slowly morphed into their magnificent glory of reds and yellows—a final show before the long rest of winter. For Alyssa—this being her favorite time of the year—it was the season for big fluffy sweaters and light drizzly rain. Weekends were spent on long walks through deer paths in the forest or curling up at night by the fire with a blanket, a good book, and a hot cup of cocoa. Preferably an oversized mug with extra chocolate swirled on the inside rim and little marshmallows floating on the top of the rich steaming liquid. But it was also the time of year when Alyssa spent hours writing new spells in her Shadow Book. And that had to be done the old way, with parchment and ink, otherwise the spells never seemed to work right.

Instead, Mabon had taken weeks to organize. Alyssa had spent hours combing various craft stores and pagan bookshops looking for the right pumpkin-colored candles. As if the Gods were really concerned that the candles were Halloween orange instead of bronzy-orange.

Rachel, however, was terribly obsessed about such details. It drove Alyssa a little crazy. When Rachel started to lose her shit, she stood with her feet apart, hands on her hips, and scrunched her eyebrows together so they became one raging caterpillar of ire. Alyssa smiled, thinking about her High Priestess with caterpillars for eyebrows.

Rachel may have been a generational witch, but Alyssa was a natural. And the thoughts of a natural witch have a way of coming to pass, so Alyssa’s mirth over larvae needed to dissipate, otherwise disastrous things might start happening.

Putting up with Rachel was an unfortunate side effect of being involved with her coven. Alyssa spent a majority of her mundane-world time alone, and although she was mostly comfortable with that, there was a small part of her that needed the companionship of the other women. Outside of coven, she really didn’t have a whole lot of friends, so it was important to her that Rachel stayed happy. If that didn’t happen, there was a distinct possibility that she’d be kicked out of the group. That had happened to Jenny Westfall when she failed to bring enough charcoal for the cauldron during the Imbolc festival. Jenny was unceremoniously ousted.

Alyssa would do just about anything to ensure she did not end up like Jenny.

Funny, though. No one had seen or heard from Jenny since the exile, and it wasn’t like Edson was so large a town that Jenny wouldn’t have been spied out. Rumor had it she had moved to the big city.