#b.w.a

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B.W.A - Witch Trials

Black Witch Attitude Witch Trials

Chapter 2 Summer’s End

   Camille had woken up tired. Her summer was nearly at an end and soon her mother would be by to pick her up, but she’d packed her things anyway, and made her way down stairs to find her aunt making breakfast. Music was loudly playing and Melona swayed with the temperament of the deep voiced songstress. The room smelled of cooked fruit and, “Pancakes? You’re in a good mood,” Camille mused.

Melona looked back with a warm smile, the gentle wrinkles and crinkles around her eyes the only thing telling of her age. It was the kind of patient smile one would give to a child, but Camille wasn’t a child anymore. And she saw worry in the look, “Aunt Luna,” she began hesitantly.

“You’ve grown up so fast,” Melona interrupted. “I remember when you were just four, your wishcraft getting you into trouble, or eight, writing better spells than most seasoned witches. By the time your were twelve.. Oh how you reminded me of your mother, so stubborn, so alive. You’ll be sixteen this year, and there will be so many changes. I know that right now, I sound crazy, but trust me. Every witch comes to this point and you will have to decide who you’ll become,” she flipped the pancake.

“You sound like one of those teen novels, maybe be less cryptic.”

Melona smiled. “There’s that teen attitude. Remember that wit and stubborness, when the world knocks you down.”

“Aunt Luna,” Camille repeated, stubbornly.

“I can’t be less cryptic, because I don’t know rightly what will happen.”

“Comforting.”

“Camille, you are still a child, by all rights, and no matter how sensible, the world is hard, and cruel. I want to protect you, to prepare you, but I can’t. This year, you must decide who it is you wish to be. That is just the way it is. There will be test, and they will show your true self. Your mother refused and she lost her magic. I found my way to being a green witch, and you, oh my dear. You are so many things, a child brimming with energy, wit, and sarcasm. You will find your way, I believe that. Just remember, Protect Your Magic.”

Camille knew her face was doing that thing. The thing it did when her mother told her to be safe and not to talk to any strangers, as if she didn’t know. She was 15 for christ sake! And while she normally wouldn’t have rolled her eyes, or conflicted with her aunt. This sounded like a load of bologna. She caught the side eye she caught from her aunt out of the corner of her and quickly fixed her face back on right. 

“I’ll remember,” she responded after clearing her throat. She didn’t really mean to give her attitude, but, well, with Camille it came naturally.

“You betta, girl.”

The rest of the morning went pleasantly enough, breakfast was good. Melona taught Camille one last protection spell, making sure the girl took not in her grimoire before Melona took the book and packed in a suitcase. The thing must have been an antique because the leather was worn as hell. Camille noted that the case was packed with other things, but she didn’t question it, Melona always did weird things and rarely did she explain properly, but Camille liked that about her. She was certain that it had to do with her 16th birthday, and all of the riddling her Aunt had done.

When her mother arrived, Camille was hesitant to leave. Well, she wasn’t, but her energy, her soul wished to stay in the house that was so much her spiritual home, her temple. It felt like it was the last time, as if she’d never see the home the same way again, as if she were going to leave her childhood behind the way her brothers had. Louis hadn’t even spoken to their Aunt since he left for college 4 years prior. Even Trevor had only just gone off to Berkley, he tried to keep in contact but even she only got the briefest phone calls usually ending with a, “If you need anything just call!” or something similar. But that was a load of crock because he took two days just to text her back and his messages were twice as vague as anything Melona said, and that said a lot.

Camille was staring at the lilac Victorian home so hard, as they drove away, that she hadn’t even realized her mother was speaking to her until -

Whap! Her mother popped her on the back of her head just hard enough to startle her. It didn’t hurt, but Camille still moved her hand to rub the spot and scowled at her mother. “I didn’t do anything!” she bit at her mother.

“You betta get dat bass from ya voice when you talkin’ to me girl,” her mother warned, her accent was always so much. “You listen to Melona too much, head’s in clouds.”

Camille sighed and slouched in her seat. “At least she listens back.” There was that side eye, it was like some sort of family trait, but it seemed, Camille hadn’t inherited it. Which just made her more irritated really. “I didn’t do anything,” she grumbled to herself.

“I’m glad you going back to school this week.”

And Camille was to now.

[ourfictionallives]

B.W.A - Witch Trials

Black Witch Attitude Witch Trials

Chapter 1 Snail Tales

Witches aren’t uncommon in today’s world. Not by a long shot. We know them, see them every day, smile at them in the park, send our children to school with theirs. We know witches. And witches know us. They have been out voice to the gods, they have risen the dead and swayed the very shape of our nation. Once, before the time when Jesus was the sovereign of men, they openly used their gifts to heal the sick, ease the suffering, bringing boon to land.

As their livelihoods, and lives were threatened by the coming of Christianity, they began to hide themselves away. Mothers taught their daughters their crafts. For generation, their gifts were passed, one to the next and the next. Some crafts were forgotten, modern society left little room for practicing more than practical arts. But practice they did, and adapted and grow and change and breed and do all of the things people do. They did.

Camille and her brother’s (Louis and Trevor) weren’t raised the way her mother had been. No, Nora had been all too happy to pretend that the world was practical and simply, that nothing but her own doing affected anything around her. She wanted to believe this, so much so, that she’d willfully followed a career as a physicist, that she’d succeeded simply to prove her own mother a loon. Camille was grateful for this reason above all else that her aunt, Melona was starkly different from her mother. She’d spent summers with her older brothers at her aunt’s, catching fireflies and toads, tending to a robust herb garden, and once the boys and gone to bed crafting potions and spells. Nora hadn’t been happy with the whimsical world, but Melona embraced every ounce of it.

As mentioned before, some practices were long forgotten, some were practice religiously, some bled into the everyday world and were practiced by everyday people, things like salt over the shoulder, crossing your fingers while telling a lie. Small things. These only made the wild tells that Melona told Camille of the world so much more real. Their childhood had been full of stories of fairies, and ghouls, and ghost, and zombies.

“Always beware the Loogaroo, they wear the face of a man, but are servants of dark forces,” Melona warned as Camille plucked plums and cherries from her stone fruit tree. Hybrid seeds that her mother had explained in far too much detail, but Melona swore was the work of a potion her mother had made in a fit for wanting fruit pies.

“So what is a Loogoo, Auntie Luna?” she asked before putting a dark cherry into her mouth, the burst of tart and sweet delightful.

Melona sighed at the lack of education her mother had given her. “A Loogaroo. Girl, you better listen wit’your ears now,” she yipped at her and waited to have Camille’s full attention before continuing. “Here, we still talk about the Loogaroo but in only one form, the werewolf. But a Loogaroo can be many things, a dog, a cat, even a bird. And they are always, and certainly tied to dark magic.”

“So a Loogaroo is what? A were creature? An evil magic were creature?” she asked, a brow raising on the 15 year old’s face.

“Yes, Camille, yes. That is what they are. They’ve sold their souls and they only seek to better themselves and eat the young. When your mom and I were little bits, younger than you now, we met a Loogaroo at the cross roads.”

“Mom saw a Loogaroo?” she interjected, that same brow threatening to raise. She could already hear her mom trying to rationalize the beastly creature as some sort of hallucination or genetic experiment.

“Did I stutter?” her aunt demanded, giving the plump girl a side glance. Camille promptly shut up once more. “You better watch that smart mouth, it’ll get you in trouble. Now, your mother and I, we were out late at night and the Loogaroo popped out, it was our neighbor.. Miss Mimi Saintclair. She’s always been a crazy woman, and I don’t mean crazy like your Mama. No, she was an eccentric old woman who lived in the biggest house all alone. She had servants we were sure had to be zombies. They would leave only late at night. But that night, we saw her for what she really was. Her nose was long and crooked like a beak, her hair had long white feathers and her legs were long and yellow and she chicken feet. She chased us three blocks, trying to peck at our necks before we got safely inside the door. And according to my cousin Marie, that old bird still lives there, over a hundred years old. I don’t know what kind of Voodoo that woman did, but she is still just as wicked.”

“And if I asked Mom about Miss Saintclair?” Camille asked. She was finished filling the basket with stone fruits now, and she was certain they would all be delicious.

Melona laughed at the question. “Nora would call her an unpleasant old woman who hit us with her purse. But I know,” she said as she nodded her head towards the house and they went inside.

Every bit of Melona’s home breathed of Magic. It had been Nora and Melona’s childhood home and she couldn’t imagine growing up there and not believing. Camille did, she believed, and Melona taught her, a little bit at a time, more and more. The craft was as much a part of Camille’s life as science was, as reason what. Because for all the bickering between her mom and her aunt, the one thing they’d never realised was that neither would hear out the other. They were both stubborn and there was absolutely no reason to Camille that they couldn’t both be right.

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