In the seventy-seventh kingdom, this world between worlds, filled thick with secrets only truly understood by the most intrepid and cunning of inhabitants—though relatively known to the common folk as places and beings only to revere from afar—this land where myth is not just simply myth, for even the most respected of the village men report of women—witches—stealing milk in the dead of night from their prized cattle, a shopkeeper’s wife recalled her recent encounter with one of these so-called witches.
“My handmaiden came to me yesterday with twice the milk as usual!”
“And why do you suppose that?”
“It was the work of the Devil. I dumped out all the milk and fired her on the spot. I don’t want this witch to influence my children.”
From the highest of the mountain meadows down to the lowest of the glens, vales, and dales, among the primordial trees and as the people of the seventy-seventh kingdom sung praises to their God, this epic God shrouded in mystery by tales thousands of years in the making, legends of yore persisted. These legends still lived among the folk even if they did not know it. Some were the lonesome magicians that set up their homesteads on the far reaches of the villages; some were the snakes that slithered amongst the crop; the bears that fished in the river in the forest; the wolves that stalked you on your hunt for herbs and mushrooms; the old crone that even your mother claims was elderly when she was your age, decades ago. The Old Ones still live in them, perhaps through them. The ancient magicians, mothers, and tricksters—the Winter Mother, the Spring Father, the Horned One, the Lightning King—persist to this day and will never die.
