Chapter two: Natures ring

My aunt Fay called checking on me seeing if I could spend the night again… I told my dad I had nightmares there and I didn’t want to go back. I lied and told him it was because she let me watch scary movies and told me ghost stories. He said I should spend time with aunt Fay because she was old and lonely and it made her feel better to have company. She kept calling for a while but stopped finally. A few days later we got a call she had hit her head and suffocated.

After the funeral the family went to her house to look around and divide her owning’s. I made haste to her back room to find the book. It was gone and boxes now filled the room when the adults came in they found them full of poisons and poison berries so I was made to leave. It was clear to me then that without the book my chance for freedom was gone for eternity…

After selling my soul during my first lesson with Aunt Fay, the nightmares came to me every night, but they weren’t mere nightmares. It was the entrapment of my soul, every night he would try to break me. To bend me to his will.. he would use my family trying to kill or harm them to make me give in. I was frightened for my family and of my “master” but I was even more terrified of giving in. he beat me and the wounds would greet me upon waking. A cut in my nightmares equaled a cut to my flesh. The pain was very much real. I soon learned if I didn’t fight hard enough I would be pinned to the floor. This horrified me to early did I learn of these acts to early had I been destroyed and twisted… but I fought and even now when I have nothing to fight for I refuse to bow.

Though these nightmares gripped me, life went on. My mom and dad had recently split up because my mom feared for her life. After that I jumped back and forth for a while. Dad was constantly moving and for a long time we lived near my aunt Reva. It hadn’t been long since aunt Fays death, and aunt Reva was her closest sister. I started staying with her. She began teaching me about herbs, the stars, and about nature in general. She never called herself a witch but she was just that. A witch.

A green witch, natural magick call it what you will. It was beautiful. It wasn’t dark and terrifying. It welcomed you. Wrapping its energy around you. I felt safe and happy and my nightmares were easier  to endure here. My aunt Reva’s was the closest thing to a safe haven. It was all I could hope for.

Reva was wise and stern, but she had a light side. Her laughter could lighten you alone, and your sides would ache if she was in a joking mood. Like most of her family it was plain as day she was part Native American. Her skin tanned her lips slightly thin, lines creased her lips from smiling. Her hair was ravens black and her eyes were a light brown. I remember she use to say everyone with brown eyes was full of s**t. Even now this brings a smile to my lips.

Aunt Reva didn’t let many people see her real side, her nature side. Aunt Reva taught me magick teaching me, by interacting with it. When she tended the garden, she would do slight movements and rituals which I caught onto quickly. After she saw I had caught on she took an interest in me. After that I stayed at her house for weeks on end. We would rise of a morning gather food from the garden and she would tell me the attributes of each as we walked. After we gathered them up we would enter the house and she would show me how to prepare them and to measure them without a cup. “Wild onions help with breathing and carrots help keep the eyes healthy.” I remember this among other thing she would tell me about her garden.

We would go out on the porch and eat. The woods around her valley would chirp happily but it came to the ears as if through a thick cloud. It was always warm a cozy warm inviting you to sleep and the sweet smell of wild flowers and earth would be brushed up by one of the many constant breezes that passed through. There was a constant trickle from the creek nearby. Aunt Reva had ten or more dogs and they would sit with us when not hunting in the woods, and they seemed just as at piece as I did. I would constantly drill aunt Reva with questions about the workings of nature and when she was tired of answering she would simply tell me to listen and watch. So I did, and what I saw was the complex workings of life and death. I saw the balance as well as felt it.

 We would walk the bounders of her land making sure all was right not only physically but harmonically and the energy in general. She never told me how to do these things she just told me to feel for it and try to a just it. It was as simple as breathing to me and I enjoyed it.

Once the dogs brought down a deer while we were walking back to the house. I felt its distress before I heard it, so we ran to it chasing off the dogs. The dogs weren’t killing it but torturing it. Teasing it. she reached out with her energy soothing it and I did the same. “I have to put it out of its misery.” I nodded my head in understanding. As she shots it I was still soothing it I got to feel its life leave its body. It chilled me. She prepared the deer giving most of it to the dogs. I just sat on the couch looking out the window until the sun went down. I ate the meat and went to bed.