To my dismay, the first search result was a page titled The Fascinating History of Hettymoot. I couldn’t believe it, but I clicked anyway.
Chapter 3
Right there at the top was a rather good picture of Hester Dew, affectionately known as Hetty, the common ancestor I shared with my numerous cousins near and far. Technically, it was a picture of a painting since they didn’t have cameras back in the late 1600’s when she lived. I recognized the painting right away. It hung in the Dewdrop Museum, our local repository of family knowledge. Apparently that knowledge had spread well outside the town.
Hester Jane Dew was born on January 4th, 1667 in Manchester, England. She came to America with her mother, Mary Jane, at only five years old after the death of her father. Some speculate that he didn’t die at all and believe that he either abandoned the family or was imprisoned. -Who exactly were these speculators? Hetty’s father died of influenza, she’d said it herself many times.- They arrived in Massachusetts aboard the ship Sunburst.
Being a widow might have been a death sentence in those days, but thankfully Mary had her older brother to lean on as she ventured into the New World. Her good fortune didn’t last long however, for only two years after their arrival her brother died after being attacked by a swarm of bees. –Actually, it was a group of enraged pixies-
Mary herself was reportedly an odd tempered woman and some of the locals suspected her of witchcraft. This was well before the infamous Salem witch trials, but Mary was still worried and relocated with her daughter to Boston. It was there that she met her husband, a kindly candle maker named Ashton. –According to Hetty, he was a total jerk and his candles burned unevenly- He reportedly raised Hetty as his own as the couple had no other children.
But Hester was an unusual child, even more so than her mother. At the tender age of thirteen, Hetty left Boston for unknown reasons and made her way inland. At that time, Massachusetts had few well established settlements away from the coast. How such a vulnerable young girl survived in the vast wilderness is unknown, -hello, she was a powerful witch, duh- but many believe that she was accompanied by an old woman who taught her the ways of magic and spellcasting. –Okay, that part is almost accurate, but it was her grandmother who came to America late in life.-
There is no information about Hetty’s life in the 1690’s and she is thought to have spent much of that time in wilderness honing her craft. The first record of her outside of Boston is a marriage certificate in 1700 from Woodshade to Joseph P. Bailey, a wealthy landowner twenty years her elder. –More like a hundred and twenty years her elder at least because he was an evil necromancer- Hetty was a bride at the ripe old age of 33, so we are missing an entire twenty years of her life’s story. –Oh, come on, she’s an active spirit and she’s still telling stories about her wild twenties and that cute Scottish boyfriend to this day-
The marriage didn’t last long, as Mr. Bailey unfortunately passed away only a year and a half after their wedding. –She cursed him and he deserved it- Aside from his wife he had no surviving heirs, so Hetty inherited his massive estate in Madison County. –Which is why she married him in the first place instead of killing the evil man on sight- Many of her descendants live on that land to this very day.
After her marriage, Hetty had six children, each one surely a scandal. –She didn’t care- The paternity of her offspring is unknown, -not to us- though her first daughter may have been fathered by her late husband as she was born about nine months after his death. –Nope, it was the return of that cute Scottish boyfriend-
The family thrived, regardless of how the single mother might have been privately judged by her community. She was a woman ahead of her time and her farm was one of the most abundant in the area, no doubt helped along by Hetty’s supernatural abilities. Her children grew up well fed and clothed and many of the local people swore by Hetty’s herbal remedies to cure their ills and enhance their own agricultural endeavors.
Her four daughters inherited her magical abilities. Each one was supposedly attuned to one of the four elements of nature: Essence (yes, that was her name) with Earth, Aspire with Air, Fearless with Fire, and Wonder with Water. The names weren’t quite as unusual as they seem, as virtue names were common in the Colonial era. However, the decidedly non-Puritanical values Hetty chose to honor may have been another source of controversy, as the tradition typically involved names like Obedience and Temperance. The girls’ physical appearances aligned with their elemental affinities, with Essence having notably green eyes and tawny skin and Fearless renowned for her flaming red hair. They learned witchcraft from their mother and soon carved out their own path.
Hetty’s sons, Merit and Zeal, were her youngest children, born in her mid-forties. The boys were said to be incredibly handsome and virile, yet unfortunately dimwitted. Both died before the age of thirty under unusual circumstances. Zeal was mauled by a bear at 25 –Actually, it was a wendigo- and Merit fell off a cliff at 29. –technically true, but my grandfather got pushed off by a poltergeist- Indeed, most of Hetty’s male descendants met a similar fate and to this day, the witches of Madison County regard their male relatives as cursed and exist merely to continue the family line. –Now that’s really offensive. ‘Cursed’ yes, ‘merely exist’ no. We love our brothers and sons dearly, they just have terrible luck and are essentially beacons for monsters- All property is handed down from mother to daughter in a complex inheritance code.
In 1769 Hetty died peacefully in her home, surrounded by several generations of her family. Her land was split up between her daughters and her deceased sons’ three living children, whose descendants are generally regarded as less powerful than those with a clean matrilineal line to Hetty, known as Daughter’s Daughters. –Doesn’t make them need our hyacinth any less-
But the story doesn’t end there. After their mother’s death, the witches continued to thrive, each one developing her plot of land into a prosperous estate that would be handed down to her own daughters. All except for Wonder, who left Madison County before Hetty died. She never returned and no one knows what happened to her or if she had any children. Her plot of land was eventually absorbed by Aspire’s descendants in the late 1800’s because that line of the family was the largest. Half of it is undeveloped wilderness to this day, and supposedly a hotbed for paranormal activity that even the witches seldom visit. –Oh, it’s not that bad. At least not during the day.-
By the early 1800’s, the remaining three daughters had already passed on their property and their craft to their own children. It was then that Hetty reappeared to her descendants in her ghostly form, on the 50th anniversary of her death, September 16, 1819. It is told that she materialized near the well in town square and was followed to her resting place in the family cemetery, where she cast a powerful blessing from beyond the grave.
Madison County was experiencing a terrible drought that year and even the witches were suffering from it. The following morning, they woke to find their barren fields and orchards overladen with the ripe crops that had withered in the punishing summer sun. There was so much food that the witches were able to feed themselves through the winter and give the excess to the malnourished residents of Woodshade.
The witches also experienced personal benefits from the blessing. Every pregnancy that year resulted in twins and for the first time, not a single male died in mysterious circumstances. By next September, life had seemingly returned to normal, but Hetty reappeared yet again to give the blessing, along with advice for some and expressions of disappointment for others. The blessing wasn’t as powerful as the first one, but circumstances were not as dire either.
As the years passed, Hetty’s ghostly image made its annual appearance, sometimes accompanied by one of her daughters, though never Wonder. The night became known as Hettymoot and even descendants who had left Madison County returned if they could for the ceremony, which evolved into something of a family reunion.
The tradition continues to this day. The family is consider
ably larger now and the cemetery is crowded with relatives near and far, but the blessing has not been diluted. Hetty herself has said many times that all life that came from her is welcome, -How convenient- so even non-witches show up for Hettymoot and come away with better luck and brighter futures. Some witches have even come into their powers during Hettymoot, or so the legend goes.
I wasn’t sure what was more upsetting, the occasional historical inaccuracies or just how much of it was true. I clicked around on the site trying to find out who ran it, but there wasn’t an ‘About Me’ section or anything like that. Honestly, that was probably a smart move. Any witch worth her salt could send out a curse with a name and a good picture.
Whoever she was, she’d been here enough to know quite a bit about us, but the parts she was wrong about indicated that she was still a long removed relative who couldn’t contact someone who actually lived here for details. Well, there was a possibility it was a man, but that seemed unlikely as Hetty grandsons aren’t all that intelligent.
The site even had a forum for “Displaced Descendants.” I guess that explained the coordinated tourist attack that was apparently about to become yet another annual tradition. I started reading one of the many threads from someone ‘who always knew there was something different’ about her, but decided not to torture myself.
The bell above the door to the coffee shop rang out and I lifted my head to watch the tourists leave. I knew I shouldn’t call them tourists. If the family tree on that site was accurate, and our three best historians believed that it was, technically that made two of them my cousins. I could especially sense it from Juno.
But I had more than enough cousins! Hetty had countless descendants, as most people born more than three hundred years ago did. There was no way Dewdrop could accommodate all of them, let alone be expected to welcome them with open arms.
Soleil put up the chalkboard sign of all the helpful enhancements for the coffees just as a set of my actual Dewdrop born cousins wandered in. I could only recall one of their names, though. See? We couldn’t even keep track of the witches that still lived here! I should have got a double shot of stress relief because one wasn’t cutting it and I wasn’t sure why.
Pushing aside my disdain, I leaned back in my chair and pulled out a book to escape into with the soothing hum of the coffee shop in the background. When I finally managed to stop at the end of a chapter, I stared out the window at the downtown strip. Witches I knew well and distant cousins I only saw once every few years were filling the streets. And by my count, there were four groups of outsiders milling around as well. It was barely noon on the day before The Blessing. This was not a good sign.
My first cousin Peridot pulled up in her rattling VW bus. Dot was more like a sister because we were raised together by our great aunts and harvested hyacinth side by side every morning. My spirits lifted immediately. Now I had a ride home. The sunlight gleamed off her ash blonde hair as she strolled into the coffee shop, no doubt for a salted caramel macchiato with one shot of charisma and two shots of confidence, her signature drink.
Sipping her magical brew, she sidestepped solicitations for small talk from the older witches as she made her way towards me. Dot was painfully shy, even around people she knew. Hettymoot was especially difficult for her and I was surprised to see her in town.
“It is so crowded!” she exclaimed wrapping her arms tightly across her chest as she took the seat across from mine. “I swear, every cousin we have is in town.”
“Literally,” I grumbled, my eyes fixated on a jubilant group of three girls I’d never seen before taking selfies in front of a sacred oak tree that Hetty planted herself. Their shorts were ridiculously short, especially for early springtime. And the poses. How many different ways could you tilt your head, arch your spine, and make googly eyes? And I thought duck lips had gone out of style.
“Aw, not you, too,” Dot said. “They’re harmless.”
“No, they aren’t. They’re multiplying.” One girl with feathers tied into her long mousy hair giggled and pulled a wand out of her tote bag. A big gaudy wand with dyed agates and polymer clay swirls, complete with a cloudy, asymmetrical crystal point at the end. It was useless, something you’d pick up at a human Renaissance faire or a comic convention. She pointed it at her friend, who threw her arms up dramatically as the third one took their picture.
“Gemma, it doesn’t mean anything. And, you know, technically…” Dot took a long drink, the heat steaming up her glasses.
“They have a right to be here,” I conceded. “I know, I know.”
“So why does it bother you so much?”
I had to think about that one for a second. “I’m just paranoid, I guess. What if this gets out of hand and more people start showing up, asking questions. Heck, what if it made the front page of Google News? Or the nightly news on TV?”
“So you’re worried about the fate of the town.”
“Maybe I am,” I said. Dot cringed, clearly holding her tongue. She was such a sweetheart and absolutely lived by the rule that if you didn’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. “Oh, spit it out already.”
“Want to hear my theory about why you find it so upsetting?”
“I already told you I did.”
“Well, maybe…” she hesitated, biting her fingernail. “It could be because you’re considering leaving Dewdrop yourself. For good.”
My spine stiffened and I chewed the inside of my cheek. “Says who?”
“Says your face,” she chuckled. “And your diary.”
“I don’t have a diary.”
“You know what I mean.”
Dot could read minds, in a sense. She couldn’t hear the exact statements you were thinking, but the girl knew when something important was up just by looking at you, even if it was only for a blink of an eye. I spent hours with her every day. And honestly, my temptation to head to the hills wasn’t that difficult to predict because that’s exactly what both of our mothers did.
“So what if I am,” I said.
“Well, if you did… Then you’d kind of be an outsider, too.”
“Not really.”
“No, you’re right. Because if you left, you probably wouldn’t come back to visit very much,” Dot said quietly. “Like our moms don’t.”
“Yes, I would,” I assured her.
“You’d mean to, sure, and maybe you would at first. But then the years would start ticking by and you’d become steeped in the human world like a bag of their mass-produced inferior tea.”
“Gee, thanks.” I knew she meant well and was terrified of my potential departure.
“And your children—”
“If I ever have any,” I cut in.
“When you do, they’ll grow up practically human, too. And if they come back, they’ll look a lot more like those girls,” she gestured to the tourists taking selfies, “than those.” She pointed down the road to Spark, where Feather was running out the door with open arms to greet her little sister and first cousin. They were away at college for now, but would soon be back under the same roof. “And your grandchildren might not even know to come here.”
“They will if that website is still up,” I grumbled.
“You’ll lose your heritage, Gemma.”
I know. But I didn’t say that out loud, I wasn’t ready to admit it to myself. “That Confidence infusion is starting to kick in.”
“It better be. I got a triple shot today.” That would make most witches self-assured enough to run for president, but it was probably just right for the timid Dot. “Hopefully, I’ll meet the father of my own children this weekend.” She grinned at me.
“Don’t you mean your husband?”
Her brow furrowed and her the tip of her nose twitched. “He probably won’t live that long.”
Okay, so maybe a lot of the witches here did look at Hetty’s male descendants as merely existing to continue the family line. Dot was only 23, but her biological clock was pre
maturely ticking so loudly I could hear it myself. She wanted her children to have the most magical lineage possible and hopefully turn out more powerful than herself, which meant she needed them to be fathered by one of our well-bred male cousins. Since they were usually toast by 25 and Dot didn’t like the idea of being a cougar, she had to act relatively fast.
Here I was three years older and wondering if I’d ever hear that ticking clock myself. Hopefully not.
It wasn’t as gross as it sounds. When you track your family line as extensively as we do all the way back to the 1600’s in America and even further back in the UK, you can find a cousin that’s so far removed it doesn’t really count. Even humans end up unknowingly marrying a fourth or fifth cousin every so often, and witches rarely went that close. Sixth or above was ideal.
Hettymoot was just about the best time of year for witches looking for such an arrangement. Our boys, who more or less lived in abject fear or total oblivion of their impending untimely demise, came back for the blessing more often than girls. It came as no surprise that Dot was wearing a tight fitting purple top under her cardigan, her favorite namesake peridot earrings, and mascara. I knew that baggy gray sweater wouldn’t be concealing her figure for very long.
Resting Witch Face Page 3