As though she was reading their minds, Mistress Brenna explained, "It's well water. One of the first things we did when we claimed the park was to make sure it had enough fresh water for us to make a life here. Then we started planting. The soil was fertile, and well, most of us had been preparing for an event of some sort for years."
At the mention of planting, Tanna sat up and immediately began to ask the woman questions. Hearing Tanna talk helped Erika relax. Erika knew her friend had a paranoid sixth sense, and if she was comfortable enough to talk about gardening things were good. She had just closed her eyes when she heard the door open.
"Erika?" a male voice, husky with emotion asked in disbelief. Hearing the familiar sound Erika's heart leaped into her throat. There standing in the doorway was Jason "Ransom" McIlwain – the same man who had been her boyfriend eight months ago when the world went to shit. The very man who told her if anything ever happened, he would cross heaven and earth to find her and keep her safe. The man who had very obviously lied.
Chapter 1
Eight months earlier…June 21, 2020
Chimneyville, Mississippi USA
Erika Lily smoothed her jet-black hair in the antique, gold-gilded mirror. She sighed loudly as she tried once more to adjust the black raven-feather headdress to sit correctly on her head. The jet pendant drop was supposed to lay centered on her third eye but try as she might it kept falling slightly askew. Third time’s charm she thought as she carefully moved it and slowly drew her hand away. "Finally," she thought with a triumphant smile, as the pendent sat perfectly centered. The smile lit up her pale face as she glanced down admiring her ritual garb. With a sparkle twinkling in her smoky green-grey eyes she had to admit she looked good. The outfit was not her normal style. She was more of a boots and mud kind of girl. And this outfit was in a word, sexy. Not vulgar sexy like so many girls today thought of sexy – no this was sexy in the same way French lingerie was.
The ritual she was attending tonight specified those taking part should wear black or white clothing. With painstaking care, Erika had chosen a wide-collared, black dupioni silk corset top with tied silk side bows. Silk trim adorned the corset, which she wore with soft, black suede riding pants. To top off the look was her feathered shrug. It was black linen, layered with feathers, and sported a stand-up feather collar. It had taken her a long time to make the shrug but the care in which she created it showed. Looking at the shoes in her closet she wondered if wearing her knee-high leather riding boots was too practical. But then she recalled how her heels sank into the soft earth at her dad's funeral, and decided comfort was a priority.
Erika had crafted the look she was wearing thinking her boyfriend, a special forces, Green Beret with the US Army National Guard would be in town. While she wasn't tall, statuesque, or willowy, she knew it was her long blue-black hair, large green eyes, and porcelain white skin that made her stand apart from other girls so she wanted to dramatize her best features. It worked - tonight she looked like an exotic cross between a dark fey and a pin-up girl. At least that is what her boyfriend, Jason McIlwain had told her once. She had always been self-conscious about her looks. Most of the girls she grew up with were tiny, blonde, and tan. Since they had started dating a year ago, he made her feel like the most beautiful and treasured of women.
The first time he asked for a pic he had made a joke about it saying that the guys in his unit would never believe that a girl like her would be with someone like him. She would not have believed him but there was an underlying weight to his words, and she knew he believed that. And that right there was why she did not mind getting all dressed up for him or taking selfies when he missed her when he was downrange.
It occurred to her he had no idea how incredible he was or how much she was in love with him. For him, she put her insecurities behind her. If he needed a photo to show his friends or to take out and remind him, she was waiting at home for him, that was fine. Anything, if he came home.
A military brat, Ransom was the product of a Korean mother and had her beautiful almond shaped hazel eyes and his Scots-Irish father. Six foot four and bulletproof, he had the body of an athlete, the grace of a jungle cat, and the confidence of a man who knew what he wanted and was willing to work hard to get it. He was hands down the most beautiful man she had ever seen inside and out. His energy was intoxicating – he had this air of far eastern mysticism and mystery that she guessed got from his Korean ancestry, but she was not sure. Simply put, he was brighter than the moon to her. She knew he was dangerous; it was his job to be, but he was so gentle with her. He treated her like she was a wild thing that you thought would run away if approached too swiftly. Who knows – maybe she would have?
Ransom was Jason’s call sign and what pretty much everyone called him except for Erika. When she started dating Jason, half the time her friends didn’t know who she was talking about. So, she decided to use his first name for their intimate time and in mixed company, he would be Ransom. He liked the idea that they had a secret code only the two of them knew how to decipher.
When he explained to her how he had to be committed to the Army for now he asked for her to always remember Ransom was the Army’s, but Jason was all hers. So she knew the score – knew he had commitments and that when he was on the job he couldn’t be thinking about her, worrying about who she was with or what she was doing but that when he was with her, he was with her and nobody else. And that was fine, but Jason was supposed to be hers tonight.
Goddess, she felt like the other woman involved with a married man. Here she was alone. Again. Thanks to the US frigging Army canceling his leave at the last minute for some save the world, super-secret ninja mission.
She took a deep breath and let it out as she told herself, "Suck it up, Buttercup." She loved that he was a warrior, a man of honor and valor, and knew that this was the price a girl pays to date a superhero. But she missed him more and more each time he left to go back to Birmingham. She was currently enrolled in her second semester in grad school at Chimneyville University, or she would have already considered moving to Birmingham to be closer to him. He told her that Chimneyville had a unit that he could put in a transfer to, but the 20th Special Forces Group was headquartered in Birmingham and there, he could advance and use his skills. It was his career. She knew she could get her PhD in Birmingham and they would be together – they just had to wait another year for her to graduate.
Looking at her reflection, Erika touched up the blood-red lipstick, took her smartphone out, posed, and took a selfie. With a secret smile playing on her lips, she typed XXXOOO before hitting send to her contact "Big Bad Handsome Man," on the phone. The response was almost immediate. Her love had sent her a heart emoji. She smiled a little heartsick and missing him. She knew he was busy getting ready for his mission and the fact that he took the time to respond was all she needed to power through her hurt feelings.
Giving herself a wry smile, she took the delicate black lace and feather headdress off. Gently, she placed it back into the box from which it arrived. It was a beautiful thing, ethereal and exquisite in design. It was the perfect complement to the feather capelet she thought as she traced the lace with her fingertips. Becca had spent countless hours on the headdresses, and it showed. The design's details created her ideal visual —the White Raven who walked the grey mists. Of course, Becca would know precisely what she would love. The younger girl was more like a little sister than a friend, she was her soul sister. Rather, soul siblings, she reminded herself, "Don't forget your other sisters or your brother."
There were seven of them in total. A strange group of misfits brought together for some mystical purpose she supposed. Becca was a star athlete on the women’s soccer team and her college roommate, Millie, a dance major. Wren was a make-up artist, who spent her free time painting scenery for the drama club and smoking clove cigarettes behind the theater. Velvet, an exotic dancer married an ex-Marine and biker. And lastly, there was Roxi, bookish, super smart, and driven. She was
pre-med and studying to become a surgeon. And their darling older brother, Hermit, the lone male of their little group.
The group had met during the girls’ Freshmen year at Chimneyville University when they had taken a class under Professor Bjorn Stewardsen on Ancient European Myth and Folklore. The professor had encouraged them to form a study circle and the rest was history, Erika thought with a giggle. The real studying started when Hermit, the Professor's teaching assistant traced the Professor's heritage. Professor Stewardsen’s mother was the last known shaman of an Eastern European indigenous tribe. A birthright passed down from mother to daughter for generations dating back to the earliest known record. Hermit told Millie, who told Becca, and soon they all knew.
Of course, as soon as they heard that their mentor was the direct descendent of an ancient line of witches, watchers, and warriors, the girls cornered the Professor. After asking them individually a series of questions, he conceded to their demands. That was when their study group's focus shifted to the folklore surrounding the Professor's birthright. So, what had started innocent enough as a study group became the birthplace of learning ancient magical arts and shamanic traditions.
Often overlooked in favor of Wicca or Witchcraft, Erika found leyline magic and the shamanism associated with it a forgotten art form of which the Professor’s tribe was the last of the great practitioners. Professor Stewardsen taught them that the leyline energies were like the veins and arteries of Mother Earth, and his research found Chimneyville was its heart. Under his guidance, the girls and Hermit were learning ancient techniques like how to weave the course of fate, journeying to each of the nine worlds, meditation, energy healing, and trancework. Each of the students had their own skills and talents but so far it was Wren who shined. Not only was she the most capable at weaving but she was a trueborn shaman, born with a caul on her face and had always walked with one foot in each world.
Recently the group was learning about Fylgjur – the animal spirit that was not only a guardian and protector of a person but that held a shadow piece of that person’s soul. The Professor said that magic users were born with one and the animal and human’s fates intertwined.
Erika had visions of shadow animals with people for as long as she could remember and expressed that she believed everyone had one. This started an argument with Hermit who thought they were familiars that only came to witches. Taking the argument to the Professor, he had gotten oddly quiet when she told him what she saw. Leaving her, he went to his desk and rummaged around in the tattered leather case he carried around and pulled out an ancient-looking tome and a notebook. Nimbly he opened the book to a marked page, his fingers tracing the words as he mumbled aloud. Stopping as though he found something of interest, he began to write furiously in the notebook. Curiosity piqued, Erika tried to join him, but Hermit stopped her saying in a mysterious tone, "Patience, Dear One. All will be revealed soon," trailing his words as he fell into a fit of laughter. Of course, that was a month ago and she still did not know what he had scribbled in that book.
Today the group of friends stood practitioners of an ancient shamanic practice and tonight they would perform a major ritual together. Each prepared to take part in a healing ritual to raise the earth's ley line energy—their intent to weaken and eradicate the Covid-19 pandemic currently wreaking havoc across the globe. The group had never done anything like tonight though.
Tonight's ritual was meant to summon the ancient elemental spirits to raise energy and turn back the deadly virus. The Professor was sure that this plague was part of the war his mother spoke of. He told them to look at how many people had been infected in such a short time and how the numbers were climbing daily.
The group had discussed how the average citizen was going stir crazy without the steady hand of the government to reassure them everything would be alright. It seemed between the government-mandated quarantines, the World Health Organization's lack of consistent information, and a general malcontent between political parties, people were stressed. Erika had even heard Ransom, and Becca's husband speak of the country being a powder keg about to ignite and she for one, believed they were right. It was tense out there and something had to give. It seemed the prophecy the Professor’s mother had was ripe for this scenario and she did not mind lending her energy to try and bring peace into the world. She was hopeful tonight their ritual would work to extinguish the fire before a match was lit but she was scared.
In one of her visions, Wren had seen “a holocaust that sweeps across the land with an appetite that brought with it an ending of the world as they knew it.” When she told the Professor, he told them about an Ancient Tribe of Forest Giants that were the guardians of these fences places to keep the bad things out of our world. His plan was to reach out to these guardians since these beings had been tasked long ago to watch over the realms of man. He believed with their help; the group might be able to accomplish their task.
Unlike most of her friends, Erika was dealing with a lot of heavy shit with her mom and the loss of her dad. While she believed in hidden realms and their creatures, she wasn't sure if it was anything more than a subconscious state of the mind, a dream, or a chemical released by the brain that opened people up to these ideas. Hell, it could even a metaphor that the ancients did not know how to explain. So, while she believed, until something changed, or there was tangible proof she could not dispute, she did not know if that would change. She used to be more ready to believe but Ransom was skeptical being more of a guns and ammo sort himself, he made her question it all. She did not question his love for her, but he did not necessarily believe all the “woo” she did. She guessed maybe being shot at, seeing villages of starving people, dealing with terrorists and bad guys all the time he had to be grounded to be alert.
The professor, which they nicknamed Papa Doc, had once shared with her his belief that each of his students and their partners incarnated together at this time with a purpose. Like attracts like, he said and encouraged her to be patient with Ransom. He believed it was his mission to teach them his ancestors' ways before the psychic wars started and that given enough time with Erika that Ransom's soul would awaken to its higher calling. "He is already is doing what must be done, his higher consciousness is just shut down, White Raven. You must be patient. Things must be this way to protect him in the work he does. Trust me, when the time comes, he will be prepared. You will see that."
Erika had not known what to think of the Professor's belief about their purpose. Admittedly she had been surprised at how easy some of the teaching and lessons he taught came to her. It was like second nature. Or an awakening of knowledge she had locked away deep within her more than having to a student learn something new and unfamiliar. But the more she learned about it, the more she trusted that it was serendipity that united the unlikely kinship that was her soul family.
Touching up the eyeliner on her pale gray-green eyes, the young woman frowned at her reflection. Soul family… That reminded her of the questionable decisions Professor Stewardsen had made of late. Big things that seemed oddly out of the man's character. Take for instance his whirlwind romance and marriage to a woman he barely knew for six weeks and now he had taken it upon himself to include his new wife’s coven into their group. Something just felt off. Erika looked for patterns in people and animals and this went against everything she knew about the man.
Ransom told her to just let it go – that the Professor was an adult, and it was his life and his choices, but she still could not shake the feeling something was amiss. At least the coven was small she thought glad that it only consisted of the high priestess's two grown sons from a prior marriage, and a young married couple. She would not say she was overly fond of the men, but she did enjoy the company of the young woman who was as calm and easy going as anyone she had ever met. Try as she might she could not seem to warm up to the Professor’s bride. And tonight, they were supposed to welcome them into their tight nit group. Yep. Something seemed off. “Yet here we are,”
she thought grimly.
For the first time, tonight, their circle would combine their strength, power, and abilities with the covens. And hopefully, in doing so, gain the support of the Guardians and the Forest, and elemental spirits do what they could to protect the living.
Taking a deep breath, she fixed her emerald green gaze upon her reflection and whispered, "All will be, as it is meant to be, so mote it be."
Chapter 2
Spanish moss hung from the great branches of the ancient oaks that lined the drive to the Professor’s farmhouse. On the surface the tranquil place whispered of southern gentility and charm but underneath it there was something more. A subtle hint of a time when it was part of the primordial rain forest when all worlds were as one. Whatever it was blanketed the entire homestead. There was an otherworldliness in the woods here. Erika could swear there were times when she could feel a deep pull to the forest that surrounded the farm. It beckoned and nudged at her steadily growing stronger until one day she gave in to it and followed the tug. The closer she got to the woods the deeper the vibration thrummed at her core. She followed the feeling to a place when she felt as though she had walked through a finely spun web. The gossamer film gave way as though she crossed some sort of invisible and forgotten boundary—one that separated this world and the others.
Erika knew the Professor had researched the property looking for just the right place to train the group. Research indicated that this area was the crossroads of some of the most potent ley line energy on the planet. When the time was right, like magic, an opportunity presented itself that allowed him to secure some acreage outside of town that ran along the river. The lines crossed through the Hill of Tara, the standing stones of both Scotland and Britain, and even had corresponding ley lines which ran all the way across the globe to the ancestral land of his mother’s people. The property was a beautiful Eden. Wisteria grew wild while azalea bushes, canna lilies, irises, and hydrangeas grew unattended.
Tapestry of Worlds : Part One - The White Raven Awakens Page 2