Melanie was fourteen and a half years old, and very full of herself. Her dad had announced to the family that he would be preparing her to become the Storm Witch Clan’s next reigning matriarch. She was the eldest of the four Storm children, and since it was her job to supervise her siblings much of the time anyway, it made perfect sense that she should be their matriarch one day. It was like being a queen. Yes, the idea appealed to her. Queen Melanie… oh yeah!
Her sister, Becky, whom everyone called “Bex”, was the second oldest, at twelve, and the prettiest of the girls, which served well to hide her darker nature. She was the most secretive about her studies of witchcraft. Her father laughingly referred too her as “Bad Bex,” which made her wonder how he knew.
Next in line was Jonathan. The only son, he was eleven, and idolized his father. He wanted so badly to have the pale blond hair like his dad, but he would be cursed to grow up with looks that would be described as “tall, dark and handsome.” For him, this was mortifying. He was determined to master invisibility and become the world’s greatest ninja.
Lastly of the Storms, was little, nine year old Tori. Seeing how the other children had taken to their father’s impossible notions and methods, her mother had demanded of her father, that Tori, being the last child she would bear, should be left to have her baby girl. Mom drove Dad nuts, and vice versa, but when she asked, there was nothing he could refuse her. So Tori took very much after her mom’s shy and timid nature when all of her siblings were larger than life in so many ways. Thus, Tori was the eternal baby girl.
Mom was a beautiful, Cherokee seamstress with a quiet, sweet nature. The kids inherited most of their dark eyed, raven haired, good looks from their mother. She was the epitome of a good Christian mother. A devout Baptist, Mom was more than a bit uncomfortable with her flamboyant husband’s pagan roots.
Daddy, as Mel’s brother put it, was Batman, Bruce Lee and Merlin the magician all rolled up into one very tall, blonde, package. A master of Chinese Kenpo, he taught Mel and her siblings from the time they made their first fist. Dad was also a hereditary witch, born and raised in the craft by his grandmother.
Great grandmother’s line of witchery reached back almost thirteen centuries to an Irish king who had only three daughters, and no son. Upon marrying one daughter to a foreign prince, who turned out not to be fully “human”, every third generation produced an adept of great power in the craft. Dad was such an adept. Since his clan was a matriarchal succession, Dad was something of an abomination to everyone but his grandmother. So the family was Dad’s attempt to bring up his own clannad of hereditary witches.
Daddy had converted to Christianity when he was in his early twenties. With his inherent pagan viewpoint, it was hard for the family to reconcile what their very fundamental Baptist church made of him. For the most part, Mel’s father would shrug it off that they really didn’t understand what a “witch” truly was as opposed to the demonic, Disney-fied versions that people were familiar with. Daddy had no tolerance for anything “evil”. Since Melanie had inherited her mother’s good looks and her daddy’s strength and intense nature, she thought she had gotten the very best of both worlds. If Daddums said he was a Christian, then that is what he was. Mel knew that a true witch’s power was in their will and their word. Neither were ever allowed to be broken.
It was the weekend before the summer solstice. Mom was away at work at the sewing shop, and Dad had taken the week off as a vacation to explore the ramifications of a druidic astrological wheel he had found. Dad would constantly be into the Internet discussing paranormal events and the mysterious “rifts” he found in various places around town and abroad. According to her father, at certain times of the year, a wizard could open gateways into other worlds. It was the stuff of fairy tales, and Mel was as fascinated as her father on the subject.
Presently, there was the mundane chore of getting her siblings fed breakfast and dressed for an outing in the woods. The kids were making a mess of the milk and cereal and Mel lamented that it would take even more time to clean up afterwards before they’d be allowed to go with Dad on his experiment. There was a great deal of movement and bustling from her parents’ room upstairs. Dad was rushing to and fro in his frenzy to get all the equipment he’d need to do his rift experiment. His excitement was very contagious with his kids.
Melanie was getting more flustered by the minute, as the kids rushed about after breakfast, but three loud handclaps had announced that Dad was present and demanding their momentary, but undivided attention. Everyone stopped in place and looked to their father. At well over six feet tall, Daddy towered over everybody they knew. There he stood, dressed in his traditional black, with his shaggy blond hair, upswept elfin features and the mischievous glint in his eyes and numerous backpacks hanging from his strong arms, everyone knew it was time to go.
“But first,” Dad pointed out, “we leave this kitchen in respectable shape for your mother. We don’t want her to come home from a hard day’s work to a dirty kitchen.”
All the kids pitched in with Dad to help clean up. Jonathan emptied the garbage. Tori and Bex swept and picked up the kitchen while Mel and Dad washed and put away dishes. It was cleaned in record time, and the kids raced outside to the aging Oldsmobile to get the best seats. Dad threw the packs into the trunk, and with a smile to Mel, he reached down and grabbed the bumper and lifted the car on it’s springs, gave it a shake and dropped it to the pavement with a bounce. The kids in the backseat bounced about with the car and shouted at their dad. Mel knew that she would grow to be at least nearly as strong as her father, but was still amazed at what he could do. With that, Mel took her place in the front seat, next to her father, and the family set off on their Saturday morning adventure.
“So, what’s the plan today, Daddums?” she asked.
“We’re going to explore the Devil’s Bathtub today,” her father said.
“Cool beans!” shouted Jon and Bex in unison.
“Sounds scary,” whimpered Tori. “Will there be monsters to eat us?”
“Not if your dad can help it,” her father chuckled.
“Does this have anything to do with the rifts?” Mel queried.
“As a matter of fact, it has everything to do with rifts, Mel,” her dad said. “It’s one of those strange places where things of an otherworldly nature tend to happen. That gives me every clue that it is probably a rift area, an area where the veil between worlds is thinnest, which is why such strange things tend to occur near these places.”
“How does the druid wheel fit in with this today, Daddy?” Mel puzzled.
“According to my studies,” her father lectured, “the ancient druids were wizards who studied the complexities of nature and the universe. Their astrological wheel has script that indicates that at certain times of the year, gateways to other worlds open into this plane of existence. As we are moving towards the summer solstice, the gateway to the faery world of Gwynydd should be easily opened and accessible.”
“Are we going to see fairies?” Bex shrilled excitedly.
“If I’m right in my calculations,” Dad answered, “we should all see some very marvelous things, faeries included.”
Southward from the city of Rochester, they drove on into Mendon Ponds Park. True to their father’s description of strange places, the park was dotted with ponds and water filled sinkholes that some said connected underground. The ponds and adjoining forests were filled with all sorts of wildlife. In the wetlands there were all manner of ducks, geese, herons and beavers, muskrats, raccoons and the occasional otter. The forests boasted white tailed deer, and in years gone by, bears, wildcats and cougars. As they rounded one large pond, Dad made a hard right turn up a steep hill. At the top was another of the ubiquitous picnic pavilions and a parking area. They parked the Olds, and emptied out into the lot to receive their packs for the hike.
“Listen up, gang!” Dad instructed, “Here’s the plan… each of you has some bottled water and some hotdogs and stuff for lunch later. Mel will carry the camera equipment and I will carry my wizard’s bag. We stay together as we hike down into the crater and if I say FREEZE, you freeze on the spot. If I say RUN, don’t wait long enough to ask why.” With that, everyone’s eyes got big as saucers.
“Well, I COULD be wrong about this, you know,” Dad said defensively.
Over the rim of the crater, was a wooded path, carved out with wooden steps down to a platform in a marshy area around a central pond called “The Devil’s Bathtub.” Mel and her siblings marched down in orderly fashion and staying to the firmer ground, examined the strange flora and fauna of the area.
“Those are called pitcher plants.” Mel pointed out to her siblings, “I learned about those in Earth Science. They eat bugs.”
“Cool beans!” said Jon, as he looked into one, “but this one ate a frog or something.”
“No.” Mel patiently instructed, “They have a smell that draws insects, and they get stuck inside and digested by the plant. An animal could easily get back out.”
“He’s right, Mel,” observed Bex, who was inspecting Jon’s find. “There’s a frog skeleton in this one.”
“Will the plants eat us?” little Tori whimpered.
“Not unless you climb in, you ninny!” Mel snapped, and stopped to examine yet another of the larger pitcher plants nearby.
“Hey Dad!” Mel called out. “C’mere and see this! Is this one of the strange things that points to rifts?”
As her father came over to look at her find, she took out her pocket knife and cut down the side of the pitcher plant to reveal the skeleton of a small rodent. The sap oozing from her cut resembled blood.
“Oh, that’s weird, Mel,” he said. “That’s a pretty good indicator that we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Mel recognized her father’s allusion to the story where Dorothy and her little dog Toto woke up in Oz. She stood up and started looking about with new eyes and renewed interest. The area, that was strange to begin with, didn’t really look like it had changed all that much. With the exception of the carnivorous plants, it looked like a normal shady bog. Jon and Bex were throwing stones out into the center of the pond.
“Just in case the devil is taking a bath in there,” proclaimed Jon, “I’ll hit ‘im in the head with a rock.”
“Yeah!” agreed Bex. “Take THAT, Satan!” she said, as she plunked a fist sized stone into the pond’s center.
“But, what if the devil gets mad?” Tori whined.
“Let ‘im get mad,” Jon bragged, “Deacon Miller says that the devil won’t mess with Dad, ‘cause he’s a big demon too.”
“Yeah!” echoed Bex, “A demon that fights with kung-fu… POW!” To this, their father’s brow arched half way up his fore head and he frowned.
At once, a thirty foot section in the center of the pond began to churn mightily. Bubbles, the size of Volkswagons, exploded to the pond’s surface where the children had been hurling stones and epithets. Peering into the froth from shore, Mel and her father were certain they could see the scaled torso of something huge and serpentine churning the water.
“Okay kids, BAD idea!” exclaimed their father. “It’s time to SCRAM, and I mean THAT way!” He pointed down a wooded trail away from the pond.
The Storm kids did not hesitate to bolt in the direction their dad had pointed. Mel brought up the rear, whilst her father paused but a moment to make some curious gestures at the pond. He caught up with them in a flash, and redirected them to yet another side trail off to their left.
“Wow!” exclaimed Jon, “I really hit the devil in the head with a rock. Wait till I tell the kids in church about this!”
“Jon, they’ll burn us all at the stake if you so much as open your mouth.” Mel chided, “and if they don’t, then I’ll make you regret it. Keep this as a family secret. They’ll only think you’re lying or crazy anyway.”
“Good point,” said Dad.
“Is there going to be a problem getting back to the car, Daddums?” Mel asked.
“Usually traversing a rift never lasts much longer than a couple hours at most, before you get snapped back to the appropriate plane,” Dad said. “Either way, I don’t think we’ll make our approach from THAT trail, just to be on the safe side. If I come back missing any kids, your mom and the church will certainly have ME roasting on that stake.”
“Good point,” said Tori.
Dad glanced at Tori sideways and lifted a brow, to which she just shrugged. Behind them, on the trail Mel exclaimed:
“PIXIE DUST! I forgot that I’m carrying camera equipment.”
“Did you lose something during the run?” her father asked.
“No,” Mel said sullenly, “but I could’ve gotten some interesting pictures at the pond.”
“Mel, you can’t exactly ask the devil to stop and say ‘cheese’ for a picture,” admonished Bex.
“It probably wasn’t the devil,” Mel rolled her eyes. “There were those strange pitcher plants that held still nicely.”
“Hold still,” said her father, unzipping her pack, “and I’ll pull out the Pentax. If you see anything interesting, take it’s picture. There’s a full 36 exposures in there.”
Hanging the camera strap around her neck, Mel felt ready for anything to happen. They moved up a trail that made it’s way to the top of a ridge of hills that skirted the far side of the Devil’s Bathtub. Her father was digging around in a leather pouch, attached to his belt with clan sigils burned into it. Out of it, he pulled a quartz crystal orb, about an inch and a half in diameter, which he held in his fingers and looked into as if it was a compass he was consulting. It may have been a trick of the sunlight through the trees, but the crystal seemed to flare up, and her father stopped.
“Pull out the tripod, and set up here, Mel,” her father directed. “We’ve found our thin spot.”
Mel dropped the pack from her back and set up the tripod with the camera attached to it’s mount on top. Her dad was carefully moving around an area by a tree ahead and gazing intently at the crystal held out arms length in front of him. No doubt about it. It was glowing fiercely. Mel stood back about forty feet and focused the camera on her father and clicked a shot off.
“What do we do now, Dad?” she asked.
Startled out of his thoughts, her father remembered he had an audience for his experiment, and started to lecture.
“I’ll need you all to stand back a little,” he directed, “Mel, keep the camera on me. The rest of you kids, move out of the camera’s view, so we can get a clear picture before we run or anything.” He laughed at Tori’s startled expression, and continued, “I doubt there will be anything we have to run from. The druids’ charts assure me that the plane we’ll be opening into will be a very nice place. What I need to do now, is introduce a large enough pulse of electromagnetic energy to open an already unstable rift to Gwynydd. The crystal is piezoelectric and charged with my own energy. If I use a small mirror and get some sunlight bouncing around inside with all that energy, it will release some of it at the weak point of this rift and let us see what’s inside.”
Done with his lecture, her father adopted a square horse stance from his martial arts practice, and held the crystal about level with his fore head and held a tiny mirror next to it to focus an unbroken ray of sunlight into the orb.
The crystal blazed like a small star in Dad’s hands. The light appeared to envelope the whole upper half of his body. At this point, her father peered over his left shoulder at her and yelled.
“This would be a good time to snap some pictures, Mel.”
Melanie had noticed some large sparks issuing out from the orb and was already snapping her picture. Jonathan was backing off behind a tree to her left as a ball of red fire seemed to fly in his direction only to be overtaken by an aggressive blue white bubble of light that chased it off into the woods. The light show lasted all of a few minutes before her father got distracted by all the activity issuing forth and broke concentration. In his hands now, was a plain crystal ball with some sunlight glinting off it’s polished surface. Her father stood there, dazed for a moment as if he needed a moment to absorb what had happened.
The Storm kids murmured a collective “wow.” Tori pointed out that there were still lights flying around in the woods ahead of them. Dad ignored her and started packing away his crystal and the extra gear as he seemed lost in thought.
“If we head in the direction Tori saw the lights go,” Dad indicated ahead. “We should come out of the woods somewhere near our car.”
All were silent and lost in their thoughts as the company traipsed back to the car. About forty minutes later, they were on a utility road that led to the parking area at the crater’s edge. The kids unpacked the food while Dad and Mel built a fire in one of the grills provided in the picnic area. Jon and Bex cut some green sticks to roast weenies on, and everyone ate lunch recounting their adventures. Dad had Mel use up the rest of the film so he could drop it off at a One Hour Photo kiosk on the way back.
The family got home and the kids removed any unused food and water from their packs. Mel got stuck washing the gear and throwing the dirty clothes in the washer while her father went to pick up her mother at work. He was going to pick up their pictures on the way home. She couldn’t wait to see them. She wasn’t sure her mother was going to want to hear about what they did today. It was going to be just another family secret she and her siblings would share about growing up in a genuine witch clan. She was sure she saw faeries in the rift that day. The pictures would confirm her suspicions.
The car pulled into the driveway and her brother and sisters rushed to greet their mom. Mel was more interested in the photo packet that her father was holding. The kids were shouting together, how they all saw faeries in the woods and almost got eaten by a water dragon in the Devil’s Bathtub. Her mother looked at her father with an unspoken “What REALLY happened today?” look, and the most powerful man in Mel’s world squirmed and shrugged sheepishly to her mother. He passed it off as a ‘piezoelectric’ scientific experiment that momentarily dazzled their eyes making them see spots. It seemed to mollify her mother’s suspicious looks at her father, and the kids ran to the backyard to continue playing till supper time. By the time her father handed her the envelope, he wasn’t saying much but the excitement in his eyes was undisguised as he gave her a sly wink.
Mel tore open the envelope excitedly. There were some pictures she had taken of the backside of the Devil’s Bathtub. Another one shown her father crossing a log with his arm extended and the crystal glowing white in his hand and a red curtain effect of light in the air in front of him. She didn’t recall the effect, other than the crystal glowing, but the film seemed to pick it up. Finally she found the picture of her father, enveloped in white light and what appeared to be a little red imp being chased by a blue white tiny angel in a bubble with a sword upraised in it’s hands.
“They’re faeries!” Mel exclaimed.
“They’re WHAT?” her mother asked from the kitchen, suddenly interested.
“Just sundogs, dear,” her father hurriedly interjected, “They’re caused by the sunlight on the camera lens.”
Mel felt deflated at that explanation. Her father said loudly for her mother’s sake:
“You can tell by the symmetrical shapes they assume, usually the hexagonal shape of the camera shutter,” as he handed Mel a magnifying lens and put his finger to his lips in a shushing gesture.
Mel looked at the picture again, under the glass, and there was no symmetry to be found in the shapes. They were a bit out of focus as Mel had the camera focused on her father and these were closer to her by a few meters. The red one appeared to be a hunched creature in a red ball of light, cringing away from the aggressive winged creature in the blue white bubble that was attacking it. Where they made contact with each other the blue white bubble had a red hue.
“What’s this mean, Dad?” Mel asked.
“I’m getting the negatives analyzed by a friend whom owes me a favor,” her dad said, again placing his finger to his lips.
A few days later, the report came back. Mel made her father promise to share the information with her when it came. He read the report, obviously amused at the jargon:
“Said picture is of a young white male holding a light source over his head in a wooded area. Two anomalies appear to be issuing from the light source, that at first glance, appear to be refractions of the light on the camera lens. Upon closer examination of the negative, it appears that these are not lens refractions caused by light focused into the shutter. The white male subject being the focal point of the picture is approximately twelve meters from the camera. The blue anomaly is in actuality, occupying a point in space, slightly to the left of the focal point and two full meters closer to the camera. The red anomaly is a full three meters closer to the camera and directly in front of the blue anomaly. In summary: the unidentified objects, tagged as ’red and blue anomalies’ are actual physical objects at a set distance from the camera and focal point of this picture, hence the resulting poor focus of each in their relations to the focal point.”
“Okay… now, what does THAT mean, Dad?” she queried.
“It means that my friend Paul, was deathly afraid to admit you took a picture of faeries.” Dad laughed, “But will admit that you DID take a picture of SOMETHING. To make it up to us, he sent us an enlargement of the blue faery.”
All that week, Mel and her siblings reported that they caught glimpses of the blue faery zipping through the house, usually just before Dad would arrive from work or running errands. In her dreams, she met with the blue faery and they talked of his home in Gwynydd. The exception being that in the dreams, he was closer to seven feet tall, with a white tunic that came just below his knees, and belted at the waist with a sword and scabbard. He had long flowing pale hair that came to his shoulder blades, and the curious sharp features of her father, except for the bluish glow that constantly surrounded him. When asked, and Mel always asked, he would not give his name.
The following Saturday came, and Dad had the usual outing planned for either Webster or Durand Parks. When the subject of faeries came up, Dad would wink, put is finger to his lips and say he’d talk about it later. As it was, the kids loaded up their staves and wooden practice swords, along with a picnic lunch for a day of play and practice by the brook they called Kidron, in Durand woods, only minutes from home.
It was a lovely, sunny, summer’s day. The foliage was all shades of rich green and Mel and the kids would stop on the trail and supplement their lunches with some sweet bramble berries growing near the trail. Their faces and fingers stained purple with berry juice meant they got to wash and play in the brook for a while. Dad had a strange, dreamy state to his demeanor. He would appear to be watching for something at odd times. As they played in the creek and dug up the white clay there to make things, Dad sat in the soft moss, under an old oak and watched contentedly.
At once, Dad perked up and called to the kids. He motioned for them to join him at the white oak tree he sat under.
“Kids, we’ve had some fine adventures already this year,” he said, “and it’s high time I introduced you to a friend of mine.”
Mel and the children looked around, and then back towards the trail to the creek, but could see no one coming. They looked back at their dad with a unanimous puzzled frown. Dad was smiling oddly and waiting patiently for their attention.
“Like I said, “ he went on, “I have someone for you to meet. I can not tell you his name, because it is a secret. However, you can all call him ‘Sundog’.”
Everyone’s eyes grew wide as saucers, and Melanie put her hand to her mouth, when from around the base of the old oak, a blue white orb, the size of a hardball, floated gently to a point just over Dad’s right shoulder. Within a tiny, two inch tall man with hummingbird wings, wearing a small leaf shaped sword belted at his tiny waist, gave a slight bow with hands extended before him. Melanie could swear that he was looking directly at her when he smiled his impish smile and his brilliant blue eyes twinkled mischievously. There were no dazzling rays of sunlight to trick the eyes, or images moving too fast for their eyes to track. There was only themselves and their father, sitting in the shade of a mighty oak with their new faery friend standing upon their father’s shoulder. Just another family secret for the witch kids to guard with their silence.
Impressum
Tag der Veröffentlichung: 22.01.2009
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