Craft

Craft

The Cursed Trilogy: Book
1

By: Lynnie
Purcell

Edited by Benjamin Locke

Illustrated by Tatiana
Vila

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Lynnie Purcell

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Chapter 1:
Feud

Some said the feud sprung from the
depths of time as completely formed as the day was long; others
said it was a tragic story of betrayal and misunderstanding; still
others believed the Coopers went mad with craft and turned on their
friends. The truth had changed with every telling. Fact had
transformed to legend. Not even the eldest of the families knew the
truth. The feud had taken on a life of its own.

For 15-year-old Ellie May Bumbalow,
how the feud began did not really matter. To her, it was simply a
way of life. She heard the arguing, the exchange of threats, felt
the crafting in the air as both sides cast magical wards to protect
against the others’ curses. She heard the indignation of her family
when the casting went too far and one of her kin was injured or
killed. She felt the cost of that casting as much as any
Bumbalow.

She was used to hearing her sisters’
opinions on the Cooper family. Their opinions were as much a part
of life as the violence. The vile epithets of hatred for the
Coopers spread throughout her entire family, repeated until it
became a mantra, a way of being. The bitter resentment all her kin
harbored for the evils done by the Coopers was not easily set
aside. Even people who were not directly involved in the fighting,
like Ellie, believed the worst of the Coopers.

It was not difficult for her to
believe the stories of murder and mayhem and to feel some of the
same bitter resentment her family perpetuated in their stories.
Ellie knew the Coopers had killed members of her family, just as
she knew the sky was blue. Her father had been one of
them.

The Coopers had ambushed and killed
him when Ellie had been only five years old. No one knew what he
was doing so far inside of town, but there was no denying the dark
craft that had taken his life. The Coopers had gotten to him. He
had paid the price for crossing into their end of town. That same
day, Ellie’s momma had left Ellie and her sisters to fend for
themselves. No amount of retaliation, or love for her girls, could
fill the gap in Momma’s heart. The Coopers’ evil deed had stretched
her heart to its limit.

Ellie simply knew it as the day her
family had fallen apart. In a single moment of violence, the
Coopers had taken both of her parents from her. It was a hard
reality that only time had taught her to accept. Ellie had never
contemplated a world without the feud. There would always be the
push and pull of Cooper against Bumbalow. Nothing could change the
years of hatred and pain. Nothing would stop the Coopers from
trying to kill them all.

The feud had not only hardened her to
the realities of its violence. It had conditioned Ellie to hate a
Cooper if she saw one, to believe the worst in them. Even more than
the rest of her family, Ellie’s hatred was based in fear. She had
never seen a Cooper, had never even come close to seeing one. No
Cooper had ever set foot on her property. She feared the Coopers as
many feared the boogeyman. It was fear they would find her with
their unnatural craft and kill her, as they had so many others in
her family. It was a way of being that was so natural, so
well-earned, that she did not give the fear and hate a second
thought. The feud was as natural as breathing. Or so she
thought.

Ellie did not know of, and could not
believe in, a whole world of feud-less people coexisting outside of
the madness of her existence. Such people were legends and stories
told to children before bed, to make their dreams more peaceful.
They were sweet stories, but stories none-the-less.

Proof of the Coopers’ violent nature
currently sat in Ellie’s living room. The wet heat from the summer
day circled them and made even breathing a difficult task. There
was no escape from the sun’s glare. It found its way into every
moment. Sweat dripped down Ellie’s back and face as she watched the
scene unfolding in front of her.

The proof in question sat bleeding out
onto the paisley sofa her great grandmother had crafted in her
youth. Ellie’s older sisters, Careen and Neveah, crafted healing
magic on the man Ellie had only ever known as Cousin. Their
shifting bodies only added to the weight of heat in the
house.

Cousin had found his way to the house
only moments ago. His arrival had been unexpected, but typical for
the feud. He had encountered the Coopers while in town. He claimed
he had not meant to cross the invisible line between the Cooper end
and the Bumbalow end, but the sisters knew he was lying. He was
after blood.

His chickens had been killed only a
week ago, and there was only one family cruel enough to murder a
man’s chickens: the Coopers. It didn’t matter that Cousin could
create new chickens, nor that the loss of said chickens was not
very great. What mattered was that the Coopers had dared kill his
chickens, on his land. They had crossed a line. The need for
retribution was obvious to Cousin. Without retribution, the Coopers
would do worse next time; it might not just be the chickens that
the Coopers killed.

Cousin had been caught trying to pay
them back for the invasion of his land and had paid the usual
penance for seeking out Coopers in Cooper territory. Blood gushed
from wounds on his chest and head. His face was pale from the blood
loss. His eyes were closed against the pain. It was a miracle he
had made it to Ellie’s house at all.

Neveah and Careen stood shoulder to
shoulder as they leaned over Cousin. They worked together to heal
him, their craft combined enough to stop the bleeding and save his
life.

Ellie watched from the doorway that
separated the living room from the kitchen. The kitchen was where
she had been doing her chores when Cousin had barged in on the
family. It was where she spent the majority of her days.

Ellie desperately wanted to help them
with the craft they were working, to help heal Cousin, but that was
not an option. Careen and Neveah never let her use her craft. At
least, not when they could help it. They did not know that Ellie
could have healed Cousin by herself, or that her help would have
meant less work for them. They did not care. Using her craft in
front of them was as good as asking for a beating. Ellie only ever
practiced her craft in private. Even then, she had to be careful so
that Neveah did not find out about her experiments. She feared
Neveah’s beatings as much as she feared the Coopers. The beatings
were more tangible than an enemy she had only ever heard of
secondhand.

There was a quiet peace surrounding
Neveah and Careen as they wove their healing around Cousin. The
craft whispered through the air, sending tingling shockwaves of
magical energy through Ellie’s body. She let the magic wrap around
her, loving the peaceful feeling, and listened as it connected her
to her sisters in ways even they did not know about. The peace was
the best thing Ellie liked about seeing her sisters work craft.
When they crafted, they were not bossing her around, bullying her
or forcing more chores on her for no other reason than because they
could. They were focused on the task, instead of Ellie. They were
doing something that had been passed down through the generations;
an act that had transformed from ability, to talent, to craft
through years of practice. Their craft was innate and
beautiful.

Twenty minutes of intense
concentration passed. Neveah and Careen did not speak. Their eyes
were closed as they visualized Cousin’s body knitting back
together. Their hands remained raised over his body. Ellie stayed
as motionless as possible. She did not want to be a distraction
from the healing. She did not want to be blamed if something went
wrong.

Finally, Cousin sat up and coughed
once. The wounds on his head and chest had healed. There was no
sign of the injury, just the lasting effects of wooziness from the
Coopers’ dark craft. Neveah, her light-colored eyes vivid against
her tan skin, smiled once and held out her hand. A glass appeared
in her hand, and in it a drink of water. She offered the glass to
Cousin, and he took a sip of the crystalline liquid. He coughed
again and started complaining about the Coopers to the sisters. His
rough, old voice was thick with a southern accent. It reminded
Ellie of winter winds and summer days spent outside under an
unforgiving sun.

Her sisters immediately joined in on
the discussion of the Coopers. The conversation progressed to the
inevitable conclusion that there was no way to handle the attack on
Cousin beyond retribution. They would have to retaliate, and
quickly. The Coopers could not think that an attack on a Bumbalow
would go unpunished. Doing nothing was a sign of weakness. That
perceived weakness could spell trouble for all Bumbalows. Fear was
the only thing that kept the Coopers in check.

Ellie turned away when she was certain
Cousin was healed. She moved through the sparkling white kitchen
she had just finished scrubbing and left the house. The screen-door
slammed shut behind her as she jumped down the three steps
separating her from the ground. At the base of the stairs, she
turned to look at the house that had been in her family almost as
long as the feud. She had always liked her house, even though she
spent the majority of her time cleaning it. It was white, with two
stories and broad, open windows. It was always full of light. A
large, green yard surrounded the wood and stone. At the front of
the house was a narrow interstate. The majority of the time, the
road remained empty. People preferred the larger interstate to the
east. No one came through the desolate countryside of Ellie’s home.
They knew better.

From the books Ellie spent hours at a
time reading, she knew witches were not supposed to have old, white
houses that looked so peaceful and sunny. Witches had shacks, huts
or caves, where they cast magic and wove complicated spells out of
animal parts and herbs. Witches spent disproportionate amounts of
time turning people into toads and using spirits to do their evil
bidding. That was the misconception, at least.

Ellie found the idea of using anything
but her hand to weave craft hilarious; killing an animal just to
get its parts for some ridiculous spell made Ellie shiver. She
could not imagine how people had thought of such macabre things, or
why they associated craft with darkness. Her books always talked
about witches as being good or evil – never both. Witches always
made evil spells full of spite, or danced naked under the full moon
at midnight. Ellie would have been mortified to dance anywhere
naked, let alone outside and under a moon bright enough where
others could see every part of her.

The stories she read were fun, though,
despite their inaccuracy. She made a study of them, collecting a
whole catalogue of books on the subject. Ellie made a study of most
things. Her books were her solace. They encouraged her to dream
about faraway places and a world where things were always changing,
instead of the repetition of chores and bullying from her sisters.
She dreamed of adventures and fighting battles like the heroes from
her books. She wanted more, but she did not have the means to
search out her own adventures. The books were the safest way of
finding those adventures. They did not come with the threat of
Neveah’s wrath.

Ellie had found the idea of shacks and
hovels being the place of choice for ‘her kind’ so amusing that she
had decided to live in one. She was lucky in that she did not have
to look far. An old shack, which was wedged between tall grass and
a sprawling forest behind her house, provided the perfect place.
She had begged Neveah to give it to her not long after her father’s
death. It had been abandoned for thirty years when Ellie took it
over. Ellie did not mind the cobwebs in the corners or the broken
parts of the structure. Those things were easily fixed, and the
shack gave her privacy and space. No one bothered her
there.