Eye of the Coven
Authors: Larissa Ladd
Eye of the Coven Series
Novella #1
Larissa Ladd
PUBLISHED BY:
Larissa Ladd
Copyright © 20
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LarissaLadd
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.
The green fields rolled out around me, stretching almost as far as the eye could see and there wasn’t a soul in sight, nothing but miles and miles of emptiness. I felt light, airy, like Julie Andrews in the opening scene of The Sound of Music when she spontaneously burst into song because it was all just so beautiful. The walk to the cave was bittersweet, the open sky calling to me and the fields beckoning, but the dark cave looming in the distance never really letting me enjoy it completely. With every step that I took closer to the cave, its heavy atmosphere pushed down harder on my chest until I felt almost suffocated when I stepped through the crevice in the rock.
The opening was just a large crack in what looked to be a pile of rocks welded together by the ages, but on the other side it opened up into a large round room. The dark rock walls were adorned with torches that were lit as soon as the first of the coven arrived, and weren’t put out until the last left. I looked around, counting the faces that turned around to glance at me before carrying on with their conversations. With me added, it was thirteen, everyone was here.
Nema noticed that I had arrived, and without a word she brought the room to order, her presence changing the atmosphere and demanding the reverence she deserved as the high priestess. When all the faces were turned to her she looked at each and every one of us, acknowledging our attendance, leaving the silence that hung thick in the air to accentuate what she had to say.
“Cherry,” she didn’t waste time getting to the point as she looked at me as the first order of business, “You’ve had your time to think about our proposal.”
I nodded slowly. I could feel the atmosphere change. Nema looked at me, her face an expressionless mask, waiting for me to speak.
“And what have you decided?” she asked when I didn’t speak.
“I have decided to decline.”
My voice was clear and it bounced off the walls around us, pulling gasps and soft exclamations from the other witches. I could feel the disapproval around me. No one said no to
Nema, not if they wanted to live. It was a risk for me to turn her down, even if what she had offered had sounded like an option. It never was. But I couldn’t take her up on it.
I couldn’t be the High Priestess.
I had known I was different than the other girls from a very young age. When they played with dolls, I was out in the woods changing squirrels into rocks and then laughing at how disoriented they were when I changed them back. I never spent time dreaming about boys or doing my nails at sleepovers.
Instead, my sister and I were at the meetings with my father, learning how to harness our power and use it when it mattered. I grew up understanding what it meant to be different than the people who surrounded me, better in many ways, and I dealt with it.
It didn’t take very long before I realized that I had more power than my sister Marlena, that I could beat her at anything, even though I was three years younger, and not long after that, my father realized it too. Power like mine hadn’t been witnessed in centuries, and his pride in me swelled, only to be trampled by the disappointment that I would never take my rightful place as High Priestess, and, as a result, I was constantly in danger. If I wasn’t going to exercise it for the good of the coven, for the good of witches everywhere, then power like mine was a curse, something that should never be released into the world. “Power has to have a purpose” my father had always told me, “and if not for the good of the coven, of the family then what for?” He died not long after that.
Since my father’s death,
Nema had been insisting I take over from her. She had been High Priestess for as long as I could remember, and stepping down was difficult for her, but, by tradition, the most powerful witch had to be in command, and so, it had to be me. She also understood the danger I would be in if I didn’t take my place, and pushed to get me there.
But I dreamed of a different life, of having aspirations and ideals besides developing who I was into the most powerful being I could be. I loved the other witches, my coven was the closest thing to family I knew, but I didn’t see myself working with them in tandem, being the leader in practicing witchcraft. I didn’t see the bigger picture everyone was always talking about.
I wanted a life like the people I’d gone to school with, a life with a job and a family, a life outside of being a witch. I wanted a place in society where I was liked or even loved for who I was, and not for what I could do, or how my existence would benefit someone or something else.
“You realize that your refusal means that we have no choice but to remove you from the coven.”
Nema’s words echoed off the walls as if she and I were the only ones there, the other witches silent now as they waited for the verdict, waited to see what would come of a high priestess challenging a witch who was stronger. No witch had ever witnessed something like this before, and I could feel their curiosity mix in the air with their lust for drama, action, bloodshed, anything. Their flickering shadows seem to dance with excitement against the walls.
I understood what those words meant. No witch just got removed from the coven to go home and perhaps find another one. To be removed from a coven meant to be killed, because a life you were born into wasn’t just a life you could be released from with well wishes, and a coven only trusted you only as long as you belonged to them.
“I don’t understand why that’s necessary,” I said, my voice strong in the dim light as the dark eyes around me flitted between the two of us.
“How do you propose we continue? You know the rules, Cherry; you’ve grown up within these walls, seen how we do things. There are rules here, traditions, but above all, there are secrets. You understand that this is the life you were meant to live, and that if you were given these powers, it is your duty to assume the responsibilities that accompany them, lest we assume you might betray us.”
“I’m more than willing to serve within the coven as I have until now. I have no reason to tell anything that I know or give anyone, including myself, away. The coven is my family. I’m just not prepared to lead it.”
Nema
pursed her thin lips together, her blue eyes searching mine. I knew she was trying to get into my mind, I could feel the slender tendrils of her thoughts prodding at mine, but I blocked her off, closed myself to her feelers, and, after a few more seconds of trying, she closed her eyes and breathed in deeply.
“You are very strong,” she said almost in a whisper, and the atmosphere in the room changed. It went from the thick palpable air of authority to something a little more submissive, and something a little sadder. I could feel her emotions shift and change as she thought about what the options were for me, and I could feel her resolve to do the right thing slowly crumble. When she opened her eyes, the blue was softer, but her voice when she spoke still had the hard edge. The other witches wouldn’t recognize her change
of heart.
“You’ll settle for a duel then.” She didn’t pose it as a question.
The formation was quickly set up. The witches voted for an opponent and fanned out in a circle around us, Nema standing closest to me. I knew it was to step in if something happened where more than one witch was needed to restrain me. I saw it in the witches’ eyes when they’d voted, felt their doubt in me snake through the air. They didn’t understand how much I knew of what they were thinking, feeling, and releasing into the atmosphere.
Rebecca faced me, her feet wide apart and her shoulders hunched like she was about to pounce. Her eyes were dark and angry, and the snarl on her face looked almost animalistic in the light of the dancing flames around us.
Rebecca launched forward and a string of guttural sounds bubbled from her throat as she thrust her hands forward. The motion was more to scare me more than it was necessary to complete the action. It didn’t. She looked ridiculous to me. I could feel the cold wind of her spell whip around the cave, saw the torch flames buck wildly when it swirled past them before they returned to their lazy dance, but I was able to block her long before her spell had any effect on me. She wasn’t nearly strong enough and even though I hadn’t been able to identify exactly what spell she’d decided to throw at me, it hadn’t done anything. Why everyone had decided she was to be my opponent was beyond me, but then again, there wasn’t anyone in the coven who would have been able to make it a fair fight. Not even Marlena, and she was my sister. What she had was as close to my powers as anyone here would get, and even she was still far from it.
Rebecca knew my strength, and my quick rebuke of her spell changed her strategy because her movement changed to a blur, and as she passed me, a sharp pain shot into my arm. I grunted, feeling annoyance start up in my chest like an itch I couldn’t scratch. It was ridiculous of her to revert to such childish games in trying to beat me. If that’s how she wanted to play it, so be it. I could feel the blood in my veins speed up, the warm sensation spreading through my body reaching all the way to the tips of my fingers and toes, and I knew that to the others I would become a blur too. It was easy to catch up to her; I was faster than her when it came down to it, and when I reached her, I grabbed a handful of her blond curls and yanked her down. There was no dignity in it, no grace; it
was stupid, but she’d asked for it. She winced and cried out like a girl as she fell to the ground and her speed returned to normal..
“This is pointless,” she said, looking at
Nema, who nodded.
“You’ve done well, Rebecca,” the high priestess said, and Rebecca looked relieved. A duel was always double-sided, a test for the one as well as a ruling for the other. Then
Nema looked at me, “we’ll revisit this topic soon, Cherry; you may be persistent but so am I.”
I turned my back on her. I was tired of playing these games, of being told how to live my life, as though it were the only way my life was meant to be lived. It was disrespectful I knew, and under any other circumstance, I would have treated her the way she deserved. I ignored the gasps and whispers I heard around me and walked out of the clammy darkness that hung in the cave into the bright afternoon sun.
The grass around me was green and welcoming, and I breathed in deeply, tasting the fresh air, such a sharp contrast to the musty air in the cave. It seemed primitive for our coven to meet in a cave, but somehow the fact that it was so primitive was what made it able for us to keep it a secret. No one looked for covens in caves anymore; no one looked for witches who came together to create spells and concoct witches’ brews. It all seemed so much like a fairy tale that thirteen witches slipping through a crack in the wall didn’t draw attention at all.
I stepped onto the narrow footpath through the grass that I’d come by and started the long relaxing walk home. A dull aching started on my arm and when I stopped to inspect it I found my sleeve was soaked in blood. I rolled it up and found three deep cuts and a lighter scrape as the forth. Rebecca’s nails. I rolled my eyes. A scrape I would have to bandage, and explain if it came down to it. I didn’t have many human friends and I didn’t see them often, but they were there and sometimes they had questions.
It wouldn’t take very long to heal; our immunity worked different than that of a human, although I didn’t exactly know how. The wound made me feel like Rebecca had forced me down to her level. She’d forced me to revert to childish games because she was incapable of playing grown-up ones. The whole thing annoyed me. Rebecca was weaker than I had thought, yet Nema had told her she’d done well.
What had I done then, if she had done well? Or wasn’t that what this was about,
were my powers so well known that instead of honor and dignity, it had become exactly that: a power-play?
How long would this carry on before they got serious? I knew I was stronger than the other witches, but
Nema could pull her weight; she wasn’t high priestess for nothing. If it came down to it, she would put up more of a fight than the others. And if they teamed up on me? My position in the coven was important to all of them; I knew it should have been important to me, and the fact that it wasn’t was why I was running out of time.
