Witch's Brew

       By C.L. Collar

        “Witchy, Witchy, Witchy Woo, what should we put in the brew?”

asked Witchy One of Witchy Two.

            “I do not want to make the brew,” said witchy, witchy, Witchy Two.

“I want to make a nice beef stew.”

            “What has gotten into you?” asked Witchy One of Witchy Two.

“It's Halloween and we must brew.”

            “I have nice eye of newt, so blue. Green toes of toad, I have these too,”

said Witchy One to Witchy Two.

            “No, not one of those will do,”said witchy, witchy, Witchy Two.

“I want to try something brand new.”

            “New does not go in the brew,”said Witchy One to Witchy Two.

“That is one thing we NEVER do.”

            “Ahh. I know what we can do,” said witchy, witchy, Witchy  Two.

“We can and will make old cow brew.”

            “I do believe, that, we can do,” said Witchy One to Witchy Two.

              “It will be old and will be new. Witchy, Witchy, Witchy Woo!”

Witch of Apple Hill ~ Part 6

“Oh for the love of Pete, would you two pipe down,” said the third ghost who had casually been leaning again the wall in the corner with her own arms folded. “If anyone is being punished in the afterlife it’s me having to listen to the two of you bicker for eternity.” She floated to Elise. “What’s the plan?”

Elise shrugged. “I guess the usual, Rosemary, haunt, curse, and cause as much chaos as possible.”

“Oh could I haunt the Garvers this year?” asked Dorothea.

Rosemary rolled her eyes. “You have to haunt them, not swoon over them.”

“Why would I swoon?” asked Dorothea, a bit too dramatically.

“Because we all know you’re in love with the bloomin’ idiot of a mayor,” laughed Ernest.

“Am not,” pouted Dorothea.

Rosemary eyed Elise, “You okay? Usually you met the fortieth year with more enthusiasm.”

“I’m a loss of what I can do to protect this valley,” confessed Elise. “I’ve failed my ancestors.”

“You failed no one,” said Rosemary kindly. “Having read every book in the library, one thing I know to be true, you can’t stop progress. Life finds a way.”

“You’ve been watching Jurassic Park again,” smirked Elise.

Rosemary shrugged. “What can I say, Dorothea has a thing for Mayor Garver …”

“I do not!”

“… I have a thing for Jeff Goldblum. Still, my point is, this was bound to happen. It just happened on your watch.”

“So I need to fix it,” said Elise.

Before Rosemary could answer the front door chimed, alerting Elise, the ghosts and Roark that a patron had entered. The ghosts disappeared as Roark scurried under the desk.

“Mrs. Welch,” said Elise plastering on a smile to the old woman walking slowing into the library with her walker, “fair okay last night?”

Mrs. Welch flicked her wrist and then nudged her walker a little closer to Elise. “I’ve been dealing with that witch since I was born. She’s a nuisance, but she’s never maimed anyone as far as I know. If I were a witch I’d curse this whole town too.”

Elise cocked her head. “Really?”

“I’d slow everyone down,” said Ms. Welch. “I swear, everyone is in such a hurry, no one stops to admire how beautiful this valley is. I say if you take it for granted get your butt on the bus and don’t look back. But what do I know, I’m older than Moses and bound to greet him soon.”

Elise couldn’t help but find Ms. Welch’s answer ironic. The Welch family had been of the five “founding” families. They had suffered the curse since the beginning. The last time Elise had tried to run them out of town, she gave Ms. Welch a nose that constantly ran coldness in her heart that guaranteed Ms. Welch would never marry.

The door chimed again, this time announcing Mr. King and his cane. Elise couldn’t help but wonder if all the founding families would soon enter her library.

“Why Ms. Welch you’re looking awful spry today,” said Mr. King taking off his hat.

Elise knew that Mr. King was a tad bit older than Ms. Welch, even if Ms. Welch moved slower and acted as if Death was tapping on her door to let him in constantly.

“I’ve never been spry, Mr. King,” snapped Ms. Welch.

Witch of Apple Hill ~ Part 5

Once Apple Hill’s famous apples started to make their way out into the world, the town grew with people working for the orchard and the five families became the celebrated founders.

Founders? Elise’s family had been the first inhabitants of Apple Hill. They had been the ones to care for and cultivate the small apple trees that had established themselves on the hill and make them flourish. They had been the ones who had protected the valley from the likes of men and their greed. Except for Elise, she had failed.

She shook the thought away as she hurried to the library. She didn’t anticipate a line at the door, since most of the Apple Hill residents were busy cleaning up the mess she had made. That thought brought a smile to her lips as she unlocked the front door, turned the sign on the window to read open, and switched on the lights.

“Good morning,” she chimed as three ghosts floated down from the rafters.

“You were busy last night,” said the woman ghost. She floated right in front of the circulations desk as if she were waiting patiently for her turn to check out books.

“Thanks for noticing, Dorothea.” Elise smiled as Roark climbed out of her pocket and onto the desk as Elise turned on the computers.

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment,” snapped Dorothea as wagged a finger at Elise. “You shouldn’t do that. These are your neighbors”

“Oh leave her alone,” said a male ghost wearing a straw hat that had more holes and barely a brim. “It’s been forty years. Curses have to be maintained.”

“Ernest, you’re nothing more than a poltergeist,” quipped Dorothea. She folded her cubby arms.

“Better than being a Moaning Myrtle,” countered Ernest.

Elise had always thought of Dorothea as the cherub among her ghost friends. She was short and stubby, with matching cheeks and double chin, and all she needed was wings to make the transformation. Ernest was her opposite in many ways. He was tall and skinny, to the point Elise sure she could make out his bones had he not been wearing overalls and a long-sleeved shirt. Where Dorothea looked ready for the church social, Ernest looked ready to pick up a plow, complete with a phantom straw of hay constantly dangling from his lips.

“I never moan,” stated Dorothea, stomping her ghostly foot, “and I’m certainly nothing like that blubbering character hiding out in the girl’s bathroom.”

Elise cocked her head at the bickering ghosts. “Why, Ernest, you read Harry Potter. I knew you’d like it.”

“It’s no Steinbeck,” Ernest grumbled, “but what else am I going to do?” He shrugged. “I read and I haunt.”

“I can think of worse afterlives,” said Elise.

“You forgot one,” said Dorothea, “you also argue like a pig-headed ol’ fool.”

“I don’t know,” said Ernest, floating closer to Elise as if sharing a secret, “this might have been heaven if I didn’t have to share it with her.”

“I heard that!”

“Oh for the love of Pete, would you two pipe down,” said the third ghost who had casually been leaning again the wall in the corner with her own arms folded. “If anyone is being punished in the afterlife it’s me having to listen to the two of you bicker for eternity.” She floated to Elise. “What’s the plan?”

Witch of Apple Hill ~ Part 4

She was sure Mayor Garver was going to tell her it was because the valley was haunted and he didn’t want her to be cursed like the rest of them. Sure that he was going to tell her about the warning that flew through the valley the night before. She just knew that he was going to confess that the valley was haunted by a witch and she didn’t want to be anywhere near her wrath.

The Garver family had been one of the families that stayed after Elise blew through the saloon in 1937. According to Roark, the Garvers, Myers, Welches, Kings, Nelsons, all stayed because they had nowhere else to go. It was at the tail end of the Great Depression and they had sunk everything into trying to mine the valley.

In fact it was JD Garver, Mayor Garver’s great granddad, who took apple seeds from Elise’s very hill and started an orchard. The five men sent for their families, even though she plagued them with fleas, phlegmy coughs, a hoard of moths that ate at their clothes and blankets, and a constant itch in the middle of the foot that would only start when the folks had on their heavy boots and ended the minute the boot was off. The Garver family had endure it all, so surely he would warn her off.

“Well, you’re getting older and I don’t like that you live up on that hill all by yourself,” he stated. “A woman could get hurt.”

“So could a man,” Elise stated with narrowed eyebrows.

Mayor Garver held up his hands. “I don’t mean any offense. I just worried about you is all. That’s my job, to worry about the fine folks of Apple Hill. We hate to see you leave, honestly.”

“Would love to see you leave,” mumbled Elise.

“What was that?” asked the mayor.

Elise shook her head. “Nothing, just that I had better go see to the library. You know I still have to find someone to take my place.”

“Have a good day,” hollered the mayor as he jogged back to the cleanup efforts.

Once Apple Hill’s famous apples started to make their way out into the world, the town grew with people working for the orchard and the five families became the celebrated founders. Founders? Elise’s family had been the first inhabitants of Apple Hill. They had been the ones to care for and cultivate the small apple trees that had established themselves on the hill and make them flourish. They had been the ones who had protected the valley from the likes of men and their greed. Except for Elise, she had failed.

Witch of Apple Hill ~ Part 3

Making her way to the top of Apple Hill, where her house stood, she turned and faced the town below. She closed her eyes and rolled her wrists to where her palms were face up, then she began chanting.

First a spell to make her voice echo on the wind. She wanted to make sure that each and every household would awake and hear her. She wanted them to tremble in their beds and hide under the covers.

The spell complete she repeated her words she had used on the night she made the curse thirty nine years ago. “Get out! Leave my valley or every generation of your families that stay will endure my wrath. You think that it is I that is evil, but the evil lies in your hearts and it will soil my land no longer. Leave by the week’s end or pay the consequences.”

She rolled her wrists again in a quick trust pushing her words and the winds through the town. The cursed gale flew through the town knocking over decorations and streets signs. Windows burst out of businesses as a mini tornado tore at the town shouted her curse.

Watching, she smiled as the lights of the town started to flicker on and worried townspeople peeked out of their doors to assess the damage. She heard the sound of the lone police siren, trying to comfort the people. As if that one man could contain her wrath? He was overweight and rarely worked a case bigger than a missing garden gnome or someone’s missing cat. He was not one of the town’s founders, just another stray that had wondered into her valley.

The worried words of the townsfolk wafted up to her house, causing her to chuckle. She flicked her wrists one more time, transplanting the shrine’s mums into her own garden and making the mums at the shrine appear black and dead.

With a satisfying sigh she went inside for tea.

Chapter 2

Elise walked toward the library and worked hard to put a look of concern on her face as she greeted the townsfolk who were busy cleaning the mess she had made the night before.

“Morning, Elise,” said Mayor Garver. He sat down a rake he’d been using to gather up litter and hurried over to her. “Don’t worry the library is okay. I checked on it first thing. Did you fair okay in last night’s storm?”

“Storm?” Elise cocked her head. She knew full well the library was fine. She would never hurt her precious building full of stories and knowledge. “I must’ve slept right through it. Weird, though, not a leaf out of place up on the hill.”

“I think it was one of those microbursts,” said Mayor Garver.

“Microburst?”

“Like a tornado, but smaller and in a more concentrated area,” explained Mayor Garver.

Elise bit her lip. Some silly weather phenom was getting credit for her work? “We don’t get tornadoes in the valley, Mayor Garver. It’s too cold up here.”

“That’s why it was a microburst,” said the mayor in a tone that made Elise feel small. “It’s okay if you don’t understand it. I’m just glad you and the library are okay. It’s probably a good thing you’re retiring and moving to Paris.”

Else felt a smirk tug on her lips, but pressed her lips together so it wouldn’t show. “Why is that?”

She was sure Mayor Garver was going to tell her it was because the valley was haunted and he didn’t want her to be cursed like the rest of them. Sure that he was going to tell her about the warning that flew through the valley the night before. She just knew that he was going to confess that the valley was haunted by a witch and she didn’t want to be anywhere near her wrath.

Author's Note: I'll be spending quality time with my family over Fall Break. The next episode of Witch of Apple Hill will be on Tuesday, October 22nd. 

Witch of Apple Hill ~ Part 2

“I just need to know that they are leaving and when,” she explained. “I hate cursing anyone, but these men are asking for it by staying. I gave them plenty of time to move along.”

The spider let out a little chirp before crawling down her body and out the door. The witch stood on her hill, among the apple trees, and glared at the sleepy little town. Those men would leave or they would pay dearly.

Chapter 1

Present day

Elise Pendergraph wandered through the streets of the sleepy little hallow called Apple Hill as she did every night. Over time the streets had changed from dirt, to cliché, to bricks, and now boasted the same asphalt every other town in America had. She had to admit she missed the bricks, it at least gave the town some atmosphere.

She sighed, it wasn’t as if the town didn’t have atmosphere. The residents did their best to keep their lawns trimmed and their trees healthy. Just about every house was decorated in fall or Halloween décor, giving the town a storybook feel. That was something Elise could appreciate, but the fact that they didn’t belong in her valley still coursed through her veins.

A large black spider crawled out of her pocket and perched on her shoulder.

“Well Roark,” she said, “it’s that time again.”

The spider lifted its front two legs as if to agree.

“Every forty years I bring chaos to this town and yet they stay,” she mused. “I wonder what more I could do this year to get them to move on?”

Roark turned in a circle frantically as if he had the perfect answer. She looked at the spider and smiled. “Roark, you know I can’t wrap them into a web and drain them dry. My coven may be gone, but I still hold their values sacred. I will not cause fatal harm to any mortal.”

The large spider rolled his eyes at her. They had been together a long time, the witch and her familiar, the large Goliath Birdeater. Of course they both knew that was just the form that he took to present himself. She had only seen her spirit protector once in his true form. He had protected her from a group of drunken miners that had been away from a woman’s touch so long, they lost their sense when they happened upon her.

There wasn’t much left of the three men by the time Roark got done with them, but she was eternally grateful that her familiar showed himself before they could complete their dastardly plan. Roark could kill for her, but only if her life was in danger. Which didn’t help when it came to driving out the people of Apple Hill from her home.

“Natural disasters are out of the question, too many variables for someone to get hurt,” she thought out loud.

Roark squeaked in her ear.

“No, I will not mess with a love potion again,” stated Elise. “They just about killed each other trying to prove their love was better than another’s. I’ve tried haunting them out, but they just embraced the fact that the valley was haunted.”

She thought of the small shrine they built at the town’s center, near a natural spring. They planted flowers for the valley witch, so that they could be in her good graces. She smiled. The first thing she would do is to kill the flowers.

She wouldn’t really kill the mums, she’d take the real plants to her home and care for them, and replace them with magical fakes. That should show the townspeople that the witch is unhappy.

Making her way to the top of Apple Hill, where her house stood, she turned and faced the town below. She closed her eyes and rolled her wrists to where her palms were face up, then she began chanting.

Thought for the Day...

Witch of Apple Hill ~ The Beginning

Witch of Apple Hill

By Jennifer McMurrain

***Note from the author***

What you are about to read is a rough draft. Anna’s Legacy supporters are getting a sneak peek at my writing process and they are the first ones to get to read these novellas. Knowing that it is a rough draft, please be aware that it hasn’t gone through my rigorous quality control and there will be mistakes, typos, and before the final product is published, it might even have a plot change. This is all part of the process. So I hope you enjoy this sneak peek of Witch of Apple Hill.

Prologue

Halloween Eve, 1937

The witch glided through the dirty streets of Apple Hill. There was no pretending this eve. She was on a mission of fright and flying would underline her message. It was time for the miners of Apple Hill to leave.

She had watched them dig into her ground, kill her animals, and make sacrifices to the gods of lust on her sacred ground. There were no morals to the men who plagued her home. Their greed gave them the right to any woman who dare crossed their paths. She knew that all too well.

Tonight would be different.

Tonight they would know true terror.

Tonight they would leave.

She heard men laughing as a tinny piano played a jubilant jig. She knew the whiskey would be running thick through their veins by this time and doubted there would be a sober man in the saloon.

Summoning the wind she glided faster toward the bar. It was time to make them pay. It was time to make them see the errors of soiling a place as beautiful as Apple Hill. Distorting her face into a gruesome impossibility of the mortal world, she slammed through the batwing doors gaining satisfying gasps from grown hardened men as well as the sound of shot glasses breaking against the wooden floor.

She whipped around the room screeching like a banshee, knocking men to the ground who tried to flee. Flipping both wrists toward the center of the room all of the candles blew out, leaving the men in complete darkness.

Creating an eerie orange glow around her face she stared down the miners. “Get out! Leave my valley or every generation of your families that stay will endure my wrath. You think that it is I that is evil, but the evil lies in your hearts and it will soil my land no longer. Leave by the week’s end or pay the consequences.”

Dousing her light she let out a series of cackles as she bounded around the saloon again causing every glass of liquor to break in horrifying crashes. Then as quickly as she had slammed through the swinging doors, she slammed back through them, leaving the bar in complete darkness as her haunting laughs still hung in the air.

The next morning she was pleased to see wagon after wagon on the road leading out of the valley. By the end of the first day only five men remained. The witch went to work reclaiming her land, knowing they, too, would be gone by the end of the week.

The end of the week came and went, but the five men stayed.

“Roark,” called the witch, “Roark, where are you?”

Her friend glided down from the rafters and sat on her shoulder. She smiled at the large, black spider that raised a leg affectionately toward her cheek. “Roark, dear, I need you to go into town and listen to the townsfolk. Don’t get caught, mind you. They’d squish you before they even introduced themselves. That’s the typed we’re dealing with as you very well know.”

The spider nodded.

“I just need to know that they are leaving and when,” she explained. “I hate cursing anyone, but these men are asking for it by staying. I gave them plenty of time to move along.”

The spider let out a little chirp before crawling down her body and out the door. The witch stood on her hill, among the apple trees, and glared at the sleepy little town. Those men would leave or they would pay dearly.

Brazilian Opal

Anna's Legacy Gift Shop 

is bringing in Fall 

with gorgeous 

Brazilian Opal!

Brazilian Opals are one of the "common opals."

They do not have the reflective quality of the precious opals but instead, have a hazy blue-green color with brown and black inclusions. I don't see anything common about them. To me, each stone hides a picture just waiting for your imagination to find it.

I see a fairy dancing in a forest in this one. What do you see?

See all of our Lovely Opals @https://www.etsy.com/shop/AnnasLegacyGiftShop?ref=simple-shop-header-name&listing_id=742269895&search_query=opal

Birthstone

It is October! 

If you were born this month, you are an Outlandish Opal!

Pink Opal Nuggets W/ Opal Chips in Silver

Opal " The Stone Of Karma "

I am light reflecting light. I absorb and reflect. I teach you to think positive thoughts because what you put out always returns.

~ See all of our lovely Opals in our Etsy Store ~ @https://www.etsy.com/shop/AnnasLegacyGiftShop?search_query=Opal