Interlude

Barataria Coven

Barataria Preserve, Marrero, Louisiana

H esteia, a red witch and one of the Barataria Coven elders, stared deep into the fire before her, its flames reflecting in her dark eyes. The smoke that rose above it drifted towards her, stroking her face tenderly. Her love, Thea, sat beside her and clutched her hand in silence. Their home was never quiet; too many people bustled about, too much magic buzzed in the air, for the clearing to ever be truly quiet. Yet tonight, all was hushed. Coven members still milled around, but they were subdued, and it felt like there was a filmy layer over the world. In an effort to discover why, she was reading the flames, trying to see if there was some danger to the coven. Unfortunately, they remained empty of any hint.

A low rumbling reached her ears. She tilted her head, confused, just as the ground under her feet started to shake, and the trees began swaying around her. New Orleans wasn’t a hotbed for earthquakes. Unlike in California, the Barataria Coven didn’t need to concern themselves too much with the possibility. But it seemed like the time for one was finally here because the shaking became more violent, a deadly roaring filling the air.

The unsettling quiet over the clearing broke as witches screamed, women of all ages flooding the common area. A young witch near the fire stumbled to her knees and, no matter how hard she tried, couldn’t get to her feet, eventually just curling into a ball on the ground. Pans clattered to the floor, books fell from their perches, familiars squawked and hissed and howled at the sound of trees in the clearing cracking and splitting. It was pandemonium, all underlined by that ghastly, rumbling sound.

Adelaide, the oldest coven elder and a shamanic witch, raced out of her underground home, eyes wild as she scanned the clearing before her gaze locked on Hesteia by the fire twenty feet away. “What’s happening, Hesteia?” A high-pitched scream rose as a tree collapsed not far from them, and Bernadette, a young voodoo practitioner, sprinted past them to see if anybody had been injured. “I’ve never seen an earthquake as bad as this in all my years. It can’t be natural!” A small slip of a child tried to get past where Adelaide was standing, but she grabbed the back of the witch’s clothing, shooing her down into the linked caverns where the shamanic witches lived. “No, baby girl, go back to the caves where it’s safe.”

Hesteia shook her head, her box braids bouncing. “I don’t know—”

Thea spoke over her wife, her low voice carrying. “It’s not natural,” she confirmed. Touching Hesteia’s shoulder to capture her attention, she gestured to the fire.

Hesteia turned and gaped. From the fire rose two pillars of flame in the shape of a man and woman. The flames intertwined, merged into one, before a crown emerged in their place. The fiery portents vanished just as quickly as they appeared, and, as soon as they did, the violent shaking and rumbling stopped immediately.

Flame reading was more art than science and, oftentimes, infuriatingly vague rather than helpful. Hesteia leaned into her partner for reassurance, Thea’s hand wrapping around her shoulders comfortingly. “Thea, what was that?” As Thea shook her head, her shoulders fell. “I’ve felt earthquakes. This was different. This was peculiar and dangerous, and whatever was in the flames… that was the cause of it. A man and a woman and a crown.” She shook her head impatiently. “Cursed flame reading. Would have helped if it shared names or features or anything of use. At this point, I might as well just try haruspicy for as much good as the fire did us.” Beside her, Thea chuckled quietly as they rose to assist the coven with cleaning up the devastation from the earthquake.

All around them, they saw the impacts of it. Several dwellings had collapsed, and at least one house was crushed by a felled tree. Gaping cracks now extended along the soil, brackish water slowly filling the holes. On the other side of the clearing, a small area had developed a conelike formation out of silt and sand with water pouring from it. Everywhere they looked was just more chaos, although, fortunately, it seemed like nobody was severely injured.

Bernadette returned to them, a shattered teacup clutched in one of her hands, the other arm draped around Sandrine’s slim shoulders. Sandrine was leaning her weight into her sister’s side; the young witch appeared to be limping, and blood oozed from a shallow cut on her cheek. She was crying silently.

Hesteia wrapped her arms around Sandrine’s shoulders in a comforting hug. “No need to cry, little one,” she whispered. “We’re all alright. Just some minor clean up needed.” That may be an understatement, but she needed to keep everyone, including the younger witches in her charge, calm.

Sandrine shook her head so hard her braids whipped against her cheeks. “It’s not that,” she replied urgently. “I can’t find Evie. I was going to find her for spellcasting under the moon—she promised we could tonight—and she’s not home. I don’t know where she is, and I’m scared something happened to her. She’s never broken a promise to me before.” More tears tracked down her face. “I don’t know where she is, Elder Hesteia!”

Hesteia glanced back over her shoulder at Thea, whose eyes were almost comically wide at that unexpected bit of information. “It’s okay, darling. We’ll find her. I’m sure she’s just out foraging. You know that Evie sometimes loses track of time while she’s roaming.” Withdrawing her arms from around Sandrine’s neck, she turned her attention to Bernadette. “Etty, could you please take Sandrine to the healers? We don't want that cut getting infected.”

Bernadette escorted Sandrine to the healers clustered at the center of the clearing, leaving Hesteia and Thea to themselves, thoughtful as disorder roared around them. They were both too scared to raise the very real question that plagued them. Eventually, though, Thea broke the silence. “What if the woman in the fire is Evie?”

“It’s possible. We don’t know much about her.” Hesteia thought back to when she and the other coven elders found Evie. A little over two years old, she had been covered in blood, her mother’s broken corpse laying not far from her. The coven had been cautious in taking in the blood-stained infant, and the Witches’ Council itself became involved in the decision, especially after Evie showed mind-boggling powers of life… and death. She could raise a field of flowers in seconds; she could decay the flesh and bone from someone’s body just as quickly. No one understood her unique abilities, but they certainly respected and feared them.

The coven had spent years trying to understand Evie's past and power through any means possible, including by some methods imposed by the Witches’ Council themselves. Hesteia had tried to flame read Evie’s past many times. Every effort failed. Cassandra, the coven’s seer, even attempted to prophecy Evie’s future once; her body contorted as she screamed, “a lovely death, a deathly love” over and over. After Cassandra had calmed, she fell into a weeks-long coma and remembered none of it upon her waking. Nothing, magical or otherwise, answered their questions so, whenever Evie asked, they simply played dumb and redirected the conversation.

So, yes, Evie was an anomaly. Even so, she loved the coven deeply, caring for every one of them. “What if she finally came into her power? The way we found her was so odd; we knew she must be intended for great and powerful things.”

Thea wound flames around her arms, a sign she was thinking deeply. “What if this is a portent of the end, my love? Unnatural earthquakes? A couple and a fiery crown? These are not standard seer fare, and you know it.” She lowered her voice to avoid being overheard, even though the panic around them made that unlikely. “What if we’re meant to ride to Evie? Leave the forest and carry the end of days to this world.”

“But the prophecy states that we will know for certain, no doubt whatsoever.” Hesteia bit her lip. “Supposedly, the old gods' return will signal that we must ride.” A thought occurred to her. “What if Evie is an old god? We found her in blood. She has unparalleled powers of life and death. There are gods that meet that description.”

Thea nibbled on her lower lip, clearly wanting to disagree but not able to. “It’s certainly not the most far-fetched theory you’ve ever had,” she said, briefly nestling her head into Hesteia’s shoulder, thanking the gods that her wife hadn’t been injured in the unnatural earthquake. “We should reach out to the other covens in the morning after we put everything to rights and make sure everyone is alright. Maybe we could subtly ask whether any of them know anything about why this may have happened. After the devastation of the witches in the mid-1900s, we lost so much of our oral history. Maybe a coven somewhere has a writing that would explain some of this.” She lifted her head slightly to look at her wife.

Hesteia nodded slowly, her braids brushing slightly across Thea’s skin. “That sounds fine,” she answered distractedly, gaze locked on a limping witch across the clearing.

Thea tugged slightly on one of Hesteia’s braids, a small smile sliding across her face when her wife turned to her with a disgruntled look on her face. “Hessie, my love,” she said, using the playful nickname that her poised, elegant wife hated to love. “We’ll get to the bottom of this. We’ll write to the other covens and see if they experienced the same issues. Figure out if there’s any reason other than the prophecy that this might have happened.” She doubted it, but she knew the feelings of their coven, a loving group that avoided violence at all costs and believed that the prophecy was more metaphorical than literal. “It will be alright, darling.”

Hesteia didn’t move, but her face softened slightly. “You’re right,” she finally responded.

“Of course I’m right.” Thea grasped Hesteia’s hand. “Now shall we go make sure everyone is healthy and has a place to rest until we can magic their homes back into being?”

Hesteia let Thea draw her around the clearing, checking in with each witch, all while she planned the letter they would distribute to the other covens.