Interlude

Chugach Coven

Chugach National Forest, Seward, Alaska, United States

T hree girls hid behind the trees at the edge of the forest where they lived, peeking out at the small village near their wooded home. Lights danced in faraway windows, and behind the glass, shadows of people flickered, offering a small glimpse into the home life of villagers the girls would never know.

It was a quiet, cold area at what seemed like the edge of the world to most, but to Natalya, Amaruq, and Stephanie, it was home. Well, the only home that they had ever known. The coven elders made sure they knew the stories of how they each came to be there, though. Stephanie had been born in summer and sent down the barely-thawed rivers to the forest just days later, swaddled in a thick blanket. An Inuit elder had escorted four-year old Amaruq into the forest and sat with her until the forest bade the elder to retreat. Natalya was dumped at the edge of the forest, too young to defend herself and half-freezing.

Now in their late teens, they knew who and what they were. They knew why they had been abandoned, and their adopted mothers—the High Priestess and the other elders—taught them the craft, alongside their other sisters. They stayed in the forest for their own protection, knowing that humankind embraced the fantasy of witchcraft, not the reality.

On uneventful nights, Natalya, Stephanie, and Amaruq loved to sit, carefully hidden, at the edge of the trees, observing the daily lives of the local villagers and, illuminating the sky like the glow of faeries, the far-away lights of Anchorage, all of it surrounded by millions of stars. They told stories about what it might be like to see it up close.

But these weren't uneventful times. The night before, an unexpected fire had ravaged their still-frozen forest, sparking spontaneously before disappearing just as quickly, and devastated the area surrounding the witches’ home. After that, they needed an escape. A way to experience some normality and dream of what it may be like to be somewhere new.

“Do you think we could do it?” Natalya whispered to her sisters. “Do you think we could go to the village? Akna would never know we were gone. And it would only be for just a little while.”

Stephanie snapped her head back, eyebrows raising high, almost disappearing into her black hair. “Oh yeah, great idea. Do you think they burn witches here or just send them naked into the snow to die? Plus Akna not knowing something? Are you crazy? She knew when you stole food from the larder while she was away.”

Natalya glared. “That’s because you told her, you little snitch.” Over Stephanie’s snickering, she asked Amaruq, “What do you think? Should we do it?” At Amaruq’s silence, she wheedled, “Come on, it would be fun!”

“I guess. But Akna would know. And I don’t think she would like it. At all.” Natalya’s face fell so Amaruq hurried to add, “But you know the prophecy says that someday the witches may be seen by the outside world. After last night, who knows. That may be closer than we think.”

Natalya snorted. “Amaruq, that is not nearly as reassuring as I think you mean it to be. We were almost burned out of our home yesterday. If this is the start of the prophecy, it's not going to be sunshine and rainbows. We would be leaving to render apocalyptic judgments under the old gods’ authority and raining fire and bringing death to all around us. Purging the world of all humanity. I don't know about you, but that's definitely not the way I saw myself going into the village.”

Giggling, Stephanie poked her sister. “You know it sounds really bad when you say things like that? ‘Purging the world.’ It sounds like genocide.”

“Well, you know it kind of is genocide. But it’s an inspecific sort of genocide, which I guess makes it better?” The three girls fell quiet, as silent as the village they could see but never enter.

“Girls!” A booming voice rang out behind them, unexpected and echoing in the clear, snowy night. “What in the holy name of Rihannon are you doing?”

The three girls swiveled as one, each bearing an identical look of guilt. “Nothing, Akna,” they chimed, staring at their feet as their High Priestess loomed over them.

Sighing, Akna wrapped the three girls in her arms and escorted them back into the forest. “What is our most important rule, my daughters? Especially after last night.” The trees rushed around them as she shooed them deeper into the frozen tundra.

“We don’t set fire to our sister’s homes. Even if it’s by accident.” Natalya's charcoal-colored eyes danced with mischief.

Akna exhaled once more, pinching her most impish daughter on the upper arm. “No, my darling, that is your most important rule. What is the coven’s most important rule?”

The three girls fell silent for a brief second before chorusing, “Don’t be seen by the outside world.”

“And why is that?” Akna prompted as they entered the small copse that marked the beginning of the witch’s territory. Before her, faerie lights became evident, revealing trees twisted into the walls of houses. “Have you forgotten the stories? Have you forgotten what happened to our sister covens around the world? The systematic extermination of Europe witches during World War II? The Rwandan genocides? The slaughter of Vietnamese witches mistaken for combatants during the War? To mention but a few.”

Once again, the girls were silent. They all knew the stories—they were the first ones they had heard as children, after all, warnings against leaving the forest, lest they be hunted. Even after the witch trials, the 1900s had not been kind to their kind, resulting in mass extinction across Europe, Africa, and Asia, and the overall depletion of power as thousands of witches died. Thousands of years of records were destroyed, including those chronicling their most important prophecy as apocalyptic harbingers. That information now lived exclusively in the heads of small population of witches that had survived the exterminations.

“But that could never happen here, Akna.” Stephanie glanced pleadingly at their High Priestess. “This is a peaceful area. They would never hurt us, even if they found us.”

Akna placed her hand on Natalya’s head as the girl began to shake, her eyes haunted. “It depends on what you mean by hurt. They don’t need to physically assault us to injure us. Sometimes cruelty or selfishness are sufficient to hurt. They can destroy our natural resources. They can imprison us. Mankind has no limit on innovation when it comes to the destruction of its fellow beings.”

Amaruq burst out, “But that would be an act of aggression against us. We could protect ourselves if they attacked us like that!”

“An ye harm none, do what ye will.” Akna intoned the witches’ creed. “Even if they are aggressors, we may not harm them. As witches, it is our duty to maintain the balance. Only when the balance is irredeemably upset, as prophesized, may we act.”

“But that’s stupid,” Amaruq argued. “How are we supposed to comply with the prophecy if we’re not around to do just that? If we're murdered by them —” She flapped her hand in the direction of the village. “—or they destroy the resources allowing us to survive or some other horrible thing, why can we not protect ourselves with violence if necessary? The early witches who wrote the creed were peaceful, not stupid!” Gesturing to indicate their ice-ridden home, blanketed by snow, now surrounded by fire-charred trees, she glared at their High Priestess.

“Go home, girls.” Their High Priestess pushed them towards their respective caretakers. “I know it does not make sense now, but this is our sworn duty. We have been tasked by our gods with the purity of the world. We may only become involved when men have destroyed the Earth and turn on one another. Now, however… ” She gestured them once more towards their adopted mothers. “You must go to bed. We have tasks to complete come morning.”

As the three girls trudged to their homes, Akna's gaze flitted across the women and girls that she thought of as her children. They were all precious, and she loved them all. She turned as her wife, Malina, approached her, appearing to shine from within.

“How did your travels go, my love?” Malina asked, resting her cheek against Akna’s shoulder. She felt Akna shrug before responding.

“The fish are dying, and the glaciers are melting. People are attacking those of different skin colors than themselves and just yesterday, I watched a group stone a man who loved other men.” Akna rubbed her temples before wrapping her arms around Malina, hoping to shed the feeling of hopelessness seeping into her bones. “The hatred and vitriol that spew from men’s televisions… it is horrifying. And with the fires of late? They nearly destroyed our home! At what point do you think we call the Council together? The news anchors seem to indicate that this problem is global. If so, then the prophecy's day may have come.” She sighed. "Regardless of whether we agree with our ancestors' interpretation of it or not."

“It’s possible that you may have to wear your bone tiara once more. The prophecy implies that we will know for certain, though, no doubt whatsoever. I do wish we hadn't lost the records of it during the extermination. An apocalypse is so final, and pursuing violence against the world… ” Malina bit her lip, shaking her head. With a huff, she turned to a different topic. “We did receive news from the Barataria Coven in Louisiana while you were gone, though.”

“Oh?” Akna escorted Malina back to their home, wanting nothing more than a good night’s rest.

“Two messages, technically. The first inquired about an earthquake that hit New Orleans and did a significant amount of damage to their forest. The second… ” Malina trailed off.

Akna sat at the foot of their bed, untangling her hair, glancing up when her wife remained silent. “The second?”

“The second let us know that they’ve been attacked.”

Hands flying to her face to cover her gasp, Akna leapt to her feet. “They were attacked? What happened?”

“Do you remember the toddler they found all those years ago? The one with the dead woman?”

Akna nodded. It was almost completely unheard of for there to be anyone with a child when they were left to the witches. When the toddler was found not just with another person but with a corpse? That raised concerns in covens the world over. It grew worse when Barataria shared that their seeress identified the toddler as the murderer and shared the cryptic phrases she kept repeating during her prophecy. Some of the older witches and more traditional covens had argued for the young girl’s ejection from the forest. The truly traditional among them had demanded that she be put to death. Fortunately, neither of those demands were met, although other extreme safeguards had been put in place as a compromise; even still, that decision had resulted in schisms between covens for years.

“She went missing then returned with knowledge she shouldn’t have about who she is. A man named Cole Aidoneus followed her, broke their protective boundaries with death magic, and disclosed that the girl herself has death magic. The girl left with him after turning the forest against the coven.”

“Why did she turn the forest against them?” Akna asked absently, her brain turning over the name Aidoneus. It sounded so familiar. Aidoneus. Where have I heard that name before? Even as Malina responded to her question, she was barely paying attention, walking over to the books lining the walls of their home. As if they might have an answer. Aidoneus, Aidoneus, Aidoneus, Aidoneus , she recited in her head as she ran her finger along the spines of their library.

“Why do you keeping saying ‘Aidoneus,’ my love?” Malina sounded slightly exasperated, leading Akna to think that this might not have been the first time she posed the question.

Scratch that, apparently I was reciting the name out loud .

“I know that name. It sounds… I recognize it. From somewhere?” Her voice lilted up in a question as her finger ran across a book on world mythology. Aidoneus . Startled, she tugged out the thick tome, flipping to the index where her eyes raced down the page until she found Hades - 1, 47, 56 - 60, 63 . Her fingers flipped quickly through the pages until she lit on a page entitled Hades . Siblings, spouse, children, history, powers… and there, buried at the end of the pages detailing the god, was a small section labeled Other Names . Aidoneus was the first among them. Akna froze.

From where she stood looking over Akna’s shoulder at the open book, Malina gasped. “You don’t think—”

“That the old gods may have returned in the form of Cole Aidoneus and this witch?” Akna’s heart beat fast. “I’m scared it may be a very real possibility, darling. We’ll need to call the Council together. Quickly.”