Chapter 1: First Encounter: The Witch and the Scholar
The peat-heavy scent of damp earth and ancient pine followed Alistair Fairmont through the black spruce stands of western Vinland. His boot sank into a soft patch of moss with a wet sigh. Above, through a rare break in the eternal conifer canopy, the full moon hung like a polished coin in a velvet sky. It was the only light he needed.
He pushed his round glasses up the bridge of his nose, a habitual gesture that did nothing to stop their slow, inevitable slide back down. The manuscript was frustratingly vague—‘seek the silver cleaving where the stone teeth bite the sky, only under the lady’s watchful eye’—but the botanical references were precise. Lunaria spectabilis.Moonflower. A theoretical mycofloral phenomenon, a glittering footnote in a moldering bestiary he’d traded three bottles of good whiskey for in a Reykjavik portside tavern.
The trees began to thin. The quality of the air changed, losing the compost richness for something sharper, cleaner. Ozone, like after a lightning strike. And beneath it, a scent he could only describe as alive. Not floral, but vibrational, a smell that seemed to vibrate against his teeth.
Then he stepped into the clearing, and his mind simply stopped processing words.
The entire bowl of land, nestled between granite outcrops—the stone teeth—glowed. It wasn’t reflection. It was emission. Thousands of flowers, their petals like intricate silver lace, pulsed with a soft, bioluminescent light in slow, hypnotic waves. The light wasn’t constant; it swelled from the heart of each bloom to the delicate edges before fading, only to begin again. The collective hum was almost sub-aural, a pressure in his ears and against his sternum.
He fumbled for his notebook, his fingers numb. This was impossible. This was…
Movement.
At the clearing’s heart, above the densest cluster of pulsating flowers, a figure hung in the air. Alistair’s breath caught. A woman, her form silhouetted by the moon behind her. Long, silver hair streamed around her as if she were submerged in a slow current, though the night was still. She held a staff of twisted gold, adorned with fluttering ribbons of iridescent fabric and dark, unpolished jewels that drank the moonlight. She was perfectly still, her face tilted up, bathed in the dual glow of moon and flowers.
Awe glued him to the spot. Scholar, explorer, skeptic—all those identities shattered. He was just a man witnessing a miracle.
Then the pulse came.
It wasn’t a sound. It was a force. A visible ripple of silver light exploded from the staff’s tip, washing over the flowers, which brightened to an incandescent white. The wave hit Alistair.
It felt like a hook behind his navel. A yank, profound and irresistible. He stumbled forward, one step, two, then his feet left the ground entirely. He didn’t fly; he was pulled, skimming just above the glowing blooms, their light strobing against his terrified face. He floated to a halt, suspended a few feet before her.
Slowly, her head lowered. Her hair settled, a silver curtain. She opened her eyes.
They were the colour of Arctic ice, of deep glacier crevasses, crystal blue and impossibly ancient. They blinked, once, and a flicker of something like irritation crossed her ethereal features.
“Well,” she said, her voice a blend of wind-chime and dry wit. “You’re not a fox.”
Alistair tried to speak. His throat produced a faint croak. He was hovering in mid-air. Hovering.
She tilted her head, studying him like a curious, potentially disruptive insect. Her gaze swept from his sandy hair, now standing on end from static or terror, over his face, lingering on the glasses stubbornly perched halfway down his nose, to his practical wool jacket and muddy boots.
“How did you get here?” she asked, her tone shifting from curious to stern. “This place is not on any map. It actively avoids being put on maps.” She leaned slightly forward, and the space around him seemed to tighten. “I am the guardian of this land. Who are you?”
The tip of her golden staff, which moments before had emitted a world-bending pulse, rose to point directly at his face. A tiny, dangerous spark of silver light crackled at its apex.
“Tell me now,” Rosalinda Evermore said, her bubbly snark completely evaporated, replaced by a flat, glacial authority. “Or you’ll be less an arm.”
Alistair!” He blurted out, raising his hands. “Alistair Fairmont—scholar, explorer, harmless—I swear I’m just here for the moonflowers! For research! I have a permit!” He fumbled for his satchel. “Somewhere. It’s—it’s in here with my notes and—please don’t take my arm, I need both of them for writing—”
Rosalinda’s lips twitched. Just barely. “A permit.” She didn’t lower the staff. “From whom, exactly?”
“The Western Empire’s Department of Natural Philosophy and—” He pushed his glasses up with one shaking finger. “Look, I can show you the documentation, I have letters of introduction, I even have a sketch of what I thought moonflowers looked like but clearly I was wrong because these are magnificent—”
“You’re babbling.”
“I babble when threatened with dismemberment!”
Rosalinda stared at him. The spark at the end of her staff didn’t fade, but the glacial authority in her eyes thawed into something more like exasperated curiosity. She looked, for a moment, like a teacher confronted with a particularly verbose and disorganized student.
“You’re floating,” she stated flatly.
“I had noticed!” Alistair squeaked, his arms still raised in surrender. He dared a glance down at the six feet of empty, glowing air between his boots and the silver blossoms. A wave of vertigo clenched his stomach.
“Most people don’t. They scream. Or faint. Or try to pray to gods that have no jurisdiction here.” She lowered her staff, finally. The hook-behind-the-navel sensation vanished, and Alistair dropped like a sack of potatoes.
He landed in a soft, springy patch of moss at the edge of the flower field, the impact knocking the wind from him. He lay there for a second, staring up at the impossible stars framed by the stone teeth, the hum of the clearing now a physical vibration in his bones. The scent was overpowering this close—ozone, damp earth, and that uncanny, alive sweetness.
A shadow fell across him. Rosalinda stood over him, staff planted in the moss, her silver hair now hanging in a calm, straight curtain. Seen from this angle, she was less an ethereal vision and more a person. A very tall, imposing person in layered robes of grey and indigo, with eyes that still held the weight of centuries. And she was looking at his satchel, which had fallen open beside him, spilling folded parchment, a brass compass, and several pencils into the moss.
“Your permit,” she said, her voice dripping with a dry, melodic sarcasm. “From the Western Empire’s Department of… whatever. Let me see it.”
Alistair scrambled to his knees, his glasses dangling from one ear. He hastily pushed them back onto his nose and began gathering the papers, his hands trembling. He found the heavy, officious parchment with its embossed seal and held it up to her like a religious offering.
She didn’t take it. She just leaned forward slightly, her crystal-blue eyes scanning the lines. A faint, incredulous smile touched her lips. “It says you have authority to ‘collect and catalogue non-sentient floral specimens for the betterment of imperial botanical understanding.’” She straightened up, looking from the paper to the pulsating, silver-lace flowers and then back to Alistair’s earnest, terrified face. “These flowers are older than your empire. Older than the concept of an empire. They remember when the stones were soft. Your piece of paper is… adorable.”
The laugh that escaped her then was unexpected. It was a bright, bubbly sound, completely at odds with her earlier menace. It seemed to startle even her. She covered her mouth with a hand, her shoulders shaking.
Alistair felt a flush of hot embarrassment creep up his neck, cutting through the fear. “It’s a standard form! I had to get approval from three separate committees!”
“I’m sure you did.” She wiped a faint tear from the corner of her eye, her laughter subsiding into a warm, amused hum. “And the sketch?”
He rummaged again, pulling out a small, leather-bound sketchbook. He flipped it open to a page with a careful, detailed pencil drawing of a flower that looked, frankly, like a daisy that had been described to someone over a bad telephone connection. He held it out, mortified.
Rosalinda took the book this time. Her fingers, long and pale, brushed against his. They were surprisingly warm. She studied his drawing, her head tilted. “Not even close,” she pronounced, but her tone was gentler. “You got the number of petals right, though. That’s something.” She handed the book back. “Stand up, Alistair Fairmont. You look ridiculous groveling in the moss.”
He got to his feet, dusting off his trousers. The magic of the place was still thrumming around him, but the immediate threat of dismemberment seemed to have passed. His scholar’s mind began to reboot, firing questions like sparks from a frayed wire. “What are they? How does the bioluminescence work? Is it a symbiotic relationship with a fungal mycelial network in the soil? And the pulsing—is it a form of communication, or—”
“Stop.” She held up a hand. “You ask questions like you’re hammering nails. One after the other, very fast, and very loud.” She peered at him, her gaze intense and assessing. “You really are just a scholar. A hopelessly out-of-your-depth, permit-carrying, babbling scholar. You shouldn’t be here. The clearing doesn’t just let anyone in. It repels. It casts illusions of wolves, or cliffs, or impenetrable thorns. How did you walk right through?”
“I…” Alistair thought back. “I just followed the manuscript. The stone teeth bite the sky… I saw the granite outcrops. The lady’s watchful eye… the full moon. It was just… research.”
Rosalinda’s expression grew contemplative, wary again. “Research,” she repeated softly. She took a step closer. The air around her seemed to shimmer slightly, like heat haze on a summer road. “Look at me.”
He did. He looked into those ancient, ice-blue eyes. She was searching for something. He didn’t know what.
She reached out, not with her hand, but with the presence of her. The humming in the clearing intensified. The moonflowers pulsed in unison, a sudden, bright wave of silver light that washed over both of them. Alistair felt a strange, invasive tingle behind his eyes, a flutter in his chest where his heart beat a frantic rhythm against his ribs.
Rosalinda’s eyes widened slightly. She took a sharp, quiet breath in through her nose and took a step back, breaking the contact. The light of the flowers returned to its slow, random rippling.
“Oh,” she said quietly. A complex series of emotions flickered across her face: surprise, dawning understanding, a hint of frustration, and something else—something that looked almost like reluctant pity. “That’s unfortunate.”
“What? What is?” Alistair’s hand went to his chest. “What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything. I looked.” She hugged her staff to her body, suddenly seeming younger, less like an immortal guardian and more like a woman faced with a complicated problem. “The clearing let you in because you’re… open. A blank page. Most people come with their own noise—greed, fear, ambition. You just came with curiosity. A pure, stupid, dangerously naive curiosity. It’s like a beacon to certain… things. And now you’re stamped with it. The scent of the flowers is on you. In you.”
“Is that bad?”
“It’s not good.” She sighed, the sound like wind through dry reeds. “You can’t stay here. But you can’t just leave, either. Not now. They know you’re here.”
“They? Who’s they?”
Before she could answer, a change swept through the clearing. The gentle hum dipped into a lower, dissonant chord. The playful, random pulsing of the flowers stuttered, then synchronized into a rapid, frantic rhythm, like a panicked heartbeat. The light turned from silver to a cold, warning blue.
Rosalinda’s head snapped up. All softness vanished. “You have to go. Now.”
“What’s happening?”
“The audience is over.” She grabbed his arm—her grip was iron-strong—and began pulling him toward the tree line opposite where he’d entered. “The things that are curious about your curiosity are here. And they aren’t scholars.”
From the deepest shadows between the granite teeth, where no light had reached before, darker shapes began to coalesce. They were not wolves, not cliffs, not thorns. They were absences, patches of stillness that drank the blue light of the flowers. And they were moving.Toward them.
“Run,” Rosalinda said, shoving him into the dark tree line. “Don’t stop, don’t look back, and don’t, for the love of the quiet moon, start babbling again. Follow the path. It will get you out.”
“But you—”
“I have work to do.” She turned to face the advancing shadows, her staff flaring with a fierce, clear gold light. Her silver hair lifted again, not in a gentle current, but in a crackling storm of static energy. “Go!”
Alistair ran.
The last thing he saw before the pines swallowed him was Rosalinda Evermore, a solitary figure glowing against the encroaching dark, raising her golden staff as the first tendril of shadow reached for her.
Then he was in the dark, running blind. Branches whipped his face, roots grabbed at his feet. The dissonant hum from the clearing chased him, a physical pressure at his back. He didn’t look behind him. He just ran, lungs burning, until his boot caught on something and he went sprawling, his glasses flying off into the leaf litter.
Panic clamped his throat. He was blind, lost, and whatever those shadow-things were, they were probably right behind him. He groped frantically in the damp mulch, his fingers closing only on pine needles and cold earth.
Then a soft, golden light bloomed ahead.
It wasn’t a beam. It was more like a mist of light, a gentle glow hovering a few feet off the ground, illuminating a narrow, mossy path he hadn’t seen. It felt warm.It felt safe. A direct, sensory contrast to the cold, sucking dark behind him.
He abandoned the search for his glasses. He followed it.
The light drifted ahead, a silent guide. He stumbled after it, down the path, over a shallow creek where the water glittered like liquid copper under the glow, and up a short, steep hill. His heart hammered against his ribs, a drumbeat of pure survival. At the top of the hill, the trees parted.
In a small, moonlit clearing stood a cottage.
It was a storybook thing, with a steeply pitched roof, stone chimney, and mullioned windows glowing with a soft, buttery light. The golden mist dissipated, its job done. Alistair stood at the edge of the trees, hesitating. He remembered the fables—the gingerbread house, the kind old woman who was really an ogress. This was exactly where the foolish traveler got eaten.
But no ill feeling came. No dread, no malicious chill. Just a profound, weary silence, and the ache in his scraped palms.
The cottage’s front door swung inward silently, revealing a slice of warm interior.
An invitation. Or a trap.
His options were the known terror in the woods or the unknown safety of the cottage. He crossed the clearing, stepped over the threshold, and the door shut softly behind him.
He stopped, looking around.
It was quaint, but not archaic. An L-shaped kitchen stood immediately to his left, all warm wood and open shelving holding mismatched ceramic jars. A broad, scarred workbench served as both kitchen island and probable dining table. The smell of dried lavender and something like fresh bread hung in the air.
Wooden stairs on his right led up to a sleeping loft. Beneath the loft, in a cozy alcove, was a small desk. And on that desk, a sleek, modern laptop, its sleep light blinking a steady blue. He blinked. She has technology.
To his right was the living space. It was cosy, dominated by a pastel pink sofa draped with a colourful patchwork quilt. An old armchair, its leather worn soft and welcoming, faced a black potbelly stove. A woven rug covered the plank floor. Books were stacked everywhere—on a low stool, on the hearth, piled beside the armchair.
The normalcy of it was more disorienting than the floating or the glowing flowers.
He took off his muddy boots carefully, placed them on a rough mat by the door, and padded in his socks to the workbench. He slid onto a tall stool, placed his trembling hands flat on the cool wood, and tried to process everything.
The humming silence of the cottage pressed in. A clock ticked softly from the mantel. The potbelly stove radiated a gentle, drowsy heat.
Then a key turned in the lock. The front door opened, and Rosalinda stepped inside.
She looked different. The crackling aura was gone. Her silver hair was tousled, a single smudge of dirt like war paint on her cheekbone. She leaned her golden staff carefully beside the door as if it were a common umbrella. She shrugged out of her indigo robe, hanging it on a peg, revealing simple grey linen trousers and a cream-coloured sweater. She looked, for all the world, like a very tall, slightly irritated woman coming home from a long night.
She walked past him to the kitchen, not even glancing his way, and filled a copper kettle at the sink. She set it on the stove with a firm click.
Only then did she turn, cross her arms, and lean against the counter. Her crystal-blue eyes fixed on him, reflecting the warm light of the room.
“You’re still here,” she said. Her voice held no menace now, just a deep, bone-tired exhaustion. “I suppose that was inevitable. The path doesn’t lead just anyone to my door.”
Alistair found his voice, though it was hoarse. “What were those things?”
“Observers. Consumers. They’re attracted to disturbances in the… let’s call it the local atmosphere. A new, loud curiosity shining like a beacon in a quiet room tends to draw attention.” She glanced at his face, his empty eyes. “You lost your glasses.”
“In the woods.”
“Annoying.” She pushed off from the counter and walked to the desk alcove. She opened a drawer, rummaged, and pulled out a pair of round, wire-framed spectacles. She tossed them onto the workbench in front of him. “Try these. They’re spares. A traveler left them years ago. Probably doesn’t need them anymore.”
The casual way she said it sent a fresh chill down his spine. He picked up the glasses. They were slightly too big, but when he put them on, the room snapped into sharp, clear focus. Rosalinda’s tired, beautiful, dangerous face. The titles of the books on the stool nearest him: Mycelial Networks of the Pacific Northwest, A Modern Compendium of Lunar Phases, The Care and Feeding of House Sprites.
The kettle began to whistle, a shrill, ordinary sound. She made tea in two large, chipped mugs, brought one over, and set it before him. The steam smelled of chamomile and honey.
“So,” she said, pulling up the other stool. She took a slow sip, watching him over the rim of her mug. “Alistair the scholar. You wanted to research moonflowers. Congratulations. You’ve just become a primary source.” A dry, humourless smile touched her lips. “The scent is on you. In your lungs, on your skin. It’ll fade in a few weeks. Until then, you’re… noticeable. To things that notice that sort of scent.”
“What does that mean?” he asked, his hands wrapped around the warm mug.
“It means you can’t go back to your little tent, or your city, or your Department of Natural Philosophy and Whatever.Not tonight. Possibly not for several nights.” She studied his face, her gaze analytical. “You’ll stay here. Where it’s warded. Where I can keep an eye on you, and more importantly, keep everything else’s eyes off you.”
“Stay here?” He looked around the cottage, the loft, the pink couch. “With you?”
“Unless you’d prefer to be the main course in a shadow-feast. Your choice, really.” Her tone was flippant, but her eyes were deadly serious.
He had no choice. He knew it. The memory of those formless, light-drinking shapes moving toward her was etched into his mind.
“Okay,” he said, the word small in the quiet room.
“Okay.” She nodded, as if a minor piece of business had been settled. “We’ll figure out the rest later. For now, you’re safe.” She finished her tea, stood, and took his barely-touched mug. “The couch is comfortable. The quilt is warm. The bathroom is through that door. Don’t touch the laptop, don’t go into the pantry, and for all that is holy, do not go outside before sunrise.” She placed the mugs in the sink. “Any questions before I collapse?”
He had a thousand. They boiled in his head. Instead, he asked the simplest one. “Why? Why help me? You could have just let them have me. It would have solved your disturbance problem.”
Rosalinda paused at the foot of the stairs. She looked back at him, her face softened by the lamplight, the ancient weight in her eyes momentarily lifted.
“Because,” she said quietly, “despite the babbling and the useless permit, your curiosity was pure. It wasn’t greed. It wasn’t conquest. It was just… a wanting to know. That’s a rare thing. And rare things deserve a fighting chance, even if they are incredibly inconvenient.” She gave him a faint, genuine smile. “Welcome to the inconvenient world, Alistair Fairmont. Try to get some sleep.”
She climbed the stairs to the loft and disappeared. A few moments later, the light above went out.
Alistair sat in the dim, quiet cottage, the weight of the day pressing down on him. He traced a finger along a deep gouge in the workbench. He was in a witch’s cottage, drinking her tea, wearing a dead man’s glasses, with the scent of impossible flowers woven into his very cells. His research had taken a rather dramatic turn.
He walked to the pink sofa, lay down, and pulled the patchwork quilt over himself. It smelled like herbs and woodsmoke. He stared at the darkened loft, listening to the soft, regular sound of her breathing above him, and waited for the sun.