Chapter 2: Domestic Witchcraft
Alistair woke to the golden dawn filtering through the cottage windows, the scent of sizzling bacon pulling him from dreams of silver-haired witches and moonflower fields. He found Rosalinda humming softly in the kitchen, her hair tied up messily, a spatula in hand—the domestic scene at odds with the golden staff leaning against the pantry door, still faintly glowing with last night’s magic.
For a second, he was confused. The patchwork quilt, the pink sofa, the low timber ceiling. Then it all came crashing back—the clearing, the floating, the shadows. He sat up so fast the borrowed glasses slid down his nose. He pushed them back, heart thudding against his ribs. Okay, he thought. That wasn’t a dream.
Rosalinda turned from the stove, caught his wide-eyed stare, and gave a small, knowing smirk. “No, sweetie,” she said, her voice still rough with morning. “It wasn’t. Come on, get up. Let’s get breakfast.”
Alistair had no choice. He pushed the heavy quilt off him, careful to fold it neatly before draping it back over the couch. He followed the smell of bacon back into the tiny kitchen, his socks whispering on the plank floor. He sat down at the kitchen island, pulling out a stool opposite her as she worked. She turned in one swift movement and placed a plate in front of him: a perfect stack of pancakes, a small mountain of crispy bacon, two fried eggs with sun-yellow yolks, and a slice of dark, seedy toast.
He looked up at her, stunned. “You made me breakfast.”
She raised an eyebrow, already heading back to the stove for her own plate. “I made myself breakfast with a little bit extra. What did you think I was gonna feed you? Moss and regret?”
He chuckled, the sound strange in his dry throat. “Honestly, I don’t know. Twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t think I would actually find the moonflower field, let alone get dragged across it by a witch. Not saying that’s a bad thing. Just… very unusual.”
That got a laugh from her, a bright, genuine sound that seemed to make the copper pots on the wall shiver. “You know, you’re pretty funny when you want to be,” she said, taking her own plate and sitting down across from him.
She didn’t wave her hand. She just glanced at the refrigerator. The door swung open silently, and a pitcher of what looked like fresh orange juice floated out, weaving through the air between them before settling gently on the table between their plates. It was so casually done, so utterly mundane in its execution, that Alistair just stared.
“You…”
“It’s heavier than it looks,” she said, pouring herself a glass. “And my hands were full with the plates. It’s just efficiency.” She nudged the pitcher towards him. “Go on. It won’t bite. The oranges are from a grove in California. Perfectly normal. Mostly.”
He poured, his mind reeling. He took a bite of bacon. It was the best bacon he’d ever tasted—smoky, salty, with a hint of maple and something else, something woodsy and wild. “This is incredible.”
“I know,” she said simply, cutting into her pancakes. “I cure it myself. The pig was a friend.”
Alistair paused, his fork halfway to his mouth.
She looked at his frozen expression and snorted. “A metaphorical friend, Alistair. A local farmer. Named Dave. Relax.”
He ate, the flavors exploding in his mouth, grounding him in a way nothing else had since he’d stepped into the clearing. The ordinary act of sharing a meal, the clink of cutlery on ceramic, the steam rising from their cups of black coffee she’d produced from a seemingly bottomless pot—it created a fragile bubble of normalcy. Through the window over the sink, he could see a verdant, sun-dappled hillside rolling down into a misty forest. It looked peaceful. It looked real.
“So,” Rosalinda said after a few minutes of comfortable silence. “The scent. It’s fading already. By sundown, it’ll be just a memory in your pores. That’s good.”
“What happens at sundown?” he asked, setting his fork down.
“That’s when they get frisky again. The Observers. They’re crepuscular. Prefer the edges of things—dusk, dawn, the space between waking and sleeping.” She sipped her coffee. “You’ll stay here today. Tonight, we’ll see. If the wards hold and nothing comes sniffing around, you can probably head back to your… what did you have? A tent?”
“A rented Jeep and a tent, yes. About five miles east of the stone teeth.”
She nodded. “Fine. We’ll get you there at first light tomorrow. You pack up, you drive back to your city, you write your paper about the theoretical, unconfirmed Lunaria spectabilis, and you live a long, boring, wonderful life.”
Something in her tone, a finality beneath the brisk practicality, pricked at him. “And you? You just go back to… floating in fields and fighting shadows?”
“It’s a living.” She shrugged, but her eyes slid away from his, focusing on a knot in the wooden tabletop. “It’s what I do. Guardian of the grove, keeper of the gate, that whole song and dance. It’s quieter most nights.”
“It didn’t seem quiet last night.”
“Last night,” she said, looking back at him, her crystal-blue eyes sharp, “I had a rather loud, beacon-like scholar blunder into a sacred bloom-cycle. You disturbed the rhythm. The Observers are drawn to disturbance. To discord. Your pure, idiotic curiosity was a gong in a silent temple.”
He flushed, but held her gaze. “I didn’t mean to.”
“I know.” Her expression softened. “That’s the only reason you’re eating Dave the metaphorical pig’s bacon right now instead of being digested by something with more teeth than sense.” She stood, taking her empty plate. “You can wash. Dishes are in the sink, sponge is there, towel’s on the rail. Consider it rent. I’ve got things to attend to upstairs. Don’t touch anything that looks like it’s breathing or singing. The houseplant on the desk is both, and it’s a foul little gossip.”
She padded up the spiral staircase to the loft, leaving him alone with the quiet hum of the refrigerator and the faint, ever-present scent of lavender and starlight.
He did the dishes. The hot water on his hands felt profoundly normal. He looked at the staff leaning by the pantry door. In the full daylight, it was still breathtakingly beautiful, the gold twisted in impossibly intricate patterns, the dark jewels seeming to hold tiny, swirling galaxies within them. It did not look like an efficient tool for floating juice pitchers. It looked like a weapon, or a scepter, or a key to a door he couldn’t even see.
He finished drying the last plate and looked around. The cottage was small, but every inch was lived-in. Books spilled from shelves on topics ranging from quantum entanglement to Victorian flower symbolism. Dried herbs hung in bunches from the rafters. A large, complicated-looking astrological chart was pinned to one wall, annotated with notes in a swift, elegant hand.
His own satchel was by the front door where he’d dropped it last night. He retrieved it, his fingers brushing over the cool leather. He pulled out his notebook, the pages still crisp and blank from yesterday morning, before his world had turned inside out. His pencil was still tucked in the spine.
He sat at the small desk, carefully moving aside a stack of her papers—what looked like weather charts, but for atmospheric layers he’d never heard of. He opened the notebook to a fresh page.
He sat for a long time, pencil poised. The scholar in him screamed to document: the exact bioluminescent frequency shift, the textural composition of the petals, the predator behavior of the so-called Observers. But the man who had floated, who had seen a woman hold back the dark with a staff of light, could only write one sentence.
It was real.
The pencil tip hovered, then added below:
She is real.
A soft thump from above made him look up. Rosalinda was coming back down the stairs. She had changed into practical, dark green trousers and a simple black t-shirt, her silver hair now woven into a thick braid that fell over one shoulder. She looked younger like this, more approachable, though the power in her step, the awareness in her gaze, was undiminished.
She saw him at the desk, saw the open notebook. “Documenting your findings?” she asked, her tone unreadable.
“Trying,” he admitted, closing the book. “Some things resist notation.”
A faint smile touched her lips. “Come on,” she said, grabbing a light jacket from a peg by the door. “You can’t stay cooped up in here all day staring at my dishware. You’ll start asking the cutlery uncomfortable questions. I need to check the perimeter wards. You can… get some air. Stay within the sightline of the cottage. And step only where I step.”
Hope and trepidation sparked in his chest. “Really?”
“Really. Consider it a controlled experiment. Let’s see if the local wildlife has lost interest in my temporary lodger.” She opened the front door. Morning sunlight and the rich, clean scent of the forest flooded in. “And don’t touch the mushrooms. Especially the blue ones. They’re opinionated.”
He followed her out, the wooden deck warm under his socked feet. She handed him his boots from the mat. The world outside was vibrantly, unmagically alive. Birds argued in the pines. Insects buzzed in the long grass. The sky was a clear, pale blue.
She stepped off the deck onto a narrow, mossy path that wound around the side of the cottage. He pulled on his boots and hurried after her. “What are the wards, exactly?”
“Think of them as… fences. Of intention. I’ve told this land, very firmly, that this cottage and its immediate surroundings are mine. That this is a place of rest, not a place of hunting. The land mostly listens.” She paused, pointing to a seemingly ordinary fir tree. “See that?”
He peered. Among the normal needles, a single strand of what looked like silver thread was tied around a branch, gleaming in the dappled light. It hummed with a barely audible note.
“Intention made physical,” she said. “There’s one every twenty paces or so. They’re tuned to me. And right now, unfortunately, a little bit to you, since you’re steeped in the clearing’s energy.” She continued walking, her eyes scanning the ground, the trees, the air itself. “They seem intact. No breaches.”
They rounded the back of the cottage. Here, a small, wild garden grew in haphazard, lush bursts. He recognized rosemary, thyme, and sage, but others were utterly alien: a bush with leaves that seemed to shift colour like oil on water, a flower that closed its petals as they passed only to reopen behind them with a soft pop.
And there, on a rustic trellis against the cottage wall, was a single moonflower.
It was closed, its silver-lace petals furled tightly into a teardrop-shaped bud. Even dormant, it seemed to gather the light around it, holding a faint, pearlescent glow.
Alistair stopped, his breath catching. “You have one.”
“I have many,” she said, not looking at him, her attention on a rune carved into a smooth stone at the garden’s edge. “They’re seeds, in a way. Anchors. This one is… a spare.” Her voice grew quiet. “I planted it the day I built this place. A piece of home.”
He wanted to ask a hundred questions. Where was home? How long ago did you build this place? What are you? But the sheer weight of her stillness, the softness in her profile as she looked at the dormant flower, kept him silent.
She blinked, the moment passing, and turned a businesslike eye on him. “Right. Wards are holding. The Observers haven’t tried a direct approach. They’re probably lurking in the deeper shadows, waiting for you to be stupid.” She fixed him with a look. “Don’t be stupid. Stay on the deck if you want sun. Do not, under any circumstances, wander into the tree line. The path you took here last night is gone. The forest would love to get you lost.”
“Understood,” he said, and he meant it.
She gave a curt nod and headed back inside, leaving him alone in the garden.
He spent the day in a state of surreal suspension. He sat on the sun-warmed deck with his notebook, trying and failing to sketch the shifting-leaf bush. He listened to the forest sounds, which were suddenly full of possible meaning—was that chittering a squirrel, or something else? Was the shadow that moved under the distant spruce just the wind?
Rosalinda moved in and out of the cottage, busy with tasks he couldn’t comprehend. She buried small, crystalline bottles at the corners of the property, chanting under her breath. She spent an hour simply listening to the large, velvety-leafed houseplant on her desk, occasionally nodding as if in response to a comment. She made another pot of coffee, and at one point, she brought him a sandwich without a word, placing it on the railing beside him before disappearing inside again.
As the afternoon sun began to lengthen the shadows, painting the forest in gold and purple, a new tension seeped into the air. It was subtle—a stillness in the bird song, a deepening of the silence between the rustling leaves. Alistair felt it on his skin, a premonitory chill.
Rosalinda stepped out onto the deck, her braid undone, her silver hair loose. She held her golden staff. She wasn’t floating, but she seemed taller, more present, her edges slightly blurred against the fading light.
“Sunset,” she said, her voice low. “Time to see if you’re still interesting.”
She walked to the edge of the deck, looking out into the gathering dusk. Alistair stood, his notebook forgotten. He joined her, keeping a few respectful feet between them.
For a long while, nothing happened. The world just grew darker, softer.
Then, at the very edge of the tree line, where the last slash of orange light cut across the ground, a patch of deeper darkness formed. It wasn’t a shape. It was an absence of shape, a hole in the world that slowly deepened. Another appeared a few yards to the left. Then another.
They were here. Watching.
Alistair’s heart began a slow, heavy drum against his ribs. He could feel a cold, probing attention brush against his mind, feather-light and invasive.
Rosalinda didn’t move. She simply tightened her grip on her staff, and a soft, golden light, no brighter than a candle flame, emanated from its tip. She didn’t point it. She just held it, a silent, unequivocal statement.
The holes of darkness lingered for a minute, two. They seemed to pulse in time with his heartbeat. Then, as if receiving an unspoken signal, they slid backwards, melting into the general shadow of the forest until they were gone.
The normal night sounds resumed—the chirp of crickets, the distant call of an owl.
Rosalinda let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for an hour. The light from her staff died. She leaned on it for a moment, as if suddenly weary.
“Well?”
She let out a breath she seemed to have been holding for an hour. The light from her staff died. She leaned on it for a moment, as if suddenly weary.
“Well?” Alistair asked, the word hanging in the cooling air.
He looked at her. Was that a good thing? The absence felt heavy, expectant.
“It could be a good thing,” she said, her eyes still scanning the darkened tree line. She sounded unconvinced. “Or it could be a very bad thing. They didn’t test the wards. They didn’t probe at all. They just… observed. And left.”
She turned to him, her face pale in the twilight. “Whatever that thing is, it’s a different sort of curiosity. They usually press, like kids poking a jellyfish with a stick. This was more like a coroner taking notes. Something’s making them cautious.”
A cold finger traced Alistair’s spine. “Cautious of what?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Rosalinda rubbed her temple.“Me? You? The fact that you’re here at all and haven’t dissolved into a puddle of existential terror? I don’t know. But their restraint is a change in pattern. Changes are information.” She finally met his gaze, her expression grimly determined. “Whatever the thing is, we need to prepare for it. But they will not cross tonight. That, at least, is good. It gives us time.”
She gestured with her staff back towards the cottage door. “Come on back inside.”
They stepped into the warm, lavender-scented interior, the heavy wooden door shutting with a solid, sealing thump that felt more final than before. Rosalinda leaned her staff in its usual spot, the faint ethereal shimmer around her dissolving into the mundane glow of the lanterns. She walked to the kitchen and began pulling pots from a cupboard.
“It’s time for supper,” she announced, her voice shifting back to a more casual register, though the tension in her shoulders remained. “And you need a shower. You smell like pine, panic, and borrowed sweat.”
He did. He smelled his own fear, the long walk from his camp yesterday, the leaf-mold he’d fallen into. “I don’t have a change of clothes.”
“I’ll find you something of my dad’s,” she said, not looking up from the onion she was chopping with swift, practiced ease. “He was about your size. Less bookish, more… barrel. But the clothes will fit well enough.”
Alistair processed that. Her dad’s clothes. Another data point about her life that was ordinary and utterly strange. He moved towards the small bathroom she’d pointed out earlier.
She paused her chopping. “Wait.”
He stopped. She wiped her hands on a dish towel and walked over to him. Her movements were deliberate, quiet. She stepped up to him, well into his personal space, her crystal-blue eyes fixed on his face.
His breath hitched. He wasn’t sure what she was going to do.
Without a word, she reached up, her fingers brushing his temples. She gently took the borrowed, wire-framed glasses off his face. The world dissolved into a watercolor blur of lantern light and her silver-haired silhouette.
“Look at me,” she said, her voice a soft murmur.
He tried. Her face was a beautiful smudge. She held his chin, turning his face slightly towards hers. She leaned in close, so close he could feel the warmth of her skin, see the incredible clarity of her eyes even through the blur. Her breath was sweet, like chamomile. For a dizzying second, he thought she might kiss him. His pulse thundered in his ears.
She didn’t. Instead, she pressed her forehead against his.
The contact was shockingly intimate, warm and solid. He froze, his mind blank. She whispered something. It wasn’t English, or any language he knew. The words were soft, sibilant, a ripple of sound that seemed to bypass his ears and vibrate directly in the center of his skull. He felt a faint, cool tingling where their skin met, a sensation like mint spreading across his brow and behind his eyes.
It lasted three seconds.Four.
She pulled back. “Open your eyes.”
He did. The world snapped into a sharpness, a crisp, luminous clarity he hadn’t experienced since childhood. He could see every individual strand of her silver hair, the faint, almost invisible laugh lines at the corners of her eyes, the tiny flecks of darker blue within the ice. He could see the grain of the wooden floorboards, the texture of the plaster wall across the room, with perfect, effortless definition. He blinked, astonished. His vision was clear. Perfectly, undeniably clear.
“What did you do?” His voice was barely a whisper.
A slow, cocky smile spread across her face, transforming her from ancient guardian back to the quick-witted woman who’d teased him about his permit. “I gave you your vision back. Consider it a gift.”
She turned and went back to the onion, picking up her knife. “For keeping me company today. It’s been a long, long time since I had a decent conversation with someone who wasn’t a houseplant or a metaphorical pig farmer.”
Alistair stood in the middle of the room, touching his own face. He could see. He brought his hand close, marveling at the clarity of his own fingerprints. The relief was so profound it felt like a physical unknotting of muscle he hadn’t known was tense. He looked at her, her back to him as she cooked, her silver hair catching the lamplight.
“Thank you,” he said, the words inadequate but utterly sincere.
She shrugged one shoulder. “You’re welcome. Now go shower. You’re disrupting my onion-chopping zen with your awe. Towels are in the cupboard. Try not to drown. The showerhead has a vindictive streak when it’s full moon.”
The shower was, indeed, a peculiar experience. The water pressure fluctuated from a gentle mist to a needle-sharp jet without warning, and the drain emitted a low, gurgling hum that sounded suspiciously like giggling. He found a worn but clean pair of grey sweatpants and a soft, faded burgundy sweater folded on a stool, smelling faintly of cedar and something else—ozone, perhaps, or the memory of magic. They were a bit broad in the shoulders but fit well enough.
He emerged, his hair damp, feeling more human than he had in thirty-six hours. The cottage was filled with the rich, savoury aroma of a simmering stew. Rosalinda was ladling it into two deep bowls at the island. She glanced at him.“See? You look almost civilized. Dad’s sweater suits you. Less ‘lost scholar’, more ‘lumberjack who occasionally reads poetry’.”
“High praise,” he said, taking a seat. The stew was a thick, dark broth brimming with root vegetables, herbs, and chunks of tender meat. He took a cautious bite. It was incredible, deep and complex, with a warmth that spread through his chest. “This is amazing. Is this also… Dave?”
She snorted into her own spoonful. “No. That would be ghoulish. That’s venison. A barter from Dave. A much less metaphorical deer.” She ate in silence for a moment, then looked at him across the steam rising from their bowls.“So. Tell me about your research. The real stuff. Not the permit nonsense.”
He swallowed, surprised by the genuine interest in her tone. “It’s… about connections, I suppose. Lost ecological networks. Folklore that might have a basis in real, undocumented symbiotic relationships. The moonflower was a grail because so many dying cultures mentioned it, always paired with stories of guardians and gateways. I thought it was metaphor.”
“It’s not,” she said simply.
“I see that now.” He pushed a chunk of carrot around his bowl. “Your… Dad. Was he like you?”
Her expression softened, a genuine, unguarded fondness touching her eyes. “No. Not at all. He was a carpenter. The best hands with wood I’ve ever known. He built this cottage. He knew what I was, of course. He and my mother. They just… accepted it. Made a home for it. For me.” She took a sip of water. “They’ve been gone a while.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. They had good, long, very ordinary lives. He’d have liked you. Would’ve talked your ear off about dovetail joints and the spiritual properties of oak.” She smiled a little sadly. “He’s the one who told me decent conversation was a treasure. I’ve been… out of practice.”
The meal continued in a comfortable quiet. The lantern light flickered, painting the room in shifting gold. The warning from the forest, the Observers’ strange behavior, felt momentarily distant, held at bay by the simple ritual of shared food.
After they washed up—Alistair insisted on drying—Rosalinda walked to the window, peering out into the absolute blackness. “No movement,” she murmured, more to herself than to him. “Just the usual night. That’s something.”
She turned, leaning against the sink. “You should try to sleep. Properly. I’ll take the couch tonight. You can have the loft.”
He shook his head immediately. “Absolutely not. The couch is fine. It’s your home. Your bed.”
“It’s a terrible couch. The springs are pre-war, and not the fun war. You’ll wake up shaped like a question mark. The bed is a bed. I rarely sleep anyway. Too much to listen to.” She gave him a frank look. “This isn’t negotiable, Alistair. I need you functional if we have to move quickly tomorrow.Go upstairs. The sheets are clean.”
She left no room for argument. He found himself climbing the spiral staircase to the small, cozy loft. It was a simple space: a large bed with a thick, down-stuffed quilt, a single nightstand, and a small round window that looked out over the moonlit treetops. The air up here smelled like her—lavender, and that faint, impossible scent of starlight.
He sat on the edge of the bed, running a hand over the quilt. He could hear her downstairs, moving softly. A cupboard opened and closed. The gentle clink of glass. He laid back, staring at the dark ceiling beams.
The scent was fading, she’d said. By morning, he’d be uninteresting again. He could go back to his tent, his Jeep, his life. He’d write a paper, a maddeningly vague one, about potential fungal bioluminescence in old-growth forests. He’d be safe. Boring. He closed his eyes, the memory of her forehead against his flashing behind his lids, the perfect clarity of his new vision.
Sleep dragged at him, heavy and deep. But just before he sank under, he heard it—a new sound from below. It wasn’t movement. It was a voice.Her voice.
She was speaking softly, rhythmically. Not the quick, efficient muttering of a spell, but something slower, more narrative. A story, perhaps. Or a report. Then a pause, as if listening. The low, burbling response of the gossipy houseplant followed, a sound like water over stones.
Then her voice again, clear and strained with a tension she’d hidden all evening: “I know. I felt it too. It’s not just watching. It’s waiting. For what?”