Adira Thompson always knew she was a witch. The definition of the word has since broadened somewhat, and rightly so, she imagined. Nowadays anyone with the determination to learn and practice the Craft of the Wise can call herself, and deservedly so; a witch. But then 500 years back there were no books written to guide a seeker, save the books of the witches themselves, but the textbook of magic was kept a secret. Back then one was only a witch if one was born to, or adopted by another witch. And even then the young one was not told all of the secrets. Some of them Adira did not learn until much later.

Her mother Beth Thompson was a wise woman, a witch, and from the time Adira was very young she was taught by her mother the ways of drawing on the power of the sun and the moon and the stars and of nature itself. Above all else, she was taught the importance of keeping all that she learned a secret. For, the penalty meted out to practitioners of the WitchCraft in those days was harsh. Her mother did never tell her just how harsh, it would be if caught. Adira learned that when she was just 19 and the lesson was so cruel its memory remained burning in her mind, though five centuries or 500 yrs. have passed since then. And yet it was because of that cruelty that Adira first set eyes upon Damien Walter. 

The key to her mother's ruin was her kindness. Her father had died only a fortnight ago, of a plague her simple folk magic could not fight. Many lives were lost in their small English village 'Amesbury' in Wiltshire, that brutal winter of 1520, and perhaps her mother Beth simply could not bear to see one more death after so much grief.

At any rate, it was Maria, the sister of her dead father, who came pounding on their door that dark wintry night. Looking startled at Aunt Maria's state; wild hair and wilder eyes and not so much as a cloak about her shoulders. Adira's mother drew her inside and invited her to take the rocking chair beside the fireplace, to warm herself. Adira offered tea to calm her. But Aunt Maria seemed crazed and refused to sit down. Instead, she walked in agitated strides, her skirts swishing about her legs, her thin slippers leaving damp footprints on their wood floor.

"I don't have time to sit and sip tea," Aunt Maria told them. "Not now. My youngest one, my little John, who has been named after my dear deceased brother in heaven, has taken ill." Aunt Maria whirled and grabbed her mother, Beth, gripping the front of her dress in white-knuckled fists. "I know you can help him, Beth Thompson. I know, I tell you!  And if you refuse me now, Beth, I vow..."

"Maria, calm yourself!" Beth's firm voice quietened the woman, though only for a moment, Adira feared. "I would never refuse to help John in any way I can. You know that" Beth told Maria. 

"I don't know it!" Aunt Maria shrieked. "Not when you let your own husband die of the same ailment. Pray, Beth, why did you not save him? Why didn't you save my brother?" Aunt Maria said to her mother.

Adira's mother's head lowered and Adira saw the pain flare anew in her eyes, a pain that sometimes dulled but never died away. 

"I tried everything I knew to help John. But I could not save him," Beth said.

"Perhaps because you brought the illness on him from the beginning," Aunt Maria said.

"Aunt Maria!" Adira stepped between the two, forgetting to respect her elders and tugging her Aunt's arm until she was facing her, and not her mother. "You know better. My parents shared a love such as few people would ever know, and I will not stand by and hear you disgrace its memory."

"Adira, don't," Her Mom called out to her.

But Adira rushed on. "No one can bring on such a plague as this, and you very well know it."

"No one but a witch, you mean, don't you, Adira? Are you practicing the black arts as well, dear Adira?" Aunt Maria gripped her shoulders, shook her. "Are you? Tell me? Are you?"

Adira could only blink in shock and stagger backward, pulling free of Maria's chilled hands. Her aunt knew. But how? How could she know the secret that had been only between her mother and her? Even her father had been unaware...

"What makes you say such a thing?" Adira's mother asked gently. "How can you accuse your own sister in law?"

"Sister in law, and not related to me by birth," Aunt Maria reminded her mother. "And I know. I have always been suspicious of you and your Pagan ways, Beth. From the time you helped me give birth to my firstborn and somehow took away the pain. And later, when you nursed me through influenza that should have killed me. You with your herbs and brews." Aunt Maria waved a hand at the drying herbs that hung upside down in bunches from their walls, and at the jars filled with powders and potions, lining the roughly hewn wooden shelves. "No physician could ease my suffering the way you did." Aunt Maria said it unkindly, made it an accusation.

Slowly Beth Thompson nodded, her serene expression never changing. "Herbs and plants are given by God, Maria. Knowing how to use his gifts can surely be no sin."

"I saw you last full moon," Aunt Maria said.

The words lay there, dropped like a bombshell, as Adira and her mother, both stared at one another, both remembering their ritual beneath the full moon when they chanted sacred words round a sizeable open-air fire at midnight.