Witches and Wolves and the Witches Exile Road

By Anna Patterson

So after the storm, I looked around in my satisfied way. God was good to us, and the chicken house were still standing and lo and behold the chickens weren't harmed.
After the storm, I believe a spirit, could have been an angel, and it could have been my Indian Guide I had picked up sometime when I was a little child in my life, told me, "Go on out a bit into the tall grass growing by the outhouse and find what you will find."
I did and there it was proud as anything, a wand stick, the storm had brought through a tornado and with the help of the gods themselves. Just as I started to pick up the knarled stick about the length of my hand and narrow, but thick as about three inches across, I heard a growl and looked up to see a wolf at the edge of the thicket of trees which lead to the site of an ancient burial ground. “Are you the ghost of a slain warrior?” I asked him just as pretty as you please. I was spunky then.
But in truth, I was so petrified. I felt weak in my knees and wanted to call out to my husband, but my mouth was dry and my words came not. What could I say, it was a big grey wolf and its snarl exposed sharp glistening white teeth. The wolf looked sharp and powerful and it was in a stance which seemed it was going to pounce on me.
“Stay back,” I said it lamely and knew futilely if the wolf intended to jump me, I would probably die, because he was large and I was short and he could go for my neck and I would die agonizing. Then I heard the other wolves. And I saw the fog coming off the wet grass. It would be so beautiful if I didn’t face certain death.
I faced death, of course I did. I could plainly hear the other wolves then. Wolves never travel alone. I thought with the wolves I heard a footstep and then another. Forests are magic things in the early morning and late evenings.. Spirits and ghosts and even fairies haunt the thick hidden depths of forests like these that go on and on but our vision is blinded by the thickness of the trees themselves, the falling and gathering in piles leaves and the cloudy, cold autumn skies. And the fog thick and swirling ugly grey in that place. “Don’t you hurt me now.”
End of note in Book of Days

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anna Patterson
• Release date: Jul 6, 2011
• ISBN: 9781466132795

Anna Patterson

About the Author: Anna Patterson grew up in the Ozark Hills with a dream of becoming an archeologist. She was able as a young adult to put the desire to good use exploring the mountains and river line of the Ozarks for early artifacts from the past. Many times in her treks deep into the wilderness forests, she was able to seek out and see first hand abandoned cemeteries of pioneers and Indians there and Ghost towns which had been abandoned during an earlier time. But it was her desire to know more about the early civilizations which resulted in her entering into her studies in history, art, and especially ancient civilizations in college. Her life as a writer brought her to many years of work in Journalism from college papers to work as a reporter and at one point Society Editor. She is now pursuing her desire to write fiction novels and feels that this allows her to put to use her life’s study of antiquities. She and her husband live in a house over 100 years old with their two Yorkies and two cats.

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WITCHES AND WOLVES

AND THE WITCHES EXILE ROAD

By Anna Patterson SMASHWORDS EDITION

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Published by Smashwords

Copyright 2011 by Anna Patterson

Smashwords Edition License Notes

This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

If you enjoyed this book please return to Smashwords.com to discover other works by this author.

This book above all, is dedicated to my husband, Bill, who has always believed in me.

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WITCHES AND WOLVES

AND THE WITCHES EXILE ROAD

BY ROMANCE NOVELIST ANNA PATTERSON

This story is about magical elves, tiny fairies, good witches (and some bad) and is just plain fantasy! Oh, yeah, and passionate men and women and what they want from each other. I indeed made this particular story up If you recognize yourself in these pages, lucky you!

There was once a young woman who inherited basically nothing from her family but a book which contained a Witches Spell Book, a wand, and that is it. The Witches Spell Book was a diary her distant relative who survived the Salem Witch Trials passed on to a woman of her lineage. Each woman thereafter added to it and this makes it a diary, or in old fashioned language, A Book of Days of the woman from that period and the spells they chose to use to this day.

The following pages are in fact a fictionalized account of this Right of Passage of these women. Any coincidence between any one living or dead is just that, a coincidence.

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Chapter 1: Desire for a treasure

The Past:

This is an excerpt from The First Witches' Book of Days

"Date: unreadable

It is cold and raining and we plan to escape any way we can:"

This page of Elizabeth's book was only finished many years after she made her horrendous escape from the Salem Witch Hunts. Others in her family were not so lucky, and she knew it. She would have helped them escape also, but it was not possible. Everyone there when it happened could testify of that, but many of these who did witness this, would have to tell the story from their grave. They have not done this so far, so how is anyone to know the trials and tribulations of carrying on the family calling, as it were, if no one comes forth and tells it like it was. Now, many years after the event. Elizabeth wrote this, knowing that it was long, long after all of it happened. But it was so terrible, she remembered it all vividly.

After escaping from Salem and ending up in the French Territory of the New World, Elizabeth Johnson married the Frontiersman Hank Miller who saved her life. Bravely for no money or reward, he took Elizabeth and her Cousin Ezekiel Johnson, down what some had told her was called the Witches Exile Road, a secret road of escape (actually a path of some kind to freedom).

Once they escaped, the Frontiersman and the rescued witch both had found they fell in love during that horror filled journey, and married. They built a huge, rustic cabin to raise their young and even numerous Indian fights around about them did not destroy the love and the family they had there.

Elizabeth became in fact (due to the workers and the lands her husband conquered and kept with his militia army), a rich and powerful woman and was able as a lady of leisure and in part because of her own skill with the pen, to begin her own account of the family’s legacy including the spells her mother and her aunt had taught her. So she wrote all of these early Recipes (the name she and others after her called them) and she cherished them with her life and its blessings. She personally knew that these precious recipes from her mother and aunt and many others came from the blood sacrifice of others and no matter what was seen as superstition to others, out of loyalty and the belief they were important to her family, she passed them on like the family treasurers they were. In doing this, she knew she was keeping alive the memory and the story of the brave and heroic people of this family.

Chapter 2: The little fallen soldier

The Present:

Elizabeth Johnson (named after the Elizabeth Johnson who barely escaped being martyred in the Salem Witch Trials) sat in the lawyer’s office and looked down at the old copper handmade box inlaid with an artist’s work of cloisonné design that she did not recognize even though she was an art major with a Masters Degree In Fine Art. Just as she started to open the lid, the old lawyer, literally wheezing with the effort said, For god sake don’t open that in here.

Surprised Elizabeth looked at him and saw from his grey face and the old fashioned handkerchief he was using to rub his red face he meant every word he was saying.

Please just sign here, I have other clients to attend. She realized he seemed acutely nervous and anxious to get rid of her. She tried to oblige him as best she could.

Feeling yet again another dismissal by a person who didn’t want to spend time with her because she was poor, she signed the paper on his desk, put the box in her oversized purse which she was glad was so serviceable at this point and thanking him briefly, she left. Looking back at him at his desk, she was surprised that he looked relieved and had sat down at his desk. He waved half heartedly as she left his office and then he turned abruptly totally away from her and looked out his office window.

His secretary was as cold as he was, and barely looked at the young woman as she left the office. She found a parking ticket on her car and thought that must mean something, so she put money in it and put it in one of the attached boxes of the meter. She had only been there a few minutes extra, but spotted a meter maid just a few cars beyond hers ticketing everything in sight. Oh well, I guess she is just doing her job, Elizabeth thought, but she was beginning to feel heated herself when she slid onto the hot seat of the old car and put her keys in and that was the limit to her own curiosity, so she turned and got the ornate old box out and looked in.

It was a disappointment, an old book, an old stick, and a few old coins. This is totally ridiculous, she thought. Where is the money? It was obvious the box held nothing else, no safety deposit box to a nearby bank. She almost banged her fists on the steering column in frustration but years of patience kept her from doing just that. Oh hell, you can wait, she said out loud to the box on the seat beside her. But she couldn’t be more wrong!

Later, in her room, Elizabeth opened the book and took out the wand and put it back. The wand looked like a carved stick, maybe oak. It was only slightly larger than a small ruler, but it was ornately carved and was of a dark wood, perhaps cherry. It had initials carved in it and an arrow in a circle in what she thought was the lower part of it, since it was thicker at that end. It was a little shorter than a ruler and not much thicker, but still looked basically like a carving made basically from a very small tree branch. How weird, she thought. Boy was she disappointed!

She then read the cover:

The book was embossed with: Daily Reminder

Inside on the back of the cover it said:

"Like the leaves of winter,

Tearing our very lives apart,

Forcing us to leave the hearth and home,

And trod with weary feet into the unknown.

Would that my path were another,

Instead it breaks my heart in twain,

For I am forced to leave loved ones behind,

Never to see them again in this life."

Then she saw the date her distant relative started her book: And she was hooked into reading the book. It began:

January 1, 1939

364 Days to travel this year

My name is Cathy Townsend. On this day we are all well. We had a fine Christmas. I received this book from my ailing mother, A. Johnson, who told me to add the things she had taught me from the cradle, along with my things I feel are important as I go along. She knows I am of such few words, other wise; it would not be filled at end of year, besides my own health is not good. Nonetheless, I feel there is something which compels me to add to this book, so I will do as she bade me do, I will add things of my own. So I am including this Recipe from my own mother:

Mother’s Spell for Safety

Larkspur seed petals, two (or any wildflower such as sunflower or daisy in full bloom)

Grass from a stem of at least the length of an adult finger

Tears of a baby gathered in a rag and placed in a jar and sealed until needed

Shaved hair of a cat (small amount) from live cat.

Mix in jar and let sit through winter. In spring take it and add fresh spring water, tea, and mix in potent type jar simmer all day. Then throw out into the yard at dusk of that day, otherwise of no good. So this, perhaps, is how the legacy of any witch is really continued. It has to be passed down, and the secrets have to be passed down also. At least, in her total frustration of not being left at least some money, Elizabeth, after reading at least a little of the book, and looking over the stick, which her distant relatives had cherished as what they called, a wand, well, she decided it had value as a personal keepsake from the past. Mean while, she was in serious financial trouble and knew that something must be done. And besides, this was the present, a long time from the beginning of this book of days by an escaped young witch.

The Present continues:

Shortly after the book came into the girl's possession, Elizabeth finally found work. She had been laid off from her job as a cashier in a local department store almost two years before this. She was getting desperate and had spent all she had and filled in with odd jobs until now, but she had to get steady work. She was so glad when a close friend helped her with this, but as she drove such a long distance into an unknown place and an unknown situation, she felt deep foreboding. What would she find there? And was this really wise, but her finances, bleak and desperate, left her no choice.

Now Elizabeth Johnson was headed from the North where she had lived all of her life, to The Deep South and to an extensive and vast farm and estate owned by a very rich young man. She was young herself. She had heard the man was a historian and world renown for his knowledge of paper and notes from the past. In fact, he was slowly gathering a growing reputation for this and helped world leaders at times by deciphering important papers of the past.. He had a huge land holding where he only lived part time while leaving the rest of the time to an overseer and his wife who it was said were more like dear friends to him. The arrangement went well and allowed the very eligible bachelor to play in the fun spots all over the continent which he had a reputation for doing also.

Now Elizabeth Johnson was on her way to this old house in the middle of nowhere and she wondered why she had even let her friend talk her into this. But Elizabeth had secrets of her own which she carried with her, she had a deep and serious legacy which she would follow like it or not – her inheritance dating back to the early history of man, now this legacy had come into her hands, through the Book of Days which she carried with her. She had already read it once. In fact, after reading it completely, she found she had a small paper cut from leafing through the thin pages, and she had left spots of her own blood on some of the inside pages. She tried to delicately remove these with tissue and cotton swabs, but to no avail. They were permanent reminders to her that she had read the book. At times, she would very much regret all of this. She thought of this and many other things as she made the long drive into the South. She loved the large old trees and the little towns she found along the way. Once or twice she had to stop for a train, and once, even saw a very old, but restored, steam engine making its way down the track. She was so impressed with all she saw, it was like going back into time. And when she heard the whistle blow and waved at the conductor of the train from her car, she felt happy and satisfied she was making the right choices in her life.

So she drove for days, resting in motels which her friend had booked for her ahead of time. For you see Elizabeth was poor and Lacy was rich and Elizabeth felt she was going out to work for bread when her friend would always have a glass of champagne and caviar in her hand. It frustrated Elizabeth so sore at the very fates themselves which kept her down and kept her a poor girl and she didn’t even have a prince charming or wealthy tycoon to help her out of this situation. In fact her own Romeo had just ditched her forever and flew back to England. She was cast adrift. Her best girlfriend had married and was off to tour the world in a lavish start to a fairy tale wedding and marriage.

What was Elizabeth left with? Well I’ll tell you what Elizabeth was left with, a job in a mysterious old house and a serious talk with her friend Lacy who warned her just before handing her money for the trip (the last she would see from said friend as it turned out). The warning was simple and said between drunken giggles by Sally. Oh yeah, she said to her friend Elizabeth, "one thing I guess I should warn