Bethania's Broomsticks

By Amy Stilgenbauer

Despite being born 700 years apart, Alice and Bethania have a lot in common. For one thing, the both believe that the same little boy is their son.

The second novellette in the "Season of the Witch" series, Bethania's Broomsticks is a twisted fable retelling of the La Befana story.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amy Stilgenbauer
• Release date: Jan 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311946447

Amy Stilgenbauer

Amy Stilgenbauer is an information scientist, freelance writer, and baseball aficionado, who spends her life split between Ohio and Michigan. She received her degree in writing from Mount Union College in 2007.

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Bethania's Broomsticks

Amy Stilgenbauer

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2014 Amy Stilgenbauer

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Cover Image: Die Burgruine Frauenstein im Winter, painted by Karl Julius von Leypold in 1833. This work is in the public domain in the United States, and those countries with a copyright term of life of the author plus 100 years or less. This work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights.

Viene, viene la Befana

Vien dai monti a notte fonda

Come è stanca! la circonda

Neve e gelo e tramontana!

Viene, viene la Befana

-

Here comes, here comes the Befana

She comes from the mountains in the deep of the night

Look how tired she is! All wrapped up

In snow and frost and the north wind!

Here comes, here comes the Befana!

-Giovanni Pascoli

1.

Queens, New York. January 6, 2013

Alice struggled to navigate the dark hallway to her son Nick’s room. A few nights ago he had insisted that turning six meant he was a big boy. Big boys didn’t need night lights. Alice did though.

She felt something furry brush her feet and had to brace herself against the wall to avoid tripping over the cat. In the process, she dropped the tiny present she had been carrying. It clattered to the ground, hidden by the darkness. "Damn it, Nicky," she thought, silently cursing his growing independent streak.

Just the night before he told her not to bother leaving an Epiphany present. He claimed he knew the three wise men didn’t really come to call. Alice Peralta was a woman of tradition, however. She had received an Epiphany present every year until she was sixteen years old, and so would Nick.

After listening for a few moments at the door to her son’s room and hearing only his soft sleepy breathing, she slipped inside. Everything in the room was neat and tidy as always. Nick was a very meticulous child. She had never heard of another six year old who treated their action figures as though they were archival treasures meant to be kept in a museum. His cousins had all torn the limbs off theirs and caked them in several layers of mud. Not Nick. He did a better job of dusting their particular spot on the dresser than Alice did of wiping down the entire living room. She worked two jobs. She was busy. Still, it was hard on her pride as an adult to be shown up in cleanliness by a six year old boy.

She went to put the new plastic figure at the edge of the collection; a disturbance that Nick would see immediately, when out of the corner of her eye she saw a shimmering