The Sisterhood of The Gibbous Moon

By Dror Bloodwood

The Sisterhood of the Gibbous Moon

 

A botanical witch is held prisoner in a deserted temple and helps her fellow sisters to get out after mistakenly freeing an intriguing priestess.

 

Red Spiders in the Moonlight

 

A thief must steal a mysterious box in the belly of a stone chimera while reconnecting with an old friend.

 

The Flower Thief

 

An old Goblin finds herself the caretaker of a wounded Warrior Mermaid in the wake of the deserted temple destruction.

 

Three short stories, six women, all connected by female friendship and the promise of more, amid gruesome events in a magical forest during the gibbous moon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dror Bloodwood
• Release date: Oct 13, 2020
• ISBN: 9798201655143

Book preview

Acknowledgments

Even the smallest books need a lot of support to get into the world.

Thanks to my Sistren, Lydia and Sus, who read The Sisterhood of the Gibbous Moon when it was just one story that I was trying to get submitted and were enthusiastic, as always, about the men suffering and the women fighting.

A big, big thank you to Sue for reading these stories, give encouragements and advices and help me with the self-publishing gritty details. You really are a life saver on top of being an amazing friend!

And last but not least, thanks to my mum, who may not read this book (it won’t make you blush, I swear) but who told me to keep writing.

Dedication

For everyone who has ever gazed at the moon and wished the moon would answer.

TABLE OF CONTENT

The Sisterhood of the Gibbous Moon

A botanical witch is held prisoner in a deserted temple and helps her fellow sisters to get out after mistakenly freeing an intriguing priestess.

Red Spiders in the Moonlight

A thief must steal a mysterious box in the belly of a stone chimera while reconnecting with an old friend.

The Flower Thief

An old Goblin finds herself the caretaker of a wounded Warrior Mermaid in the wake of the deserted temple destruction.

––––––––

Three short stories, six women, all connected by female friendship and the promise of more, amid gruesome events in a magical forest during the gibbous moon.

The Sisterhood of the Gibbous Moon

They started by ripping her nails off.

It had been predictable, even if extremely uncomfortable but they had forgotten one. A lonely, all ragged edges, miserable looking nail on her left little finger. She was using it to cut herself open now. Just a tiny bit, where the skin was thin, and the blood ran dark and fast. Dark drops fell into the mix of dust and soil and the ground absorbed it with an almost inaudible sigh of satisfaction.

She dug her index finger in the softer part of the wall. Fierce heat spread from the tip of her finger to the bones in her wrist but she needed it.

The pain.

The second offering to the earth.

Gifts were not important if they were meaningless. Besides, there was no point in dying if she couldn’t experience some of the pain. Make it a bargaining chip for the River of Souls or the new life that was waiting somewhere on the other side.

She took a deep breath between her teeth, firmly clenched on her lower lip and dug in all five fingers this time.

The scream was the loudest that had ever pierced her brain.

It stayed firmly inside her head.

She would have been proud if she hadn’t been busy blinking through silent tears and visualising tiny sprouts of green through the stone wall. They had grown since the night before.

She had started calling for them on the first night, but growth always took time. At least, it had been a rainy spring. She didn’t know how she would have managed with dry weather.

Her knees dug into the soil and dust mixed with a bit of her blood. All the better. They said a corpse was heavier and ready to fall into the earth once the soul had left the body. She was only half dead but that served her well. She needed the proximity of the earth.

She kept on visualising the luxuriant thick vines, brown and green and sturdy, pushing at every stone until they reached her. Her aim may not be good enough for her part of the wall, but it didn’t matter. From what she had gathered, there was only a broom closet next to her.

Soon enough, she heard the sound of thousands of vines pushing through nooks and crumbly mortar on the other side.

They had pierced the broom closet.

Good thing I don’t believe in a god, or I’d sure believe I’m cursed.

Of course you don’t. All the gods are worthless, craven creatures. It’s only the goddesses who matter.

The voice came from the broom closet. There were only two choices possible; either believe a broom was talking to her or that it had never been a broom closet at all.

Lobelia had decided quite firmly she wouldn’t suffer hallucinations when the Anti-Magic faction had abducted her.

Are you a goddess? she asked the dark hole on her left, making sure her voice wasn’t wavering. It was an absurd question but then, with her bleeding fingers and her plants threatening the foundations of the cell, she was already in an absurd situation.

No, only a priestess.

This wasn’t the answer Lobelia had expected. Not because she wasn’t used to priestesses; there were at least three temples outside of her corner of the forest and they were good at exchanging bright exotic fruits and shiny soft fabrics for decoctions and unguents.

She just hadn’t thought they had started attacking the gods as well.

The priestess had a gaping wound in her neck, where a marking of some sort should have been. What had started its life as a bun on the top of her head was now a falling pony tail with crushed flowers and grey feathers. There was blood around her mouth and smudged black around her eyes.

Lobelia sighed.

She knew she didn’t look better. She could smell herself.

I’m a witch, she said, as if the giant leaves of dark green ivy now wrapping around her ankles like a purring cat and the fragrance of honeysuckle flowers covering the stench of the cell weren’t explanation enough. My name is Lobelia, she added, and the priestess laughed.

"Lobelia Inflate. Vomitwort. Poisonous woman. Maybe my Goddess hasn’t abandoned me after all."

Lobelia blinked. No one had ever thrown Latin in her face like it was a good joke.

They took her from me, you see, the priestess explained, her fingers hovering close to the oozing black and pink hole but never touching it. "They carved her out of me, thinking she would leave me to die here and they could steal her power through my power. Larkspur, that’s my name. The name of a