Excerpt
Anna concentrated on her scrying bowl and frowned. She reached beside her. Her searching fingers found three dried sage leaves, and she added them to the stubborn, silent mixture. They bobbed across the dark green surface like tiny boats, but still no clear or distinct visions came to her. This troubled her greatly. Claire was guarding her mind from entrance. Neither sister had ever kept secrets from one another, until recently.

Since the death of their Guild Mother, Grainne, early in the last Winter Quarter, Claire had changed. Now deep into the Spring Quarter with no signs of her sister's grief, her odd behavior, and frequent disappearances from Guild classes waning, she'd started to fear for Claire's mental well being.

Anna had spoken with one of her own teachers, a lower-level Scribe Elder who'd often acted like a second Guild Mother to Anna and Claire growing up. But even Rosalind found Claire's vague, erratic ways, and that her grief continued so raw and fresh with no signs of healing, a bewildering situation.

Together they watched Claire's comings and goings, spying on her in covert concern, trying to discern a reason for her strange disappearances and frequently missed instruction in her beloved and bestowed Craft of music. Even Bathsheba, Claire's teacher in the lyrical arts and the nuances of melody, had expressed equal worry to Anna over Claire's absences. Claire's love for music nearly rivaled Anna's love for her own bestowed Craft-that of the Scribe. The keepers of histories and stories for the Guild and for all of the Dalthwein Region. There was a time Anna knew her twin had never missed a day of studies.

Claire was slippery in her clandestine escapes, and Anna and Rosalind had little luck in keeping tabs on her comings and goings. Frustrated from the lack of communication, the constant worry, she decided to try a new tactic for gaining entrance into her sister's deeper mind. She'd grown desperate to learn the secrets Claire now tucked into shadowed corners of her psyche.

The murky mixture in her worn but polished birch scrying bowl bubbled slowly, pulling the three sage leaves down into the depths of the potion. As the leaves vanished, the potion boiled faster and the liquid grew clear, almost opalescent. Anna concentrated and waited.

First came eyes. Yellow eyes, with a lick of orange flame in their depths. Anna gripped the thick cutting block and squinted. The face that materialized in the small, shimmering pool was a visage woven of both animal and something akin to human-feral, frightening, yet entrancing.

A dark mahogany-skinned satyr leaped down from the high, thick branches of a looming old cedar, just as Claire crawled through a cluster of underbrush and greeted him with a shy, somewhat fearful smile.

Anna moved closer to the bowl, and watched the two walk toward one another. They were tucked somewhere in the northeast forest near the cabin. She was sure of that. She knew every spot possible for hiding and taking a moment of solitude within the first 10 to 15 ft of the forest's edge perimeter.

The Northern Forests bordered the upper half of the Guild Lands, wrapping around the northwest and northeast boundaries, and stretching across the Dalthwein River. The river separated the Wise Women's property from fae territory. The Northern Forest grew lush, barely ever touched by any mortal presence on the other side of the wide, long stretching river.

The dark satyr took Claire into his thick arms of root, bone and blackest soil. Anna wanted to look away from her scrying, after the woodman removed the white kerchief from her sister's russet hair, and Claire leaned into him, taking his shaggy large face into her pale and calloused hands, bringing him close to kiss him deeply.

Taking the bowl in her hands, she moved to the tiny backdoor of the cabin she and Claire shared. She opened the creaky pine-board entrance and poured her vision mixture into the dark, grassless earth near the short stoop.

A visit to Rosalind was in order. She needed counsel, regarding what she'd just witnessed inside her sister's mind.



She found Rosalind's cabin empty. The Scribe Elder would be at the Guild Center, at the Scribe's Hall. It would have to wait, then. Her worry wasn't strong enough to bother her Guild Mother with yet, if she was busy with the history transcriptions.

Afternoon turned to early twilight, as Anna walked back to the cabin. Just before she reached the small back door, she decided to change direction, and veered toward the Northeast forest's edge. She didn't want to wander far from their gifted property, but an instinct told her to investigate the patch of land closest to the storage shed.

Traditionally, a Wise Woman did not receive her gift of property from her Guild Mother until she'd reached Third Level Initiate status. But, under the circumstances, the Higher Elders of the Guild decreed the young witches should inherit the property not long after Grainne's death. Their third level of initiation was only a short time away, due to take place at the end of this Autumn Quarter, on Samhain morning. With the provision Rosalind watch over her and Claire, until their time of Third Level Initiation was completed, they took over the cabin, and the patch of land.

Something in her third eye whispered Claire was still in the forest with her secret woodman. This higher instinct pulled her closer to the border of the northeast woods, and farther from the meager home she shared with her sister. Her stomach warred with a concoction of emotions-anger, fear, betrayal. What was Claire thinking with her rash, secretive actions?

She remembered the death of their Guild Mother. While very few witch women chosen for the Guild were mother and child by blood, all third level witches, and Wise Women who hadn't yet reached High Elder status, acted as mothers, teachers, to the lower level initiates who were newcomers to the Guild Lands.

Their Guild Mother had loved both of them. Yet, Anna always felt Grainne paid her sister greater favor. It was, she suspected, the reason Rosalind had stepped in as a bit of a second Guild Mother to her, in addition to being her Scribe teacher. She, too, had been aware of the slight difference in Grainne's affection for her and her sister.

Anna and Claire were different from most Wise Women lower level initiates, and not just because they were blood sisters and identical twins. They were also the only Wise Women in the Guild Lands who were born within the sacred valley nestled between the Dalthwein mountain ranges. Most young girls and witch women within the Guild were chosen for their special blood-females born with natural shamanic abilities and innate magical qualities-but Claire and Anna were found as babes, abandoned near the opening from the valley that led into the Western Pass and on into the lands of the Western Dalthwein Clans.

It was Grainne and Rosalind, then Fourth Level Initiates of the Guild, who found the twin girls nestled in a large, strong basket of woven Willow branches, covered in a heavy woolen grey blanket. When the Elders of the Guild discovered the twins held the prized witch blood in their veins, they were welcomed into the Guild, and it was decided Grainne would act as their Guild Mother, and serve as the babes' primary caregiver and teacher. Rosalind would act as a secondary mother in care and teaching provided for the girls.

Anna heard a rustling low in the underbrush near her feet and she stopped, standing as still as a pursued animal trying to make itself unseen in the tall grass. She caught the scent of rich, wet earth, like a fertile plot of dark dirt tilled after a rainstorm. Then she heard laughter, Claire's laughter, low and filled with wild abandon.

An old cedar, four trees to her right, swayed back and forth and an animal-like whooping call drifted from the top of the shaggy, thick outstretching branches. Anna jumped, gathered her arms across the bib of her white apron and scoured the trees in the direction of the movement. She caught the woodman with her gaze as he leaped to a tree farther back in the edge of the woods. Anna saw the yellow eyes staring back at her from his new perch; yellow eyes in a face crowned with horns of black and a vulpine smile of sharp, pointed teeth. The satyr from her scrying bowl. Of this, Anna had no doubt.

Claire stumbled from the bushes in front of Anna. When she met her sister's glance upward, Anna saw doubt and a raw fear in Claire's deep green eyes. Just briefly, Anna had seen something primal, and more akin to forest folk than human, in her twin's prolonged stare.

"What are you doing, sister?" Anna shocked herself with the ferocity of her words. She spat them at her sister and grabbed Claire by the arm, yanking her from the cover of underbrush.

"Let go of me," Claire whined, and yanked herself free of Anna's grasp. "Give me a moment. Let me straighten myself, please?"

Once Claire tidied her drab grey muslin dress, and took her bib apron from one of the side pockets of her skirts, looping it back over her head and tying it in place, Anna took hold of her twin again and drew her near. She did not give Claire time to fix her badly tousled hair or to replace her small, white hair kerchief.

"Who was that woodman I saw you with?" Anna shook her sister. "He is not of the Northern Forests. What were you doing with him?"

Claire bit her pale bottom lip, and then frowned. "How do you know he is not of the Northern Forests?"

Anna didn't have to read her mind to know her sister was trying to evade the true nature of the inquiry between them.

"Who was he, sister? I could smell his scent and it was not of our woods. It had the smell of wild, South Forest blood to it."

Claire jerked her arm away.

"What business is it of yours anyway?" Wild green flame seemed to dance in Claire's narrow-eyed glare. "You were spying on me. Are you jealous, Anna? Is that why I can have no privacy from you?"

The remark hit Anna's heart with an odd kind of hurt. It was unexpected, and it wounded something deeper in her that she tucked away, not ready to look at that part of herself quite yet. Without warning, she reached back and brought her open palm forward with as much force as she could find within. Claire yelped when Anna's hand met her cheek. She staggered backward a few steps, unable to gain her balance fast enough to prevent herself from falling back into the underbrush she'd just crawled from.

Anna moved over her quickly, pinning her sister to the ground with her sturdy black boots, holding down the loose fabric on the arms of Claire's dress.

"Do you realize what you do, laying with him? I would not have had to spy on you, were you not hiding your mind from me ever since Mother Grainne's death."

At this, Claire turned her head from Anna, and Anna caught the tears that fell as her twin's guilty gaze drifted away from her. She stepped from Claire's right arm sleeve and swung her leg over her sister's prone body, bringing herself to a kneeling position on the other side of Claire.

"You sacrifice your position as a guardian within the Guild if you bond with a lover, if you take any vow of bonding. You know that."

Claire swiped the tears from her face and turned back to Anna, scowling now. Anna shuddered at the coldness in her twin's eyes.

"Who says I wish to bond with him? It's nothing but a secret and swift tryst, sister. I will end it soon enough and no one within the Guild will be any the wiser to my actions."

Anna snorted in disgust and stood, crossing her arms over the bib of her apron as she scowled down at Claire, giving her twin no help as she righted herself to her feet.

"You are a fool, and you'll be filled with much regret one day if you continue this way-so callous and rash."

With that, Anna turned away from Claire, who adjusted the wispy white kerchief over her tidied hair, re-plaited and gathered in a large red bun at the nape of her neck. She intended to leave her sibling to her own defenses, walk back to the cabin, when something farther down the tree line, directly ahead of her, caught her attention.

She heard Claire shuffle behind her and gasp as she mumbled something. Anna knew her sister had seen the phantom too, that it was no trick of her angry, chaos-filled mind.

A red-haired woman who resembled Claire slightly, stood about 15 ft from them, her transparent hand resting on the wrinkled bark of a dying Cottonwood. Anna swallowed and closed her eyes. Taking in a deep breath, she attempted to read the specter's energy-taste it and feel it for the hint of any insidious intentions. But Anna could pick up nothing from the green-cloaked ghost. It was well aware of its state of death and it was guarding its sentience carefully. Frustrated, she gave up and opened her eyes, staring at the phantom.

Claire stood beside her now. Anna turned to her sister and found she too studied the tall, translucent apparition. Was she reading anything off the mysterious woman? Anna tried to reach into her twin's mind, and found Claire slapped her third eye away; shut the door to her deeper psyche and locked it.

Anna grabbed her twin's arm and shook her. "Are you speaking with her? Who is she?"

Claire sneered at her, almost growled, and Anna fought the urge to slap the brief feral appearance off her sister's face. Claire composed herself quickly, obviously sensing Anna's inward reaction, and whispered, lowering her gaze to the grass, "I do not know. She does not speak to me either."

Anna stared at Claire's face, tried to access her mind again, but her sister pushed her out. Her frustration growing into anger, Anna yanked her around by the arm, making Claire stand to face her.

"You lie. You may not allow me into your thoughts, but your eyes still betray you as a liar."

Claire struggled and snatched herself from Anna's grip. Anna watched her sister stare back at the spot where the phantom hovered a scant inch above the dirt. She followed Claire's intent gaze, with a lump forming in her throat, trying to choke her.

The specter woman, Anna found, had disappeared. She took a step forward, cocking her head and listening for the voice of any stray ghosts. It was highly uncommon to see a restless spirit outside of the Tunnels of the Dead-an intricate network of tunnels governed by the People of the Woods, and used for containment of willful undead. A spirit seen outside of the vast catacombs was usually a troublesome wraith indeed. While Anna could not see, feel, smell or hear any lurking phantom energies, her greater witch instincts told her something still watched them from the long-stretching tree line.

She turned to Claire to ask if she felt anything left behind as well, but found her sister running toward the cabin they shared. Her twin sprinted away from her and her questions as fast as she could, holding her skirts above her ankles to help her move even more swiftly. She sighed, worrying her apron with her fingers, twisting and turning the starched white cloth, as she moved slowly after Claire. Head down, she walked back to their home, worry weighing down her heart, making her chest heavy, constricted. It was a strain to breathe.