Rise of the Night Witch

Chapter 2.3 - Forest of Despair

Recap: After training in the Otherworld, Marissa jumped onto Darcy's staff to fly to her Initiation.

Flight had always been one of mankind's greatest dreams. Who didn't dream of being free from gravity's tyranny and flying through the air like a baby bird?

Well, I did just that on Darcy's staff. And I hoped we'd finally land.

I screamed as the hot wind rushed through my clothes. I clutched tighter against Darcy, the blood pounding in my ears, and the cape whipping behind me.

Lyfa sat on the tip of her master's staff. A tunnel of aether enwrapped us and distorted the trees and the lake below like a fisheye lens. They shot past us at unfathomable speeds. Distances in this tunnel were different from the outside.

Darcy drew the ley line's power through her staff and pushed it out in a blazing plume like a rocket trail. We levitated until our altitude increased enough that the mighty lake below us became a pond.

The tunnel ended in a ball-shaped portal. Halos of distorted spacetime looped around us as we dove into the light at the end of the path.

I closed my eyes. Everything became so cold. I re-entered the mortal realm, my feet planted on the ground, but even the warm summer air felt frigid compared to the Seelie Kingdom's never-ending high noon.

A hiking trail flanked by tall grass and pine trees as far as the eye could see surrounded me.

Oppressive darkness covered this place. Only small stripes of sunlight illuminated the space between the shadows cast by the pine trees. If predators and demons were here, they had tons of hiding room.

A shield near the trail told me where I was. October Mountain State Forest. Thousands of acres big and the largest national forest in Massachusetts.

Its reputation preceded it. Ghosts in white dresses, vampire bats, horned devils, and beasts with glowing eyes were just some of the denizens it was said to contain. Rumor even had it that William C. Whitney, the landowner who built a massive game reserve here, still haunted this place as a ghost.

"So, you hide in the wilderness?" I asked.

"In a way. We wanted to have our most important buildings in the same state as Salem. When our Society was founded in 1700, we first called it 'Salem Society' before we switched to 'Thaumaturgic Society' later."

My breath was fast, but I tried to conceal it. "S-sounds a bit disrespectful to name our Society after the hysteric murder of innocents."

"Yes, but Salem has a big ley line. It's to us what Transylvania is for the vampires, what Sleepy Hollow is for the Headless Horseman, and the Olymp for the Greek Gods. Human belief not only empowers monsters and gods; it changes geographic aether fields."

Well, the trials happened in Salem Village, now Danvers, but the city of Salem turned its witchiness into a tourist attraction. Guess the association counts. Not that I cared, my head hurt too much to talk.

Darcy and I took unmarked trails that led near the West Branch Chapel Cemetry, an abandoned graveyard best known for allegedly housing the ghost of a ten-year-old girl who died in the early nineteenth century.

I had to give the practitioners here some credit. Those thousands of acres of reclaimed wilderness were the best place to hide a magical society short of going underground or into the Otherworld.

October Mountain State Forest was a common discussion topic in our Paranormal Pals group, particularly the Bigfoot sightings here. Those woods were so deep, I wouldn't have been surprised if those sightings had a kernel of truth to them.