I wake very early in the morning to stoke the hearth fire back to life. Although spring is unfolding gently across the land, the mornings are still wrapped in the mist that rises from the waters overnight. The heat of the flames that lick the dry burdock stems warms the early morning chill from my hands. I feed the fire so that it may feed us. My knees sit in the groove that was worn by my mother’s knees, and as I rest here, I feel her around me, though she has travelled through the water to the lands of the ancestors these two summers past.

I remember the morning I first saw them, running around over my body, crawling under my skin. Hundreds, thousands of tiny white men. Hard at work, they were running around on my belly, stamping down in heavy boots to make it flat. They had built some kind of apparatus to hoist my breasts up, and there were many of them with tiny scythes methodically removing every hair on my body except for my eyelashes, my eyebrows and on my head.

I am Aelfgifu, a witte, someone who holds and weaves strands of magic. I was born into the Husmerae, a tribe of Hwicce, a land of many tribes. It was in the year 600 as the Christians counted it, always gabbling on about their nailed god. I was born to magic, and at a young age I was given to a druid of the Dobunni, the Britonnic tribe that we shared this land with.

I can feel the pulse through the earth beneath my bare feet, the heartbeat of the land. Drums and voices throb between the trees, this tiny scrap of ancient forest, clinging on in a deep and hidden ravine. Many years, many lives have led towards this point and I am ready.

Deep in the centre of a dark forest there was a magnificent old yew tree, gnarled and twisted branches spreading wide. In its roots was nestled a well of fresh and sweet water that reflected the sun in the sky, even though the branches covered the sun. This well had magical properties and would show the truth to anyone who drank from it. So strong and pure was the truth, that a beautiful and fierce emerald-coloured dragon guarded it, for the truth was not to be taken lightly.

Lars jumped out of his mud streaked truck, well-worn workman’s boots thudding into the earth. He ran a hand through his light blonde hair and walked towards the waiting crew. The forest loomed ominously behind them, beneath a cloudy sky, dense pine the colour of midwinter even in the late summer sun, scenting the air with its fresh and spicy fragrance. 

She yawned, stretching her arms out, out and out, down and down. Fingers bent and retracted around the thick and heavy palm. The ex-hands hit the cold, snow-dusted floor of the polar weather research station with a thud. She shook herself mightily, billowing out her rich olive skin, breathing in and in until it split and fell away, revealing the thick golden-white fur beneath. She tested a little roar and saw her breath in the cold air, the heating off and doors now hanging open to the arctic winds.

Biwa looked at her sisters over the body of their mother, mourning draping like a shroud about them all. Biwa had seen nineteen summers pass and felt grateful that her mother, Wraga, had lived long enough to know her grandchildren. Wraga had delighted in them, ready with a freshly made griddle-cake or even a bit of honeycomb in the summer, always a story ready, hovering at her lips, ready to be told again.