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 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.

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.