The Pillars Of The World

for the world around her?”
    She closed her eyes, feeling her heart ache as if she had brushed against the bruise that had been left on it by her mother’s death two winters ago.
    Taking a couple of deep breaths to steady herself, she slowly, carefully, grounded the power she had unthinkingly summoned, giving it back to the Great Mother. When she was done, she felt depleted and fiercely thirsty, but also calmer.
    There was a time, her grandmother had told her, when a witch could command the power of all four branches of the Mother—earth, air, water, and fire. But something had happened over the years, and the witches’ strength had waned. For the past few generations, the women of her family had been gifted with one primary branch and a trickle of power from another. She was the first in a long, long time who had almost equal strength in the two branches of the Mother that were hers to command—earth and fire.
    “But even that much power isn’t very useful when it comes to dealing with the likes of Mistress Brigston or Granny Gwynn,” she said softly as she dug into her skirt pocket and pulled out the fancy. Just enough magic in it that she didn’t dare ignore it. So, if she couldn’t ignore it, what kind of lover would she like to draw to her?
    “A man who has kindness inside him as well as strength,” she told the fancy. “A man who could accept me for what I am. A man who isn’t from Ridgeley.” As I will it. . .
    Ari shook her head and stuffed the fancy back into her skirt pocket. Granny Gwynn might be a hedge witch with enough strength to do a bit of mischief magic, but she , like all the other women in the family who had come before her, was a witch full and true. And a witch did not send out idle wishing.
    Retrieving the handcart, she continued the walk home while thoughts and memories chased her.
    Royce had begun “courting” her shortly after her fifteenth birthday. He had been the first man in Ridgeley who had treated her with courtesy, and his sweet words had seduced her into believing that he was as much in love with her as she was with him— until the night she had met him in a meadow and he had pleaded with her to make their love a physical union. Since she had been raised to believe that intimacy was a gift from the Mother, she had been willing to celebrate their love. She had gotten no pleasure from the quick, rough coupling he had seemed to enjoy. And afterward . . . Afterward he had sneeringly thanked her for giving his rod some relief—. . . and for helping him win the bet that he could have her on her back within a moon’s cycle of beginning his “courtship.”
    She had crept home, ashamed and brokenhearted. Her mother and grandmother had been understanding
    —and never spoke aloud the sadness she knew they had felt that her first experience had left her with such bitter memories.
    Taking a deep breath, Ari turned aside from those thoughts. It did no good to look back at something that had happened two years before—something that she had never allowed to happen since.
    Maybe it was that feel in the air that made a budding summer day have an edge like an approaching winter storm. There was a message there, if only she could understand it. But earth and fire were the branches of the Mother that were her strength, and she couldn’t sense what the branches of water and air might have told her.
    Think of something else , she told herself sternly. Your thoughts are your will, and you bring to yourself what you will .
    Loneliness had brought today’s events down on her like an earthslide. Well, she would ignore it the next time it crept into her dreams. She’d been alone since her mother died a few months after Grandmother Astra. She would get used to it, wouldn’t let herself be ruled by it. She had no choice, since she was all that was left of her family.
    We are witches. I’ll not deny it , Astra had told her once. Whether that’s a gift or a burden is something each must choose for herself. But, child, it’s only a word, and only you can decide what that word will mean. When you let others define you, you give up the greatest power of all .
    Wise words from a strong, wise woman. But even Astra couldn’t have foreseen a time when there would be only one of them left, and that one being a seventeen-year-old girl struggling to define herself while an entire village strove to reshape and diminish her.

    Willing herself not to cry, Ari looked around and spotted a hawk