Spells Trouble

was, indeed, a powerful witch. Hunter, how did she escape?”
“She bespelled the jail guard so that he fell asleep. Then Sarah’s familiar, a cat named Odysseus—” She paused as Xena meowed loudly, causing them all to laugh, before continuing, “brought her the keys to her cell so she and her daughter, Dorothy, could escape.”
“Excellent. Mercy, how did Sarah and her daughter find their way to what would become Goodeville?”
Mercy and Hunter knew every word of their history. They also knew how to set their intention for a successful ritual, but they loved telling the story of their ancestress, especially because the telling of it made their mother so happy.
As Mercy answered she spread one arm wide and let her fingertips touch the slick, green edges of the nearby corn leaves that were already damp with dew. “Well, because Sarah had listened to omens of warning sent to her by her goddess, Gaia, she had buried money, clothes, and spellwork things outside town. The night she escaped Sarah made her way to her buried stash and, using a large opal, Gaia illuminated a path for her. So, she, her daughter, and her familiar started walking southwest, following a strong ley line of earth power. Eventually, they joined a wagon train that was happy to have a healer ride with them. The journey was long and dangerous, but Sarah kept heading west, following the ley line, and it kept getting stronger, until it brought her here, to what would eventually become central Illinois.”
“Well told, Mercy.” Her mother nodded appreciatively. “Sarah Goode stopped here, along with several families she’d become close with during the journey, because Gaia revealed that this was a site where five power-filled ley lines converged. Hunter, why was this beautiful, fertile land unsettled and avoided even by the aboriginal peoples?”
“Because they were freaked out by the monsters that roamed around here, slaughtering anyone who got too close to where the ley lines converged.”
Abigail smiled over her shoulder at her youngest daughter. “You are an excellent storyteller, Hunter. Mercy, why were there literal monsters loose here?”
“Because at the apex of each ley line was the entrance to what we describe as a different mythological Underworld, though that never made sense to me.”
“Why not?” her mother asked.
“Well, Abigail, if the Underworlds were mythological, the oogly-booglies”—she winked at Hunter—“wouldn’t be real. And they definitely were.”
“Are,” her mom corrected her. “We must never forget that what is on the other side of each of the Underworld gates is all too real.”
“Good point, Abigail. It also supports my point about those places not being myths,” said Mercy.
“I agree,” said her mother. “Hunter, what did Sarah do then?”
“Sarah used her witchy wisdom and figured out how to close each of the entrances with a kind of a gate. Each gate is marked by a tree she planted, and each tree is from the area of the world the oogly-booglies were from,” said Hunter.
“Correct,” Abigail said. “But never forget that the trees were steeped in magic from their inception. Sarah was a Green Witch.” She smiled at Mercy who grinned proudly back at her. “So first Sarah called forth the saplings magically. They were formed from the fertile earth below our feet mixed with her powerful magic. At the Norse gate the sapling that grew from her invocation spell was an apple tree. At the Greek gate an olive tree sprouted. For the Egyptian gate the magic chose a doum palm tree, and for the Japanese gate there appeared a very young, very supple weeping cherry tree. For the final gate, the Hindu one, a banyan tree lifted from the verdant ground. And when she was done calling forth the trees and casting the spell that sealed the gates with them, what did she discover, girls?”
Together the twins said, “That the trees created a giant pentagram!”
“Exactly! So she and the families that had stopped with her founded our town within the pentagram, and, in honor of their beloved healer, named it Goodeville. And every High Feast Day Sarah returned to one of the trees and performed a powerful protection ritual to be sure the gate remained sealed. During the rest of the year, what did she do, Hunter?”
“Exactly what you do, Mom. Sarah tended the trees to be sure they thrived and grew,” said Hunter.
“Yes. Then Sarah settled here and worked as a midwife and healer, and she lived a full life to a very old age. She trained her daughter, Dorothy, to take her place after her own body returned to the earth, tasking her and each female from the Goode line that followed with tending to the trees, which close the gateways to the Underworlds beyond. So, as Sarah did all those generations ago, we also do. Our intention for tonight has not changed. We shall use the energy carried through the ley lines in the earth to strengthen the apple tree that guards the Norse gate. As we do that we imagine that the tree is a gate, and its strength is what keeps the Underworld gate closed.
“In addition, tonight my beloved daughters will speak aloud the type of witchcraft they have decided to practice in the name of their goddess—and god.” Abigail smiled over her shoulder at Hunter. “Ah, and here we are! Right on time.”
The hedgerow had ended in a grassy meadow where four fields converged. In the center of the meadow stood a thick-trunk apple tree whose gnarled branches spread like an enormous spiderweb. Some of the boughs were so huge and heavy that Abigail had placed wooden posts with padded Ys beneath them for support. Spring had been unusually warm, and the tree had bloomed early this year, but even though most of the blossoms were already turning into hard little green balls, the air around the tree was still fragrant and sweet.
“Daughters, place your baskets in the center of the pentagram along with your shoes, and then put your offerings at the feet of the gatekeeper.”
The apple tree,