Welcome to my magical short story series: We are the Spinning Sisters.

Part 1 – They’re all dead now

We are the spinning sisters. The count one two three girls.
We count and we spin and reel it all in.
We spiral it up and dance on its head.
We turn the world upside down.

We chanted this near every night at the break of dusk because our days began not when the sun came up, but when it went down.

Now, listen here, because I know what you might be thinking but you’re wrong. We aren’t a weird kind of vampiric things out roaming the night to drain the world of its life force. Quite the opposite, actually. Well, not that we’re vampire hunters, of course. That nonsense is just nonsense. Right? Ha.

That’s what they’d tell you.
That’s what they’d have you believe.
They want to keep it all in the shadows so you can keep on living your life the way you always have. But, know this – those things that happen under the veil of night… those are the real battlefields. Those are the places where the true fates of woman and man and child are decided.

Ah the sweet world of mortals. La vie stupide.

Now, don’t worry your pretty little head, though. It’s not your fault that you’re living the stupid life… we’ve made it that way on purpose.

You see, it’s all by design.

Kierah used to call you our pets or our children. I hate to see it that way. Though… if you think about it…

Oh, but Kierah would also tell me this is no way to start a story. “No way to begin a tale,” is actually what she’d say. She always did like to talk proper… speak proper. That dear dead sister of mine.

Did I forget to mention? They’re all dead now.

We’ve lost. I’m laying on the battlefield – a field you cannot see, of course, and not at all like your mortal mind would picture. I’m dying and I’m sending this message to you, little one.

Oh, little mortal girl. Sweet little red-headed mortal girl.

They say your ginger life will be harder than that of your blond and brown haired cousins or your black-haired sister. And here I am, about to make it worse. But when was any girl’s life easy? You can’t escape your destiny, little one.

You’re upset, sweet child. I can feel it in my bones as I lay here dying.

How dare I call you a young child when you feel ripe at the tender age of eighteen.

But you don’t understand, little one. You are but a child. You are only one sixtieth of how old you will grow to be now that I am giving unto you all that I have left inside me to give. My essence.

You will continue our traditions. You are one of us now.

Ha. We cannot truly die, then, can we?

No children for us. The barren witches of the afterlife. Ha, but we show them, don’t we. As we die we have one chance to pass our essence on to the next in the flock and she can choose to bring in her sisters, if she likes.

Now, I want to tell you that you’re special ginger girl, but I’d be lying.

You’re nearby and that’s as good as anything. My power is draining and I have much to tell you, much to teach you, and so your proximity is all that allows me to reach through the ether and send you my message.

Ha ha! Look at me sounding all proper and whatnot. Kierah would be proud.

Now, to do her right, where should I begin this story of ours?

I’m gonna have to ask you, ginger girl, to use your imagination, now – to open your mind – to suspend everything you thought you knew; everything you were taught to know. Look into the unknowable, with me, for just a minute. This is your future… well, it is my past but in some ways it’s a piece of your future.

I suppose it began right before dinner tonight, with the force of a hammer on the old wooden door of our humble little home in the marsh.

Or, didn’t it really just begin when we were children running round our auntie’s backyard? That’s when we read our first rites. That’s when we were first allowed to practice the craft as it had been passed to us from our auntie as she lay dying in the kitchen. Taken by the flu, she was, that year. Now as you might guess, she wasn’t our real auntie. She couldn’t have been. But when our mama died two years earlier she swooped in and took care of us Spinter girls. Me, my sister Kierah, and other sister Belladine.

We didn’t know a darn thing about Auntie Marybeth. We didn’t even know mama had a friend named Marybeth. But it didn’t matter much on account of we didn’t have a single family member known to us at all. We just had each other… and the landlord who somehow expected three ten-year-old girls to have money for the rent that mama sure couldn’t pay.

Auntie Marybeth came in, quick and quiet, in the night two days after mama died. She paid for a proper burial for mama and packed up a suitcase each for us girls and moved us into her tiny little shack in the marsh. Now, I know what you’re thinking, ginger girl… How did Auntie Marybeth have so much money as to pay for mama’s burial when she lived only in a shack? And we didn’t get it, much, at first. We just found ourselves grateful that Auntie Marybeth had the money to do whatever it was she wanted to do. And we accepted our humble home just as we’d accepted the one before it.

It wasn’t until Auntie Marybeth died that she passed on her knowledge to us. First through Kierah (who then liked to think of herself as the head of the rest of us). And then Kierah was able to bring along me and Belladine – just the way you’re gonna bring your sleeping sister along with you, ginger girl.

Now, let’s fast forward because, though I’m able to slow my time for this story, I am still dying, ya know.

So, let’s move past the part where we learned that we’re now witches. Let’s move past the part where we learned that Auntie Marybeth was a witch. Let’s move beyond the whole ‘figuring out our powers’ part and the ‘oh, that’s why we hide out in the marsh and pretend we’re poor when we can have anything we want’ part. You’ll get to know those parts soon enough, ginger girl (I think I’m gonna stick with calling you this – suits you well enough).

Now, let’s talk about the hammer slam on our front door, ginger girl, because that’s really where the story gets good.

It was a little before sundown last night. We were about to gather in our spinning circle to recite our chat. Every good witch needs a chant, ginger girl, don’t forget that. A coven of sisters does best to chant together, you hear?

Ok, so where was I? Yes, the door. The hammer. We hadn’t yet spun our circle chant and we weren’t, then, charged up for the night. (Charged up is what Belladine called it. I like to think of it like breakfast. But Kierah called it peaking our power.) Whatever you wanna call it is fine, I guess. It’s just the thing you have to do before you start your night to make sure your magic is really brought to life. Otherwise, it gets old and tired like, well, a mortal human.

So, we weren’t ready, at all, when the hammer came knocking. We were hardly awake, yet. Because yes, we aren’t vampires, but a witch’s best work is done in the shroud of darkness, you know (a new moon is best), because then she’s all charged up and ready to go.

And the hammer came hard. A thwack on the door feet from where Belladine was fixing our breakfast. We sisters turned our attention from the door to each other and back again – waiting.

Sure enough there it was. Thwack, yet again. But this time harder. This time more forceful. And third came just as swift and just as hard. Light shone through the small hole where the hammer had hit. And an eye peeked through.

“Witches!” It was a deep and gritty voice, a disgusting voice. I knew right then it was a troll.

Now I’ll stop myself right quick, here, ginger girl, because it’s important for you to know a few things about the way things really work in the world beyond what you can see. Most everything you were told isn’t real is real. Trolls are real, vampires are real, werewolves, pixies, demons, angels – the whole lot. I reckon you don’t think they go together, that mishmash of fantasies and fairy tales, but they do. Oh, I don’t know if I have enough time to tell you the whole lot. I have to tell you this story, though, ginger girl, because the details might prove important for the journey you’re about to embark on.

I can feel your heart rolling its eyes, ginger girl. Even in your sleep you’re a bit abrasive. But I like that about you. It’s why I chose you and not your sister.

Anyway, real quick then, all those things are real but not at all in the ways you were told they were real. The creatures I’ve talked about don’t look or behave like you think they do, ginger girl. They look just like you and me. They are you and me. There’s no one God hovering over us all in some cloud telling us what’s right and wrong. There is just us. And we are you, only you are different. There are no aliens and it isn’t mortal versus the rest of us. There is a balance, though, and every different being is trying to do something with it. Too much greed and evil can upset the balance but so, too, can too much good. Oh it’s all so complicated. Anyway, we witches (of which there are very few now, by the way) are working to restore the balance. Oh goodness, just find our old shack in the marsh, ginger girl, I’ve written everything down in our old leather-bound book of shadows.

So, the troll yells, “Witches!” as he hammers a hole through our front door.

Kierah was sick with a fever and hardly making sense of what was going on and maybe it was that mixed with the early evening hour and the fact that we hadn’t done our chant, yet, but the protections we had placed around our little house failed us and he came straight through that door.

And he was angry. He should have been. We had just turned his entire tribe into toads. It’s temporary, of course, we aren’t monsters. They had just done so much to disrupt the balance and we needed to slow them down while we figured out how to infiltrate the demon hive they served.

Belladine caught my eyes and we knew it was going to be hard, but I tell you this, ginger girl, I didn’t know that tonight was going to be the night I would die. I guess that’s just how it goes, though, sometimes – or most times. I doubt many of us get to know exactly the day we will die. If I’d have known it would be today I might have scouted out a more willing little witch to pass my powers to. I might have made sure the Book of Shadows was complete and up to date. I might have done so many things differently, ginger girl, but here we are.

The troll burst through the door. He was short and rotund and covered with a curly fur from head to near toe, as any troll is. A brute of a man, he would simply seem by the light of day, but as the sun was setting his true form was clearer and clearer.

His strength was nothing Belladine or I could fight. Even if Keirah hadn’t taken ill, it would have taken everything the three of us had to fight this one troll without our nightly spinning chant ritual.

I procured weapons from the kitchen while Belladine used most of her power to shroud the Book of Shadows in a cloak of invisibility while protecting it from whatever elements it may see next. And elements it did see, ginger girl.

The troll wasn’t alone. As he burst his heavy hammer through the splintered wood of our door a crashing sound came from above. Then another. It all happened so fast, ginger girl. He was through the door and barrelling toward me as I pushed him back with every bit of magic I could muster. I threw knives and pots and pans and ladles with a force stronger than my form. They pierced his skin and pummelled his head, knocking him down to the ground.

But the victory was short-lived. It wasn’t a minute before another troll came thundering through the broken doorway, hammer in hand. More crashing sounds came from above and it hit me, ginger girl. A realization, not a troll (though that would happen soon, too). It struck me that the sounds from above weren’t bricks or boulders as I first thought. They were fiery cocktails setting the roof ablaze.

Heat pressed down on me as Belladine finished her spellwork, hidden behind the dwindling strength of my magic.

The second troll came toward me, raising his hammer above his head as drool pooled from his mouth to the floor. I found myself running low on power and entirely lacking weapons, by this point, ginger girl.

Keirah appeared, bleary and disoriented from her fever. She was always the strongest of us three.

As the heat from the fire above became sparkling bits of floating ash, Keirah let loose a pulsing blast from her palms that sent both trolls flying through the front walls of our little shack. Keirah followed them as they tumbled out onto the soggy lawn, with Belladine and me in tow.

We put up a good fight, ginger girl, but it was no use. On our lawn stood an army of trolls, all brandishing hammers and brute strength that we weren’t going to win out against.

It wasn’t ten minutes before we found ourselves almost entirely stripped of our power, ginger girl. I won’t describe the scene to you, but know this – as I look around myself, now, all I see is evil. Trampled trees and wildflowers smushed into the muddy ground. The burning remains of a home we loved. I see the tattered remains of my sisters. I don’t know if they had a chance to slow down like I’ve got; a chance to pass on their inner power. Their deaths were swift, ginger girl. Ha. Imagine feeling blessed to have a long and painful end to your life. But here I am, doing just that.

You need to come, ginger girl. You need to follow your instincts because they will lead you right here to this spot. Just look for the smoke in the sky. I’m certain our house is still burning.

It is up to you, now, ginger girl. You and your sister.

You must find the demon hoard, retrieve the Book of Balance, and perform the Undoing. Only then will the Earth return to its natural state. Only then will the mortals be free.

…stay tuned for part 2