“Who are you?”
Whatever else is going on in my life, I can never say I haven’t been blessed with an overabundance of interesting.
To answer your question… I’m the daughter of a witch and a werewolf. No, I don’t know how they met, though I kind of want to assume it was either a Beltane ritual or some kind of paranormal Match.com. It’s always been a story they’ll tell me ‘when I’m old enough’.
I wonder if, along with your driver’s license, right to vote, and ability to drink, if there’s some age in between that a government official shows up at the doorstep and says, “Congratulations, you’ve reached the Age of Enlightenment. You’re officially old enough to hear all the dirty jokes, all the bad words, and all the stories no one would tell you!” Then he’d shake your hand, give you a laminated card with the limerick about the man from Nantucket (you know, so you can prove you’re finally really truly old enough), and be gone.
Sometimes my mind wanders- deal with it. You’re the one who wanted to walk inside my head, I didn’t invite you.
Mom and I lived in Edgewood, New Mexico, where she worked as a librarian. Apparently however lucrative witchery is, it doesn’t pay the bills when you have a kid to take care of. It’s not that Dad wasn’t around- he was, when he could be. But he was based out of Oregon, and, well, it’s a long drive.
He never missed the holy days. Every summer, he took me to his place, were we ran together in the forest. I wear a splinter of his own bone carved into a protective fetish on a leather cord around my neck. I am his only child.
Such are the gifts my father has given me.
Fall, winter, and springtime I belonged to my mother and school and society, in that order. With my mother, I learned to respect life and to love words. One place she never applied ‘when you’re old enough’ was the bookshelf… I read Stephen King along with Jane Austen… and when I stop to think about it, that’s a scary metaphor for my parent’s relationship. Stephen King meets Jane Austen, huh. Funny how these insights spring up.
I still don’t think writing this all down is a good idea, though. Don’t get smug.
Before I go on to tell you why I hate school and society so much, I’m going to derail for a moment and talk about that other world.
Witches and werewolves (and fae and vampires and chupacabra for all I know) usually pass some level of talent or ability on to their offspring. Yes, witches and werewolves have had children before, usually male, usually with some kind of gift. It’s true that sometimes it doesn’t come out until the teenage years, so I still have a few more to go before we know for sure.
Cause right now, it looks like I’m a dud.
Now understand, neither of my parents have ever been anything but wonderful to me, it’s not like there’s this sense of disappointment hanging over me from them. Neither one of them are kid people though (note my one and only status on both sides, though they are not bound to each other in that way), and I think I know my mother well enough to say that she wouldn’t have had a child if the portents hadn’t been favorable.
So, understand, when I look around at other people, especially kids my age, that think they know what the world is and who they are in it with such absolute disgusting certainty… well, I kind of hate them. I hate them for their blindness- I mean, mom wasn’t exactly cooking up potions in the break room at the library, but she did hand out an awful lot of amazingly helpful teabags. I envy them for what they consider problems… losing a smartphone, failing a test, getting a zit on date night… when compared to wondering what the hell you were born for, it sure looks like small potatoes, right?
And they don’t worry about the dangers out there that they can’t admit exist.
Like any of the hundreds of things that may have my mother.
She’s been gone for 198 days now, and no one knows what else to do.
I am Nessa. I’m 17 and still barely tall enough to ride the really good roller coasters. I have dark hair like my father’s and my mother’s dark eyes. I’m the girl in the back of the room that does her best to never be noticed by anyone by keeping her nose in a book. I have my father’s grace in the woods, but nowhere else. I have my mother’s knowledge in the garden and the kitchen, but know nothing of her potions or spells.
Even if I never see her again, in my heart I will always be the witch’s daughter.
Hope you enjoyed Chapter 1, and if you’re tempted to read a little further, well, the whole book is available on Amazon. If you click on My Books at the top, it’ll helpfully take you straight there.
Cheers!
Curiouser and Curiouser 