The Price Guide to the Occult

Time might heal all wounds, but what about the scars those wounds left behind?

She liked knowing that rose bushes could fall in love and that leaves sang as they fell, a lilting sigh synchronous with their slow descent to the ground. Most trees could dream as well; all Nor had to do was observe a forest at dusk to know it was true.

Treat others with respect, and one should seldom be in need of protection. As for the times when this is not effective, one should do oneself a favor and get a knife.

Any decent human being, witch or otherwise, had the capacity to do good in this world. It's merely a case of whether one chooses to do so.

Rona soon picked out her own plot of land - one hundred eighty acres that stretched along the bottom of a rocky hill and only a stone's through from the shoreline. Quickly, much more quickly than natural for a man much less a woman - even one of Rona Blackburn's stature - a house appeared. She filled her new home with reminders of her previous one on the Aegean island she had loved so much: pastel seashells and a front door painted a deep cobalt blue - a color the yiayias always claimed had the power to repel evil. Then she set up her bed, made a pit for her fire, and erected two wooden tables. One table she kept bare. The other she covered in tinctures and glass jars of cut herbs and other fermented bits of flora and fauna. On this table, she kept a marble mortar and pestle, the leather sheath in which she wrapped her knives, and copper bowls - some for mixing dry ingredients, some for liquid, and a few small enough to bring to the mouth for sipping. And when the fire was stoked and the table was set, she placed a wooden sign - soon covered in a blanket of late December snow - outside that blue front door. It read one world: Witch.

If Goth ever becomes fashionable again, you'll be the first person I call.

Two tiny sparrows hopped along the branch of a nearby pine tree, fluffing up their feathers in the rain and chirping at each other fondly. Animals, Nor had learned, have their own names for each other. Best translated, they were typically things like Winsome, Persnickety, and Sanctimonious. Of these two, one called himself Vigilant, the other Balderdash.

After seeing Fern's little demonstration on national television" Apothia said, "your grandmother and I decided we needed something to give us strength. We haven't decided if that strength will come from food or from vodka.

Any decent human being, witch or otherwise, has the capacity to do good in this world. It's merely a case of whetever one chooses to do so.