Chapter 1.
That twitchy feeling... It was the unlocked door to the fascinating tower room at the apex of our one hundred and fifty year old gray brick and black frame house...
Ours was the extremely tall house that average residents of Wildcroft Cove called “The Witch House. It’s many towers, cupolas, gables, chimneys, curlicues and gilding seemed to split the gloomy autumn sky. It’s double porch and winding spiral stairs leading to a stained glass nine foot door was so imposing few strangers would dare approach it, especially not, on Samhain Eve.
You would think living in Wildcroft Cove, a village fifteen miles from Salem, that we'd be English but no. We are Italian, of the Old Ways, - La Vecchia Religione. The Cerri family is from Tuscany where the sacred tradition of Aradia started, the charismatic fourteenth century woman who left behind, as most people think, lewd ways.
My wealthy ancestor Rosemunda, --- "Rose Of The World", was an evil flame-haired temptress. Our house was her country estate, where she took her elite friends to a circle of standing stones and gnarled oaks. There in the night mists, wrapped in white gauze, waving her flashing athame toward the full moon, Rosemunda would lead rituals.
We stubbornly cling to our unusual ways. No male children are raised in the Cerri family. Baby boys born to Cerri women are put up for adoption. In the distant past, they were taken in by our cousins, the Armettis. One of my first responsibilities, as the youngest child was to adorn our crinkly household guardian Befana, to clean the doll in her niche in the parlor, to give Befana fresh flowers in her dry, old hair in the spring and summer and sharp scented maple leaves in the Fall and even dried red rose hips from our faerie roses in the winter, the small white roses growing fifty feet into the Russian mulberry tree.
We stubbornly cling to our unusual ways. No male children are raised in the Cerri family. Baby boys born to Cerri women are put up for adoption. In the distant past, they were taken in by our cousins, the Armettis. One of my first responsibilities, as the youngest child was to adorn our crinkly household guardian Befana, to clean the doll in her niche in the parlor, to give Befana fresh flowers in her dry, old hair in the spring and summer and sharp scented maple leaves in the Fall and even dried red rose hips from our faerie roses in the winter, the small white roses growing fifty feet into the Russian mulberry tree.
But, I climbed the spiral staircase to my grandma's room. Clear diamond pane windows cross hatched with lead were set in the horsehair plastered walls to let in light. The old stairs creaked every few steps; the railing was beautifully made, as was every piece of woodwork in this grand old house. You'd never know, unless you looked very closely, that it wasn't carved from one long sinuous piece, like a twisted white serpent.
For years I had wanted to see the secret room where Grandma Lila kept her potions, her handmade oils, ointments, washes and dusts, those very magical things that she'd created all her adult life for practically every human condition. Grandma Lila was in her late sixties, but she still had an hourglass figure and was as spry as a goat. Her wavy black hair was streaked with iron gray; she had piercing deep set purplish gray eyes, eyes the color of cascades of heavy rain running down our tall windows.
Some of the delicately formed spindles were missing, the paint chipped. Up I went, five stories until I stood on the landing facing a pink door a couple feet wide and five feet tall. An averaged sized adult would have to turn sideways, stooping to go through it. I touched the ring in it's center.
The door sprang open to a narrow room with rough ivory colored walls painted with thorny vines and orange roses. One wall of the room was floor to ceiling golden oak drawers, such as one might see in an old apothecary's shop. These drawers contained my grandma's potions. A ratty polar bear rug with open mouth and wicked looking golden eyes, laid on dull planks.
My sister Matilda jumped with a ringing cry from the brass bed, clutching a quilt to her breasts. Her curly brown hair was wild, her long lashed blue eyes wide and crystalline as a doll's. A young man leaped from the bed, charged through the door and down the stairs, his denim shirt tails flapping, his muscular chest heaving.
"What the flaming hell are you doing here, Tatiana?," my sister screamed at me.
I put my hands on my hips, and leaned forward from my waist. "What were YOU doing here?," I shot back at her, pointing a shaking finger toward the open door and the stairs, "...with HIM!”
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