~Then~
Eloise Ward wasn't the first woman to ask The Glade for power, it had already been going on for centuries. She'd been born into an English farming community of Germanic ancestry, in about eight fifty AD. Not that any of those terms would have meant much to her, or the use of the word Witch, to describe the powers she possessed. Hexe was the term she'd have recognised, the women who ruined crops and cursed whole families. All nonsense of course, Eloise had quickly learned that very few of the women who claimed to be able to curse your neighbour, for a fee of course, had any real power at all.
"Grind it slowly Rose." She said. "It works best as a thick paste."
Her youngest sister nodded at her and worked the contents of a pan with a wooden spoon. It wasn't an evil smelling concoction, but a balm to calm the skin sores caused by several common diseases. It had the perfume of lavender, which they grew in their own garden. Rose was the youngest, barely able to walk when a bad winter had taken the life of their mother. Eloise was the eldest and had been forced by necessity to take over the role of family matriarch. The middle sister, Maude had been old enough to help with the household chores, but it had been Eloise who had run the house and kept everyone clean and fed. Their father had been a good man, who'd worked the land from sunrise to dusk. He'd lived for another five years after the death of his wife, until hanging himself from a beam in their barn.
"Teach me how to do that." Said Rose.
Eloise had been thinking about a thousand things and the wooden handle of the broom in her hands, had pushed out two buds, which were beginning to open. Cherry blossom on the long dead wood of her broom handle. It was bizarre and it was a massive waste of the powers she'd worked so hard to obtain.
"Useless ! Nonsense." She said. "Fill up two more jars of unguent and we'll go to The Glade again."
"All of us ?" Asked Maude.
Maude was in disgrace, she'd been caught getting herself felt by a boy from the village. They'd all taken a vow of celibacy, it helped the efficacy of their potions and powders. Besides, they all knew the village people were terrified of them, especially Eloise. The local boys might see bedding one of them as a challenge, but there'd never be any question of marriage.
"Do you promise to be virtuous ?"
"Yes sister."
"Then you can come."
Eloise was about to rub the blooms off her broom, but relented and let them flower, putting the broom close to the window. They weren't bad people, even if the locals did think they'd killed their own father. He'd been lonely and had decided to end his life once his daughters were old enough to run the farm on their own. In a world where everything revolved around religion, the girls were effectively atheists. They saw no mortal sin in suicide, or saw it as a terrible blot on their family name. There were the animals they stole to sacrifice, but those thefts were usually blamed on travellers. They lived near the main road that took people west, or east, depending on how you viewed it. There were always convenient travellers with strange physical features, to blame things on. They had owned a few chickens, which had been the first sacrifices offered to The Glade, but they were now offering larger creatures, with more blood to cover the stone. A huge stolen pig, a male, was locked away in their barn. It was difficult to handle and had already given Rose a few nasty bites.
"We'll take the pig with us." Said Eloise.
Her sisters looked happy but said nothing. Eloise was the only one of them with real power. Her sister's made good quality potions, powders and unguents. There wasn't a child for miles around who hadn't been treated with their lotion for measles. Like most people who would eventually be called witches, they were really just herbalists and apothecaries. They did occasionally cast spells, but when Eloise cast them............ they actually worked.
