Mrs Parson's Girls

PROLOGUE

The change from gloomy woods to bright sunlit clearing was too sudden for Mrs. Parson's aged eyes. While they struggled to accommodate, she proceeded forward stubbornly without pausing and tripped over a mound of red sand smack in the path leading to the house. She was lucky she hadn't fallen.
The park's oracle was a shunned hermit, everyone openly despised her but Mrs. Parson, being a connoisseur of all park gossips knew people secretly visited the park's oracle for help now and then, but no one wanted to be caught at it lest they incurred the Alpha's wrath.
"Serves me right to fall and break my hip here, how will I explain what I was doing at the Oracle's cottage"
She approached the roughly cut slab of wood that served as the front door and lifted her fist to knock when she noticed the door was slightly ajar, pushing with a finger, the door opened further to reveal a room in a state of total mayhem. The hut had a single room, one average sized space which was poorly illuminated as there were no windows to let light in save the door where she stood. But there were also beams of sunlight that penetrated through the zinc roof piercing the air like laser beams. Her brow furrowed as she took in the sight, an over turned stool in her path, a rough wood shelf laid face down at the back of the room, the vials and ornaments it had once held, spilled over the packed earth floor. There was an open kitchen area to her right, and that had not fared any better with overturned crockery on the floor. It looked like the place had been ransacked by strays, which was possible considering it sat in the middle of the woods, put away from the rest of the park. But this was park land still, and any stray that had crossed the boundary would have been spotted by patrol. Mrs parson turned around to leave and nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard a crash and a feminine voice squeal.
Another possibility came to mind, maybe that crazy witch was actually the one who had caused the mayhem, after all she was unstable, or so the grapevine said. She walked into the room steadily, stepping over spilled tinctures and avoiding turned over furniture.
'Hello?'
The rumbling ceased at the sound of her voice, it was coming from the back of the room where a bed was pushed against a wall, but there were so many items thrown around, one couldn't make out anything.
'Hello?' She called out again
'Who are you?' a soft voice said as what she had thought to be a turned over lamp rose to its full length, a five foot two inches waif of a girl in a see through white dress with a mop of raven black hair
'Who are you?' She asked in return, the oracle from her memory was a towering intimidating brute of a woman, not an adolescent.
The girl assessed her for a while, then seemed to dismiss her and turned around to heft a make-shift bag made from a wrapper tied at both ends. The items in the bag clinked and clanged as the waif settled the heavy bag across her body, resting on one thin shoulder like a strap, and made to walk past her.
'Wait, where is the witch?' she grabbed onto the thin arm nearest to her to stop the girl.
The waif pointed out the door with her other hand and Mrs. parson looked in the direction she pointed in but couldn't see anything except an empty yard and the woods beyond.
'She went out to the woods? When will she return?' Mrs. parson asked
'She is never coming back, she is there. ' the girl said in a deadpan tone still pointing outside.
Looking out again, she was beginning to think the girl was as crazy as her mistress when she saw it then, a red mound at the path, the one she had stumbled over, a grave site.
'Oh' she dropped the arm she had been holding onto in shock, she had stumbled over the witch's grave, she did a hurried sign of the Cross, which seemed foolish since she wasn't a believer.
'She died this morning' the girl said
'Well, that is quite unfortunate and such bad timing!...but mostly unfortunate. '
'What did you want? I could help you, for a fee of course. '
As Mrs. Parson looked at her with suspicion, she added 'I helped my mother prepare some of her potions, I know a thing or two. '
Mrs. Parson was taken back, the witch had a daughter, who knew, she had thought it was an apprentice. A daughter meant she had her mother's skills, had inherited the gift, damn, the girl was the next oracle by right.
Mrs. Parson considered it, she was ready to try anything at this point. Things couldn't get much worse, so she might as well put her faith in the young oracle.
'I need, I mean, my girls need a little help.'