The Wicked Existence of Lillian Lennox

8. Chapter Eight - The Original Eight

Gran took a deep breath. "You're a Witch."

I looked at her blankly, not sure whether to laugh or be offended at the notion. Maybe this was all some insane delusion, a dream. Or a prank. Karen and the girls had teamed up with Gran. I knew it was ridiculous even as I thought it, of course.

Before I could respond, Gran continued. "So am I, and so was your mother." I just stared, dumbfounded, not sure how to react or what to think. Gran who seemed to have expected this reaction, carried on. "Us Lennox's are one of the original eight families that fled from Salem, over 300 years ago."

This shook me out of my stupor. "What does us fleeing have to do with-" I halted, my brows furrowing, "Salem? You're not saying..." But Gran was already nodding.

"That is exactly what I'm saying. Your tenth Great-Grandmother Dorothea Lennox, was born in 1678. She fled from the Salem Witch Trials in 1693, at the age of 15, after her own father betrayed her mother as a witch." Gran shook her head with grim remorse, as if this pulled at her very heartstrings. I sat in silence, to shocked to say anything. "Seven others joined Dorothea, four men and three women, and together they came to Karl-Borough; a then undiscovered hamlet, where only three other farming families lived. Over time a town was built here, and the witches were able to live in harmony with the unknowing people." She paused for a moment, focusing on me. "Being a witch is in your blood Lillian." She unexpectedly held my gaze with a startling intensity, and I couldn't look away from those icy blue eyes, that seemed to bore into mine. As if Gran could will me to believe this by just looking at me; as if she could convey the truth with her eyes. I had started shaking my head, my own green eyes wide, my composure completely gone. "It's true child," Gran said, placing her hands on my shoulders, as if to rattle this veracity into me

"But if - how come - I can't - " I sputtered unable to form a sentence, my mind reeling, my usual mask forgotten. I closed my eyes for a moment and took a deep breath, trying to focus. There were important questions I needed to ask, I felt instinctively. After a moment, I had sorted my thoughts. "If you're a witch," I started slowly, the word feeling foreign, "and my mother was a witch, why did no one ever tell me? Why did I never notice anything?" I bit my tongue to keep from asking more questions. I knew I had to practice patiences, if I wanted a thorough answer to each of them.

Gran looked at me for a long moment, and I briefly thought she might not answer. Finally she nodded and began. "When the original eight witches first came here, they formed a coven and practiced in secret. During my Grandmother's generation, in the late eighteen-hundreds, the witches started to integrate more with the people of Karl-Borough." Gran closed her eyes for a moment, as if reliving the past, though it was much before her time. "Instead of constantly avoiding the outsiders, pretending to fit in, or wiping their memory, they decided they wanted to coexist. To trust the outsiders. They didn't go around town shouting out that they were witches, but they did start telling their friends, and some of them even started romantically seeing and eventually marrying outsiders, humans. It was mostly going well. The people who knew accepted and respected us, and the others were kept in the dark." Gran shook her head gravely, her face grim as she continued. "But then things took a turn for the worse. Many of our coven members fell very ill, others were unable to conceive, some even tragically died. When it first started to happen, we were sad of course, but not overly concerned. We didn't think anything of it. But then, we noticed a pattern. All of the witches who had told outsiders who they truly were - or worse married them - found themselves thrown into this horrible fate." Gran's jaw was tightly clenched and it seemed to aggravate her to continue. "This wasn't anything from the humans. This was a curse from our own kind. Someone who clearly didn't agree with the integration of witches and outsiders. Someone who wanted to warn us."