No time for witches, p.1
No Time For Witches, page 1
NO TIME FOR WITCHES
S.A. ISON
No Time For Witches
Copyright © 2021 by S.A. Ison All rights reserved.
Book Design by Elizabeth Mackey
Book Edited by Ronald Ison Esq. Editing Services
Book Edited by Boyd Editing Ent.
All rights Reserved. Except as under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a data base or retrieval system, without prior written permission of S.A. Ison
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the production of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons – living or dead- is entirely coincidental.
OTHER BOOKS BY S.A. ISON
BLACK SOUL RISING From the Taldano Files
INOCULATION ZERO Welcome to the Stone Age
Book 1
INOCULATION ZERO Welcome to the Age of War
Book 2
EMP ANTEDILUVIAN PURGE
Book 1
EMP ANTEDILUVIAN FEAR
Book 2
EMP ANTEDILUVIAN COURAGE Book 3
POSEIDON RUSSIAN DOOMSDAY
Book 1
POSEIDON RUBBLE AND ASH
Book 2
EMP PRIMEVAL
PUSHED BACK A TIME TRAVELER’S JOURNAL
Book 1
THE RECALCITRANT ASSASSIN
BREAKING NEWS
THE LONG WALK HOME
EMP DESOLATION
THE VERMILION STRAIN POST-APOCALYPTIC EXTINCTION
THE HIVE A POST-APOCALYPTIC LIFE
PYTHAGORAS FALLS
MY NAME IS MARY A REINCARNATION
THE MAD DOG EVENT
DISTURBANCE IN THE WAKE
OUT OF TIME AN OLD FASHION WESTERN
PUSHED BACK The Time Traveler’s Daughters Book 2
YESTERDAY’S WARRIOR
FUTURE RELEASES
NO ONE’S TIME
THE INNOCUOUS MAN A.I. APOCALYPSE
A BONE TO PICK
For The Wabanaki
♥
PROLOGUE
Martha Wainwright sat before the mirror of her childhood pink vanity table. Leaning forward, she peered deep into her brilliant green eyes. A sardonic smile slid across her lips and was gone. He’d miss her, she knew he would. Stephen Putnam would miss her and he would regret breaking up with her via text. Her face heated at the remembered text.
‘Hey babe, you know how you are like, independent? You say you only need you? That the world and people revolve around you, not the other way around? Cause you’re all that? I agree. So, you go be independent, I’m gonna date Cassey Trendle. Bye.’
That slut Cassey was a plain Jane with zero personality and no fashion sense. Martha looked at her porcelain skin and deep red hair. She knew she was beautiful and not just because her mother told her she was. She saw the hungry glances from the boys and the jealous hater glances from the girls. She was a triple threat, smart, rich and beautiful. How could Stephen even look at that pimple faced Cassey? At least she wouldn’t have to look at either one of them much longer. School would soon be out and she was going to talk her parents into sending her to Europe. Maybe France? She had been doing pretty good in her classes.
Summer was almost there and she’d not look at either of them. Then, when her senior year started, she would just ignore them both. Maybe by then, Stephen would see what a ginormous mistake he’d made with that no name bitch. She sat back and smiled into her eyes. That was the plan then.
“I’ll go to France this summer and have an adventure. I’ll find lots of boys, maybe men. They’ll appreciate my beauty, my independence and my intelligence. I won’t give a shit about Stephen or Cassey,” she said and her reflection agreed. It would be an adventurous summer.
Ψ
Kim Diez cleared the table as her abuela looked out the window. It was early spring and school would be out soon.
“You know, there is an opening at the museum, mija. I think you should work there; it will look good on your college application next year, for Salem State University,” Angela Diez suggested sweetly. Kim had her back to her abuela and rolled her eyes. This was a conversation they had nearly every week for the last year and a half. Her senior year was coming up in the fall and Angela had urged and pushed her granddaughter to take the AP courses, engage in community volunteering and all the other myriad of tasks needed to put a good foot forward when applying to a college. She would never, ever, hurt her grandmother’s feelings, nor show disrespect, but she wasn’t all that sure she wanted to go to college.
“Kimi? Did you hear me, mija?” Angela asked, looking over her glasses.
“Yes, abuela, I heard. I’ll think about it,” Kim said and looked over to her grandmother and winked. She went into the kitchen as she heard her grandmother sigh happily. It didn’t take much, go along and get along. She knew of the museum that her grandmother spoke of. Not the witchcraft one, but the historical one, that included the witches, but also the Massachusetts Bay Colony, the Wabanaki Indians, along with the revolutionary war section. It was a large museum and there were a lot of summer jobs to be had there. She knew it was a good choice, but because her grandmother pushed, she resisted. Since her parents had been killed twelve years before, Angela Diez was more like a mother than a grandmother. Angela was also a very vivacious grandmother as well, young at heart and ageless with her outlook on life.
At fifty-eight, her grandmother did not sit around the house knitting. She was a member on a bowling league and women’s swim get together. Kim wondered at times who was the kid and who was the adult? She sighed and set the dishes in the sink; she would wash them later.
“I’m gonna go look some stuff up online, abuela,” she said and headed to her room.
“It’s a good decision, Kimi. You’ll thank me,” Angela called after her. A grin flitted across Kim’s face. Angela was usually right. She sat down at her desk and opened her laptop. She found the museum’s web page and looked on their jobs section. There were guide jobs, cleaning jobs, cashier jobs and all kinds of miscellaneous openings. Anyone who lived in this city knew the history of Massachusetts, Boston, and most assuredly, Salem. All her life, she’d heard about the witch trials and on Halloween, most of the girls dressed up as either fairy princes or witches.
She noticed an opening for a guide, but this was for the Wabanaki Indians exhibit. She smiled, that was different and she didn’t know much about it, but figured that wouldn’t be as boring as being a guide for the witches or the Boston massacre. She read through the brief synopsis of the job and found that she would have to learn some of the language which was Algonquin in origin.
“Who knew?” she muttered to herself. She read off a few of the words and they sounded odd on her tongue. She smiled. She could do this, especially if she started memorizing the language now. There was two more months before she could start, so she might as well get a jump on it. Besides, if she showed up to the job interview knowing some of the language and history, she’d be a shoe in.
She thought about her grandmother and wondered what Angela would think if she knew that Kim was thinking about joining the Navy right out of high school? Angela was pushing hard for college, but Kim wanted to travel, to see life outside of Salem. She’d stopped by the Navy Recruiting office, over on Lancaster. She would have to take the ASVAB this fall, but she was pretty sure she could do well on it. She had already started running. She was given the physical standards and physical training she would need for boot camp.
As a young biracial woman, she knew that in the military, it was color blind. She was black to some folks and Puerto Rican to others. She just wanted to be herself, no labels, except maybe sailor. She’d been given a pamphlet and she’d looked around on the Navy Recruiting’s website. What she saw were young people of every color and origin, working together. She liked that. Also, the Navy would pay for her college and her grandmother wouldn’t have to worry about footing the bill. She knew if she went to college, she’d have to apply for grants and scholarships to ease that burden from her grandmother’s shoulders.
Going into the Navy would allow her to travel and to earn her degree. Besides, she didn’t even know what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. She didn’t want to be stuck indoors in a classroom for the next four or five years. She wanted to enjoy her senior year and then head out into the wild blue yonder. She wanted adventure.
Ψ
A large man sat in the back of the Dark Horse Inn, holding a warm tankard of ale. It was early evening and the candles flickered around him, though it afforded little illumination. He cradled the tankard in his large hands, it was perhaps his fourth or fifth, he’d lost count. He was near the Boston Harbor, a bustling place that he was still unused to after so many years. He’d lived most of his life in Salem Town, then Salem Village and then Boston. He had taken over his uncle’s position as sheriff and had then moved on to Boston to work for his other uncle. He could count himself a prosperous man. Yet, each evening, he roamed the spiderweb of cobblestone streets, looking for oblivion in the bottom of a tankard of ale or beer.
As all love does, it rips the heart asunder, leaving a man to walk as the dead do. Horses moved outside the inn, hauling vats of wine to the back of the tavern. The large man is feeling the sorrow surge up once more and he remembers a song that a lass used to sing often, her voice pure and high and sweet. It was so long ago, but not long before the witches came and died. It had been a terrible time of slaughter and he’d spent years running from her face and her memory.
“How do I live? How do I breathe? When you’re not here I’m suffocating,” he sang in a low slurred voice. Most of the words are mumbled and muffled as tears slid down his unshaven round cheeks. His red rimmed eyes slid to those around him, their rough faces going in and out of focus.
“Cause the writing’s on the wall,” he finished and took another drink. It had been there before him and he’d done nothing. All she had said had come true, but it had been so much worse.
ONE
Kim groaned and turned her back. Martha Wainwright had just walked in, carrying her costume. She’d had history, French, and algebra classes with the girl and what a diva, drama queen she was. She’d known Martha most of her life, since first grade. Martha wasn’t overtly mean to her, but Kim knew that they swam in different circles. Kim was more artsy and Martha was a social butterfly. Kim was normally awkward whereas Martha was polished. They lived in two different worlds, but normally got along. Though spoiled, Kim thought that maybe Martha was at heart, lonely. Afterall, what kind of friendships could you have when you only dealt with being superficial? She could be wrong; she didn’t like to judge people because she didn’t like being judged herself.
They had tolerated each other in classes and there had even been times when Martha had come to Kim for help with homework. Algebra had been Martha’s Achille’s heel. Martha had also found several of the Navy pamphlets in her backpack and had teased Kim about it. But Kim had seen a spark of admiration and also envy. It was a tenuous friendship held together by years of knowing each other. Martha smacked her on the back playfully.
“Seriously, is this not the ugliest stuff?” Martha huffed, holding up her costume. It was a long dark blue skirt along with a fitted dark ochre top. It was a Puritan’s costume. She held a white coif in her hand along with an apron, a slip and cream shirt. Kim looked down at her own costume and groaned again. It was a soft deer skin outfit with shells of polished quahog and other decorations sewn into the hide. It was actually well constructed; the garment was beautiful and a replica of what the women of yesteryear sported in Wabanaki tribes. She turned when she sensed Martha was near her.
“Hey Kimi, I see you’re gonna work here too. Ah, and just right, an Indian. Sure, you don’t wanna be a pilgrim? Oh wait, did they have black pilgrims back when? Or just slaves,” Martha smirked, then giggled and moved away.
“Racist much Martha? Besides, you’re not a pilgrim, you’re a puritan colonist,” Kim retorted, rolling her eyes, the hint of a smile on her lips. She could never take Martha seriously.
“Tomato, potato, who cares? It’s a joke job anyway,” Martha said and puffed, blowing a long strand of red hair out of her face. Both young women headed toward the back lounge, where they would change into their costumes.
“Then why are you here? Why are you even working?” Kim asked, going over to a locker that had a piece of tape with her name on it.
“My dad says I’ve got to learn the value of a dollar. Big whoop. My mom just said go along for a while, until he forgets about it. So, here I am,” she said and shrugged. The tall redhead flipped her long hair over her shoulders and looked at the white hat. The coif had smudges around the edges, it looked old, but Kim knew that it was just used. She hoped they had cleaned it after the previous guide. Martha held the cap up and waved it, her lip curling.
“Ugh, all I wanna say is, I can’t believe I have to wear this lame thing. It’s gonna give me hat hair. At least you get to wear your hair down or maybe done in a braid.”
Kim turned her back and rolled her eyes, Martha could whine and complain about anything. Her family was well off and Martha had her own car, a new one too. Kim had to take the bus and the only car in her future was when she got to borrow her abuela’s Toyota.
“Are you working in the Bay Company exhibit?” Kim asked as she began to put her clothing into the locker. She looked at her dress and hoped that her own costume had been cleaned, but she wasn’t sure how that would be done. It was leather and she wasn’t sure if you could wash leather.
“Let me break it down for you, I have two exhibits to work. Can you believe that? The Massachusetts Bay Company and the Salem witch exhibit. I should get paid double,” Martha said as she stepped into the long white petticoats. She looked down at the shoes and they looked like warped hunks of leather. Kim thought those would be uncomfortable. She looked over to the stockings laying on a bench and the ribbon garters that would hold the stockings up.
“At least you won’t get bored. You still dating Stephen?” Kim asked casually, not looking over.
“Girl, please. That was over a long time ago. He’s with some skank. She flunked out and is repeating her senior year. She didn’t have enough credits. I’ll see that be-otch in the fall,” Martha said, making a face.
Kim had nurtured a crush on Stephen Putnam since the sixth grade. He was on the football team and had filled out over the last few years. Tall and good looking with a ready smile.
“I’m sure he’ll regret it,” Kim said lamely.
“All I wanna say, Kimi, is that I dropped his sorry ass and I’ve not looked back,” Martha said and cursed softly as she tied the ribbon garters around the stockings and her thighs.
“That’s good.”
Kim went over to the mirror and braided her long jet hair in a single braid down her back. Her hair was wavy and there were a few curls that escaped around her face. She wasn’t sure how the women of the Wabanaki tribe wore their hair, but she figured this was close enough. She looked at her reflection in the large mirror, pleased. Behind her, she could see Martha struggling with her costume. Her own outfit was slightly weighty but not cumbersome and she ran her hand down the soft material. The sleeves fell to her forearms and had slight fringe along the edges. The dress was one piece and Kim thought it was a pretty buttery brown color. There was some quill work down around the hem of the skirt. On the upper part of the dress, across the chest were shells. The quahog shells were aligned in three vertical rows over each breast. She fingered the cool polished shells, each shell was different, some deep purple, while others were cream and other shells were a combination of both colors in a striation pattern. The dress came down just past her knees and there was a narrow yoke around the neckline which had painted ochre designs. All in all, she thought it was better to wear her costume rather than the maladroit puritan costume.
Martha looked at herself in the large mirror, her mouth a flat line of recalcitrant temper. She wanted to rip the costume from her body, the outfit was hot and she was glad that the museum was climate controlled. Her green eyes slid over toward Kim. She thought the girl looked very pretty in her costume. She looked back at her own reflection. It was an ugly, plain outfit. If it weren’t for the slip and petticoats, it would itch her to death. She did like the stockings and the pretty ribbons that kept them secured to her thighs. Her thoughts slipped to Stephen and then she jolted herself back from that. It was a painful feeling, to be dropped and rejected and he’d done that via a text. He didn’t have the balls to face her.
Why am I even here? she wondered again, she was sure if she really wanted to, she could make her mother cover for her. Why was her father doing this to her? She had begged them to send her to France this summer, but they had flatly refused. She had huffed and pouted for weeks. Then they promised that she was going to Europe next summer and then onto college. She wasn’t sure where she wanted to go for college, but it was going to be far away from her parents. After the breakup with Stephen, they had clamped down on her comings and goings. She blinked rapidly; she wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t. Her eyes slid once more to Kimi, who was heading out. She knew Kim had a crush on Stephen since forever.
