"The Matriarch of the Witch Clan"

a novel by John Stormm

John.Stormm@gmail.com

Sci-Fi/Fantasy 81,700 words

STORY SYNOPSIS

     The first in a series, this novel starts with the last reigning adept matriarch of a witch clan that has practiced its craft and kept its secrets for over thirteen centuries. It opens in modern America in 1939. Ella Mae has a dream of producing the perfect adept witch and moving her clan out of hiding and into the spotlight in an enlightened new age where witches will be no longer demonized, but respected.

     Ella and her daughter, Emma, open a gateway to the ancient Sidhe and make a pact for a Sidhe husband for Emma's daughter, Lorry. The hope is that the hybrid child of this union will prove to be the most powerful witch in the modern world, and will sway world leaders to become more tolerant of the Old Ways and its practitioners. But the Sidhe prince who crosses over has a dark side, and nothing comes out the way they planned. The Sidhe must be destroyed or he will destroy them, and the child of that fateful union is a male, and not the candidate for future matriarch they had hoped.

One by one, members of the family start dying off, including Ella Mae. Emma, who is not an adept, must assume the mantle of clan matriarch and retrieve her unwanted grandson to raise as her own, as a witch of the blood. Believing the child will bring nothing but death and sorrow, the rest of the clan are none too eager to receive a male hybrid into their midst, and Emma has her work cut out for her. It is dangerous to offend the Sidhe, her mother had taught her, and paid with her life. Emma must single handedly set things to right with this child.

     Emma is no "adept" witch as her mother was, but her lifetime of being raised and nurtured in the craft of her family has prepared her to deal with the supernatural forces that struggle for predominance in her life. Like most shamans or mystics, much of her wisdom comes in that strange transitory place between dreams and reality, blurring the lines between the two. What is merely a dream and what is real is a question the reader will have to find to their own satisfaction because for Emma the distinction is a minor one at best.

     Raising little Johnny is a two way educational experience. Emma must train him up as a witch, and teach him the disciplines of the craft and give him a loving home environment. In watching her little grandson coming in to his own, she is discovering the wonders of an ancient race where faery tales are lessons in history and culture far removed from the industrial America of the 1950's. Johnny has precognitive dreams, imaginary friends who are not imaginary, can open gateways to other worlds and claims her heart as she does his.

     With her ten year old granddaughter, Leona, whom she fosters in the craft during the summer holidays along with five year old Johnny, Emma must face a threat from another hybrid witch of yet another ancient race, not friendly to the Sidhe. Johnny is separated from her by a mad creature called the Vough, who harbors an ancient grudge and wishes to tap the boy's power to create murder and mayhem between alternate planes of existence. And if that was not enough for even an adept matriarch to handle, she must nurture the boy to keep his darker nature in check or nobody's lives will be worth living.

     The final straw nearly comes when she must send Johnny to live with his mother and her new husband across the country in California. Lorry is no witch, and Dave has no idea of what to expect. When Dave gets involved with a "mestizo brujo", a witch doctor, he is duped into lacing the Sidhe boy's cereal with peyote, and Emma finds herself crossing other boundaries to save him and discovers herself and her own legacy in the process.

     Instead of the fae spirits of the ancient Celts she and the boy must deal such personages of Native American lore as Coyote, Raven and Iktome the Spider to save the boy from the brujo's evil machinations. The seven year old Sidhe child (by this point in time) is not what anyone expects and with Emma's help, he survives his trial and returns to her custody where he may be raised and properly trained.

     This book of this series ends at this point. Book Two of the series "Warrior of the Witch Clan," begins a little before Johnny's tenth birthday. A Mohawk war hero (Korean Conflict) becomes his new martial arts mentor, and the mysterious Sidhe faction send their own masters of the craft to help train the impossible boy to his full, albeit mixed heritage.