Love and Other Wicked Things by Philline Harms EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Philline Harms
- Language: English
- Genre: Teen & Young Adult Fiction about New Experiences
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
THE HIEROPHANT
family-shared beliefs -established conventions
Thank the earth and stars, Rhia thought as she sank to her knees in the
middle of the woods on the evening of September 22, that I was lucky
enough to be born a witch.
It was a thought that crossed her mind often, but never more so than
during the autumn equinox. It had been one of Rhia’s favorite holidays ever
since she could remember. She loved the first chill of fall that accompanied
it, marking the last celebration of the warm summer days before the cold
settled down for good.
She loved the traditions: harvesting the last of her family’s little herb
garden, baking the first pumpkin pie of the season, going apple picking with
her sister. Most of all, she loved the feast that her family held in their
garden every year, where, over food and drink, the women would thank the
earth for everything it had given them throughout the summer and cast
spells for protection and prosperity in the upcoming winter months.
What Rhia was doing at this moment was her own little tradition.
Every
autumn equinox, in the late afternoon, she would go for a walk in the woods
behind her house to look for the first signs of fall. Pine cones, chestnuts, the
blushing leaves that came tumbling down—she foraged them all, carefully
storing them away to decorate her altar with when she got home. Presently,
she was kneeling in the middle of the woods to pick up one of the acorns
she had spotted. They weren’t too easy to find because she had misjudged
how early the sun was setting—she’d been scavenging long enough that her
only source of light was the pale moonlight that filtered through the crowns
of the trees—but Rhia didn’t mind. The dark had never scared her, and she
knew how to find her way around these woods even after nightfall.
She
could always trust the trees to tell her the way back, after all.
Rhia pulled a small pouch out of the satchel slung over her shoulder. The
earth doesn’t owe us anything, her mother’s voice murmured in the back of
her head. We must never take too much without giving something back.
Using her hands, Rhia dug a small pit into the soil, its texture beneath her
fingertips as familiar as her own heartbeat. When she offered some seeds
from her pouch, she could hear its pleased hum. “Thank you for these
acorns,” she softly said as she pressed the seeds into the earth.
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