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THE WITCHES OF FEATHER MOUNTAIN

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THE WITCHES OF FEATHER MOUNTAIN Chapter 1

Her name is Lorili but she always thought it should have been Miranda. She stands alone in the inky, dark night on the balcony of a luxurious A-frame in the Northern Arizona wilderness looking through the darkness down the mountain into the trees. Her lady the moon was playing hide and seek with the ominous grey shadows of clouds that were big, white, fluffy and friendly a few short hours ago. A wee bit of light flickered here and there amid the dense, green blanket of pines below, that guarded her from the rest of the world. This was her fortress of solitude. The dark cape about the shoulders fluttered open and closed with each gust of cold air revealing the well formed, misleading, firm flesh of a young woman responding to the sensuous caressing and erotic fondling of the near-winter Northern breeze instead of one of a very recent grandmother. Lorili peered down the mountain into the trees below and studied the flickering lights of the forest for a few moments. It gave her comfort and pleasure to think the Old Ones were near to approve of the self inflicted, life-long quest of the coven. She saw two pairs of headlights winding up to her estate on Feather Mountain and thought, 'It's a good night for planning with the girls.' Her old friend in West Virginia had found Amanda and Keith for her. There would be no cone of power or mystic ceremonies this night. It was time to lay travel plans to try and get them together. They were both pure blood and of the age that needed the happiness and peace that comes with a long, enduring and comfortable relationship. The Old ones would rest better with these of their children happy and content. Her friends who believed in her and the quest came from every corner of the globe and were trying to find the great, great grandchildren of the infamous sufferers of the Salem witch trials. In her leather bound diary there were recorded hundreds and hundreds of names found with a great deal of arduous and painstaking searching through old records and private family papers belonging to descendants of the Old Ones.
Lorili had found through the years, the easiest way to bring the youngsters together was to go to the area they were in and hire both of them to do some small job for her at the same time and in the same romantic setting. Lorili reluctantly left the soul soothing balcony, got dressed and went down the stairs to the kitchen. She got out the big lard can used for her special fancy filled cookies. There were layers upon layers of the elaborate cookies she was so well known for. Each layer was separated with wax paper and supports to keep the delicacies on top from crushing the goodies on the bottom. The girls all liked the poppy seed filled ones the best so she filled a large silver tray with them and put on the water for tea.
While waiting for them to finish the winding drive up the mountain she switched on the computer and saw the, "you have mail" flashing.. The first message told her that Trudy and David were going to postpone their wedding until spring because everything was frozen solid up at Thunder Bay. The second was background information for Amanda. There was no time to read more as Marsha exploded through the door saying, "Jeannette drives me crazy. She barrels up this mountain like a maniac. One of these days we'll all be found at the bottom of the quarry over on the other side."
Lorili smiled matronly and said, "She's alright. She just knows this mountain like she was born on it. It's normal for her to go fast and close to the edge."
The exasperated honey haired girl placed her bag on the table and replied, "I wouldn't mind if it was only that. Those banana skins she calls tires are as smooth as tapioca pudding. They could self destruct or peel right off of the rims at any moment. You better have a word with her. She won't listen to anyone but you."
"You're right. I better talk to her. I don't want anything bad to happen to any of my girls. Ann accident could happen at any time. Slick tires are unpredictable. I'll have her stop at Cliffs' Exxon for new ones tomorrow."
"Good. Tell her right now." She said pointing toward the door at a woman in her early thirties along side a gorgeous redheaded Mary Ellen about the same age. Then Mary Beth came in reflecting a mirror image of her twin sister. The only way to tell them apart was the fact that Mary Beth kept her hair cut a bit shorter than Mary Ellen.
Lorili greeted the others and said, "Jeannette. Take your car down to Cliffs' and have new tires put on it. Tell Cliff to put on the mine account."
Jeannette said, "Okay Aunt Lorili, thanks. It sure must be nice to own a whole mountain sitting on top of the largest amethyst mine on the planet. How did you ever discover it?"
We found it a long time ago after an Indian boy gave us some purple stones and told us where he found them. Jim was shrewd enough to buy it and incorporate everything in my name before he was killed. He put this entire area into a private company for me. I own all the stock and make all the profits."
The exquisitely decorated living room appeared to be gigantic at first glance but became noticeably smaller with the twelve young women making themselves comfortable in every space available. Lorili greeted each of her ladies with genuine affection, then excused herself to get the tea and cakes. The conversation continued along the same subject of Lorili's' own wondrously colorful past with her husband Jim. The twins were curious so Marsha asked her aunt to tell the girls the wonderful story of how she and Jim met.
Lorili smiled a comforting secret kind of personal smile reserved for thoughts of the one and only man she could ever dream of loving. She placed the silver platter on the coffee table and sat in her favorite lotus position on the floor in front of the fire. After getting comfortable she said, "It's a story that began before some of you were born. I worked at a McCrorys' five and dime in a small town on the Ohio River. It was early summer when Jim started coming up to my counter in the small coffee shop for lunch everyday. He started out telling me he loved me in kind of a kidding way right from the beginning. We hadn't gone out with each other yet but somehow I knew he would mean what he had been saying in due time. I also had a strong feeling inside that he was the one for me. He was so comfortable to be with. easy going and emitted a gentleness I can't even begin to describe. I just felt like I had always known him intimately for some reason.
One day he finally stopped in to ask me out. He left his Buick Electra 225 running in front of the store and was trying to keep an eye on it while he asked me. He didn't do a very good job because it ran off by itself while he was in the store for that brief few moments. We found out later it had a smidgen of help from some of the kids from the high school using it for a quick thrill and ride home. He spent most of that day making out police reports on both sides of the river in West Virginia and Ohio. It might as well have been both sides of the world from the way one agency wouldn't share information with the other. Anyway, we decided to wait until the next weekend to go out. Jim was an electronics representative and trouble shooter for the Underwood Olliveti corporation. They sent him on loan to distributors having problems with the equipment. It was usually on a government service agreement for three years at a time. The following Friday he borrowed an old Mercury convertible from a friend and we went down the West Virginia side of the river to Wheeling for dinner. We went to a small restaurant at the marina called the Pirates Cove.
It was a great little place and we were seated way in the back next to a roaring fireplace that didn't seem uncomfortably hot. That's when I started to realize there was something magical about Jim. There was an electricity or some sort of animal magnetism with him. He could pass his hand over your arm without touching you and yet you would feel a tingling sensation and the hair on the arm would stand up like it had gone to sleep. I think I started to fall hopelessly in love with him right there in that dimly lit room.
The next weekend we went back down the river a different way and found his Buick that had been coasted off the side of the road right where it ran out of gas.
The highway patrol didn't take kindly to some of the things Jim said about incompetence and told us we might get arrested for stealing it if we tried to drive it back across the river to Ohio. Nothing like that would ever bother Jim. He just said it would be unlikely that any officer would even see us do it after driving by a stolen vehicle in their patrol cars for over ten days . Especially coasted sideways off of the road the way it was and a danger to traffic. He just said the car was probably invisible and we were going to take it home. Nothing ever frightened Jim. He drove it back while I drove the convertible over the bridge to Ohio. It was real strange the way bad things always happened to one or the other of us when we were apart and never we were together. Shortly after that Jim was transferred to the Navy gun mount Station and Fort Knox in Louisville Kentucky and off we went, to be together always. Then from Kentucky we headed out here to Arizona.
Marsha moved from the sofa to sit next to her aunt on the floor and interrupted the story with, "Aunt Lorili. I've heard you talk about Uncle Jim hundreds of times but you never talk about sex like the rest of us do sometimes. How come?" "I don't know. That part was incredible like it was a normal continuation of us, but it was so much more. It was a great deal like we were addicted to one another. Sometimes I imagined it was hard for me to even breath when he was away from me. It was wonderful and spooky at the same time. Another thing was the way he related to others. He didn't just talk with them. He could reach right down into their very soul to communicate. The discovering of this mine was a good example.
When we came out here I fell in love with the colorful Hopi and Zuni kachina dolls. Jim found an Indian boy who carved them for people by hand. The boy was almost blind and getting worse every day. I don't know how he managed to carve such beautiful kachina's for me. The money for them was going into a savings account for him to go to a special school back in Missouri someplace. I loved those historic little dolls so Jim made special glass cases to put on all of them for protection. I had eleven of them at that time. Anyway one day Jim brought the Indian boy home with him for dinner. When he saw the kachina's in glass cases he began to cry and asked us to let them out so they could breath. He believed the spirit was the kachina was part of the dolls just like the spirit enters the Hopi dancers when they put on the kachina costume and dance in the ceremonies on the village mesas. The boy said that if we would set them free he would give us the purple stones he found up here at Feather Mountain. He had about twenty of the largest chunk of pure amethyst you ever saw. We took the cases off of the dolls and told him to keep the stones. I didn't know Jim knew what they were at the time. A few days later Jim found out the land on this mountain and most of the surrounding acreage didn't belong to the government like he first thought it would, and was for sale. The trouble was that we had to buy it all because it couldn't be sub-divided. We would have to buy the whole parcel that included the mountain and about thirty acres adjoining it to the South. We sold, borrowed and mortgaged everything we had to buy it all including the mineral rights and began to mine the amethyst and build this house. We worked side by side day and night as close as we had ever been to accomplish everything you see today all around you. Four years later we paid off the entire mortgage and other bills from the mine profits and owned everything up here free and clear. Jim set up a trust for the boy to go to school and arranged a percentage of the mine profits to go to him for the rest of his life.
The only time I ever saw Jim hesitate about anything was the night before he left for the bank in Phoenix. He walked right in the middle of a holdup and got shot dead leaving me alone. I think he had a premonition of some sort. He sat down with me the night before it happened and told me where all the business papers were and how to deal with them in order. He said he recorded a box of movies and tapes explaining every aspect of own lives and business. I always though we were both indestructible before that but I forgot how bad things were when we were apart. I was crushed beyond belief. I stayed up here all by myself for months afterwards. I couldn't admit to myself that part of my own soul had been ripped away from me. I couldn't even deal with his family about it. He told me many times he never wanted anyone to see him dead in a box or carry on about it. He said I should just bury him in the back yard. In a way that's exactly what I did. I scattered him all around me on this mountain. He's here with me all the time. If things get too overbearing or stressful, I can put on one of the tapes and hear his confident soft Southern drawl and visit with him like he was. At other times I stand up on the balcony and talk to the emptiness and feel like he knows and understands. One of the things I miss the most is the cute way he used to say things, like keller for color and poke for a bag. He would say he'll carry you to the store instead of take you. All of those things made him special and different but real. He just seems to have gone into another challenging experience like I've seen him handle so successfully dozens of times before. I suppose that's probably why helping others to possibly find a connection like that is such a turn on for me.
The only thing I could say at this point in my life is that even if I tried I wouldn't find another human being who could feel or say more to me with a touch on my hair or guiding me along a path with ever so slight pressures of thumb and finger at the small of my back as a dozen other men could say with the words, flowers, mushy cards or poetry in the world. Jim could say more to me with a single long caressing gaze."
Marsha sighed and said, "My mom says the same things about him. He told her Gramma knew what she was doing when she taught her daughters about the beauties of nature along with the special plants, herbs, and old formulas she grew up with. He said you and my mom were getting younger looking and more beautiful every day. There was never any doubt of his love for you and all of mother natures wondrous ways and miraculous."
"I know your mother and I talk all the time about these things. Your dad was no slouch when it came to treating a woman right either. It's funny about Jim though, he planted those scrawny green apple trees for the deer years ago. We put salt licks out back and when it got close to winter we picked the last of the apples and put them on the ground for the animals. We even bought some from the store if the winter was heavy. Even now after all these years the deer and other animals come up to the back porch looking for him."
After an eternity of silence from the emotionally drained girls Lorili got up from the floor and said," Okay ladies, that's quite enough of the past. We have the future to work on." **************************

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Revised: date Aug.-1-1997
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