Wanted to share my newest WIP. I've been having fun working on this and it feels so so good. It's just what I've been missing. Below is an excerpt (rough draft) of my newest work-in-progress, NEW AVALON.
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NEW AVALON
Journal Entry: February 1994
~ Sometime after midnight
Led Zeppelin blasted out of the radio as I made my way over the Salem/Beverly Bridge. Robert Plant and I sang in harmony as my right hand tapped the steering wheel in steady rhythm to Bonzo’s drum beat. My jeep chugged along and soon neared the bottom of the bridge. I maneuvered into the right hand lane and travelled down route 1A or as us locals call it, Bridge Street. Nearing the turn onto Winter I noticed the green streetlight up ahead. Before I could increase pressure on the gas pedal to speed up and plow through the light, it quickly turned yellow then red then back to green, all within mere seconds. It did this twice more then stopped.
That’s when IT happened.
Everything around me went instantaneously black. My immediate thought: Shit! Power outage. I continued on but noticed no other cars on the road. Also, there were no people milling about, which was odd for a Friday night in Salem, Massachusetts. Right then I realized something else. I had been so intent on what was going on outside the jeep that I hadn’t noticed inside. The music had stopped. I pushed every preset button on the radio and found nothing but static coming over the air waves. It was eerie. Scary eerie. The only thing moving in the dark was my car and of course, IT; a massive, swirling white matter that hurtled up, from out of nowhere, blanketing the jeep and reaching upward for the stars.
I stopped and parked the Wrangler smack dab right in the middle of Bridge Street. That’s when I felt the vibrations. At first I thought it was an earthquake then I realized it wasn’t the road shaking – it was me! I couldn’t stop. The internal vibration was an intense, continuous energy coursing through every part of my body making me feel as if I could shoot to the moon and beyond. There was a buzzing sound in my ear too. You know the kind, like when a bee passes to close to your ear, or the sound a hummingbird makes as it whizzes past. That’s what was needling into my brain. Neither would stop. In fact, it was getting worse.
Between the mind-numbing buzz and the adrenaline pushing energy, I thought my body was going to explode. IT was intense. I got out of the car and in the darkness I saw my body glowing. My aura was a myriad of shades ending with a blue tinged white. The glowing concerned me and I was shocked by the fact that I was buzzing and charged with energy. Right then I was the epitome of a human lightning bolt. If I touched something right then, they’d be electrified or burnt for sure.
The sensations running through my body at that moment were like none I’d ever felt. First, there had been the fire within me. A consuming heat so intense it threatened to set me aflame. Then there was the warm coolness of a turbulent wind, like an angry vortex was spiraling out of control inside me. It shook my body in an uncontrolled fit then immediately stopped only to be replaced by an intense dryness and heaviness. It felt as if sand was filling my entire body, as though I were an hourglass with my time running out. When it reached my lungs I began to cough and sputter; I was suffocating, but on what? That sensation was immediately replaced by a sense of liquid rushing through my veins. My blood seemed to thin to water. When I moved I could hear the sloshing within. The fluid was pulsating through me. I fell to my knees and begged for whatever it was to stop.
Oh, please. Someone, anyone…make it stop.
IT did.
Ask and you will receive. It was odd. I still felt the energy and vibratory hum, but it was soft, tolerable. I looked myself over and found I was still intact but filled now with immense peace. A sense of love, unity and oneness with the world enveloped me. I smiled. My senses became sharp and crisp. Right then, it seemed as if the universe had kissed me on my third eye, opening it to see the world in front of me but in a whole new way.
The tree on the corner was no longer just a tree but an entity. A living, breathing species that would tell you its tales if you stopped to listen, and I did. I heard its whispers. The majestic oak was happy, as was the elm, and the willow. They conversed. And, I could hear them!
“Welcome home,” they said in unison.
I paused. I wasn’t home yet. Unconcerned by my pause or thoughts they moved their wondrous branches to and fro as they giggled and laughed happily. I sniffed as the acrid smell of smoke and incense wafted through the air. Familiar smells to my awakening senses, but where was it coming from? I looked up to see if I could see the smoke but what greeted my eyes instead was some kind of spectral field. Almost imperceptible to the eye but yet, I could see it. A clear film of sorts, that arched high and as far into the darkness of the night sky as I could see. It reminded me of a liquid bubble. Iridescent yet, around its outer edge was a white-blue that shimmered. An energy field. I felt its vibration and hum. Boy had I felt it. I gazed up in wonderment - I was baffled.
What was it?
~ ~ ~
Journal Entry: March 20, 2012
IT was the beginning.
The rebirth of the auld fused together with the new. Of time gone backwards then brought forward sparkling to those that believed in magic.
I was chosen to journal all that was it, and what it was to become – New Avalon. A township of mystical, magical people set on the wondrous path of resurrecting an old place in time where peace, unity and the ways of the gods and goddesses were worshipped and revered. The witches of Salem, and the world over, had enough. Persecution still existed even though the witch trials ended decades ago. Outsiders don’t understand and probably never would. It was easier for them to frown upon, cast angry glances or fear the witch then it was to take time too understand.
Longing for the days of auld, where magical abilities were honed and used in society, witches far and wide stood together and sent their energies to those in Salem who raised the luminescent energy sphere. The time had come to bring it all back. And, that is just what happened.
As most do here, I remember the night it happened. The awe and fear as the elemental forces passed through me. The wonder and thrill of having my sixth sense opened and attuned to everything around me. To feel alive and know that what was happening was a good thing. And for some time it was good. I say was, because time has a way of changing people and their ways. I understand now why the legends and lore of the fae, pegasi, elves and such disappeared. Why the Avalon of auld escaped into the mists. It was people’s blood-lust for power that destroyed it.
Witches have been persecuted because they hold the unknowable power. Most people thrive on power. Those that don’t have it - want it; and those that do, always want more. Both parties will do anything to get their hands on it. This was the downfall of Avalon, and now possibly of New Avalon. I can save it, but the question I ask myself, do I want to?
Do I want to save a place where chaos now reigns? Hexes, spells and potions are everywhere. There are outcasts within New Avalon hiding their abilities from the power hungry. The once open place of unity, love and peace has all been shattered to oblivion. The outsiders have been waiting for this. They wanted us to fail. To see our protective shield shattered so they can laugh and point their judgmental fingers at what we’ve done to ourselves. We are hanging our own witches, not by the nooses hung on Gallows Hill, but by our own inability to share and stay at peace with one another. Old habits die hard.
In a society filled with mystics, surely they foresaw this. I did. But then I’m a believer in fate, hope, love and all things good. I believed we could change the future of New Avalon if we stopped what was coming. Nobody believed me about her until it was too late. The high priestess, Annwyn; power flowed to her, and she liked it – too much. Annwyn wanted it all and she didn’t care what she did to possess it. She would be New Avalon's downfall.
There’s a fine line between good and evil. It’s delicate, a gossamer thread. To make New Avalon work we all had to stay in balance. But alas the wheels of fate turn, and like everything that is, you cannot have one thing without another. With good there must be bad – as above, so below – it was only a matter of time. No one in the Circle of Nine ever wondered or asked, how do we handle evil when it comes? I did, as it was what I foresaw. I saw the evil no one dared to speak of. Now that it’s here, they say I can stop it. I can bring back the harmony we once had. I’m not so sure about that.
My fear is that my choices don’t matter, that it is now out of my hands. New Avalon is bigger than anything we ever dreamed possible. Building a bridge into the portal of a closed world was not wise. Avalon and all its mysterious secrets shrouded itself from mankind for a reason.
Annwyn’s plan to use her power to cross over and open the portal door frightened the beejeezus out of me because the only thing standing between Annwyn and the Avalon of auld, are Tavish and Eithne - my children. She wants them. Alive, if she can have it. Dead would work just as well. But dead doesn’t work for me, and the only way to keep my children safe is to get them back into the outer zone. They are sixteen now, the legal age in New Avalon, and they’ve informed me they aren’t going back. They are staying put.
Now, I’ve never lied to them but I’ve never given them the whole truth either, as some things are better off left unsaid. Though, it stands to reason, that when you’re the journal master that someday they might find out the whole truth. Right now Eithne, my wild tempest, is angry with me. Even Tavish, her twin and the peacemaker, is unhappy. “How could I not tell them? How could I keep this big secret from them?” I can only stare at my children and think, how could I not! They have no idea what they’re up against. I do. And, I want my children to live. What mother wouldn’t?
Tavish and Eithne left the outer zone and came back to the place of their birth. The place I took them from sixteen years ago. By crossing through the zone they are now marked. Annwyn’s eyes are everywhere. She would know they were here and send her leeches to find them. It was up to me to keep them safe and I got the twins off the streets of New Avalon. It meant having to go down below, down with the other outcasts. If there was anywhere we stood a chance at being protected, the vaults under the cemetery were it. The outcasts knew my secret, and now that Tavish and Eithne knew it too, I felt they should read the journals. All was not what it appeared and they needed to read the truth.
I could only hope that after reading the journals they would want to return to the outer zone, but that wasn’t the case. It made them want to save this township even more. And, they were still mad at me. I had not prepared them for the battle yet to come.
How could I tell them that I had been shown two visions; in one they were trained for battle but they died, and in the other they were untrained and living in the outer zone - very much alive. As their mother I chose the second vision for them. I wanted them to know peace, happiness and love; not the craziness under the bubble. I smuggled my children out of New Avalon so they could live, and now sixteen years later they have come back here. And, I fear it is to die.
