Juicy Secrets Forbidden Tales of Lesbian Love

For a list of the many characters who populate this saga, check out Dramatis Personae.

A brief summary of the previous chapter: In the village of Derwold, the summer holidays begin for the Newton girls. Eleven-year-old Freya struggles to cope with the changes that adolescence brings, and wonders why she feels so angry and alone. To add to her unhappiness, she experiences her first period.

And now, dear readers, we make our way into the next installment. Read on…

by BlueJean

Local residents have noticed a flurry of activity at the old Derwold Manor in recent days. The manor, which dates back to the Elizabethan era, has been left abandoned since the 1970s when the ancestral Derwold family became bankrupt. Ownership of the manor has always been unclear, with many believing local authorities took control of the property, others assuming the Derwold family still owns the estate. Either way, the new renovation work seems to indicate the old manor house may soon host a new family.

Article from the Derwold Gazette

1

Freya spent the first day of her summer holidays buying panty pads. Georgia had given her a couple to use, along with a hug and a few tears, but Freya decided to go up to the post office the next day and buy her own.

Her first period ended as quickly as it began, but the eleven-year-old wanted to be prepared for next time. Georgia told her it was a rite of passage for all young girls, and Freya did feel kind of grown-up about it, but honestly, it was hard to muster much enthusiasm about leaking blood. In truth, it had scared her a bit, not that she would ever admit that to anyone.

Mrs. Jeffries was restocking the shelves when Freya walked through the post office doors that morning. The postmistress was renowned for her wicked sense of humour, and usually her greetings went something like this: “What the bloody ‘ell do you want?!” or “Didn’t you see the sign outside? ‘No oompa loompas’ it says!” or “Nick anything and I’ll chop yer ‘ands off!” Or Freya’s personal favourite: “Shit in me shop and you’re cleaning it up!”

Today she turned to her young customer, rosy-faced and out of breath, and offered a simple, “‘Ello, Freya, ya little cowbag!”

“Hi, Mrs. Jeffries.”

“How ’bout this for an idea – You restock the shelves for me, and I’ll go and ‘ave a nice cup of tea and a lie down.”

“I think there are laws against child labour,” Freya told her with a smile. “I can’t, anyway. I’m going over to Sadie’s.”

“Fat lotta good you are.” Mrs. Jeffries climbed down from her step-stool and took her usual place behind the counter. “How come our Sadie ain’t sold that house of ‘ers, anyway? She’s been livin’ with you for the last six months, ain’t she?”

“Her cat refuses to move out,” Freya said, and it honestly was the best theory she had. It didn’t seem like a very good reason for not selling a house, though. Maybe Sadie was just attached to the old round cottage. She often referred to it as her ‘sanctuary’. It also happened to be the base of operations for witchcraft lessons. Freya couldn’t tell Mrs. Jeffries that, of course.

The postmistress didn’t seem convinced by the cat theory either. “Right…” She clapped her hands together in a down-to-business manner. “So what’ll it be, the usual? Gin? Ciggies? One ‘o them mucky magazines?”

Freya selected three of the freshly baked eccles cakes that Mrs. Jeffries kept stocked, dropping them into one of the paper bags that hung from a hook. She picked up a box of sanitary pads and put them on the counter along with the pastries. “Just those, please.”

The post mistress raised an eyebrow, then gave Freya’s hand a quick pat. “Ah, joined the menarche club, ‘ave we? I remember me first period – bled like a slaughtered pig, I did. Looked like I’d had a fight with an axe murderer.”

Freya gave the plump woman a horrified look, and Mrs. Jeffries realised too late how insensitive her words had been. “That mouth o’ yours is gonna get you into trouble one o’ these days, Sal,” her husband Jeff frequently reminded her. Truth was, barely a day went by without Sally Jeffries’ mouth getting her into trouble. Georgia patiently explained to the girls that their postmistress didn’t have a filter.

Mrs. Jeffries did her best to offer something more sympathetic. “Well, don’t suppose yours’ll be that bad, mind. And they’s always worse to start with.”

“Okay,” Freya said, taking a self-conscious nibble of one of the cakes. “Thanks?”

The shop bell gave a sharp tinkle and Freya turned to find a middle-aged woman standing in the doorway.

“Bloody ‘ell, it’s the Bride of Frankenstein!” Mrs. Jeffries blurted out, then slapped a hand across her mouth.

The woman’s frizzy red hair was tied back into a barely contained bun. Two flashes of white/grey streaked through the sides like the haphazard brush strokes of some frustrated artist. She was pretty, in a severe sort of way, and her clothes were smart and elegant. The attire of someone who has money to spare, Freya thought.

If the woman had heard Mrs. Jeffries’ comment, she chose to ignore it. “I hope I’m not intruding. My husband and I have just moved into the area, so I’ve been familiarising myself with the village.”

“Well, in that case, welcome to our neck o’ the woods,” Mrs. Jeffries offered. “I’m Sally, the postmistress. And this little sh— er, little poppet is Freya. Her mum’s the local beekeeper.”

“Hi,” Freya said, giving the woman a brief wave.

“It’s very nice to meet you both. I’m Elsa. Elsa Hart. My husband is Simon Derwold.”

“Derwold?” Freya said. “That’s the name of our village.”

The woman gave the eleven-year-old a thin smile, and for a brief moment Freya felt like a fly trapped in a web. “Your little village was named after my husband’s ancestors, in point of fact. I suppose officially he’s the current Lord Derwold, but there are some ongoing legal disputes that I won’t bore you with. We’ll be moving into the manor up on the hill.”

“But if he’s your husband, wouldn’t you be called Derwold too?” Freya pointed out.

“I happen to be rather attached to my own name,” Elsa said with a hint of haughty pride. “A woman taking her husband’s name is such an old fashioned idea, don’t you think?”

Freya had never thought much about it, but it did seem an odd thing to do, almost like a man was taking ownership of a woman instead of marrying her. “Yeah, I suppose,” she admitted. “It’s pretty cool that you kept your own name, actually.”

“The Derwolds are back…” Mrs. Jeffries muttered, then offered her rosiest smile. “I’m honoured to ‘ave you in my post office, m’lady. If you ever need anything, we’ve probably got it. We ain’t exactly M&S but we’re well stocked, at least.”

“Oh, none of that ‘m’lady’ tosh,” Elsa said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “Simon and I are very down to earth. We haven’t quite moved in yet, but once the manor is done up and fit for habitation, we plan to host a housewarming party. The whole village will be invited, of course. Spread the word.”

“I loves a good party!” a delighted Mrs. Jeffries announced, then gave her plump bottom a little shake. “You should see me dancin’ round me handbag. Best twerker in the village, I am!”

“Well, I certainly look forward to seeing that, Sally,” Elsa said with a chuckle. She offered Freya another smile, this one slightly warmer than the first, then glanced briefly down at the box of sanitary pads in her hand. “And I hope to see you and your family there too, young Freya.”

“I’ll let Mum know,” Freya replied.

Elsa browsed the shop while Mrs. Jeffries nattered away to her, finally selecting several items from the small delicatessen the shop boasted. Freya regarded the woman with great interest, trying not to be obvious about it.

Once the lady of the manor had made her purchases and departed, Freya turned to Mrs. Jeffries. “She seems nice.“ The postmistress seemed lost in thought. “Mrs. Jeffries? Earth to Mrs. Jeffries!”

“Hmm…? Put a sock in it, ya cheeky little trollop!”

***

Derwold’s most ancient oak tree continues to amaze with its inexplicable and apparently miraculous powers of regeneration. The tree, which is believed to be well over a thousand years old, was assumed to be dying. Not long after last year’s big summer storm, it began to display brand new growth. A year later and the oak is aglow with a lush green canopy and a healthy looking trunk. Local legend says an ancient forest spirit lives in the tree and protects the village. 

Article from the Derwold Gazette

2

“What do you see?”

“A tree.”

Sadie and Millie were sitting cross-legged on yoga mats in Sadie’s overgrown conservatory. These days, it was more like a jungle. The various herbs and plants the witch had cultivated over the years had exploded into bushes in recent months, and it was all Millie’s doing. Sadie didn’t know exactly how her young apprentice had achieved it, but she’d managed to draw more energy from the soil than it should have been able to give, then amplified it even further.

The basis of all Wiccan magic revolves around drawing power from the Earth, but witchcraft is supposed to be subtle – something to be nurtured over time. Nature can be manipulated, as any farmer or gardener knows, but the laws of science still apply. Everything has a finite supply of energy, or at least Sadie thought. Whatever Millie was doing was anything but subtle.

“A tree?”

“Yup,” said Millie matter-of-factly. “Isn’t that what you see?”

“I just follow the paths, really,” Sadie told her apprentice. “Most times they don’t reveal themselves until I need them.”

“I… I think the paths are the branches,” Millie explained tentatively. “And I’m the… the big bit.”

“The trunk?”

“The trunk, yeah.”

And there was another conundrum: Ancestral memories. They were supposed to be vague. If you didn’t understand that what you were experiencing were the memories of long dead ancestors locked inside your DNA, they could easily be misinterpreted in a number of ways – Déjà vu, ghost sightings, hallucinations. The memories took decades to master. Some witches had dedicated their entire lives to understanding and clarifying them. Apparently, Millie’s ancestral memories were laid out in front of her like a mood board.

“Can you follow one of the branches?” Sadie asked her.

“Any of them, I think.”

“Concentrate now. Pick a path and tell me what you see.”

Then all at once, Millie was inside Sadie’s head. Or perhaps she’d dragged Sadie inside hers. “It’s easier to show you. It’s an older memory, so we both have it.”

“Millie… wh-what’re you doing?!”

The clarity with which the image flooded Sadie’s mind was astounding. Whoever’s eyes they were looking through was sitting in what looked like the mouth of a huge cavern. The woman was grinding some kind of seed on a flat rock with a smaller, hand-held stone. Her hands were marked with the rough skin and callouses of daily toil.

There were others there, too. They were dark-skinned, African for certain, but their faces were strangely robust and archaic – not quite human, or not long human. They were laughing and smiling. There were words, but the words were simple; guttural.

All other memories stemmed from this one, and with sudden breathtaking realisation, Sadie understood its significance. This was not branch, or even trunk. This was the root. This ancient woman whose eyes looked out onto a world that had long since moved on was Mitochondrial Eve. The Mother of Humanity.

Of course, Sadie knew it wasn’t that straightforward. If the current ancestral line became broken, another woman from the prehistoric past would claim the title of Mitochondrial Eve. But it was easy to get caught up in the romance of it. To see through the eyes of this prehistoric woman was incredible. Overwhelming, actually. She was beginning to feel an acute nausea.

“Millie… stop now. It’s too much…”

And just like that, Sadie was back in her overgrown conservatory. Her cat familiar, Billy Buckham, sat before them, purring so loudly Sadie swore she could feel it vibrating through the ornate mosaic floor. She turned to Millie. “I think we need to establish a few rules regarding entering people’s heads without permission.”

“Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Just warn me before you try something like that.”

Freya let herself into the conservatory, and Billy waltzed over to greet her like a feline butler. She knelt down to scratch him behind his ears and he offered a low growl. “Oh, stop playing hard to get,” she told the grumpy tom cat. “You know you like me.”

“I thought you weren’t coming,” Millie said to her sister.

Freya gave a shrug. “I changed my mind.”

“Are you feeling better this morning?” Sadie asked. Georgia had told her about Freya’s first period, and she could see for herself how down the eleven-year-old had been of late. Sadie wanted her to know it wasn’t something that needed to be hidden, that it was okay to talk about. She also had a cunning plan to lift her mood.

“Yeah. Thanks for asking,” Freya replied, sitting herself down on a vacant yoga mat.

“What’s in there?” Millie asked, trying to peek into her sister’s shopping bag.

Freya pulled out the smaller paper bag and shared its contents. “Cakes. I’ll bet even witches get hungry sometimes.”

She put the bigger hemp bag down on the floor and discreetly pulled the sides down to reveal a box of sanitary towels. Sadie briefly considered imparting the words, Whoop whoop! Panty pads are cooool! before realising her street cred would hit rock bottom and probably never recover. She offered Freya a smile instead.

The cakes were sweet and delicious, and they devoured them with gusto. Energy levels restored, the three of them set about studying something a little more approachable than ancestral memories.

“Today…” Sadie announced with more pause than was strictly warranted, “…we are going to make a love potion.”

“A what?!” Millie said, wide-eyed.

Freya gave a small snigger. “That sounds like something they’d do in a Disney movie. I don’t think love potions are an actual thing.”

Hands on hips, Sadie gave the eleven-year-old a stern look. The problem was, something always seemed to get lost in translation and it just ended up making her look constipated instead. She had no idea this was the case until Georgia pointed it out.

“Oh, Freya Newton, ye of little faith! Love potions are indeed a thing, and have been a thing for a long time. A very potent thing, if brewed correctly.” She paused before adding, “I shall stop saying thing now.”

“Does it make you love someone?” Millie asked, and it was a reasonable enough question.

“Not exactly, despite the name. Love potions promote a feeling of wellbeing and calm. And, er… they may have some aphrodisiacal qualities as well.”

“Afro…” Millie began.

“She means a sex aid. Like Viagra,” Freya explained in the tones of a worldly woman who’s been there and done that.

“Enough chatter, my apprentices! Freya, fetch some dried jasmine, rose petals, a vanilla pod, and a cinnamon stick. Millie, prepare the distilling apparatus!”

“Do you mean the camp stove?”

“Indeed I do!”

“You don’t need to be so melodramatic,” Freya said, trying her best to pretend she wasn’t having fun.

“Silence! My ingredients, if you please!”

Freya made her selections from Sadie’s well-stocked shelf of jars and bottles while Millie placed the small portable stove on the conservatory floor, then put a small receptacle partially filled with spring water on top. It was shaped like a cauldron and cost £19.99 from Amazon. Some might have called it a novelty pot, but Sadie would have vehemently disagreed with that assessment. It was made of metal. It was cauldron-shaped. And Sadie was a witch. Therefore, it was a witches’ cauldron. End of.

Freya measured out the ingredients according to Sadie’s instructions. When the water had reached boiling point, she tipped them into the cauldron. Sadie brought the liquid down to a simmer, letting it tick away for a few minutes before allowing it to cool.

Next, the witch fetched her antique potion bottles from the top shelf. They had once belonged to her great-great-great Aunt Muriel, a bonafide professionally trained witch during the Victorian era. It had taken a great deal of persuasion to convince Sadie’s mum – who kept them in a glass cabinet in the kitchen – to part with them.

Sadie had Freya strain the liquid through muslin cloth, then funnel it into one of the small bottles. Millie stoppered the finished potion with a cork. They could have left it at that and it still would’ve qualified as a love potion. But a witch’s love potion required an extra touch of magic.

Teacher and apprentices filtered out into the garden, where Sadie handed Millie the potion. “You know what to do. Do you remember the incantation?”

Millie nodded. She knelt on the grass and placed her free hand on the ground. “Imbue an potion seo le cumhacht an domhain!”

The liquid in the bottle bubbled alarmingly for a second or two, then was still. Sadie hadn’t seen a potion imbued with earth magic behave quite that violently before. More often than not, it entered the liquid with a mere ripple. “Try not to make my nice antique bottle implode, thank you very much,” she cautioned.

“It is done!” Millie hollered, the potion held aloft proudly. Sadie very much approved of her sense of the dramatic, but Freya evidently felt it deserved one of her patented eye-rolls.

“Very good,” Sadie said. “Now let us return to the atelier and sample our potion!”

“God, it’s like someone forced me to appear in a Shakespeare play as punishment,” Freya muttered as they made their way indoors.

I should have been more responsible, Sadie would consider later. Should’ve insisted on tiny sips instead of gulping down the entire potion. If she had any defense, it was that the ingredients weren’t in any way dangerous – they were natural and safe, not even a hint of anything that could be construed as narcotic. And yes, she felt a bit cowardly blaming her eight-year-old student and apprentice, but it was Millie’s fault. It was her magic that made the potion so potent.

Georgia’s words to Sadie when she first took the girls on as apprentices haunted her that day: “Please don’t poison my children or anything, okay?“

Millie. “I feel funny…”

Freya. “Ooooh, floaty…”

Sadie. “Oh dear…”

Millie clambered up onto Sadie’s tattered couch and into her lap. She slung her arms around the witch’s neck. “Is this what being drunk feels like?”

“What did you do to the potion…?” Sadie heard someone ask, then realised it was her.

Everything was inexplicably amplified – colours were brighter, sounds were clearer, smell was sharper. And… well, it was a love potion, wasn’t it?

“Cuddle me,” Millie demanded of her teacher.

“It’s all pink…” Freya said, gazing around in amazement. “And fluffy. Is it supposed to be pink and fluffy?”

Sadie was acutely aware of the warm weight pressing against her body, and the sweet scent that accompanied it. She cupped Millie’s buttocks and drew her closer. “Give me a nice kiss and I’ll give you a cuddle.”

“But you’re already cuddling me.”

“You owe me a kiss, then.”

Millie wrapped her arms around Sadie’s neck and kissed her, tongue slipping easily into the witch’s mouth. The youngster had never tasted so sweet to Sadie, like rainbow-flavoured candy. When she felt her apprentice fumbling at her shirt buttons, she helped with the remaining few, then watched as the eight-year-old scooped out her breasts from the lacy confines of her bra. Transfixed, Millie toyed with the fleshy pillows for a while, then helped herself to a nipple aperitif.

The conservatory seemed to pulse around them, the glass expanding and contracting, as if they were inside some living, breathing creature.

“Would you like to suck one too, Freya?” Sadie heard herself ask.

“Ahhh… I’d rather lick your pussy,” Freya crooned, already pulling Sadie’s trousers and panties down her legs.

Sadie kicked the garments away, glad to be free of them. She spread herself wide for Freya, hoisting Millie up to make room for her sister. Millie, now practically sitting on her mentor’s tits, must have thought Sadie’s intention was to have her pussy in her face. She stood up to pull down her shorts and knickers, then thrust her smooth mound against Sadie’s mouth. Snaking her tongue out, Sadie was amazed to find she could visualise the taste, although if pressed, she would never have been able to describe it.

Freya used two fingers to prise her teacher’s pussy open, her tongue darting in and out of Sadie’s cunt like a hummingbird sipping from a flower.

Sadie’s orgasm arrived without much warning, a searing white hot wave that caused her body to arch spasmodically. For one brief, peculiar moment, she was struck by the utterly unfamiliar sensation of time coming to a stop before threatening to continue in reverse. Like a rubber band that’s reached the limits of its elasticity, the young witch was catapulted back to the here and now with a desperate wail. “Holy shit!“

Even after an orgasm of such intensity, Sadie found herself still ravenous for more. “Into my bedroom, both of you,” she told the girls in the no-nonsense tone employed when someone was misbehaving in class.

The three of them hastened into Sadie’s room, Millie and Freya now clad in nothing but their socks and sneakers, Sadie completely naked.

“Bend over my bed,” Sadie demanded. “Then play with each other’s pussies while I put my stockings on.”

Sadie had always loved the feel of lingerie against her skin. It felt especially sexy at school, and most days she would sit at her desk and run her fingers over the smooth nylon. She’d recently managed to persuade Georgia to doll herself up the same way, and more than once, they’d both slipped into their intimate things for a night of fun with the two little ones.

A shame Millie and Freya didn’t come wearing their school uniforms, Sadie mused. She’d long harboured one very particular fantasy, in which a pretty young lesbian teacher takes two of her little charges home for some ‘extra tuition’. One day she would act out that scenario in full, perhaps with Georgia playing the role of mother-who-likes-to-watch.

Sadie pulled on a pair of sheer thigh stockings, then slipped into her heels. She approached the girls, still bent over the bed, the two of them giggling away while they toyed with one another. “Hands to your sides,” she demanded, and the two of them quickly complied.

She reached out to caress their bare bottoms in turn, squeezing and massaging the pliant flesh before sinking to her knees and spreading Freya’s arse cheeks open. Unconcerned with any notion of dignity, Sadie lapped at her like a dog, drawing her tongue up and down the entirety of the eleven-year-old’s crack from slit to anus. Then she switched to Millie, giving the younger sister the same lustful attention.

Sadie fed her hunger for a few blissful minutes, dipping greedily between the two girls. But her own need had grown too acute to ignore, so she found her feet and gave each of their bums a swat. “I need you both to make me come. Think you can do that?”

“Yes, Miss Laine,” the girls chanted, falling easily back into the role of obedient students at their teacher’s assertive tone. Sadie had never exactly been strict in class, but she had always commanded a certain respect from the children in her care.

Sadie climbed onto the bed, spreading herself out upon the satin sheets. She had Millie straddle her so they were both mouth to pussy, then instructed Freya to position herself between her legs so she and her sister could both eat their teacher out. Sadie slung her legs across the bed, then spread Millie open to get at the tender flesh of her sex.

Hard to say how long they remained tangled together that way, since their perception of time had become equally as skewed as their perception of reality. At some point, Millie came in Sadie’s mouth while Sadie allowed her own climax to wash over her. Then Freya mounted one of her teacher’s stockinged legs and rubbed her pussy against it until she came, too.

The three of them lay tangled atop Sadie’s bed, dazed and exhausted.

The effects of the potion seemed to wear off as quickly as they had arrived – the fleeting dissipation of magic rather than the slow retreat of narcotic substances.

“We probably shouldn’t mention this to your mum,” Sadie cautioned the girls.

She hated lying to Georgia, but choosing not to volunteer certain information didn’t really qualify as lying, did it? And besides, she didn’t want to worry her girlfriend. Georgia still wasn’t fully on board with the whole Wiccan thing, and it was understandable after everything that happened the previous year. It hadn’t been the ideal introduction to the world of the arcane.

The irony was that Sadie could beat herself up over not telling Georgia about a harmless little potion, but she had no reason at all to hide the fact that she’d just had sex with her lover’s two preteen daughters. That was the new normal for the four of them these days. Stranger than magic.

***

Big cat sightings in Derwold and its surrounding areas have increased in recent weeks. Several eyewitnesses have reported seeing large black panther-like creatures, some even providing mobile phone footage, usually grainy and shot at too much of a distance to prove conclusive. The jury is still out on whether these big cat rumours, which have become ingrained into British folklore, are real or imagined. 

Article from the Derwold Gazette

3

While Freya and Sadie headed back to Beekeeper Cottage, Millie made her weekly pilgrimage to Mr. Dalliard’s grave.

The cemetery was a place of quiet contemplation for the eight-year-old. She’d sit and talk to her old friend, telling him about recent events at school, or keeping him up to date with her Wiccan lessons.

She didn’t think he could actually hear her – the last time she’d seen Mr. Dalliard alive, his spirit had somehow found its way inside a stag, and she was sure he’d since moved on – but it was nice to chat with him anyway. She could almost imagine him chipping in with the occasional, “Oh, aye? Sounds like a right kerfuffle!” Or, “Crikey, nipper. You go easy there, won’t ya?”

Millie missed the old man. Desperately so, sometimes. It was like reaching out for something that wasn’t there anymore, but somehow you still expect to find it in your hand.

Today she was telling him about the start of their summer holidays. She also told him about the love potion, but left out the rude parts – Mr. Dalliard didn’t need to know about that.

“Freya said it was my fault. She said I did something wrong when I was imbuing the potion, so I told her it was her fault because she was the one who picked the ingredients, and she probably didn’t get the measurements right.”

As she nattered away, Millie carefully deadheaded the roses that adorned Mr. Dalliard’s last place of rest, the way Mum had taught her. She’d planted the rose last year, just after he’d passed away, but the groundsman had told her off for it, explaining that only loose flowers and gifts were to be left at the graveside. Millie didn’t like cut flowers, though – why sever something from the earth when you knew it would shrivel and die? Seemed totally stupid to her. She’d told the groundsman as much, and added that she didn’t care if it was allowed or not, and that if he dared dig up her rose she’d put poo through his letterbox. He’d left the rose alone.

“And Sadie was all quiet,” Millie continued, “and she was giving me this funny look, like she agreed with what Freya was saying, and I said to her that she should’ve checked we were doing it right ’cause she’s, like, the teacher? And that’s, like, her job? You know? And then Sadie said that we should all calm down and have some of her homemade lemonade, so we did. The lemonade was nice, actually. Sadie puts our honey in to make it sweeter. I’ll be back in a minute, I’m just going to get the watering can, okay?”

Millie was filling up the watering can from the tap on the back wall of the church when something crept out of the trees and stalked towards her, its head low to the ground, unerring yellow eyes fixed sharply on her. Millie caught the movement from the corner of her eye, and thought at first that it was Billy Buckham, wondering why Sadie’s cat had followed her here. She quickly realised it was far too big to be Billy.

As it moved closer, the dark shape projected a thought that solidified into a single irrefutable word inside Millie’s mind.

Prey.

“Huh?”

The creature threaded through the gravestones, silent as an assassin. It was a cat, Millie had been right about that. Just not one that had any business prowling the English countryside. It looked for all the world like a black panther. No. It was a black panther.

Prey.

Millie slowly sidled along the church wall, away from the approaching animal. “Where did you come from?”

Stand still, prey. Hungry.

“Uh… I’m not food, okay?”

Prey. Food.

Not prey. The thought rippled out from Millie before she had time to consider how she’d managed it.

The panther stopped in its tracks. The prey didn’t usually talk back. It didn’t smell much like prey, either. It smelled like the green female that dwelled in the forest. Old and dangerous.

Not prey?

Millie pushed the thought out again, stronger this time, a wave instead of a ripple.

Not. Prey.

The big cat moved back a few steps, unsure.

Emboldened, Millie added, Maybe you’re my prey, kitty cat…

The thing turned and ran, disappearing back into the trees.

“Hey, I was only joking!”

A hand fell on Millie’s shoulder, startling her. “Are you all right, child?”

Millie nearly jumped out of her skin. “Waaaaah!”

The vicar pulled his hands away as if he’d been burnt, holding them up in a gesture of surrender. “No, no, no, there’s no need for alarm! Shhh! I won’t touch you anymore, I promise! See? I’m not touching you!”

He had no intention of getting himself into trouble again this late in his tenure. The bishop had managed to pull some strings last time, but it’d been a close call. Too close. It just wasn’t worth it this near to retirement, especially as he hadn’t actually done anything to the girl.

“It’s okay, you just scared me a bit,” Millie told him. “There was a big panther that wanted to eat me, but I scared it off. Did you see it?”

Best to humour the girl. She was a tad strange, the vicar had noticed. “No, I’m afraid not. Would you like to come back to the vicarage with me? I have ice cream.” Good God, what was he saying! Now wasn’t the time for the old chat-up lines!

“No thanks,” Millie told him, picking up the overflowing watering can with both hands. “I need to water Mr. Dalliard’s grave and then I’m going home. Bye.”

“Y-yes, no, that’s… that’s for the best, I’m sure. Quite the relief, in truth… You carry on, Millie. Don’t let me hold you up. Praise the Lord!”

When Millie looked back over her shoulder, the vicar was gone. She was glad – she could see exactly what he was thinking when he ogled her with those beady little eyes. Yuck!

She found herself peering into the trees where the panther had vanished. What a strange encounter. Where on earth had such a creature come from? She could only think it had escaped from a nearby zoo, unless someone had been keeping it as a pet. Were people even allowed to keep panthers as pets?

As she made ready to leave, a subtle change in the air alerted Millie’s senses to some other presence. Beneath the forest of stone sentinels, the dead stirred. She could feel their restlessness, hear their whispers. They were the ones who had never moved on – the frightened and the confused, spirits entirely unaware that they had died.

She wondered what’d roused them. Was it still possible to send these poor souls onwards, the way Sadie had sent Isabel on? Her fingers tingled madly, primed for that very task, but Sadie had told her she wasn’t ready to perform The Sending yet. It was advanced witchcraft, and Millie was but an apprentice.

So she left the dead to their madness and headed home.

Soon to come: Chapter Three!