The Return of the Witch Read Online Free PDF

respected, held in high esteem, you might say. He officiated at ceremonies with great dignity, upheld the Druidic laws, and gave counsel to those who traveled to sit at his feet, bringing their problems to him for a solution.”
    â€œSounds … great,” I said uncertainly.
    â€œTrouble was,” he went on, “Gwynfor was not a true believer.”
    â€œHe wasn’t?”
    â€œOh, he knew all he had to know, could recite creeds and prayers and so forth and so on until the cows came home. And, had you asked him, he would have told you he believed in the divine ruler with all his heart and all his mind and all his soul. But…” Here the old man paused, puffing deeply on his pipe, eyes half closed, lost in thought.
    â€œBut?…” I tried to nudge him on with his story.
    â€œHe didn’t believe in himself.”
    â€œOh.”
    More silence followed. A seagull soared past on its way to the southern nesting sites.
    The old man shook his head. “All that knowledge, all that learning, all that wisdom, and he couldn’t see how he fitted into it. He was nothing more than a walking library, a collection of information for others to come and pick and choose from whenever they wanted. He missed the whole point of it all. Missed the true value of the gifts he had been blessed with.”
    â€œHe did?”
    â€œHe couldn’t see that he wasn’t simply a keeper of that learning, he was that learning. Himself. You could no more separate it from him or him from it than you could snatch the reflection of the moon from the surface of a pond.”
    He turned to look at me then, nodding slowly as if he had explained everything perfectly clearly and I was supposed to understand. But I didn’t. Not really. Not until he asked, “And how about you, Tegan? Are you just a store cupboard for all that you have learned, or have you become all that you have learned?”
    The intensity of his gaze was unnerving.
    â€œHow did you know I was here?” I asked at last, unable to hold back from questioning him any longer. “And why did you come? And how did you get here? I didn’t hear a boat…”
    He stood up and stepped closer to the cliff top. I instinctively got to my feet and followed him. He looked so flimsy I was worried he might just teeter over the edge. He didn’t seem at all bothered by being only inches from falling to certain death. He wasn’t even looking at the crumbly bit of path he was standing on. He was still looking at me.
    â€œThere is such a magic inside of you, Tegan. Your breath carries magic onto the zephyr, your pores ooze magic onto your skin, your soul thrums with magic, indeed, your very bones vibrate with it. And still you do not believe, not in yourself. It is up to you to accept the gifts given you, child. It is up to you to revel in your own unique power. And when you do, when that moment of epiphany comes, you will be all that you can be. You will be Tegan Hedfan—The Fair One Who Flies.”
    â€œBut, I…”
    I never finished that sentence. With a strength and a speed I could not have believed the old man capable of, he stepped forward and, in one determined movement, pushed me off the top of the cliff.
    And I fell.
    And as I fell thoughts tumbled through my mind—questions, curses, prayers, cries of regret and panic and fear and sadness, all jumbled and whirling in the blink of an eye. And all the while I fell, faster and faster, the sharp granite cliffs flashing past me or me flashing past them; me hurtling toward the cruel rocks or them rushing up to meet me. Either seemed possible in that terrifying moment. All good sense, all ideas of the way things should be, or how the day was meant to go, or what fate had written for me, all that fell away to nothing as I fell toward my death. And I heard the shaman I had trekked across Siberia to find chanting. And I heard the Hoodoo witch from Louisiana