Work In Progress #19: Starwitch #2

"I declare to all: if any of you ever harms so much as one hair on the heads of my daughters, I will return as a vengeful spirit, with bloody intention to wipe out this entire village, guilty and innocent alike, because evil triumphs when good men do nothing!"

  – Erika Blackwell, the mother of Amelia, an Excerpt from Starwitch.

Starwitch is a novel about space-faring witches that I plan to release first as a web series, then for sale in online stores.

You can read short summaries of each day's writing on Mastodon.

Here's a list of previous blog entries on this work in progress novel, in order from oldest to newest:

• Starwitch #1

Chapter 3: Steam Without Flame

Most of this chapter was descriptive details on Amelia's projects, to slowly demonstrate what she can do, despite her primitive surroundings.

Amelia is 14 in this chapter and now has a small shack to work in. She pays for things by making and selling high-quality steel ingots to the village smith.

She's working on parts for a steam engine that lacks a firebox, a series of metal plates she's chiseling runes into, including the runes for 'metal', 'boil' and 'water'.

She finishes her work, assembles the plates with some rods to form something reminiscent of a heat sink, though with larger gaps between the plate. She pours some water on it, which boils off as if the metal was hot, though it's cool to the touch.

I imagine the runes to be the written form of the language of magic, which just about anyone can use, though they need the right knowledge to make use of it: only runes marking metal and stone will work, because metal and stone act as mediums in which magic condenses.

Any previously living material, like wood or paper, will fail, because dead things strive to live again and use up the magic in that attempt. Effectively, this means dead wood is very slightly zombie (maybe about 0.001%).

Marta (Amelia's oldest sister) joins her, curious to see what she's working on and they have a brief discussion of runes covering the above information. It's stated that Marta's husband died around the time Amelia was four years old. She's 12 years older than Amelia. Marta is a rather large woman and built like a lumberjack, but she's not unattractive.

After they're done talking, Amelia puts the enchanted device inside the little engine's steam chamber and seals it. She fills it with water and the belt wheel on the side spins, demonstrating that it works. Thus, Amelia is capable of making extremely compact steam engines with a level of power that rivals that of a modern gasoline engine.

Marta asks what's next and Amelia says she needs a carriage. Marta is confused, because they don't even own a horse, but Amelia insists she needs only the carriage.

In the next scene, months have passed and Amelia has heavily modified a carriage into a horseless carriage and her sisters help her mount a heavy, magic-powered steam engine to the frame.

Amelia's Sister, Iris, is described. She's a little taller than their mother, who's average height. She's also exceptionally beautiful. Her personal history is briefly illuminated as part of her description.

She'd been engaged to the mayor's son, but just days after they announced this to the whole village, he was murdered. It isn't entirely clear how he died, though he was tied to a tree and wolves got him. It isn't stated whether the wolves killed him or just ate him.

Iris has been very sad for the past three years, due to losing her betrothed.

With the work done, their mother gives them a picnic basket of food and the three of them head off for a test drive, with Iris in the driver's seat. She turns out to be a crazy speed-demon and smiles for the first time in years.

Unknown to our main characters, the local smith and his son, both named Rolf Mossflaw (senior and junior, to be clear), were sneaking onto their land while they drove off. The two of them witness the horseless carriage and Rolf senior concludes that it's witchcraft, despite multiple attempts to justify it as non-magical.

Eventually, the lack of smoke from the steam engine's firebox (it doesn't even have one, but he doesn't know that) forces him to accept the idea it's magic.

The smith and his son head back to the village, to "do the right thing" and tell the mayor, even though they don't want to.

Chapter 4: A Terrible Choice

Erika, Amelia's mother, is at home, working to prepare ingredients for potions, since healing potions are how the family made their money before Amelia started making steel.

Her husband, Tim, is a woodcutter, but it's a weekend and he's taken a day off to spend time with his wife, though he's fallen asleep in a rocking chair.

There's a heavy knock on the door, far too loud to be a social visit and Erika concludes the mayor is back to accuse her of being a witch, for the sixteenth time, even though it has been more than a decade since he last accused her.

The mayor once witnessed her using magic while he was drunk and has never let the subject go.

Tim wakes and offers to beat the man, but Erika decides another round of intellectual jousting will be enough to take care of the problem, so he sits down again. In other words, she decides to handle it herself, since the mayor is an idiot and she normally runs mental circles around him.

She opens the door and Mayor Godfrey Rumblecleaver points the accusatory finger, saying, "She's a witch! I've seen it with my own eyes! This woman, Erika Blackwell, has had congress with the devil! I saw her dance in the forest, naked, alongside a demon!"

He has an entire lynch mob with him, including his deputy. The mayor is, by ignorant and stupid tradition (according to Erika's internal monologue) also sheriff and judge, though he's bound by law to follow certain procedures.

This involves giving the accused witch a chance to refute his claims.

As an avid reader, Amelia has both read and understood the village's entire law book, having committed it to memory, consequently making the mayor look like a fool once already. She also taught her mother something: the law book says accusations require two or three witnesses.

Erika points this out, so the mayor provides another witness: the village moonshiner and local drunkard, who claims he saw Erika dance naked with a goat-horned demon!

Erika remembers the only occasion she saw him that week, in which he was drunk off his butt and likely hallucinating, so she isn't surprised he imagined her naked and a passing goat as a demon.

She asks the crowd to raise their hands if they believe the man to be a reliable witness when he's drunk, which is basically whenever he's awake. No one raises a hand.

Likewise, she refutes the mayor's claim, because everyone knows how drunk he was the night in question, which was when Erika was 15. She's now 42.

The incident took place during a harvest festival and moonshine had been freely available. The young man that later became the mayor had been drinking heavily, despite the fact he'd never had any alcohol before.

The smith, Rolf, steps up next, reluctantly telling the tale of seeing Erika's daughters drive a bewitched carriage. They argue for a time and he presents his irrefutable, expert opinion that it could only have been magically-powered.

Erika demands a second witness and Rolf junior confirms the story.

Seeing he's caught Erika in a situation she can't talk her way out of, the mayor offers a pair of awful alternatives: either Erika's daughters burn as witches, or she does in their place, because the law says a parent can pay for the crimes of a child.

He even goes on to call it a good bargain. Meanwhile, his face is full of sick glee, because he's finally caught the witch he's chased most of his life. If Erika agrees, then all she has to do is say out loud that she's a witch.

She says, "I'm a witch" so softly, no one but Tim hears and he rushes to attack the mayor, only to get shot in the shoulder with a crossbow bolt from the deputy.

Erika patches him up and he passes out.

Absolutely reveling in her torment, the mayor says he didn't hear her and she needs to speak up.

Erika speaks louder, but he still isn't satisfied, demanding that she speak loud enough for everyone to hear.

Finally, she shouts her true feelings to the world, including how proud she is to be a witch, making a verbal list of all the good things she's done for the villagers, much of it with secret magic.

She finishes by saying magic isn't evil, but the mayor is, having persecuted her over nothing, for decades.

As her hands are bound by the deputy, she considers torching her accusers with magic, but remembers her grandmother's words on the matter, which were basically, "Do no harm with magic."

She follows the vow of pacifism she made to her grandmother, going quietly to the pile of wood and the stake, to be tied to it, while moonshine is dumped all over the wood to make it burn better.

Before she's lit aflame, the mayor whispers to her, "I had to kill my own son, because one of your whore-of-the-devil daughters bewitched him, just like I did with that poor fool that married Marta! I'm glad I finally get to see you burn for what you took from me!"

Finally seeing the depth of the man's depravity, Erika speaks her final words:

She spoke at a volume comparable to a megaphone, her voice magically enhanced to ensure all ears present would take notice, "Know this day, Mayor Godfrey Rumblecleaver, that your sins will follow you to your very last day, while the gates of the infernal realm gape open and ready to take your soul!

"I declare to all: if any of you ever harms so much as one hair on the heads of my daughters, I will return as a vengeful spirit, with bloody intention to wipe out this entire village, guilty and innocent alike, because evil triumphs when good men do nothing!" Erika gave Rolf and his son a particularly scathing glare, before she looked once more at the now cowering mayor, to speak so softly only he should have heard her final words, though the magic still took them far and wide, "With my last, dying breath, I curse you to never know peace!"

All of that was just words to mess with everyone's heads, but who knows, maybe the last words of a witch have power beyond mere magic?

Erika uses magic to light the pyre herself, to take control out of his hands of the mob and steal from the mayor the option to believe he killed her.

Shortly after, her daughters arrive, just as a wagon full of men departs. Marta is driving, barely managing to stop the carriage before succumbing to a numb and helpless silence, while Amelia sputters.

Iris, on the other hand, rushes to the aid of their mother, using magic to part the flame and loosen the ropes, so she can haul Erika free of the blaze, but it's all for naught, because she's already dead.

Chapter 5: Salt in the Wound

While Amelia's family are reeling at the loss of their wife/mother, a few days pass and the town crier shows up with a proclamation from the mayor: all property of the confessed witch is to be forfeit to the village and auctioned to pay for the firewood used.

The auction is scheduled for the next day at dawn, though they will have four full days to actually willingly give up the land or make arguments that they should be allowed to keep it.

Amelia's father produces a stack of old wills from her ancestors and she reads them all, discovering that every one of the Blackwell women for the past few centuries has used the same wording in their last will and testament.

The essence of it is that the home and land were given to a specific individual, but everything else became the collective property of their female progeny.

In essence, they foresaw the issue of being discovered as witches and had a strong legal defense in mind to dodge the seizure of property. They would have done the same with the land and house, but local law forbids joint ownership of real estate, to prevent family arguments from spilling into court.

Amelia attends the auction and makes an attempt to buy their land back, but the mayor out-bids her, paying double the actual value of the land. Amelia make herself publicly weep by thinking about her mother, but smiles on her way out of the courthouse, because the auction went just the way she planned.

Over the next few days, wagon loads of salt, alchemical waste and lye arrive at the Blackwell family home and their father directs the work of poisoning the land, to make it worthless to the mayor. At night, the sisters use magic to summon rains storms, so the contamination will sink into the soil.

Their last day on the land, they pack up their belongings and Iris uses fire magic to burn the house's thatch, followed by Marta employing earth magic to make the mortar and stones of the walls crumble. Last of all, Amelia jams the pressure relief valves of a small steam engine and activates it inside her workshop, before they all run away to avoid the explosion.

Effectively, there's nothing of value left behind. They stay in a tent that night, but no one can sleep and their father goes out.

He visits the village smith and brow-beats the man into joining him. They gather others that hate the mayor.

Together, the group throws a blanket over the mayor's head and haul him out of his house for the beating of his life, but before they get going, they tell him why, including among the accusation both everything they know and suspect. He's warned that if he ever twists the law again, they'll come back to seek vengeance for the three people he's killed (Erika, his own son Conrad, and Marta's husband, Zayne).

In the morning, the mayor fails to show up for the deed to the Blackwell family's land and the subject of where their father went in the night is raised. He admits nothing, but promises the man is still alive, followed by this little gem: "On those cold, winter nights, I imagine his knee will really ache and I hope he'll be reminded of all the bad things he’s done."

The sisters decide they can live with that and, in fact, it makes them feel slightly better.

They leave the deed to the land under a rock and depart for what they hope will be a land without persecution and prejudice.

Chapter 6: The Stuff of Dreams

After two years of off-and-on travel, Amelia and her family are near the city of Macclesfield, a prosperous farming community, where they've been camping long-term, to rest from their travels.

Amelia has built herself a horseless portable workshop in a wagon/shack similar to the one Mr. Pinewater lived in. Inside, she's built herself a lathe that she's been using to make table legs, because no one in the city has ever seen the results of a lathe before.

Her table legs are all the rage in town with wealthy ladies, even though Amelia thinks the existing legs are better, but she's not going to argue with wealthy people giving her their money to do a job.

Amelia is depressed, because she wants a more permanent home and a much larger workshop, but most towns won't let them buy real estate, because they're outsiders. Even worse, in the few towns that did, rumor reached all the way from the prejudice-filled village they left behind, causing them to flee for their lives, lest the Blackwell sisters be burned at the stake.

As she works on an order, Amelia reflects that she has wealth, but what she may actually need is influence, to change a few minds, that she might buy land, since she believes she's now beyond the reach of the rumors; it's been eight months since she last heard rumors about her family.

She finishes work and heads for town.

While she's there, she waives her fees in exchange for the the wives of the three members of the city council speaking to their husbands on her behalf, to make an exception to city law, so she can buy land.

It works and she even becomes friends with the mayor's wife, Mrs. Maccle, who has very forward-thinking views of women and thinks Amelia will be just the thing she needs to shake things up, in a good way. It's never quite stated that way, but Mrs. Maccle is a feminist.

In the next scene, Amelia is shown a huge, disused warehouse, one option among many properties she might buy and she's soon seeing all the possibilities the place holds for her. It even has an office area that could easily be converted into a comfortable home for her family, solving both issues.

She's soon lost in imaginary visions of what could be, eventually seeing in her mind not just the flying machines she been wanting to experiment with, but airships and eventually, a steel tower rising through the air on a column of super-heated steam!

The tower pierces the heavens and then turns at the apogee of it's flight, producing another burst of steam that carries if forward, until it's falling all the way around the world, always dropping, but never hitting ground, an orbit.

The word 'orbit' sticks in her mind, because she's never heard it before and she realizes the imaginary vision she just had wasn't her own.

She haggles over the price and buys the warehouse, before heading back to her little workshop, where she looks at The Book of Newts and asks, "What are you?"

The book flips of its own accord to the last page, which is blank. Next, it flips to a page showing a diagram of the solar system. Finally, it shows her star charts, and she finally realizes the sun the gas giant her little moon orbits is one star among many thousands of named stars, which are mapped in meticulous detail in the book.

She doesn't understand what it's telling her, but she feels exhausted, because the book has been manipulating the magic her body produces to flip it's pages, a feat that has left her with a headache, because her magic is rather weak. It isn't able to finish what it was telling her, because she doesn't have the magic required for it to finish.

She recognizes the book has some kind of dream or desire, which mostly lines up with her own dreams, though it clearly thinks on a larger scale than she does. She questions whether she should trust the book, since that was so very strange. It has never harmed her, so she decides to continue on her current path.

She also reasons that perhaps she owes it something for the knowledge shared, deciding to try and fulfill the book's dream of flying to the stars.

At this point, I finally named the gas giant Amelia's moon orbits: Junas. Amelia believes it's the home of her world's gods, a much bigger world for giant, divine people. By the way, it looks a lot like Jupiter, but let me make it clear: it isn't. Junas is orbited by many worlds the size of Earth, plus lots of little ice moons.

Chapter 7: Wings

Amelia and her sisters work to haul her first full-size flying machine out of Macclesfield, while townsfolk look on, in wonder.

Blackbird, as Amelia named it, is a fixed-wing aircraft with a single propellor, using another of her enchanted steam engines. Amelia jokingly refers to the cockpit as a 'the witchpit', which is where the term was originally coined. The aircraft is black and Amelia compares it to a raven.

It's winter and the ground is covered in snow, because Amelia hasn't yet learned about vulcanized rubber and didn't want to deal with metal or wood wheels at such high velocity, thinking the ride would be dangerously bumpy.

Marta drives the plane out into a farm field using another of Amelia's recent inventions, a steam-powered vehicle designed for heavy hauling, a tractor.

When they're ready, Amelia and Iris act as pilot and co-pilot, taking Blackbird into the air! It's an exhilarating moment as they lift off the ground and Amelia cautiously gets them some altitude in a slow circle around the city, before turning control over to Iris, who does some crazy dives and sharp turns, until Amelia is sick.

Amelia takes them down for a landing, which is the part she's most nervous about, because she expects to crash the first time.

The landing goes smoothly, right up to the point they hit a boulder hidden by the snow! Since everything is white, Amelia never saw it.

The prop smashes on it, then the engine hits it, producing a spray of hot water and steam, followed by the belly of Blackbird getting torn to shreds on it, while one of the skis is torn right off. They're briefly forced back into the air, because the boulder somewhat acts like a ramp.

When they come back down, the left wing dips into the snow, due to the missing ski, lurching them to the side, until the wing rips off. Next, the right wing does much the same, a whiplash-inducing sudden shift from twisting one direction to the other!

The wing also tears off, then the other ski breaks, leaving snow, ice and dirt spraying all over them through the torn bottom of the witchpit.

Amelia pukes, while Iris laughs hysterically and sobs at the same time.

Marta drives up to check on them, but fortunately, the only injuries they've got are lots of bruises and Amelia is motion sick.

There's some discussion of what went wrong and Amelia decides wheels are a must, after all, so she'll be seeking a way to cushion them.

Tags: writing, work-in-progress, starwitch