The 13TH Witch

“She shines by day and into the night. Daughter to a mother both chaste and bright. A moon and star upon her cheek. Make this scrying stone find its site.” The 12 women stood in a closed circle holding hands. A large obsidian stone floated in the air over a map of the Camel Back mountains. It moved in a wavering pattern buzzing as it neared the map. It floated above a spot and slowly landed on the town of Chandler.

“We will find our lost sister, here.” Grace, pointed, handing the scrying stone back to her sister, Ester.

It was very dark in the desert that night with only a crescent Moon shining back from the women's eyes. Their night vision was excellent.

“We need to establish our full coven. The signs have been accumulating for far to long for us to tarry. Ester and I will find our sister and bring her back to the Phoenix stronghold. This time we cannot fail or it will be the death of the planet.” Each woman blinked out like a switch being flipped off.

Grace and Ester reappeared one block south of Indian School Road, near the beginning of the Navajo reservation. They were careful not to trespass on Indian land due to long standing treaties between the tribes and the witches. It's never wise to antagonize their shamans when you might need help.

This sibling had been lost due to the death of her mother shortly after her birth. The child had been taken in by non-witches and raised with no connection to her people. The two sisters could feel her like they felt the rest of their coven but there was a difference. She would need training and connection to the group to reach her full potential. Even without casting the scrying stone, it tugged and pulled at Grace's pocket showing the way. It was a simple task to follow its urging toward a small neighborhood on the outskirts of the city.

They found the house with little difficulty. A large pseudo hacienda of pink clay with large windows and an adobe tile roof. It was covered with Halloween decorations, black cats, witch cutouts and pumpkins everywhere. They cast out the call and a small black clad witch with a cone shaped hat came out on to the front porch. It was her, at most a 13-year-old child, no wonder they had not detected her before this year. This would complicate the problem. They needed a fully functional witch not a child. There was something different about this child. She had a raw energy which they hadn't felt before.

The glaze from the spell they cast on her dissipated too rapidly. The child's eyes cleared and stared straight at them.

“What do they call you, child?” Grace placed the question in her head.

“I am Lilly. The one you seek.” She had placed the thought in both their heads.

“Nice costume.” Ester commented as she examined the ludicrous hat.

“I wasn't sure what to expect so I thought it would be good to blend in.” Lilly removed the hat.

“Lilly, do you know why we have come? You are our sister. You were born of woman alone. An exact copy of us all. We have existed from the time before history. Do you remember your past lives? Your sisters?”

“Thank goodness, I thought I was going crazy.” Lilly looked visibly relieved. “Are you going to train me?”

“First, I'm going to convince your parents that we are your aunts, and you are going to stay with us for a while.”

It took 3 months to train Lilly. She was an excellent pupil. Lilly had been completely ignorant of her origins.

We are from nature, when conditions dictate, we are born. A non-fertilized egg spontaneously starts to divide. We are the result of that extraordinary occurrence. It is similar to the temperature conditions that cause turtle eggs to develop into all females. It's a genetic condition that comes with certain skills. The genetic code has its own time table.

The power of the coven increased exponentially with her addition. They would need that boost if they wanted to undo the ecological disasters that were looming in the near future.

Ecology is a complex science. Small changes lead to gigantic results, like the death of one species of honeybee could lead to the collapse of an entire section of the agricultural industry. Its like a row of dominoes. You push that first tile and watch the branches cascade. You can prevent the start of the fall or you can block the fall of one of the branches. The earlier you intervene the better.

They unfortunately had intervened a little late. The great tidal surge had already decimated Southeast Asia, mostly the lower lying islands of the Philippines and the chronically waterlogged Bangladesh. But what really got the world's attention was the news of the destruction of Venice with lurid pictures of the various islands collapsing into the sea, taking centuries of buildings, art and tourists with them.

Like most things it started slowly. It was unmistakable yet they denied the facts. But by the time of the great tide of 2025, with most of Bangladesh under water and over 1 million people drowned or clinging to the tops of trees, people started to take notice. The clincher came about 3 months later with the collapse of Venice. A small amount of desalinization of the canals around Venice caused the timbers that supported the mud under the famous islands to allow a common water fungus to proliferate and weaken the timbers.

It was a Saturday and there were almost 500 tourists in St Mark’s Square. The rats reacted first. Great swathes of the rodents fled as the timbers holding up the islands begin to sink. They jumped into the sea and clung to anything that floated. The Square had a long history of flooding during high tides, but this time the land under the famous landmark began to sink. Cries from the hundreds of tourists in hundreds of languages were cut off as the sea swallowed everyone. Those who didn’t die from drowning where crushed as St Marks Basilica tipped and crumbled on top of them, all of course caught on live feed from various Google World Satellites. The canals, which had been under cutting the land for centuries, soon filled with on rushing water. By the time it was over Venice was a floating mass of corpses.

They had to work in secret. The last time they had come out was in the Middle Ages and that didn't work out very well, so they convened late at night, deep in the Sonoran Desert, outside of Phoenix.

They worked individually and in groups. The bee problem was to be tackled by their youngest, Lilly. She conjured up a virus that would infect the parasitic mite, varroa destructor, which was infecting the honeybees and causing them to die.

The next problem was the toxic mess that our atmosphere had become. An excess of methane, sulfur dioxide and various forms of hydrocarbons polluting the air and causing it to retain heat. This rise in contaminants was heating the entire planet causing cascading effects. The die off of vital marine organisms that produce most of the oxygen. Compounded by the rape of the Amazon rain forest which also contributes to the oxygen.

How do you remove gasses from the atmosphere? Grace and Ester thought long and hard about this subject. Ideally, when you noticed a trend line pointing at a global increase in temperatures exceeding 4 degrees and staring extinction in the face you would think that humanity would stop using hydrocarbons. But no, humanity had been lucky many times in its existence. Well, this time it would be a close call.

They would have to rely on the smallest inhabitants of the Earth. The micro fauna and flora, viruses, bacteria and even worms, all creatures great and small. A little Acidithiobacillus to eat the sulfur and bind both carbon and nitrogen from the air. It was a question of balance. They just had to re-balance the ecosystem. A few well-placed rumors about the vast profits available from implementing their system and industry would be falling all over themselves trying to finance their methods.

Was this witchcraft or science, alchemy or the lost knowledge of antiquity? The coven kept initiating small changes over long periods of time and watched the dominoes cascade toward the solution.

All the world knew was that the mean world-wide temperature dropped two degrees that first year and it is projected to stabilize in eight years. Small changes produce large results, when you work with nature and not against her.