The Lighthouse Lantern Witch of Saltwater Coven

“Sea Witch!”

“Sea Witch!”

“Sea Witch!”

“Be damned to the darkest depths of hell.”

A gavel sounded. It was much hollower than usual. The rain collected in the basin of the old trees’ trunk. The leaves had turned brown and dropped dead to the Earth. The vibration of the virtuous rapping travelled up through the branches and snaked down the very ropes that would hang several accused sea-witches that month.

The Seventeenth of October. A curse-d day. Pierced shells and sea glass whispered their own hymns in the whistling winds. Caps of white crashed into the sharp rocks’ miles below.

Jane Martin stood still and unmoving as waves of putrid black smoke wafted by.

Fire burned fast at her feet, a braided chain of thick rope hung loosely from her neck as she clung to a quickly disappearing barrel. This whole ruckus was turning into one big, huge misunderstanding—as it should—and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.

Jane Martin was no ordinary witch, in fact, she wasn’t a witch at all. Maybe she should have been. Jane Martin was a Root-Speaker, but not just any run-of-the-mill rootist—her plants whispered secrets, secrets from the poor, desperate, decrepit souls rotting beneath withering tombstones in the garden overlooking the rolling cliff waters of Saltwater Cove. Their souls trapped between this world and the next.

It was hard to see what the trouble was all about. If you asked me, Jane Martin should have been revered. It made sense the townspeople wouldn’t want such nonsense and witchery being talked about town—not of them, or their dead. Especially once they found out the dead were talking. After all, secrets of such blasphemous calibers should remain absent and buried. There was no use in digging things up and it wasn’t long before idle whispers lit fires through the town just as quickly of this newcomer who spoke to flowers, dried leaves, trees and all things green hidden amidst rotting flesh and bone. Learning secrets, no one wanted freed. Charging fees for prophecies even a real witch couldn’t conjure up—it was clear, even she knew too much.

Maybe that was why she was dying on this day.

Jane Martin cleared her throat, a question rising to the tops of her lips, barely audible over the rising sea water churning far below—a question that sounded more like a hex to the sanctified ears of the willing, less eager crowds gathered round—a curse, a spell, some form of magic:

“Would you recognize death when it arrived to claim your very soul, crouched slightly upon your idle front steps, or would you let the haggard beggar take you? Still and silent like the faltering wind, with slender fingers cursed to rap, and crawl and creep their way up the petrified wood of your quiet front door. Their dried, hollowed bones striking heavy, somber chords as your senses go mute. The life draining and fading from your very breath. Your body bowing to their feet as they whisper the irreversible curse. A singular solemn key chaining you to a lawless world, stiff and unmoving, unwavering, unfaltering as you dwindle down to hell. Death clambers around your doors, cloaked in a shroud of secrecy and misunderstanding, just as it has for me. Knocking three distinct times…one…two…three. Your whole world is about to go black.”

The bucket finally caved under her as she fell into the roaring flames.

Jane Martin was not a witch at all. But she would be remembered as such. Seven black candles with brightly lit blue flames hung in the large shop window of her black brick house on the edge of the rolling cliffs. Fifty narrow stairs ascend to the stars, a lantern at the top. Her stone hearth lay sootless and smooth in her absence. A singular oversized kettle burned over a flameless pile of rubble. Purple coils spilling over, bubbling into the air. The Coven had lain stakes, working their unworkable magic, lying roots where death had once been.

All was right with this world until Jane Martin stepped foot into the sleepy town of Saltwater Cove, and unknowingly turning it into Saltwater Coven. Her death disrupted the peace for all who would dare come after her, that she made sure of.

In Jane Martin’s honor—every half century, on the day of her fiftieth birthday—a sea-witch lights a lantern in her lighthouse window. It’s light cast forevermore, guiding sister souls’ home to whisper amidst the roaming vines and wilted flowers, the dead are spilling their secrets again.