Follow me Witch Boy, I may know how to save you. (The Covenant)

The Witch Boy who fell from the sky

During Friday nights, Pizzeria Maria was full of college students enjoying the best pizza in town accompanied by a beer and live music. It was the usual meeting place for the young people who wanted to relax after a week of homework, essays and exams. As every Friday, Alessa Weathon attended the ritual of her Art class and sat by the window at Pizzeria Maria while listening to the conversation of her classmates regarding their final projects for the semester.

Alessa was there only because they all had a previous agreement. Actually she was tired of their weekly interaction at class, but Pizzeria Maria became a tradition among them and she was conscious that she needed bonding time with them. But the night felt strange and she decided to go home early. She lived in a set of student apartments near a lake. Aloburgh was known for having a small community surrounded by forest and lakes. It provided a calm life and was ideal for students.

After excusing herself and getting her coat, Alessa walked her usual path to her dorm. The route she passed surrounded a small hill full of trees located in the center of the town known as Harju. The young girl was thinking about her plans for the weekend when she saw a ball of fire flying over the treetops of Harju. She was hoping that not many people saw the fire ball as the locals were still superstitious people.

If you think about it, it could be an entrancing characteristic. Alessa sometimes thought that her neighbors were cute believing that witches fly past midnight mounted on their brooms, caressing lightly the treetops with the tip of their pointy shoes, wind blowing gently on their eyeless faces turning them a fast and furious ball of fire coming to torment dogs at night while attempting to take away their newly born from their cradles. They were naïve to think that navigating through the sky in a fireball was witches' preferred transportation method. And surely they were mistaken at their motifs for flying.

How did Alessa know about this? She knew that witches cannot extract life and youth from stolen babies or become a fireball in order to travel because Alessa was herself a powerful witch. However in certain occasions a fireball flying over the sky could be a witch, one that needed help or lost their way. At least something of the lore was true.

The outdated ideas the locals had about witches and magic was perhaps the reason why her grandmother chose a place like Aloburgh for her to live. Her grandmother thought it was safer for a witch to live on a small unknown town where no other witch dared to get near because the locals still use old amulets against witches. True, open scissors under the pillows and parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme plants on the windowsills were not effective against witches, they could block magic. Most witches feel unwelcomed on that ambience. For the High Priestess of the Daughters of Winter Dusk it was of utmost importance the security of her granddaughter, just in case witches from other covenants tried to incline the scale to their side. It was the sacred duty of the High Priestess to look out for the balance of magic or power as the warlocks called it, and Granma Dot had been doing it for over 300 years now.

Nonetheless Alessa found herself walking with a steady pace to where the fireball fell. There was certain magic attached to that phenomenon and she was on her way to find the source of the disturbance. As she approached to the place of the fall, the young witch could sense that magic was involved. Surely a powerful warlock was involved in the event.

When she arrived to the center of the hill where a clear patch used to race during summer she saw that effectively, there was a ball of fire in the center, and said fire was engulfing a young man. It was curious though, that the fire was not burning his skin, it was just ablaze, as if the fire tried to damage the person inside against its will but the man was resisting. She came near and noticed that the man on fire was rather attractive. He could not be older than 25. His eyes were closed and his face showed a rictus of pain framed by the strong squared jaw that delimited his face. This was no common fire, someone sent him here, magic was involved and this was no ordinary boy.