A Place Without a Witch, Chapter Four

Virginia Clay

The first time that Gemmy rooted with her landbase, she found it cold and wet. The land was red Virginia clay and Virginia clay is red because it’s full of iron. Virginia clay holds water in between the tiny particles of iron and stays cool, even in Summer. Oddly — or, well, actually, not oddly at all, my sweet, my heartling, my best, good listener — Gemmy’s human body was full of blood that was also red. It was, perhaps not so oddly, red for the precise reason that Virginia clay is red: because blood, just like Virginia clay, is full of iron. And blood, like Virginia clay, is wet, but blood, unlike Virginia clay, is so hot that it steams, when, as it mostly should not be, it is exposed to air. And, so, Gemmy, with her warm, red blood, and the landbase, with its cold, red Virginia clay, met, and knew each other, and found, despite the differences in their temperatures, a point of connection.

As Spring came on, Gemmy learned to shut off office politics as she walked through the door of her home. It was a deliberate act, accompanied by an act of breath. Air-in, hold, suffuse the air with office politics, air-out. Insert key into lock, turn key counter-clockwise, step into home. Gemmy dropped her backpack, her housekeys, her fingerless mittens, and her coat at the door, walked to her kitchen, poured herb tea into an old clay goblet, one that her coven-sister Mari had made for her, and walked out onto the barren deck that over looked her barren back yard.

Gemmy took a deep breath, rooted, came into communion, and poured the herb tea, brewed each morning, onto the broken pavement that was her backyard. “Greetings, red clay,” she’s call, with all the irony that three decades, one divorce, a broken dream, and $15,000 of debt can teach a woman. “I am Gemmy, the Witch of this place. I want to be in right relationship with you.”

Somedays, the place was silent. Somedays, it answered back.

Gemmy showed up, regardless.

Picture found here.