Bianca Marais cohosts the popular podcast The Sh*t No One
Tells You About Writing, aimed at emerging writers. She was named the winner of
the Excellence in Teaching Award for Creative Writing at the University of
Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies in 2021. She is the author of two
novels, Hum If You Don’t Know the Words and If You Want to Make God Laugh, as
well as the Audible Original The Prynne Viper. She lives in Toronto with her
husband and fur babies.
Author website: https://www.biancamarais.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/biancamaraisauthor
Twitter: https://twitter.com/biancam_author/
The Witches of Moonshyne Manor by Bianca Marais is an interesting witchy tale. There are witches, a crow, a ghost, and a lively teenager. The story has a unique beginning as we get to meet each witch. The point-of-view switches between the sisters and Persephone. The author created some unique characters. The witches are in their 80s with all the aches and pains that comes with that age. We learn about each sister which includes the secrets they are keeping. I loved Persephone. She is a precocious teenager who wishes to help the octogenarian witches. Persephone provides levity and charm. The pacing picks up in the last quarter of the book as the action and suspense ramp up. There are sisterly squabbles, the reading of tea leaves, a fiery game, a frantic search, reuniting with Ruby, and magic spells. The resolution was a little too neat and easily accomplished, but there was an unusual component. There is a part that is clever, and I like the revelation near the end (I cannot say more because it is a spoiler). I do want to let you know that the story does contain an excessive amount of foul language, intimate situations, nudity, and self-love. The Witches of Moonshyne Manor is a curious anecdote with a clever crow, a talented teenager, sister witches, mad men, a self-righteous relative, a sizzling sport, a ticking clock, and a panicky pursuit.
Saturday,
October 23rd
Morning
Half an hour before the alarm will be sounded for
the first time in decades—drawing four frantic old women and a geriatric crow
from all corners of the sprawling manor—Ursula is awoken by insistent knocking,
like giant knuckles rapping against glass. It’s an ominous sign, to be sure.
The first of many.
Trying to rid herself of the sticky cobwebs of
sleep, Ursula throws back the covers, groaning as her joints loudly voice their
displeasure. She’s slept in the buff, as is her usual habit, and as she pads
across the room, she’s more naked than the day she was born (being, as she is,
one of those rare babies who came into the world fully encased in a caul).
Upon reaching the window, the
cause of the ruckus is immediately obvious to Ursula; one of the Angel Oak’s
sturdy branches is thumping against her third-floor window. Strong winds whip
through the tree, making it shimmy and shake, giving the impression that it’s
espousing the old adage to dance like no one’s watching, a quality that rather
has to be admired in a tree. Either that, or it’s trembling uncontrollably with
fear.
The
forest, encroaching at the garden’s boundary, looks disquieted. It hangs its
head low, bowing to a master who’s ordered it to bend the knee. As the charcoal
sky churns, not a bird to be seen, the trees in the wood whisper incessantly.
Whether they’re secrets or warnings, Ursula can’t tell, which only unsettles
her further.
That
infernal billboard that the city recently erected across from the manor
property—with its aggressive gigantic lettering shouting, ‘Critchley Hackle
Mega Complex Coming Soon!’—snaps in the wind, issuing small cracks of thunder.
A storm is on its way, that much is clear. You don’t need to have Ivy’s
particular powers to know as much.
Turning
her back on the ominous view, Ursula heads for the calendar to mark off another
mostly sleepless night. It seems impossible that after so many of them—night
upon night, strung up after each other seemingly endlessly—only two remain
until Ruby’s return, upon which Ursula will discover her fate.
Either
Ruby knows or she doesn’t.
And if she
does know, there’s the chance that she’ll want nothing
more to do with Ursula. The thought makes her breath hitch, the accompanying
stab of pain almost too much to bear. The best she can hope for under the
circumstances is that Ruby will forgive her, releasing Ursula from the invisible
prison her guilt has sentenced her to.
Too
preoccupied with thoughts of Ruby to remember to don her robe, Ursula takes a
seat at her mahogany escritoire. She lights a cone of mugwort and sweet laurel
incense, watching as the tendril of smoke unfurls, inscribing itself upon the air.
Inhaling the sweet scent, she picks up a purple silk pouch and unties it,
spilling the contents onto her palm.
The tarot
cards are all frayed around the edges, worn down from countless hours spent
jostling through Ursula’s hands. Despite their shabbiness, they crackle with
electricity, sparks flying as she shuffles them. After cutting the deck in
three, Ursula begins laying the cards down, one after the other, on top of the
heptagram she carved into the writing desk’s surface almost eighty years ago.
The first
card, placed in the center, is The Tower. Unfortunate souls tumble from the
top of a fortress that’s been struck by lightning, flames engulfing it. Ursula
experiences a jolt of alarm at the sight of it for The Tower has to signify the
manor; and anything threatening their home, threatens them all.
The second
card, placed above the first at the one o’clock position, can only represent
Tabitha. It’s the Ten of Swords, depicting a person lying face down with ten
swords buried in their back. The last time Ursula saw the card, she’d made a
mental note to make an appointment with her acupuncturist, but now, following
so soon after The Tower, it makes her shift nervously.
The third,
fourth and fifth cards, placed at the three o’clock, four-thirty and six
o’clock positions, depict a person (who must be Queenie) struggling under too
heavy a load; a heart pierced by swords (signifying Ursula); and a horned beast
towering above a man and woman who are shackled together (obviously Jezebel).
Ursula whimpers to see so many dreaded cards clustered together.
Moving faster now, she lays out
the sixth, seventh and eighth cards at the seven-thirty, nine and eleven o’
clock positions. Ursula gasps as she studies the man crying in his bed, nine
swords hovering above him (which can only denote Ursula’s guilt as it pertains
to Ruby); the armored skeleton on horseback (representing the town of Critchley
Hackle); and the two bedraggled souls trudging barefoot through the snow
(definitely Ivy). Taking in all eight sinister cards makes Ursula tremble much
like the Angel Oak.
Based on
the spread, Ursula absolutely should
sound the alarm immediately,
but she’s made mistakes in the past—lapses in judgment that resulted in
terrible consequences—and so she wants to be a hundred percent certain first.
She shuffles the cards again, laying them down more
deliberately this time, only to see the exact same shocking formation, the
impending threat even more vivid than before. It couldn’t be any clearer if the
Goddess herself had sent a homing pigeon with a memo bearing the message:
Calamity is on its way! It’s knocking at the window, just waiting to be let in!
And yet, Ursula still doesn’t sound the
alarm, because that’s what doubt does; it slips through the chinks in our
defenses, eroding all sense of self until the only voice that should matter
becomes the one that we don’t recognize anymore, the one we trust the least.
As a result of this estrangement from herself,
Ursula has developed something of a compulsion, needing to triple check the
signs before she calls attention to them, and so she stands and grabs her wand.
She makes her way down the hallway past Ruby’s and Jezebel’s bedrooms at a bit
of a clip before descending the west wing stairs.
It’s just before she reaches Ivy’s glass conservatory that Ursula
breaks out into a panicked run.
Kris
The Avid Reader
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