To Read & To Write

"A woman in one village had the Sight and predicted doom. There were always such stories somewhere; natural philosophy was still the province of the rich and educated. The poor would have their gods of tree and stream and hollow, their hedgerow cures and charms. But those things were not usually tossed about in tavern gossip. For them to come out now meant fear of something else that was too hard to face. He had seen the hex signs, the wardings, on the farmhouse doors and the roofs of barns. On the sides of the roads were little primitive pyramids of stone for guarding and shrines with offerings of food. People expected evil. It made no sense, not even accounting for the uneasiness the dragons cast... it was the newness of it, he decided, made from raw fear and not unthinking custom." (p. 8, 10) Anne Leonard's Moth and Spark  (2014) tells a saga of old magic's renewal in desperate times of unknowing and obscured discernment within the kingdom of Caithen, a co