She Wasn't Always a Witch

Beginning of our Forevers

"Great grandmother, did you really have three husbands?" Helaine asked me

Helaine was one of the younger granddaughters I have. You see, she is the daughter's daughter of Igraine and Falerin. Although Igraine was not able to have children, she natured and cared for the child as if she were her own. Igraine was picking berries in the forest one after noon when she heard the cry of a baby. She searched for the source of the noise only to find that a bundled up babe was left in the forest embedded into thick roots of a giant tree. She wore no clothing of any kind nor was she left with a note as to who here parents were nor of where she came.

Igraine took the child back to the castle with her where Falerin assumed her parents may have been killed by bandits and had hidden the babe to save her. However, that's only what he believed. We were never able to find the parents of the child so after some months, Igraine and Falerin decided that they would raise the babe as there own. Oddly enough, as the babe grew older, she looked a spitting image of Igraine. We all noticed it although no one could explain why that was. 

I once asked The Old Blind Witch and she simply told me that Fate has ways of granting wishes to the most deserving people. I did not question what she meant, I only smiled and knew that Fate had looked upon my daughter and found her worthy. 

As she grew older she married and had a daughter whom her husband named Helaine after his beautiful wife. 

"Yes, I did Helaine. Do you think that I would tell you false hoods?" I asked her

All of my great grandchildren were spread all around me on the ground, sitting quietly as I told them the tale of my life and how they all came to be. 

"No great grandmother it only seems that so much has happened to you that perhaps...you may have added some things to make the story more entertaining." My eldest greatgrandson, Brennus, said

"Children, I have not told you anything that is not true. I truly had a husband names Nickolas and a husband named Cain. I also had a husband name Bellamour. They are all your great grandfathers."

"How can we have so many great grandfathers if we only have one great grandmother?" Asked my shy great granddaughter, Linet.

"Because, in life, a women always out lives her husband." I smiled at her. She nodded her head 

He is the wisest of all my grea grandchildren. I know that one day she will be a force to be beheld and that any man that wishes for her attentions must have wit on his side.

"Is that the end of the story great grandmother?" Matilda questioned

"Yes, now go run along and bother your mothers. I need to rest." I smiled at my nine great grandchildren. Each one of them stood up and ran towards me. They each hugged me and kissed me and told me they loved me before they ran off into the castle that I had lived in all of my youth.

I did not tell my great grandchildren of the more explicit details of my life story, those were only for my memory to relive. I stood up from my spot on the lawn and walked slowly towards the apple orchid. As I walked through the trees, smelling the fresh to come apples on the breeze, I remembered what happened after Bellamour and I made our little home in the woods near the castle.

We lived there for nearly fifty years together, in peace. We never had children together and for that I will always regret although Bellamour always told me that he wouldn't change anything about me for his world. I knew that deep inside of himself, he did want to have a family with me. That will always be the worst part of being touched by the Fates. 

Bellamour lived to be a rip old age of seventy-two winters. I knew that he knew his time was nearing for he began telling me that perhaps I was getting to old to live in this cabin so far away from my family. You see, Bellamour had not family. His parents and brothers were killed in a Saxon invasion when he was but nine summers old. His two older sisters were taken as concubines to the Saxon soldiers and were never heard from again. He joined Arthur's army to seek retrebutino for what the Saxon's took from him.