...Of the Dawn
an excerpt

The snow swirled and the wind blew. The only color in the white landscape was the deep, sturdy shade of the evergreen trees. A small stone cottage lay nestled in the banks of snow, candles burning in each window. The nearest town was merely a tiny country hamlet five miles away. In the village, Christmas had descended. Each home and storefront was decorated for the holiday in reds and greens and golds. The cottage, however, didn’t have a single wreath on the door.
Inside the cottage the decorations were just as scarce. The holiday spirit had skipped over Morgendämmerung Cottage. The small rooms had been renovated recently and stripped the house of all old world charm. The house was warm in temperature but cold in character.
Voices drifted through the house from the back room. Three people and a cat occupied the small room. Any observer would bypass the ordinary humans in the room and focus immediately on the extraordinary cat. This cat sat regally atop the massive desk in the middle of the room. The cat was so large that it took up most of the top surface of the desk. Its fur was of the finest silvery grey and its eyes piercing and luminescent.
The three people assembled in the room were engaged in a heated conversation. All three had hair so blonde it was almost white. The man stood up behind the desk and revealed his full and impressive height.
“I don’t care if the girls are sixteen or fifty-six, Astrid. If they are messing around with magic, then they pose a grave danger,” said the man in his deep, authoritative voice. He had the kind of good looks that, even after aging had begun, cut through a room like a knife.
“They probably don’t even know what they’ve stumbled upon. They’re just little girls.” one of the tall women, Astrid, said.
“How much damage can they do, Anton?” the other woman Anika, who was also very tall, asked.
Anton, Anika, and Astrid were not like other siblings, in fact they were triplets. They worked together but not at any normal job. These three siblings were the core of a secret organization thousands of generations old—the Druwids.
Many people in the world had mistaken ideas about the Druwids. In the history books the Druwids were said to be the priestly class of an ancient culture and polytheistic religion that still had some surviving branches in the modern world. Anton, Anika, and Astrid Reiter, however, knew better. They were indeed the priestly class of an ancient culture and they, of course, were proof that some branches still survived in the modern world but the Druwids had no affiliation with religion. The Druwids merely kept secrets. For this reason, some old legends and folklore referred to the elusive group as The Keepers.
“We can’t risk taking that chance. What if one of these girls is Macha?”
“Anton, I really don’t think…” Anika began but Anton held up his hand to stop her. The great, grey striped cat on the desk growled.
“The girls must be stopped.”
~
Persephone took the train to London. It had begun to snow the night before and hadn’t stopped. London would be enjoying a white Christmas. The snow merely annoyed Persephone, however. She hated traveling in snowy weather.
Piped in Christmas carols assaulted Persephone the moment she stepped into the coffee shop on the train’s platform. Persephone held in her anguished groan as she made a beeline for the back of the shop and the prospect of caffeine. She had never been a big fan of Christmas. She traced her dislike back to her early Christmas experiences, which all included screaming sisters and family feuds. In any case, Persephone resented the holiday. This year she especially wished to skip Christmas what with the family hysteria and the added element of the hundreds of unanswered questions about the mysterious magical stone circle.
After collecting her espresso, Persephone found her mother waiting for her. Mrs. Aldridge didn’t embrace her daughter but instead began interrogating her about school. She wore a long black coat with matching black hat and gloves. Persephone thought she looked like a widow but she kept her comment to herself. Mrs. Aldridge had no doubt spent several hundred dollars on the coat. In general, Persephone’s mother had dressed in the exact same style for the past thirty years. Her entire wardrobe consisted of grey skirts paired with silk blouses. Persephone’s mother always looked exactly the same—classic.
“How’s Daddy?” Persephone asked as they left King’s Cross and met their driver, Carl, who relieved Persephone of her luggage.
“Your father’s fine,” said Mrs. Aldridge in a hurried voice. Mrs. Aldridge always spoke in the same rushed tone as if she were always late for an important appointment and didn’t have time to have a proper conversation. As a result, she spoke extremely fast. Consequently, all of Mrs. Aldridge’s daughters also inherited the fast-talking trait. Mr. Aldridge, however, always took his time speaking. Sometimes he’d even speak extra-slowly just to balance out his daughters and wife.
Mrs. Aldridge kept up a running commentary on every one of the society ladies and their wives for the remainder of the drive home. Persephone occupied her thoughts with musings over the stone circle and the magic she had experienced. She didn’t care half a rat’s ass about any of her mother’s friends or enemies. She did care about figuring out the mess of questions surrounding what she had experienced over the past month. Unfortunately the month had passed and she had no more understanding than when everything had first begun.