A treewitch’s magic is her soul; a treewitch’s soul is her magic.
For my first mini blog post, I thought I would tell you a little bit about treewitches — not too much though, as I’m hoping to be writing my blog for some time to come and I don’t want to reveal everything too soon. A lot of the information I will share is part of the treewitch world that won’t automatically make its way into the novels or will be revealed little by little across the series. Of course, there’ll be plenty of detail I won’t be sharing in my blogs, not yet anyway, as you need to find out some of it for yourselves!
You will, of course, have picked up that the elderwitch referred to in both the title and blurb about the book is a treewitch. The elderwitches are one of the surviving ten clans that make up the original twenty types of Celtic treewitches but there are also other treewitches and their namesake trees who have spread throughout the world. The first treewitches emerged around 60,000 years ago as they and homo sapiens were leaving Africa, the witches starting to show distinct right-brain differences from their human (or ‘sleeper’) counterparts. After 10,000 years, they were developing basic magic and divination skills, and by 40,000 years ago, the treewitches were forming clans and associations with particular trees.
The story of Elderwitch is set in the 14th century and, neither witches nor sleepers of that time had any idea of their scientific origins. Like sleepers, treewitches have their own creation myths and the one you’ll see at the beginning of the book dates to over 2,000 years ago, around the time of the Battles of Darkness and Light, which culminated in the destruction of the last of the hollywitches and the hard-won dominance of the oakwitches. It was around this time that the magical abilities of witches were constrained by a powerful spell agreed on by all surviving clans. This was to ensure there would be no more devastating wars and no more destruction caused by reckless magic.
But something is changing!
Lucie