The Witching on the Wall: A Cozy Mystery (The Witchy Women of Coven Grove Book 1) by Constance Barker Read Free Book Online Page A

journal, she’d often thought. She dared not touch them, but she trailed her fingers around them, fascinated as ever and desperately curious about what they meant. Maybe Martha really did know. If she did, that alone made it worth dealing with her.
    The most interesting thing about the odd collection of scripts and letters was that they didn’t actually translate. They were like gibberish. To Bailey, this was evidence that the author hadn’t actually spoken these languages; that maybe they had simply seen bits and pieces, copied letters down, and then decorated with them. When she was just turning twelve, she’d copied down every line and letter and worked tirelessly at the library digging through books on languages and symbols, trying to piece out what they’d meant.
    She and Avery had done it together, imagining themselves intrepid junior archaeologists on the verge of a great discovery—the sort that would launch them into world fame. “Twelve Year-Old Genius Researchers Discover Meaning of Ancient Cave Paintings,” the headline would have said. “World in Awe.”
    She smiled, remembering those long afternoons after school spent shoulder to shoulder, arguing about the letters, and running back and forth to the Caves to compare notes and pose their child-like hypotheses. Bailey had supposed, at one time, that they were actually magic spells, preserved here by ancient wizards or shamans who had traveled the world on the wind collecting the wisdom of dozens of cultures and concentrating it in this one place. In fact, she’d believed it so strongly that she and Avery got into screaming matches about who was right: her, with her ancient sorcerer theory, or Avery with his hypothesis that it was just mimicry.
    Eventually she’d grown out of the belief that there was anything magical about the paintings than what was inherent to the place itself—which was to say, only it’s mysterious nature. Avery’s theory made more sense after they’d failed to translate a single line. On the other hand, both of them had learned a great deal about these ancient languages. She’d aced Latin in high school without working up a sweat.
    In particular, her favorite painting was in the fifth Cave. Each of the seven Caves was defined by an apparent theme, and by the narrow passages that connected the wider caverns. The fifth cave’s wall was one of the most bare, but it had the most complex art. It was unmistakably a woman, almost eight feet tall, her arms spread wide and angled slightly down as though to embrace the observer. The mounds of the cave wall served to give the impression that her arms were in fact reaching out from the wall, and the curvature of the whole mural was such that no matter where in the cavern you were, her simple, expressionless eyes seemed to follow you.
    Except, Bailey had never really felt that her face was exactly expressionless. The artist had not given her a mouth, and only a spiraling mix of letters for eyes, two of them, each with different script, and yet she somehow seemed always to be smiling in Bailey’s opinion. She couldn’t have said why she thought so, other than this is what she felt when she looked at it. Perhaps that was the point—this was all the work of some early abstractionist who’s goal was to make you feel the work, rather than just look at it. Whoever it was had been centuries ahead of their time.
    Bailey watched the ancient goddess, enchanted by the whorls of fine lettering that made up her eyes. Above her head was a tribal depiction of the Sun, along with a star that she had long ago decided was meant to be Venus in the morning sky. There were several of these throughout the caves, though not all of them were as obvious—constellations and recreations of the heavens were a typical theme in many cave paintings the world over. Mankind had, Bailey imagined, always been fascinated by the regularity of those pinpricks of light in the heavens.
    She shook off her fascination. She