ELSBETH AND THE
CALL OF THE CASTLE GHOSTIES
Cape Cod Witch Series
Book III
Written by
J Bean Palmer and Chris Palmer
Illustrated by
Melanie Therrien
Copyright 2015 by J Bean Palmer and Chris Palmer
Artwork Copyright 2015 by Melanie Therrien
All Rights Reserved
Holly Hill Press
Post Office Box 662
Farmington, Maine 04938
ISBN 978-1-4566-2080-6
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
The Story of ElsBeth Amelia Thistle,
Cape Cod’s Youngest Witch
When their ancestral home is threatened like never before in battles past, three ancient Highland ghosts need one of their clan from the living world.
Calling on the Winds, they summon the young Cape Cod witch across the sea to the old country.
ElsBeth has her own calling to protect the natural world, and a need to find out more about the family mysteries, but soon finds she is in well above her magic level.
THE CALL
Present Time, Scottish Highlands, the Castle
Durst was not upset about being dead.
But he was upset, mightily so.
His homeland was threatened.
Not for the first time over the ages. But while past threats had come from fierce soldiers he had fought with fiery passion and honor, this danger came in the smooth words and slippery smile from the one known as “Gorgeous.” And though Durst was now a cold ghost, it chilled him.
From a rough-hewn cavern beneath the dungeon, Durst’s vaporous form rose up and up, until he was high above the tower walls. Below him the castle’s grey stones gleamed softly in the weak moonlight.
A fog lifted slowly from the rocky cliff that bordered his land and overlooked a restless inland sea.
An owl swooped past in search of prey. A lone wolf howled. Other creatures of the night went about their quiet business.
This land must not be destroyed!
***
Durst returned to his solitary chamber deep underground.
He rubbed the flat edge of his stone knife back and forth, back and forth, against his pale blue cheek.
Done then with thinking, he stabbed the blade overhead, and a single crash of thunder quaked the Highland dark, summoning two other unearthly guardians of the castle.
In their own times and in their own ways each of them had devoted their living days to these lands — the proud mountains and their valleys of sweet heather, on which even a god could lie and rest his head and drink from bottomless, clear lakes.
The ghosts shifted in the small space, uncomfortable together. They were not friends. But they were bound by a love of their homeland that could not be bounded by a short earthly life.
Now they needed one from the living world. One with the purpose ... and the magic ... to protect this sacred place.
Durst took up the length of sapwood from the sacred alder tree on which he had carved the old symbols, and with the stone knife cut the final notch of a simple flute.
The three touched, a spark flew, and it grew until their shimmering forms blazed in a cold, white-gold fire.
Durst’s ancient ghostly lips met the living wood.
He breathed in all their hopes and fears, and sent forth to the Four Winds a sweet, sharp song. His command was clear: “Carry here the youngest of the clan, the youngest Thistle.”
A future was cast.
Chapter 1
Boys Versus Girls
Present Time, Cape Cod
ElsBeth Amelia Thistle caught two-year-old Winston as he ran past and lifted him high in the air. He laughed and reached over into her thick, dark-blonde hair. His fingers stuck, and she didn’t think the stickiness was from something in her hair. But she laughed, too, taking in his sweat-and-sweet-strawberry, little boy scent, before she set him down and left to join her friends.
Having survived their weekly morning at Library Story Hour, the four exhausted volunteers waved to Mrs. Wattle, the librarian, who kept a gentle but firm hand on the wickedly grinning, two-foot-tall Mr. Winston Nickerson, everyone’s favorite toddler terror.
ElsBeth blew him a kiss good-bye.
She and her friends stepped down the cobblestone walk in a bubble of chatter, when a cold breeze suddenly chilled her, and ElsBeth felt a shift in the space she thought of as her world.
She glanced back at the library. Instead of the cheery, salmon-pink, converted sea captain’s mansion, she saw a bleak castle, veiled in mist, backed by a darkening sky. She had the idea someone was there ... someone evil, and at the same time ... “gorgeous.”
She felt nervous. Like some danger had just sailed up and dropped anchor in her future.
Hardly anyone knew she was a witch — this was just something that wasn’t discussed. A good, almost eleven-year-old witch, granted, but a witch nonetheless. She knew her perceptions of the world were sometimes a little different, and they didn’t exactly ask her permission to come in on her. And she definitely didn’t always understand them.
But this wasn’t just different or strange. Something in her world was wrong, and it didn’t feel like it was going to get back to right anytime soon.
She blinked twice, and when she looked back this time there was only the weathered-shingle library, cozy and familiar, precisely where it was supposed to be.
She felt the solid ground below her feet. She sighed, and lifted her face to another glorious end-of-summer day on the Cape — pale blue skies and puffy white clouds above the distant sparkling blue-green waters, the air salty-fresh.
ElsBeth shook the remnants of the meddlesome castle image from her head and caught up with her friends, who had stopped to wait for her under the gold-lettered street signs at the corner of Main and Sea.
“I’m going to the beach,” Amy said. “I need to lie in the sun for a while. Then I want to get some more shells and sea glass for bracelets. Want to come?”
Amy looked like a golden beach herself with long yellow hair, tan skin, and pink blossoms on her sandy-colored dress, just like Cape roses on the dunes. Amy was terribly sweet, but in a good way.
“Like, no, Amy. Shopping,” Veronica said. “Think about it. There’re only a couple weeks left before school.” Hands on hips, Veronica looked at Amy more like