If you’ve read my indie-published series Rowanwick Witches, you’ve already met Amaryllis. I’ve completed and published three volumes, and it’s possible I might write more—based on short stories I wrote as a teenager a long, long time ago. In those books, Amaryllis only has one feline familiar, a black cat named Devious. Amaryllis & the Pixie takes place after she’s adopted two kittens, Vita and Virginia (named after Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf).
You can purchase those three Rowanwick Witches books on Amazon as print books or e-books:
https://www.amazon.com/s?k=Rowanwick+Witches&crid=3DM5QDIXI4BUZ&sprefix=rowanwick+witches%2Caps%2C208&ref=nb_sb_noss
In addition, revised versions of some of the original Rowanwick Witches short stories are included in my book Witch’s Familiar & Whimsical Stories, available here:
https://www.amazon.com/Witchs-Familiar-Whimsical-Susan-Wigget/dp/B0CVQTPYSS/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.RLNwSdHPeQYu60qjwq3HTTwe1NT8k3DeQRFHU9fwKGvqMTSkJHO7hIzXvVs4Mf2egcNpBCM0HESl4qDZlPY4a-VZedxM-2AcCav9cCYLTMlm2btGQrdVY658lAd6iYqTw2cGHMCa9s_O7ehI0c_NIIk9kaAxqo7T5Yp9CgjIgzfG2PnV-LeqMHFeYxxfQ3vUwAVxtK9aPLvxpkl3oGXvK8B_-5R02D3rDfccRxSqXZ8.OSCsOCUtiGvOLUy6mVgtlY1MRiXQ-aP2GyF-WEC8cvY&qid=1727931930&sr=8-1
If you need to start at the beginning, here’s Chapter 1:
Chapter 3:
Amaryllis & the Pixie, Chapter 4
At home in the library of Rowanwick House, Amaryllis Farkly scans a letter through her reading glasses. She is tall and plump and has a plain but memorable face with blue eyes that protrude a bit and a thick main of brown hair with a white stripe down the center, a feature in which she takes pride. Her nose is aquiline, and her chin juts.
She has graceful, calculated movements thanks to decades of practicing mindfulness and, well, witchcraft… because you can’t be too careful with spells, potions, and tinctures. Certainly, the oddest thing about her appearance is her habit of dressing like a man from the eighteenth century, though she lives in modern Portland, Oregon.
Amaryllis tosses the threatening letter from her Aunt Ethel. Evil Aunt Ethel, Pile of Offal, as she likes to call her, even if some might think it a bit immature for a fifty-six-year-old witch to continue using such a nickname. The letter flutters in the air. Never toss a letter until you’ve crumpled it up into a ball first. That’s common sense.
Amaryllis exhales and rises from her roll-top desk. That odious aunt, Ethel, is claiming that Rowanwick House, the Victorian mansion in the Pearl District of Portland, Oregon, that has been Amaryllis’s home all her life, belongs to Ethel. But it simply doesn’t. The only name on the deed is Amaryllis Farkly. Amaryllis knows this and reminds herself: the only reason Evil Aunt Ethel claims she owns the house is because she’s older and thinks she’s entitled to have anything she claims is hers, no matter how extremely not on the deed her name is. This aunt has the nerve to demand that Amaryllis add her name to the deed.
Amaryllis also happens to know that Aunt Ethel has her own house, and it’s in Kansas, where she can bloody well remain. Toto, this isn’t Kansas, thank Goddess. Amaryllis also knows and takes comfort in the fact that she happens to be a more powerful… or at least more talented… witch than Aunt Ethel.
Amaryllis hears a loudly rumbling purr and looks down to her left. She makes eye contact with Virginia—the fluffy Siamese-mix tortie named after Virginia Woolf. Standing beside Amaryllis’s desk, the familiar says, “Meh-EH!”
Amaryllis scoops up Virginia and holds her while the cat licks her face, grooming her chin and around her mouth. Amaryllis strokes her familiar’s long, pale, silky fur. “Yes, I was upset over that letter. But thanks to you, no more. Besides, I can always give the property a stronger protection spell if Evil Aunt Ethel has the audacity to attempt to break into my house or so much as knock on the door. Knowing her, she wouldn’t bother knocking.”
Virginia begins licking with her rough tongue on Amaryllis’s ear.
“What say we work in the garden, dearie?”
Virginia telepathically replies, Excellent idea. I enjoy chasing faeries in the garden.
Amaryllis leaves the library and walks with Virginia through Rowanwick House and out the back door. After a little visit to a garden shed as purple and Victorian-looking as the house itself—though admittedly not as authentically Victorian as the house itself—Amaryllis walks alongside Virginia toward the herb garden on the edge of the property.
Amaryllis owns a city block. It’s a small city block, but a block nonetheless, in a fashionable neighborhood in Northeast Portland. Actually, it was already a fashionable neighborhood in the 1880s when the house was built. Otherwise, such an elaborate house, with its turrets and gables and gingerbread trim, would not have been built here. The land slightly slopes from a stone wall that surrounds the property. A set of three stone steps leads to the front walk, and another set of three stone steps leads to the back walkway.
It’s late September and no longer hot outside. There’s a soft breeze under a bright blue sky. It rained recently, and a circle of large, white mushrooms has sprouted in the yard. Amaryllis imagines chanterelles instead of poisonous mushrooms, but of course she can get those at the supermarket. Even witches can shop at New Seasons.
A cat shrieks in the distance, and Amaryllis, carrying a spade she removed from the shed, glances down at Virginia. Virginia looks up at her and gives a noncommittal, “Eh.”
“Yes, I agree. Not our problem. I know where you, your sister, and Devious are. Three cats are enough for me, I think. I’m not the most nurturing witch in the world.”
Amaryllis works in the garden. Virginia supervises, sprawling out on her side and swishing her fluffy tail while she watches Amaryllis’s progress with the mugwort. Amaryllis hears footsteps and voices coming from the sidewalk on the other side of the stone wall. Not expecting people, she tenses her shoulders slightly.
The wall is only about two feet tall, built into the slope of the land, so it doesn’t work as a privacy fence or any kind of protection. Amaryllis has assured visitors that it is merely decorative, and some have suggested she get a cast iron fence built above it. She supposes it’s a possibility, to keep out police and white supremacists who try to give Portland a bad name. But she hasn’t gotten around to it yet. Of course, she cast those protection spells, which are surely sufficient for keeping out such riffraff. Whether the protection spells can keep out another powerful witch, such as Evil Aunt Ethel, is the real question.
Two boys, about ten years old, stop on the sidewalk. They point their toy guns downward and stare at the looming purple and lavender house. Amaryllis glances their way and hopes they’ll keep walking, but they’re clearly planting their sneakered feet in place. Amaryllis doesn’t feel like gardening with an audience, but it would look weirder if she used magic to make herself invisible and the spade continued moving seemingly on its own.
“What a creepy haunted house,” the boy in the blue shirt says.
“Why is it called the Lavender Menace?” the boy in the red shirt says, showing his incomprehension of the neighborhood’s humor.
Amaryllis knows the neighborhood jokingly calls her house that, but she doesn’t mind. How much of the house’s history the neighbors know is the real concern, she sometimes thinks.
Amaryllis tightens her grip on the spade. Because if you make an enemy of the homeowner, you’ll find out what a menace she can be.
The other boy notices Amaryllis, who coolly looks away. He points—as rude as can be—and shouts, “Look! It’s an ugly old witch!”
Virginia stops purring and stares at the boys with her enormous, pale blue eyes. She thumps her fluffy poof of a tail.
At fifty-six, Amaryllis feels old but not elderly. She knows that back when she was this little toad’s age, she thought fifty-six ancient. Now she knows it’s old enough to be wise and have creaky joints... and if you’re fortunate, you’re not jaded by her age. She’s fairly certain she isn’t jaded, only because she’s had the privilege of living alone with non-humans in this mansion for decades.
Instead of ignoring the brat, as she thought she should do, she turned to him and raised her voice loud enough for the two boys to hear her. “Well, I cannot deny that. I am proud I’m a witch. You, however, should not be proud of being a sexist brat.”
One of the boys yells, “You should be burned at the stake!” They both point their Nerf guns at her and shoot Nerf pellets. The pellets land in the garden.
Amaryllis tenses her shoulders and scowls. “Now you’ve definitely crossed the line, little monsters.”
Virginia stands in front of Amaryllis with her big, fluffy, pale gray and beige tail sticking straight up. She’s staring at the boys. Amaryllis almost wishes she’d turn around and shoot pee at them. But she supposes male cats are far more likely to do that.
A clod of clay hits each of the boys in the face. They stand frozen with their mouths hanging open in shock. Another clod of clay hits the boy in the blue shirt—and then another hits the boy in the red shirt.
Amaryllis turns and espies five pixies charging down the slight slope of her yard, toward the boys. They lift their arms and throw more clumps of soil with bits of grass.
Amaryllis wonders where they got all that dirt and imagines a small hole in her yard. But she can’t complain under the circumstances. Indeed, she feels gratitude and smiles faintly in approval as she continues watching the clay fly.
The last clod of dirt and grass to smack the red shirt on the back of the head sprouts spindly little green legs and arms. Clearly this is a bright green pixie, The Fae dances a jig on the little terror’s head. The boy reaches up and tries to scratch the top of his head. “Ow!”
Virginia sits down, watching with round, pale blue eyes. She purrs thunderously. Amaryllis, equally satisfied, stands and watches.
The dancing pixie giggles, jumps down from the menace, and scurries back up the stone boundary wall and the green slope of the yard.
When the boys are gone, running down the street, Virginia purrs loudly and rubs against Amaryllis. “Meh-eh!”
“Sweet kitty.”
One of the pixies walks up to the witch. “That dragon is in the parlor.”