The Tale of the Kindly Crone

Previously

…"The earth is angry," declared Widow Maeve, her eyes wide with a superstitious dread that had always simmered beneath the surface of their practical lives. "Something has disturbed its slumber." And then, the whispers found their target. Clara, with her quiet ways, her solitary walks in the woods, her uncanny ability to coax life from the most stubborn soil, became the focus of their fear. It was easy, in times of desperation, to point a finger at what was different, at what was not understood. "She's always been… peculiar," muttered Barnaby, a burly farmer whose fields were as