Briar Coven Board Expulsion Proceedings by Andrea McDowell
2025 Honourable Mention
Dear Ms. Elara Thornwood,
We are writing with respect to your membership at the Briar Coven Board Meetings, previously brought to your attention via correspondence on the Wolf half-moon (waxing) and the Seed full moon (n/a).
As you know, clause 10(2) of the Terms of Reference (TOR) for the Briar Coven states unequivocally that a member must attend eleven meetings out of thirteen to remain in good standing with full rights and privileges pertaining to materials access and mentorship of junior Witches. You have missed five (5) consecutive meetings without rationale. As no reply has been received providing that rationale, in accordance with clause 13(3).1 of the TOR, we must regretfully terminate your voting membership.
At your earliest convenience, please return the following items:
Briar Coven Book of Shadows
Ash wand, inscribed with Briar Coven logo
Two (2) bottles of eyes of newt, sourced from Arka
All files containing confidential correspondence and/or magical technologies copyrighted to Briar Coven
If you would like to appeal the termination of your membership, please write to Ms. Evangeline Mistwood, Chair and High Priestess, within seven (7) days of the above date.
We thank you for your many years of service to Briar Coven and the powerful magical techniques you have developed for our ongoing use. Best wishes in your future endeavours.
Regards,
Briar Coven
Elara —
Where are you? I’m worried sick. I put them off as long as I could. Evangeline wanted your blood. Literally. She’s got some new blood-powered spell and she wanted it to be your parting penalty. If you do appeal she may ask for a pint as price of entry.
I’ll have my possum Dogwood scouting in your garden in case you are unable to write — though anything that could keep you from your pens must be a nightmare.
Please write even if you’re never coming back. I don’t want to think about the Coven without you. Aren’t we friends and sisters as well as coveners? I miss you.
Your dearest,
Isolde
A tidy bungalow on a small street of twelve houses. Barely enough snow to blanket the grass. Streetlights painting the snow beneath them golden; otherwise, a black-and-white world. Chickadees bunched together in tree cavities. Coneflower seed heads dreaming of springtime. And one window, double-curtained, leaking green light.
A possum hiding from the cold under the shed, gossiping with the Hickory chipmunk family, and snacking on millipedes. A sharp knock on the wood floor, above, and a tiny sliver of a missive pushed through the slats addressed to Isolde: “I am so sorry, dearest. You will hear all soon.”
Highest Evangeline,
My apologies for my long absence. If I can prevail upon you for one meeting for an appeal — or if not an appeal, a proper farewell — I have much to tell all of you. I have been learning the magic of bees.
Yours,
Elara
Video Transcript, Appeal
Five women nurse drinks in a well-appointed living room. Four wear dark brown, grey, black. Two look towards Evangeline, sitting erect in the largest chair. The last, Isolde, leans toward Elara, in green and yellow.
Elara: I aimed my spell at a bumblebee, being familiar and larger than other native bee species. But I missed and landed in a bicoloured striped sweat bee.
Isolde: What is a bicoloured striped sweat bee?
Elara: Small. Front parts like chips of flying emerald. Hind parts striped clown pants. They make magic from the stuff of bee life: pollen, nectar, wind, sun, flight, love, despair.
Evangeline: Despair! Nonsense!
Elara: Consider how many larvae a mother bee will lose. Many of their spells are pleas: world, let this one live. Others are for successful foraging, safety, good weather. I brought one. [Elara holds up a small, stoppered bottle containing what looks like a sleeping bee and several seeds.]
Evangeline: How can this benefit our coven?
Elara: Ah. Well. They are unlike honeybees. They have no castes. Every female bears her own larvae. They live together in burrows underground, each with her own apartment, but jointly defending the young. They are covens, really. Only…
Evangeline: Yes?
Elara: No … no queens. No high priestesses. No, well, you.
Isolde: Magic without high priestesses?
Elara: Yes. Quite. [She opens the bottle, stands and vibrates, buzzing furiously. One woman laughs. Evangeline slumps, eyes closing.]
Isolde: What have you done?
Elara: I have made our high priestess the familiar of a hibernating bee witch, for a time.
Gia: You what? [She stands abruptly.]
Cora, beside her: Wake her up! Right now!
Elara: I can’t. It’s up to the bee witch.
Cora: You can’t do that without consent. [She puts her coffee down on the table with a thud and takes out her phone.] I’m calling our lawyer.
Elara: Exactly how many of your love spells have been consensual, Cora? That’s what a spell is, an attempt to force things. Did you like it when she drew your blood for magic?
Gia: You will remove it.
Elara: I won’t.
Cora: You will never be welcome here again.
Elara: [shrugs] All right.
Cora: And you will never be in another coven! Anywhere.
Elara: I am already in another coven. A bee one.
Gia: Wake. Her. Up. [She begins murmuring a spell, sparks flying around her clenched fists.]
Isolde: I think you should go.
Elara: It appears so. [She stands, puts a ball of pollen on her tongue, vibrates, and disappears.]
I settled on a pine branch overlooking the rail trail and smoothed my feathers. Below me, two human women ambled, deep in conversation. Streaks of grey lightened their head-fur and they’d bundled themselves in portable nesting to ward off the chill spring breeze.
“When will Evangeline wake?” asked Isolde.
“When the spell wears off,” said Elara. “And when the bee witch wants. You’ll find out. Look,” she said, nudging Isolde with her elbow. “The bloodroot are coming up.”
Isolde looped a hand through Elara’s elbow. “So what’s next?”
Elara’s gait slowed. “I think I’ve learned all the human magic I can. Other bees, maybe? The green metallic sweat bee is solitary. What could I learn from a fully solitary bee? But mostly, when I and the coven sang to the asters – they love asters, those bees ….”
“Like an altar, or a friend?”
“That, and an all-you-can-eat buffet plus an art museum, in one – sang their spells for pollen and nectar – with their whole bodies, I can still feel it – I could swear I heard the asters singing back.”
Both women stopped walking, Isolde staring at Elara while Elara stared into the trees – neither woman spotting me. Some water ran from Elara’s eyes down her fleshy beak, and Isolde squeezed her elbow. They began walking again.
“I want to know what magic the asters have,” said Elara.
“What if you can’t come back?” asked Isolde.
“My dearest, I will always come back for you,” said Elara. Isolde wrapped an arm around her neck, and they stood still again. “The asters won’t come up for months yet,” Elara said. “We have time.”
As they walked on, last year’s leaves crunching under their feet, the woodpecker Knot joined me on the branch.
“So?” he said. “Which is it? The branchy one? Or the shrub?”
“Branchy,” I said. “Elara.”
“Is she ready?” he asked. “Will you invite her to join the coven of all beings?”
The tree beneath us swayed, needles leaking pheromones asking the same question. To both, I said, “Not yet. Soon.”
Andrea McDowell manages climate change projects by day and makes things at night. She has published in Spacing, This, and Corporate Knights magazines. She lives in Hamilton, Ontario with the world's best kid ever and an impossible puppy, and loves bees about as much as you imagine.
