Maya's Aura: The Crystal Witch Read online

  MAYA'S AURA

  The Crystal Witch

  (Book Six in the Series)

  By Skye Smith

  Copyright (C) 2012 Skye Smith

  All rights reserved including all rights of authorship.

  Cover Illustration is a part of "The Moon" by Alphonse Mucha (1902)

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Than you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Revision 0 ISBN: 978-0-9881314-6-0

  MAYA’S AURA - The Crystal Witch by Skye Smith

  Cover Flap

  NOTE: This is the sixth novel in the “Maya’s Aura” series.

  This naughty novel of magic and mayhem begins with Maya hanging with some witchlets in an ancient pub near Cambridge, England. Through them she meets a formidable Wicca and together they set up what can only be described as a Wicca Ashram.

  Maya is on a quest for the source of the heirloom ring given to her by her great-grandmother, which leads her to archeological digs, in which some very ancient crystal pendants have been found.

  When she sleeps with one these pendants around her neck, she has vivid dreams of the life of its original owner, a healer who lived a thousand years ago. So vivid, and so clear are the dreams that her companions begin to log them, and thru Maya have conversations with the memories of a peasant woman long since dead.

  What they find out threatens to turn an entire field of history upside down.

  MAYA’S AURA - The Crystal Witch by Skye Smith

  About The Author

  Skye Smith is my pen name. My family convinced me not to use my real name because my stories are so critical of predator males. You'll understand and forgive me this as you fall in love with sweet Maya, my main character.

  For those of you who like stories about vampires, witches, and magic, you won’t be disappointed by my very different, more realistic take on it all. My vampires are parasites wearing business suits. My witches are healers ignored by the modern world. My magic is based on aura’s, and everyone has felt or seen an aura at least once in their lives.

  The novels so far in the "Maya's Aura" series are:

  1. “The Awakening" …… - published - She discovers her strange aura.

  2. "The Refining" ………. - published - She learns how to use her aura.

  3. “The Ashram” ……….. - published - She searches for answers in India

  4. “Goa to Nepal” ………. - published - She follows a quest into the Himalayas

  5. “The Charred Coven” ... - published - She fights black craft in England.

  6. “The Crystal Witch” …. - published - She learns psychic craft in England

  7. “The Redemptioner” … - published - Psychic dreams of her ancestor Britta.

  8. “Destroy the Tea Party” - published - Britta’s adventures in Boston in 1773.

  MAYA’S AURA - The Crystal Witch by Skye Smith

  Forward

  This is the sixth book in the Maya series, but you can read any of these books out of sequence and still enjoy them, so long as you know the premise that they are based upon. In other words, read this forward before you read chapter one.

  Maya is a good looking twenty year old woman from Mendocino County, California who was born with an aura. She first found out about her aura while on a gay nude beach in Vancouver, Canada, where she met Erik who also has an aura.

  After living with Erik and his partner Karl for a few weeks, her aura became noticeably stronger, to the point where it would put Erik into a trance. With Erik’s help she explored her ‘gift’ and Erik tried to explain it scientifically.

  Her aura can be felt by others. Sometimes it feels like a delicious inner feeling of wellbeing. Sometimes it feels like a sensual massage. Some mistake it for the feeling of love. Some sense a white light, although not with their eyes. Some sense the perfume of Lily of the Valley, although not with their noses. It is like a super sensitive sense of touch, but without touching. It is a proximity sense that can reach out to another person, and even into another person.

  A Buddhist monk has taught her how to better control it. How to raise its strength and how to lower it. How to focus it through her left palm for far range. How to focus it through her right palm for close range, and how to cup her hands and focus it into things like crystals.

  A epiphony happened when she realized that her aura can heal sickness and cure dis-ease in body and mind. Is this what her aura is then, a healing touch?

  A good theory, until one day she killed a man who was trying to rape her. Officially he died of a heart attack, but she suspects that it was caused by her aura. Later she found out that the man had been a psychopathic sexual predator.

  Meanwhile, Maya has been recruited as an extra in a B-gradeVampire Slasher movie. The director used her as Vampire bait because she looks so much like an innocent school girl when dressed in a tight white blouse and a mini kilt. Karen, the star, befriended her.

  Through fearful experience, Maya has learned that the very touch of a psycho makes her see and smell and feel a horrible darkness that make her swoon. Simultaneously she learned that her aura has a major hate on for psychos. If she cups her hands under a psycho’s throat, her aura goes apeshit and they die instantly, as if from sudden death syndrome or from a massive coronary.

  When an Asian mystic learns of this ‘gift’ that not only identifies psychos, but also kills them, she scolds Maya for putting herself in such danger from such violent men. Publically violent psychos are not worthy of her ‘gift’, because they will all eventually be caught by the police. There are much more destructive psychos lurking in politics and big business who cause widespread evil and get away with it.

  Partially because Maya was wanted for questioning by New York police about the suspicious deaths of some Wall Street bankers, and partially because she must find out more about her aura, Maya had journeyed to holy places in India. In Nepal she found a treasure. An ancient Tibetan book that is like an “Idiot’s Guide to Aura’s”.

  From the Tibetan book she has learned many things. For instance, how to cure psychos rather than kill them. For instance, there is a connection between auras and quartz crystals. Quartz crystals not only store and reflect auras, but also store the thoughts of the people who have worn the crystals around their necks.

  Meanwhile the suspicious deaths of a few elite ‘one percenters’ have brought Maya to the attention of a wealthy Englishman, Sir Nigel, and his executive assistant, Wendy. They want to use her ability to sense psychos for their own purposes, and they are quite willing to blackmail her into working with them.

  Her agreement with Sir Nigel has Maya temporarily working for him in England, but Maya is using the time to search out her heritage, including the provenance of the ancient iron ring that was given to her by her great grandmother. This quest has led her to Cambridge, where there is a sizeable colony of witches and Wicca.

  Okay, that’s enough, now enjoy this book.

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  MAYA'S AURA - The Crystal Witch by Skye Smith

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Cover Flap

  About the Author

  Forward

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1 - The Speckled Hen, Cambridgeshire, England

  Chapter 2 - Badger Hollow

  Chap
ter 3 - The Fen Island

  Chapter 4 - Sir Harry's Treasures

  Chapter 5 - A Household of Interesting Women

  Chapter 6 - Sir Nigel Arrives

  Chapter 7 - Fixing the Louts

  Chapter 8 - The College MRS List

  Chapter 9 - Crystal Magic

  Chapter 10 - Wicca Ashram

  Chapter 11 - Crystal Dreams

  Chapter 12 - Fiona Turns it On

  Chapter 13 - Fodder's Ale

  Chapter 14 - Matchmaking

  Chapter 15 - The Rose Crystal

  Chapter 16 - Exploring the Shires

  Chapter 17 - The Missing Prince

  Chapter 18 - Interpreting Crystal Dreams

  Chapter 19 - Robin Hood's Cave, The Peaks District

  Chapter 20 - Wendy makes a Choice

  Chapter 21 - Outbound to Hollywood

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  MAYA'S AURA - The Crystal Witch by Skye Smith

  Chapter 1 - The Speckled Hen, Cambridgeshire, England

  The Speckled Hen pub was an old building with a slumping thatched roof and nestled in a garden just where the High Street of a village became rural again, and became a very, very straight road that led towards the town of Ely. "The road is so straight. Is that going to be a new freeway off ramp or something?" Maya asked as she got out of the car. In England the only place she had ever seen a road so straight was on the freeway.

  "Naw, it's Roman. Two thousand years old," replied her new friend Fiona without even looking up. "If you see a straight road in England, it's always Roman and two thousand years old." Fiona thought for a second and then said, "So that must be impressive to a Yank. Your oldest highway is what, two hundred years?"

  "Well normally, yes I'd be impressed," replied Maya absent mindedly, "except I just spent the winter in Nepal and I walked through a gorge on a road that was five thousand years old."

  "You've been to Nepal?" Beatrice looked up from locking the car. "How's it? I've always wanted to go."

  "I love it to death," Maya replied with a big smile at the instant flashes of memory. "I'll go back any time." She flipped her long blonde hair and looked at the red head. "Hint. Dye your hair black before you go to any of those countries. It makes life so much easier."

  They had to stoop to go through the front door of the pub. Compared to the endless June twilight outside, it seemed gloomy inside. A voice sang out from behind the bar that faced the door. "Go into the lounge, ladies. I won't have single women being pestered by the men in the tap room."

  Maya looked through the gloom into the tap room. It was empty. Even the dartboards had no darts stuck in them. She was pulled the other direction and into the lounge. A man there, the only client, waved to them to come and join him at the biggest table. They did.

  He was an old fellow, a large fellow, with puffed red cheeks and a big smile. "Molly's just heating me some stew. Would you like her to heat some more? I'll call through to her for you." He pointed at a chalk board menu that showed only one choice. Steak and kidney stew. Slowly each of the girls nodded to him, and then he leaned back and called through the doorway beside him. "Three more stews, love."

  Just the thought of what an English-made steak and kidney stew must taste like had Maya's stomach churning. What she really preferred was, like, tuna sashimi, and the stew was as far away from that as she could imagine. She looked at the big man across the table. His ham-sized fist was lifting a delicate flowered china tea cup from a matching saucer. He took a sip. It must have been scalding because he poured some tea into the saucer and sipped from the saucer instead.

  "Good evening, Beatrice, Fiona," said the man, but he did not recognize the third girl so he asked, "Are you going to introduce me?"

  "Oh, right." Beatrice, the plump English red head, blushed the color of a robin's breast, "This is our friend Maya from California. Maya, this is Fodder. He's the brewer who makes Molly's Ale."

  He held his huge hand out to shake hers, and against her better judgment she trusted hers to it. It was one of the gentlest handshakes that she could remember. She was so relieved that she beamed a smile at him.

  "None of that, now," he said holding her look with his eyes. "I'm a married man." Then his laugh filled the room with a roar and a smoker's hack.

  "So where is everyone?" asked Fiona. "We expected this place to be full to the brim." To explain herself to Maya, she said, "The clientele here is mostly women of the craft. This is where they come to gossip. After what happened after the Witches' Sabbath, we thought this place would be jammed with gossipers."

  Maya blushed. At the actual Sabbat, nothing had actually happened, if you didn't count three psycho witches drugging her and locking her up in a damp old cellar. It was later, when one of the psycho witches ran afoul of Maya's aura that something happened. As was normal whenever a psychopath got too close to Maya's aura, the head witch, the Magus of the coven, had dropped dead. Simply that. Everything in her body stopped still and she died. The pathology report would label it as a massive coronary, or as sudden death syndrome.

  Molly popped her plump face through the kitchen doorway and answered the slender brunette, Fiona. "They are all at home hiding. Some are under arrest. They send their husbands here after work to gather the latest gossip, but that is about all the business I am doing."

  "That's why I'm 'ere ta 'elp Molly out," mumbled Fodder. "I just delivered some barrels of my best, the only ones I'll deliver to any pub before the weekend. On my website I'll say that the only place to drink it this weekend is 'ere at the Hen. That should bring in some business."

  "Yes," Molly added, "I'll have to call around and bring in some help. Oh, and I must tell the plod to expect a parking problem out front." Molly ducked back through the doorway. "The stew!"

  Maya cocked her head and threw Fodder a questioning glance.

  "Oh, it's a long story," he replied to her look. "Well, I suppose you have time, til the stew arrives. See, all my life working in an insurance office, I dreamed of owning my own pub. It's a common dream of men in England." He began to laugh. "Their favorite wet dream." It took the echoes of his laughter a while to calm down.

  "Trouble was, see, that every time I saved enough scratch, the cost of buying a pub would go higher. I could never catch up to the new prices. Then I heard of a bloke that had a cottage brewery who was selling it cheap 'cause he'd buggered his back. Need a strong back to be a brewer. So I bought it, and he taught me how to make beer."

  He picked up the tea cup with one finger and a thumb and sipped noisily. "Trouble was, the beer was crap. That was why he was selling out. He was broke. Well, I looked about at the industry. Cottage brewing was just coming back into fashion. His problem was he was making the same kind of beer as the big companies, who control all the pubs. To rescue my investment I decided that I had to make beer that the big breweries couldn't make in bulk. Something that would not compete with them in their own pubs."

  Molly came back in with a huge board of bread and pots of butter. "He was crying in his beer over in that corner, and so I told him of the Hen's recipes for ale. God knows how many owners they's been passed through. I inherited the Hen from my da, and he from his." She pointed to some words carved into a beam.

  'Licensed by King Henry III to sell ale'

  'Licensed by Queen Elizabeth to sell spirits'

  "So ale since the 1300's, spirits from the 1500's" Fodder picked up his story again quickly before Molly, the old tongue wagger, could spoil it. "Back then, if you drank water you died of dysentery. The process of making ale purifies the water, and ale is fast to make. The only things safe to drink were ale and hot soup."

  Molly's tongue was not to be outdone by a mere man. "So I loans the Hen's recipes to 'im, and he tries them, and the beer connoisseurs love it. That's why he sells them under the name Molly's Ales. They's famous because he only makes small batches. That's why the website. To tell the punters where to drink the next batch."

  "It's my story, go on with y
ou and get the stew," he interrupted. "So now, instead of owning a pub, with all the problems of payments and taxes and employees and police and drunks and long hours, well, instead I am the most welcome non-paying guest in any pub in Yorkshire."

  Maya gave Fiona an absent stare. Fiona was taking geography at University in Cambridge. She'd called it 'reading' geography, to Maya's puzzlement. Yet another strange way the English talk of things.

  "It's in The North," giggled Fiona. Whenever someone in The South heard a place name they didn't recognize they always said 'It's in The North'. Even on the freeway, they never listed the city names on the direction signs, they just said 'The North'.

  "So the ale you just delivered..." Maya was starting to understand.

  "Will more than make up for all of Molly's lost business this week." he chuckled and coughed. "The punters will drive a hundred miles to find it and drink it so they can brag about it at the office on Monday."

  Molly arrived with a big steaming pot of stew and five bowls, and served it out before sitting down herself to eat.

  Always polite, Maya took her first spoonfuls and tried not to grimace. The chunks that tasted like piss must be the kidneys. The chunks of gristle must be the steak. "Pass the hot sauce, please," she asked politely, and when everyone looked at her, frozen with half-lifted spoons and open mouths, she added, "Tabasco will do.

  "No love," Glib Molly covered her shock well, "got nothing like that 'ere. I run an English kitchen, and proud of it."

  "So Molly," Fiona asked. "we didn't come just for your famous stew. We want to here the latest gossip, you now, about the coven."

  Famous stew? Maya thought as she bit into something round that she had thought was a potato but it was more like eating a sodden sponge made from flour and soaked in gravy. She reached for the bread. Bread, butter, and gravy are food for the gods.