Under the Leaves: A Short Story

In the shadowed lanes beyond Cambridge, something takes flight.

When Dr. Ambrose Weatherby, an unassuming Cambridge scholar with a taste for obscure manuscripts, witnesses thirteen cloaked figures take flight from behind a decaying house on a country road, his world tilts from the rational into the arcane. Terrified yet entranced, he returns to his university rooms and consults a forbidden grimoire-De Natura Volucrum-which details the preparation of a witches' flying ointment. Armed with mandrake, henbane, and half-forgotten Latin, Ambrose fashions the unguent, memorizes a series of arcane flight commands, and waits for the moon to wane.

Following the witches deep into the woods, Ambrose becomes an unwilling witness to a night ritual centered not on spellwork, but on summoning. As the coven's chant spirals toward its climax, he realizes they have more than one offering to make-and one of them is him.

A darkly atmospheric and humorous blend of folklore, ritual magic, and gothic suspense, Under the Leaves is a tale of scholarly pride, supernatural peril, and the dreadful price of asking questions no one ought to ask.