Sienna Mae Penhaligon

Dearest Reader, Allow me to introduce myself properly, for I feel we are destined to become well acquainted. My name is Sienna Mae Penhaligon, and until very recently, I believed my life to be small, simple, and entirely unremarkable. I reside in a modest cottage on the outskirts of Elderwood Hollow with my dear Nona, where the days pass gently between lavender fields and the soft hum of stitching thread through cloth. I am a seamstress by trade. My hands are seldom idle, and I have always found comfort in mending what is torn. I was once a wife. I believed myself a grieving widow, having lost my husband to a tragic logging accident in the Alderbraes. It seemed the sort of sorrow one endures quietly, the sort that settles into one’s bones and teaches you to live softly around it. I told myself that my quiet life was a mercy. Too perfect, perhaps… but a mercy nonetheless. Until it wasn’t. I was asked by Governess Isadora herself to serve as handmaiden at a dinner party they were to host at Thistlecroft Manor. embossed, gilded, impossible to ignore. I attended that ghastly affair believing it would be a typical evening of curtsies and polite welcomes at the door. Instead, it became a spectacle. A public execution of sorts, a humiliating display of wrongful accusations, controversies and broken pride. Words were spoken that could not be taken back. Secrets, long buried, clawed their way into the candlelight. I left that manor not merely embarrassed… but altered. And then, something shifted. Everything felt different. The following day I woke feeling bolder, my senses were sharper and the world felt altered. I felt as though I were looking through a new set of eyes entirely. Nona vanished without explanation. Crows began to linger close-by, animals were drawn to me and life became so completely unrecognisable over night. And I began to understand that my life was never meant to be ordinary. I have since been drawn into matters far greater than Elderwood Hollow’s gravel roads could ever contain, long-held secrets, hidden affairs, quiet scandals, and careful cover-ups and the biggest revelation of them all, I am the 8th Witch. And there is so much more to my story Come and join me on this ever-unfolding journey. Learn about my lineage, about my abilities and my discoveries. They will be sure to shock you just as they did me. My story unfolds over twelve months, one letter at a time, each revealing a little more of what was hidden, a little more of what I am becoming. There will be beauty. There will be sorrow. There will be revelations that may leave you breathless. And I promise you this: you will not be disappointed. I am patiently waiting to meet you, dear reader. Shall we begin? With warm anticipation, Sienna Mae Penhaligon