"Each of you must write your Book of Shadows, as Magdalene did, to teach those who will come after." It’s how our learning gets passed down. So now I'm writing mine, since there’s one born to pass it on to. She’s early. I know because I’m still alive. I expected to be her ancestor. Yet here I am. Better get writing. Before the age we’re in clangs its gates closed and the next one is upon us. It won’t be long, listening to the young women in the street “Morning, goddess,” on their way to work. “G’night, witch,” going home, expecting to arrive safe. As if there had been no stake-burnings, grove-razings or ducking-stool drownings. Like you could wring out the words or brush off the cinders off and they’d be good as new. The problem with rewriting history is it half works. Enough for most people to get on with it. But not enough to resolve what's left unresolved. After enough rewrites, no one has words for what's wrong any more. But everyone can feel it: the not-rightness jarring at our edges, in pre-dawn dreaming and twilight walking home, in the centre of the lonely dancefloor, or at the bottom of the bloody wineglass. Unravelling that means reaching way back into the past where history blurs into myth....