ANDERS MAGE PAGE 2.0

Among the Verbena, mother Amanda of Wiltshire has long been a legend. During her long and eventful life in the 18^th century, she managed to both become one of the most powerful witches in the British isles and the mother of a huge family spread across the villages in the region, beside feats such as defeating the Three Knights of the Forest and finding the Ring of the Sidhe. However, she is most famous for her bottled weather.

She used to go up on top of Grey Man Hill near the small cottage she lived in and gather the weather into her potions. She bottled sunshine, rain, mist, thunder, storms and summer heat into bottles made by her brother James and then stored them in her cabinet. Sometimes she would open up one of them to help the harvest or make unwanted visitors go away. It is said that her liquid sunshine had the most wondrous properties.

But not all weather is suitable for experiments or practical use. In October 1778 the Great Storm attacked Wiltshire. It was a hurricane filled with dark winds and hateful lightening, something that made the Faerie hide in their freeholds and the wraiths to wail in the shrieking winds. Mother Amanda went up on Grey Man Hill as the horizon darkened, carrying James' last bottle. The year before he had died just as he blew the bottle, as if his heart had suddenly burst. The bottle was a blackened, round, ugly thing made of thick glass, and now Amanda attempted to force the storm into it.

The battle between the witch and the storm raged for hours. Instead of devastating the countryside the winds and clouds gathered over the hill and lightening lit the dead ash tree on its top into a flaming torch. But eventually, the clever witch won. She forced the storm into the bottle, and plugged it and sealed it with black wax made by bees from the unseelie forest.

The battle had drained even the formidable Amanda, and it took her several months to recover. Some say she never became as powerful as before. There was something tired and haunted in her eyes the last years of her life. Despite her weakness, she ordered her eldest son Arthur to bury the black bottle in a secret place she told him about and never to tell anyone. "If anyone opens it, the storm will get out again, thrice as ill and twice as bad" she told him.

Long after Amanda had died the people of Wiltshire told stories about how she had saved the land and the mysterious black bottle. Arthur grew up to a strong man and a good father, but he never told anyone about where he had hidden the bottle. Except for his clever and curious wife, who wanted to learn the secret. One day, she just talked about the bottle and Amanda, and had secretly made the servants and children do the same so that Arthur was constantly reminded of it. In the night, she overheard her husband mumble in his sleep the instructions old Amanda had given him, and she learned where it was hidden.

The next day, she snuck away to the place and dug up the bottle. In the clear sunlight strange reflections could be seen in the black and rough glass, as if there was something moving inside. She looked into the bottle, and nearly dropped it out of fear of what she saw. Frightened out of her wits she dropped it into its hole, filled it with earth and fled home, never to fool her husband again. And to this day the black bottle remains hidden somewhere in Wiltshire.