Beware the Canandanti

For those of you who like a short bit of nonsense, here's a story I wrote a couple of years ago. If you've ever wondered what your pets dream of, then maybe this will help to answer your questions. My dogs liked the story when I read it to them.

The story is inspired by the witch trial accounts of the magical order of spirit-journeying Benandanti magicians and their battles against the evil crop-cursing Malandanti in 16th and 17th century northern Italy (of which you could read further in Carlo Ginzburg's The Night Battles. 

Quite what those people who made their complex and involved confessions to the Italian Inquisitors were actually up to ~ and whether or not they were part of some very late surviving pagan cult, Christian folk magic, or something yet odder still ~ is open to a great deal of debate. However, the world is a deeply strange place and, just occasionally, some humans take a full and honourable part in that wonderful strangeness.