Where The Wild Hunt Has Mustered, The Wilderness Lingers. All The Signs Suggest They Were In Newington

Where the Wild Hunt has mustered, the wilderness lingers. All the signs suggest they were in Newington last night. Residents have reported waking to parked cars carpeted in moss and ferns, wood anemones, cuckoo flowers and primroses have broken through the road, and Bernard Terrace is currently blocked by a full grown oak.

Anyone susceptible to compulsions should avoid Newington for the time being. Residents should be alert for any new paths that might appear and anyone hearing a hunting horn should vacate the area immediately.

Autumn and apotropaic magic

As summer ends, the shadows lengthen, and trees begin their slow descent into senescence, now is the time to consider your wards and charms.

Any permanent resident of Edinburgh can apply to their local council office for a basic witch bottle kit.

On receipt of the bottle, residents should fill it in the normal way - with nails and pins, sea salt, earth, thorns and rosemary - before placing it on their hearth. If your house or flat does not have a hearth the boiler cupboard will work just as well.

Once this task has been completed residents can relax safe in the knowledge that they are once again protected against fire, flood, madness and malice.

A reminder: witch bottles which have successfully trapped a malevolent spirit should not be disposed of in the glass recycling bins. Instead, consider burying the bottle in sanctified soil or placing it within a blacksmith's forge. For environmental reasons, casting the bottle into the depths of the sea is now also discouraged.

Placating the fair folk

Loud music, all night parties, replacing your first born with changelings, the Fae make terrible neighbours. Unfortunately, unless you're happy dodging curses and elfshot or just plain moving out, negotiating with the Fae over work night feasting is rarely a good idea. Gifts can help moderate their behaviour, however, and might even lead to reciprocation - though a Fae's idea of a good gift might not always match your own.

When making an offering think shiny, colourful delicious, or all three. Silver and gold are highly prized (though avoid iron at all costs), or even jewels if you have the budget. Decorating sacred trees with bright cloth (always go natural), or 'clooties', is a good move. If you're looking for a suitable tree Ash or Hawthorn trees are good candidates. Gifts of wild meat like venison or fowl, fresh water fish like trout and whisky or wine are also appreciated. For a smaller offering wild flowers might be suitable though avoid Ladies Smock or Verbena.

Above all remember that the Fae are intrinsically unpredictable. What works for one Heim might not work for another and a period of trial and error will be required. Good luck!

Lemon and burning sage chicken

This is a public health announcement. The Nandos on the corner of George IV Bridge and Chambers Street is currently cursed.

The owners have asked customers for their patience at this difficult time.

Stay on the paths, don't follow the lights

After several accidents, two disappearances and a suspected changling incident, Greyfairs Kirk have asked us to warn tourists against trying to take pictures with any Will-O-the-wisps seen in the Kirkyard.

The age old advice on laying unquiet spirits to rest is to bury them at a distant crossroad. The problem is, that this advice is strictly short term. Over a long enough timeline villages shudder and stretch and become towns, towns shrink and grow with the tides, and a lonely crossroads deep in the woods becomes a corner on a bustling city street.

But where the forest fell, the spirit endures. Commuters accumulate in drifts on its pavements, to be swept over the road like leaves in wind at the changing of the lights. Street sweepers come in the night, snuffling through the gutters like boar in search of worms. It swapped tree roots for water mains, a network of copper xylem reaching ecstatically up towards the sky.

Once supplicants would visit the crossroads in darkness to exorcise wishes they couldn't say in the light. Now every day the spirit hears the wants of a hundred hundred people. Their tithes paid in split coffee and wind-caught crisps, penance done in silent contemplation of the traffic lights, pilgrimages carried out in business hours only.

The forest was torture for the spirit, trapped forever with its past. In the city it finds solace in roar of the crowds; voices become babble become noise, meaning is lost and with it identity. Now it is at peace, made anew each day at 0700 and losing itself in the crash of the shutters at closing time. Umbrellas open like mushrooms with the rain, and the spirit rejoices in their transience.

The herder held their crook up in thanks to the driver who had patiently waited for them and their flock to make it through the intersection. The trouble with both herd animals and wandering spirits was that they tended to cling to their habits harder than most, and little things like the passage of time or traffic did not interest them in the slightest. Herding ghost sheep, however worthwhile the promise of their delicate and fluffy ephemeral fleeces was, tended to thus be an exercise in both repetition and situational awareness for any shepherd trying to keep them.