“And you can sense that?”
“Yes.” Her eyes drift over to me. “I told you it was unconventional.”
But I know Myrtle. I know her kindness and her humility, the strength of her resolve, the largess of her heart. Were it anyone else, I would certainly question the motive, the discernment. Butbecause it’s her, I don’t. Instead, I ask, “Is that where bane witches started—thirteenth-century France?” I recall Bella’s brief and passionate reference to the first bane witch, her rape at the hands of a nobleman, her miscarriage after.
“So it has been said for as far back as anyone can remember,” she answers me. “And so we shall go on saying. Women killing in self-defense, particularly with poison, is hardly unique to us. Who can say when the first battered wife or angry mother dosed someone’s cup or meal? There have been widely documented cases of course, primarily in France and Italy, but those women didn’t invent the wheel, they just gave it a good turn. Neither did we. But we are a distinctive instrument of delivery, and as such, we do have an origin story.”
“I’d like to know it.” I imagine fireside chats, multigenerational, the glow on a grandmother’s face, girls cross-legged at her feet, staring up, riveted. The way all stories are passed on, family legends, myths told and retold. An ache opens up inside me yet again for the childhood I missed. The camaraderie. The sense of tribe. But then what sits at the heart of ours burns through it, and I think maybe I was better off alone.
“She was a cunning woman,” Myrtle begins. “The first of our kind—a midwife and a healer in her village. And worse, a widow, having lost her husband to side sickness the season before, what we now call appendicitis. Late one evening she was called to the bedside of a noblewoman who’d gone into early labor. The child, sadly, could not be saved, but the woman was spared thanks to the healer’s efforts. Her husband, however, was not so grateful. Drunk and enraged at the death of his son, he raped her brutally and turned her out. She staggered to her horse to ride home, clutching her womb, but never made it. She hemorrhaged, falling unconscious, the horse wandering deeper into the woods with her draped over its back.
“She would have died if the old witch hadn’t found her. A grizzled old woman most avoided, but that the midwife often left food for.” Here, Myrtle’s eyes begin to sparkle, the storyteller insidewaking up, stretching her limbs. “But when is a witch ever just a witch? This one was a fée—a fairy or woman of herbs and stones. Or a demoness, depending on who’s telling the story. What’s clear is that she was not human. She recognized this healer who’d shown her kindness and chose to grant her a dying wish. The midwife did not ask to recover, or even that the life of her unborn child be restored. Her dying wish was for revenge. And so the bane witch was born, resurrected with a potent, toxic ability, the nobleman her first and most deserving mark. But like many gifts of the fay, this one came with a terrible cost. For generations her daughters would be born killers, sons poisoned in the womb or soon after unless given up, with gifts both feared and hated. We’ve had to hide for hundreds of years or be driven from our communities, even savagely murdered for daring to deliver justice where it is due.”
It seems too glossy to be real, spun a little too tight. I whistle low, teeth buzzing with the sound. “That’s some story.”
She gives a small dip of her head and smiles broadly. “It may sound like a fairy tale, but mark me, Piers, it’s all true. We’re the living proof.”
Certainly, there must be truthinit. But I imagine unseemly details lost over the years, like jagged edges sticking out, catching at loose skin. Perhaps not food but offerings the midwife left, seeking the power of life and death. Or maybefairy womanis a euphemism for something older and more sinister, a Lovecraftian presence brooding among the trees, slogging from the swamp, pestilent and hungry. A Faustian bargain was struck, something traded away from the eyes of men, the prostitution of the soul. In any case, it ismystory now, the origin of my kind. The notion of my trading places with Myrtle someday, sitting in her chair as I retell it to another, ignorant and disbelieving as I am, strikes me with such violent clarity that it forces the wind from my lungs, and I double over.
“Piers?” Her voice is high, worried.
“It’s nothing,” I say, pushing myself up, head in a daze. “Just a passing sickness. I’m fine.”
She studies me as if she can smell the lie but leaves it alone. “I’ve kept you long enough,” she says quietly, admonished. “You need to sleep. Your hunt is more important than mine.”
That’s not what she means. She means more dangerous. More exhaustive. More precarious. But I listen just the same. “What will you do?” I ask, rising. “To feed?”
Her eyes twitch toward the window as if the darkness sets them itching. “I’ll find the bulbs,” she says, patting my hand. “Don’t worry about me.”
Stepping to the wall, I hit the switch, and we both stand in sudden shadow, staring across the house to the uncovered windows, straining to see what lies just beyond our sight. We are so still even the dust begins to settle, silence thick enough to drown thought, the tick of our hearts syncing, keeping time. Who knows how many minutes pass, our eyes adjusting moment by moment, pupils growing large enough to swallow stars. Somewhere beyond the cabin, I feel him, gazing back, locked in a stare down, holding until one of us breaks. I think he is too far to see me, but I know he feels it, the thing that ties us together, like gossamer twine.
Myrtle would call itmagic.I call itdeath.
Something slides around inside me, slippery and unmoored, a slug in a jar. “Don’t go out there,” I whisper. “Not tonight. Wait until morning. Promise me.”
I see her throat bob and glide as she swallows her nerves. She nods once. She will stay inside tonight, but she’s right. The hunt is beginning, and my prey is out there, hunting me in return.
THE NEXT MORNING,I find her at the table with a cutting board and a utility knife, slicing up daffodil bulbs like they’re shallots and eating them raw. Her flannel hoodie is partially unzipped like she forgot what she was doing halfway through; her hair isn’t yet pulled back. Fleshy, lavender pockets bulge beneath her eyes. The corners of her mouth are cracked and bleeding.
“You found them.”
“I trekked to the shelter this morning,” she says without looking at me. “But I waited for the sun to rise.”
“You should have waited until I was awake,” I scold, but she goes on eating, untroubled. I watch her from the corner of my eye as I set the coffeepot and wait for it to brew. Normally, she would have done this already. “Has anyone opened the café?”
“I told Ed to unlock the door and put the cereal and bowls out. I programmed the coffeepot last night.” She pops a final papery, brown nub of bulb into her mouth and chews like it’s a piece of homemade caramel, licking her fingers.
“I can go over and make some oatmeal,” I tell her. “Let you… finish here.”
Her eyes finally snap to mine. “I can do it. This will last me for a while.”
Coffee steam invades the air, bringing the cabin to life. I pour her a cup and add milk, setting it before her. “Shouldn’t you refrain from… you know,handlingthings for a bit?” I say, gesturing at the empty jar with the pot. I wonder how she’s done it all these years, alone in this untethered circle of mountains, overcome with hunger and the need to take a life while still maintaining her Pollyanna presence in the community.
She grunts, lifting a limp pair of white cotton gloves. “That’s what these are for. Everyone thinks I have palmoplantar psoriasis. When they see the gloves come out, they assume I’m experiencing a flare-up.”
“Let me help. It’s the least I can do.” I wiggle my fingers. “I’m toxin-free at the moment, safer than you.”
She picks at a gap in her teeth, then agrees. “Fine. I’ll head over in a bit. Just need some time to get myself together.” She looks down and notices her zipper, tugging it up.
