“Hello,” I start. “Could you tell me—”
He sinks to one knee.
The crowd assembled behind him follows until they’re all on the ground.
“Why are you bowing? What is going on?”
“O Great Sorceress,” the man says. “You’ve liberated us from the Witch of the East. She has subjugated us since the Great and Terrible War, and we owe you our lives and our thanks. My name is Mathian and I am a proud citizen of the East End.”
A second man bows beside Mathian. He’s taller, skin darker, hair shorn close to his scalp. He’s wearing a decorated tunic, the fabric soft linen, the collar adorned with embroidered flowers. “I am Aakin and I too am a proud citizen of the Ends. We owe you much thanks.”
That dull ache behind my eyes returns and I press at the bridge of my nose trying to drive it away.
None of this makes sense.
“I’m no sorceress,” I answer. “And I don’t believe in witches.”
“There,” Aakin says and gestures with a nod of his head at the bloodied woman behind me. “Thatis a witch. Your house landed on her.”
“And then you killed her.” The soft, quiet voice comes from behind me. I turn around and look down at the short, curvy woman. Her dark hair is cut to her chin. Bright blue eyes gaze up at me from beneath long, fringed lashes.
She has yet to bend to her knees. I’m not sure what to make of that. Does she hold a higher position here than the farmers?
She’s wearing a simple cotton dress with delicate buttons up the bodice. The collar is stiff, not unlike her body language.
“What’s your name?” I ask her.
“Cleo, O Great Sorceress.”
“You really must stop calling me that.”
Mathian stands up. “But you’ve killed the witch, Sorc—miss. They are unkillable.”
I take my first look at the body nestled in the grass, edged in silver light. She looks pretty dead to me. Killing her was easy. It’s this part, the aftermath, that’s hard.
I cried the first time I helped slaughter a pig. I’d already named him Sylvester. He’d only been on the farm a few months, but it’d felt like years.
The sound of his squealing haunted my dreams for more than a year. Life on a farm is brutal and unforgiving.
“I didn’t mean to kill her,” I tell the crowd. “She attacked me. I was just trying to defend myself.”
“Of course, Sorceress—”
“Dorothy,” I correct.
“Sorceress Dorothy,” Aakin adds. “The Witch of the East never made it easy to like her.”
Mathian gives a nervous laugh. “Wouldn’t have said that while she was alive.”
“Certainly not.” Aakin adjusts the belt over his tunic, chuckling with his friend.
I’m a little shocked at how celebratory these people are about the body resting behind me. Was she truly that awful?
She did attack me, I suppose. And she wouldn’t listen to a word I said, almost like a feral animal out for blood, with no logic to her actions. Maybe if she’d stopped for one minuteand let me speak, we could have come to an understanding. She’d be alive and I wouldn’t be a murderer.
But then again… these people would not be celebrating their freedom from an unkillable witch.
What have I stepped into?
