Long ago, a witch very nearly seduced the king of Penterra into giving up his throne. She exerted her magic and wiles on him, but he valiantly wrested himself free and escaped her clutches, putting her to the torch—the first of many witches.
There was a book I had been drawn to in the schoolhouse. I’d studied it over and over until the brittle pages became worn and loose within their spine. It contained an illustration titledThe Shadow Witch, Vala Put to the Pyre.
I’d fixated on that picture, examining the artful black-and-white rendering of the witch shackled to a tower of wood and kindling, flames licking up her slender body, meeting and tangling with the long tendrils of her hair, reaching her face—upturned to the sky in a dramatic vision of agony.
The memory of that illustration pricked me still, sharp as a scythe. As a young girl, I would lie in bed thinking about it only to return to it the next day to study it even longer, mesmerized by the image, imagining I could feel her pain, taste her fear...hear the crackle of flames devouring her.
Now I wondered about my connection to that book and its illustration. Had I felt some sort of prescience? Had I sensed a witch lurking close to Isstad, living in the woods I prowled?
“Witches are gone,” one of the men at the table finally called, capturing my attention again. And yet there was uncertainty in his dark eyes that I felt run through me like a tremor.
Maretta cackled. “Are they indeed?”
More doubtful looks were exchanged.
“She lives in the woods,” Maretta proclaimed. “She is there. I have felt her magic.”
At this assertion, I sat up a little straighter, as though this information connected to some cord that ran directly through the center of me and tugged me to alertness.
“How?” someone challenged. “Are you a witch, too?”
Now it was her turn to scoff. “I’ve lived a hundred and nine years among you all and never once harmed a soul.” Because witches only ever harmed. That was the understanding—the truth.
I took thorough measure of the old woman. A hundred and nine? Was she exaggerating? It was unheard of for someone to reach such an advanced age—someonehuman.
She continued, “In fact, I’ve nursed many of you back to health from the brink of death, including you, lad.” She pointed a gnarled finger at the one who had dared to offend her with his accusation. “Remember that time you got your bum stuck in a bucket. I was the only one to get itunstuckand then I treated your blistered and chafed arse afterward.”
The man’s face burned red as everyone at his table broke into explosive laughter.
“If I was an evil witch who wished you ill, would I not have left you in that bucket?” She sniffed. “I didnot.” She nodded with alacrity. “Because I heal andsavelives. I do not take them.”
Grumbles of agreement met her words along with several nods. There was no doubt she was a skilled healer. She’d tended to members of my own family on more than one occasion. Her skills were valuable in a community that was frequently beset with illness and disease and injuries. No one wanted to lose her, and if anyone truly, seriously thought her to be a member of witchkind, I suspected they would keep that opinion to themselves.
“Just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean they are gone. They’re cunning chameleons. Know just when to appear and disappear,” the old woman added with a sly smile that revealed the dark holes of several missing teeth. “Aye, they’ve become very good at hiding.”
Another man spoke up tentatively, and I recognized him as Gert, father to one of the children fond of pelting me with snowballs. “I’ve seen a woman in the woods. Hair like ice. Her black eyes bore a hole right through me. Ran a chill down my spine, she did. Must confess I nearly soiled myself in my haste to get away.”
I shivered at his admission.
A somber silence fell. No one laughed at the mention of his near mishap.
Another man volunteered, “I’ve seen her, too, walking my back pasture by the light of the moon. Haven’t been able to grow or harvest anything in that field since, and when I set my sheep to graze on it, they never live out the season.”
A grave murmur broke over the room at this, and others started calling out their own similar experiences and encounters with a lone, mysterious woman who stirred fear and unease in their hearts.
Maretta nodded. “Aye, witches are out there still, hungry to avenge the wounds done to them and their kind.”
The campaign to exterminate witchkind was still something recounted among our elderly, those old enough to remember—like Maretta. Witches had been systematically rounded up and put to the torch. Pyres had burned across the land, the smoking bones and skin of witchkind mingling with the perpetual fog that cloaked so much of Penterra.
It was understood that witches, or at the very least their progeny, could still be out there, but little could be done about that. Not when they blended so well among the population. They were not like dragons of old, impossible to disguise.
The witches not captured and burned had vanished, fading from society, melting into the fog.
If they were not hiding in plain sight as wives and mothers, sisters and daughters, burying their witch roots, snuffing out the magic flickering inside them, then they lost themselves in the more remote areas of the kingdom to escape persecution. Those who fled to the boglands and deep woods clung to their magic, attacking anyone who dared enter their realm. These were the stories told to children at bedtime to keep them from straying.
I stood and moved to sit across from Maretta, propping my elbows on the scarred tabletop, staring at her heavily wrinkled face, the lines there so deep they resembled the ruts and crevices of a well-traveled road.
“Maretta,” I greeted as though she could hear me. It was morefor me, these moments when I spoke out loud. Using my voice made me feel almost normal, part of the world, as though I still belonged here. Because if I didn’t belong here...I didn’t belong anywhere. I swallowed thickly. “Tell me more.”
