5. A Witch in the Woods #2
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 more for 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.”
Conversation gradually returned in the tavern, and Maretta contented herself with her mulled wine, sipping loudly at the steaming brew over the rim of her glass. I studied her, those sunken eyes beneath eyebrows that sprang wiry hair in every direction.
A witch claimed her.
She meant me.
There was a logic to it. I remembered the presence I had felt with me in the woods that night months ago. That sense of someone lurking close.
She lifted her face from her drink and stared directly ahead, directly at where I sat. The attention jarred me. I sat up a little straighter, hopeful, perhaps, that she could see me.
“Maretta?” I whispered her name again. “Can you see me?”
She remained as she was, her gaze fixed ahead—at me, on me. And yet not.
Not on me.
Not seeing me.
Not hearing me.
For several long moments, I held my breath, hoping for her to reply. For some recognition to flare in those wise old eyes. Some awareness. Something.
Nothing.
Nothing happened.
She blinked and looked away, went back to sipping her brew.
Deflated, I sighed and pushed up from the table, walking from the tavern and out into the cold night, the door thudding softly behind me, muffling the buzzing din of the living.
I walked, a soundless specter, down the center of town, snow falling softly around me, landing gently as a moth on my lashes.
I walked headlong into the teeth of winter and did not feel it. Not nearly as much as the bitter bleakness churning inside me.
I strode across town to the schoolhouse on numb legs and let myself inside, jiggling the window with the loose latch that never fully sealed shut no matter how much Mr. Nyland struggled with it. I pried it open, sliding the window up enough for me to wedge myself through it.
Standing, I surveyed the space with its empty desks and benches. I’d never been inside the school when no one else was around. I suspected if a book fell to the floor the sound would echo forever.
Moonlight spilled inside through the large, mullioned window that faced the street. In the night it felt eerie, the shadows stretching, creeping long fingers over desks toward the front of the room where Mr. Nyland presented his lessons.
I had always enjoyed my hours within these walls, wishing for more time here. School was only a few hours a day but not at all during harvest. Even the youngest of children were required to work then.
I stepped across the plank flooring, knowing that the schoolmaster who slept on the second level of the schoolhouse would not hear the creak of the floorboards beneath my weight. I’d learned this already when testing out the boundaries of my invisibility.
Desperate to be heard, I’d thrown objects. A pitcher to the floor. A bowl against a wall. I’d grabbed each of my father’s boots and tried flinging them into the window, hoping to shatter the glass.
The moment these things released from my fingers, they never landed. I would glance to my hand to only find it empty, the object back where it originally had been, untouched, as though it had never been moved at all.
I’d done this so many times, flinging things, hoping one of them would make contact, would result in a crash. Only it never worked. Like my nonexistent footprints, nothing I did ever left a mark. Nothing I did mattered.
It was some sorcery at play, to be certain. It had to be . . . which brought my thoughts back to Maretta’s words.
A witch claimed her.
If that were true, then the word cursed would be more accurate.
I advanced on the shelf of books, finding the one I sought.
Hugging the thick, leather-bound volume to my chest, I moved to the front window that faced the street and the meetinghouse with its many torches casting light into the night.
I sank before the panes of glass in a puddle of light and opened the book, quickly finding the page with the illustration of Vala, the shadow witch who had so transfixed me as a child.
She was exactly as I remembered her. Even in black-and-white strokes, inanimate on the page, the illustration was so vivid, so very raw, depicting the witch on the brink of death, caught up in an agony of flames.
My gaze traced her form, the twisted features of her face, her torso arching against her ropes, surging away from the fire to no avail.
In the dark hole of her wide, screaming mouth, I felt an echo of myself.
She might be gone, fed to the pyre, but had another like her done this to me . . . answered my foolish call and taken a perverse thrill in cursing me?
I just want to disappear.
I closed my eyes in a tight, miserable blink at the echo of my words reverberating through me. Those damning words.
Why? Why had I said such a stupid thing?
Why had I flung those words out there into the world so carelessly, an offering to be greedily snatched up, turned and used against me like the sharp thrust of a blade to my heart.
I lifted my face to peer out the window, studying the night. My gaze flicked over the rutted road where snow and dirt mixed into a muddy mess.
Was a witch out there, delighting in my misery, in the mischief she had wrought?
Was she watching me even now?
I studied the brown buildings covered in velvety white. The torches jutting from the meetinghouse flickered in the air, whipped by wind and snow.
“I didn’t mean it,” I whispered. “Please.”
A dog appeared, trotting down the street with a purposeful air. The whistling wind ruffled his mottled, snow-dusted fur as he blithely continued on his way. I envied his purpose. He probably had a home and family waiting for him.
“I’ll find you,” I addressed her, my anonymous witch, the one who did this to me.
If it took me days, weeks, months, I would scour every inch of the woods and find her.
“You will free me,” I vowed in a harder voice, determination fueling me, chasing away the cold.
Nowhere in my mind did I imagine this existence could last any longer than that.
No way could it be forever.