Amara, Witch of Hoia Baciu

Prologue

Amara

The man has been wandering through my forest for three hours before he finally realizes he is no longer alone, and I find myself wondering whether humans have become less observant over the centuries or if I have simply grown accustomed to expecting disappointment from them.

Men used to pay attention when they came hunting monsters.

They carried crosses pressed against their chests and whispered prayers through trembling lips, flinching whenever branches snapped beneath their own boots or the wind moved through the trees too violently.

Some brought priests, others carried silver or iron, and a particularly entertaining group once arrived with wooden stakes despite the fact that I have never drunk blood from a human neck in my considerably long life.

This one brings technology, which, judging by the way he keeps hitting the small device against his palm, has failed him spectacularly.

I watch from between the trees as he lifts it closer to his face and frowns at the screen. The glowing arrow spins without purpose, unable to decide which direction will lead him back to the road.

“You useless piece of shit,” he mutters, striking the device again as though violence might encourage it to cooperate.

My lips curve while I rest against the trunk of an old beech.

The device is neither useless nor broken, but the forest has never appreciated humans trying to reduce it to lines on a map.

Paths exist when I allow them to exist, roads appear when I want visitors to find them, and tonight, I have no intention of helping this particular man leave.

Fog gathers around his ankles while he continues deeper into my home, his heavy backpack shifting against his shoulders with every step. He has no idea that I already know every item hidden inside it.

Three syringes contain enough sedative to stop the heart of an ordinary woman. Two sets of steel restraints sit beneath plastic ties and a glass vial etched with symbols copied from a book written by a man who has never stepped foot in Romania.

The tools interest me far more.

He packed each one carefully, wrapping them separately in cloth as if preparing gifts for a lover rather than instruments intended to peel information from my flesh.

Pliers rest beside a bone saw, several scalpels and a hand drill, and I wonder which one he imagined using first during the journey that brought him here.

Men have always been creative when they believe pain can buy them power.

The stories change, but greed rarely does.

Once, they believed eating my heart would grant eternal life.

Later, it was my blood, consumed while still warm beneath a full moon.

Now, my blood supposedly makes barren women fertile, my hair summons the dead, my skin preserves youth and my eyes show the future if removed before my heart stops beating.

Every few decades, humanity invents another reason to cut me apart.

Somewhere beyond my trees, in the darker corners of the world where wealthy men trade human lives as easily as gold, someone has decided the Witch of the Forest can be captured, studied and used.

The man suddenly stops walking and searches the trees surrounding him.

I remain perfectly still while his eyes pass directly over me without seeing me, almost pitying how heavily humans depend on their sight.

Every root beneath his boots feels the weight of his body, every leaf disturbed by his clothes whispers of his direction, and the trees taste the sweat from his palms whenever he touches their bark.

The forest carries everything back to me through the soil.

He entered me the moment he crossed beneath the first branches.

A wolf howls somewhere to his left, and his head snaps toward the sound.

There are no wolves nearby tonight.

Another howl answers from behind him before a third rises somewhere ahead, and his hand disappears beneath his jacket. A knife emerges seconds later, gripped tightly enough to whiten his knuckles.

A low growl rolls through the trees directly behind him.

He spins around, slashing at empty air. His breathing becomes faster as he searches the fog for an animal that does not exist, and satisfaction settles beneath my skin when I finally smell the first trace of fear.

A raven shrieks above his head and he ducks, throwing an arm over his face as wings beat violently through the branches. When he slowly lowers his arm, there is nothing above him.

The deer is waiting when he looks forward again.

I create it between two trees, allowing fog to curl around its long legs while enormous antlers rise from its skull. Its fur is almost white beneath the moonlight, except around its mouth, where dark blood coats its jaw.

The man does not move. Neither does the deer.

I let them stare at each other until his grip loosens around the knife, and then I stretch the animal’s mouth wider than any jaw should open.

A woman’s scream tears through the forest, and the man stumbles backwards as the deer disappears into the fog.

“Fuck,” he whispers.

I bite the inside of my cheek to contain my laughter.

Perhaps this one will entertain me after all.

“Who’s there?” he shouts.

A child giggles behind him.

The color disappears from his face as another giggle answers from his right, followed by one from his left.

Within seconds, the forest is filled with the laughter of children he cannot see, and when he finally presses both hands against the sides of his head, I allow the sound to move inside his mind.

“Stop!”

I silence them all at once.

The absence of sound is far more effective than the noise, and the forest becomes so quiet that I can hear the frantic rhythm of his heart.

I step onto a fallen branch and allow it to crack beneath my bare foot.

The man spins toward me, and this time, I let him see enough.

White fabric moves between the trees while the edge of my dress disappears into the fog, and I allow my red hair to remain visible for one heartbeat longer before the forest hides me again.

His fear wavers almost immediately.

Greed is a remarkable thing.

“There you are,” he whispers.

I walk away, and he follows because men cross oceans for the promise of wealth, slaughter their brothers for land and sell their daughters for titles. Following a woman into a dark forest is hardly the greatest stupidity their kind has committed.

I lead him deeper while the trees close quietly behind us, erasing every path his boots create in the mud.

“I’m not here to kill you,” he calls, and a laugh threatens to escape me because they always say that eventually.

“I know what happens if you die.”

My feet stop moving before I can prevent them.

It lasts only a moment, but the hesitation is enough for him to notice.

“I know you’re connected to this place,” he continues. “People know what you are.”

They know stories.

They call me the Witch of the Forest, the creature beneath the trees, the woman who steals children and the monster who eats men. I have heard every version repeated so many times that I no longer remember which lie came first.

None of them know me.

My fingers curl at my sides, and the forest responds to my anger. Branches groan overhead while the fog thickens around us and the ground trembles beneath my bare feet.

The man laughs softly behind me.

“There you are.”

I turn and find him standing several meters away, mud covering his trousers and blood running from a cut above his eyebrow. The knife is gone, replaced by a black weapon held steadily in his hand.

It is not designed to kill me.

He wants me alive.

“You’ve been difficult to find,” he says.

“And yet, here you are.”

His expression changes when he hears my voice. Men always expect a rasp or a shriek, perhaps the broken voice of the ancient woman from the stories their mothers told them when they refused to sleep.

Instead, they find a woman.

That is usually their second mistake after entering my forest.

“You don’t look like a witch.”

“And you do not look intelligent, yet I am trying not to judge you too harshly.”

His gaze travels over my body.

“I think we’re going to make a lot of people very rich.”

The word we almost makes me smile.

“What do you believe my blood will give you?” I ask. “Immortality, perhaps? Wealth? Maybe you believe drinking it will make your cock harder. I struggle to keep track of the stories humans invent about me.”

“You know why I’m here.”

“I know what is inside your bag.” I simply say.

Uncertainty touches his face as I walk toward him.

“The restraints are unnecessary because I have no intention of running, and the sedative is rather adorable. The bone saw, however, is an interesting choice. I have spent the last three hours wondering whether you intended to start with my ribs or my legs.”

He raises the weapon.

“Stop.”

I continue walking.

He fires.

The dart crosses the space between us, but a branch tears through the fog and catches the needle in its bark.

The man’s face drains of color.

“Now that we have finished embarrassing you,” I murmur, “perhaps you can tell me what you planned to remove first.”

He runs.

My laughter follows him as the forest rearranges itself around his panic. I allow him to believe he is running north while every step carries him deeper into my home, and when he jumps over a fallen tree that exists only in his mind, he crashes face-first into the mud.

He pushes himself onto his hands and knees.

Blood covers his palms.

His breath catches.

The blood is not real, but his mind has no reason to doubt his eyes. He wipes his hands against his trousers, only for more to appear between his fingers and run down his wrists.

“Get it off.”

I walk behind him while the forest keeps me hidden.

“Get it off me!”

I allow the blood to crawl beneath his skin. He screams and claws at his forearms, digging his fingernails into his own flesh to remove something that exists only because I want him to feel it.

The blood beneath his nails is real this time.

He runs again, and I guide him with every nightmare his mind is willing to accept. A bear roars ahead, wolves snarl behind him, a woman cries to his left and a child screams for help to his right.

Every sound pushes him exactly where I want him. Back to me.

He breaks through the fog and stops when he finds me waiting.

His mouth opens, but the words disappear when he sees his knife resting between my fingers.

“Looking for this?”

His knees hit the ground.

I walk toward him, studying the terror that has finally replaced the greed he carried into my forest. This is the part I enjoy most, because there is always a moment when men understand that the stories were warnings rather than invitations.

“You wanted my power,” I say as I crouch in front of him.

He shakes his head.

“You traveled thousands of miles with tools designed to cut through my bones, yet now you wish to pretend you came here for a walk?”

“Please.”

My smile returns as the first plea leaves his lips, because there will be many more before the forest sleeps tonight.

I place the tip of his knife beneath his chin and lift his face toward mine.

“You came hunting the Witch of the Forest because someone promised you wealth and power if you delivered pieces of me, and you were foolish enough to believe the men willing to pay for my body knew more about me than the people who have feared this forest for centuries.”

His lips tremble as I lean closer.

“You should have asked them why they were too afraid to come themselves.”

The trees bend toward us as his scream tears through the forest, and I close my eyes for a moment, allowing the sound to travel through the branches before the night swallows it.

I push the knife through his throat.

His hands fly to my wrist, fingers tightening desperately around my skin as he tries to pull me away, but I keep the blade buried in his flesh as my power travels through the metal and pours into his body.

The change begins beneath his eyes.

His skin loses its color before sinking against his cheekbones, and the strength in his hands disappears as years his body never lived tear through him in seconds.

Veins darken beneath thinning skin, his lips split, and the eyes staring into mine cloud as I pull every trace of life through the blade and feed it into the forest beneath us.

By the time I remove the knife, there is barely enough left of the man to recognize.

I look down at the remains before my attention settles on the thick silver ring circling his index finger.

That will do.

I crouch and pull it free, turning it once between my fingers before slipping it into the pocket of my dress. I always take something from the men and women I kill, although I stopped counting the trophies long before humans discovered electricity.

Not every soul that wanders between my trees earns a place among them. Most leave Hoia Baciu with nothing worse than muddy shoes and stories nobody will believe, but the forest has a way of bringing the rotten ones to me.

The roots move beneath his body, breaking through the soil before curling around what remains of his arms and legs. Slowly, they drag him down, returning his bones to a forest he entered believing he could conquer.

By morning, there will be nothing left for another hunter to find. There never is.

No poisoned soul who enters my forest leaves alive, and after centuries of watching them repeat the same mistakes, I see no reason that should ever change.