My hands pressed to the ground, her ashes spread in the wind. There they lay trapped between the lines of my palms. Dirt and soot indiscernible. The villagers had long since descended into their households, reunited with family and loved ones. Their evenings would conclude as always, yet I was made to suffer eternally.
All I had learned so reluctantly to love would never return to me, not in this life or the next. No, I’d been stripped of that right. Reduced to a husk of remembrance, existence weighing on the complexity of my memories.
I wasn’t sure what was true and false anymore. My world, my very existence, had been turned upside down. Everything I’d ever learned rendered futile. Was I even myself anymore? It was impossible to tell.
A witch, they said.
The very thought, the name itself, burned my tongue like wildfire.
Our acquaintance transcended the mere lifetime we shared. Everything I was––everything I now knew––it was because of her. Because of the mother we shared in teaching.
Who I was previous to their time in our village, I can hardly bring myself to remember.
I was not me, that was for certain.
The person I was before bore no comparison to now, powerful with knowledge forbidden.
Perhaps that was why they feared her and her mother, regarding them with such a word of disdain.
Witches.
The world could not will the word from my lips, supported by the breath of those who had come before me, molded me, sanctioned me. I refused, for I knew her more than I even recognized myself. Her hair appeared as though it caught the sunlight within its strands, eyes of the ocean and temper like its waves. She was the embodiment of life itself, breathing existence into all who knew her.
I smelled her in the crushed herbs within a mortar, her grip firm upon the pestle. I remember how scared I was when her mother offered to bestow their knowledge, the way I nearly ran to my own in terror.
It was only medicine.
I’d never seen one of our own practicing it, outside of the holy ones. They were the only beings allowed to interfere with their god’s plan. Death and despair the blueprint of their existence. She would not stand for it, nor would her mother.
They taught me not to stand for it, either.
So in secret, we treated those in need. Salves and elixirs, healing herbs and remedies of the earth. Unescorted women sought out treatment—the occasional husband, too. Expecting mothers, desperate daughters. The command of their services was endless, and they trusted me with it all. Together, we provided strength through the darkness of uncertainty, remedies for ailments that had been known to kill.
Lives were saved, hearts touched, families mended.
It was a glorious thing, this glow of delight, knowing I was helping one patient at a time.
From there they taught me a wondrous skill, something I’d once regarded as an impossibility blossoming to fruition before my eyes.
The pages beneath the pads of my fingers had once been a scar, reminding me of what would never be. Such pursuits were forbidden, after all. But she showed me it wasn’t as impossible as it seemed, that sometimes in order to truly live, one must sin. Her calloused hands rounded my lips in the form of vowels, pulling at my jaw to bring sound to the ink of mache pages.
I still remember the first time I’d read a sentence on my own. It was such a simple text, yet they celebrated me all the same. Berries and nuts they’d gathered in a distant clearing, dried meats and fresh cheese, milk sour yet the sweetest thing. We dined like royalty that evening, and for a moment, it truly felt as though we were.
I can still hear it, the outrage from a mere few hours ago.
The village roared with determination, the light of torches seeping through the shutters of our kitchen window. I opened them, a sudden knock like an explosion at our front door. Father moved to answer it, a neighbor spewing rants of madness.
“…Witchcraft.”
It had been the only word I’d caught in the flurry of here and there. Mother ushered me to her bedroom, prying me from my evening chores whilst father moved in formation with the mob. I heard it then, her screams of terror, a noise I’d once only heard in glee turned diabolical. It was undeniable. My dear friend––my only friend––was to be the next victim of holy madness.
I couldn’t simply slump here and allow that to happen.
I pulled myself from my mother’s embrace, the woman calling out to me, but I made no effort to listen. By the time I departed from the small cottage we called home, I saw my only friend strung up on the post where many previous had burned, lives lost to misunderstanding.
“What’s happened?” I spoke out, yearning for anyone to heed my call, though I knew all too well. It was a wife, a look of shame across her features, who answered.
“Witches,” she spoke in a whisper. “One of the men found them gathering herbs in the clearing west of town, chanting to themselves from an unholy book, adorned in nothing more than a corset and underskirts.”
The very same clothing shaping her bodice as she flailed helplessly against the wooden dowel, dyed black with berries and tea, a method I’d used on my own linen once or twice––courtesy of their teachings. I moved forward, pushing through the crowd, uncaring of the faces contorting as I passed.
It was then I finally caught a clear glimpse of my dear friend. Her face was smeared with dirt and tears, screams tearing her throat apart, now a mere hoarse whisper. Her hair was unkempt, the fresh flowers I’d known to always decorate her hair wilting at her feet, casting a halo beneath her.
But where was her mother?
I prayed she’d gotten away.
One of the holy men brought himself upon the podium, standing exalted before the townspeople, voice echoing into the darkness, a torch his guiding grace. As he spoke, the crowd went silent, hanging onto his every word as though children attached to the womb. “You have been accused by many as an associate of the dark arts––a witch! The penalty for such a crime is death, your own life to spare those of the townspeople.”
No!
I moved to scream, yell, advocate for her innocence. She was no more a witch than anyone else in this wretched town. It was my own father who held me back, his palm to my lips, quieting me with a fierce whisper, a tone that declared itself. “Speak and you’ll meet the same fate.”
I stilled, watched with tears in my eyes as torches were tossed her way, the spire alight with fire. My friend screamed in crippling agony, skirts aflame, charring porcelain skin. Our eyes locked for a moment too brief, memories of my only friend. Her gaze reflected the people, my own the flames. A single tear down her cheek, consumed by injustice, sizzled into nothingness by the heat emanating off her skin.
How I yearned to look away, shut my eyes and relieve myself, but I would not. She deserved this, if only this: a witness to the death of innocence.
I remained well past her expiration, her screams like a tune that would remain forever, unforgettable. My father departed, kissing my forehead, reassuring me that all would be well––the witches could not harm me anymore.
My hands grew dirtied by the memory of her warmth, the breeze her voice and windchimes her laughter. I saw her, what remained of her, charred and lifeless. The ground was still hot to the touch, but I didn’t allow it to phase me, not as I sifted the ground for her remains, anything to remind me of her. I was only awarded a handful of items: blackened bones, cloth kissed by the flames, and a small bottle.
Unlabeled, somehow mostly intact. A miracle sprouting from the seeds of her demise.
It was then I heard the town’s infamous holy man, who spread gossip as though it were a profession. “Why do you mourn the child of the damned?” He was clearly drunk on cider, swaying here and there, regarding me with wanton disgust––though such behavior was forbidden of him. The way he spoke of the deceased should’ve awarded him the title of damned. Such a shameful man, brimming with the superstition of holy light.
Her memory in the palms of my hands, I placed her essence in the pockets of my apron, my thumb circling the remains for reassurance. She would travel with me, guiding me on this new journey of isolation. One where my fury bubbled like an elixir within a cauldron, tears hot with a raging fire.
I would not, could not allow that wretched word to pass my lips.
But just this once.
Only once.
In condemning her, I would avenge her, the path of vengeance taken here and now.
I rose from where I once crouched down, the whispers of sunrise kissing the tips of my eyelashes. “I would never mourn the wicked…” I hissed at the holy man, fists clenched. “I would never mourn a witch.”
The man, seemingly satisfied, carried on with his drunken morning, likely returning home to the family he so dearly defended––so much so, he stripped me of mine, the person I held closest to my heart reduced to the ashes beneath my slippers.
Mother would be anticipating me hysterically, father likely pestering her regarding my tardiness.
I didn’t care. Their theatrics were no longer my concern.
I could feel my friend as though her spirit walked alongside me, hands conjoined in an unholy waltz. Perhaps it was. It mattered not, not to us. Our life was our own, our security forged in fondness. I could smell the herbs, the creek splashing in the western clearing, and fauna landing in the palms of our outstretched hands. She’d become one with nature, the life she so fruitfully made her own coming to its end.
But I had no intention of allowing this to be the end. No, this was only the beginning.
The people of this village would burn all those who threatened their security to the ground. Such a fragile community, to be brought down by practical teachings passed down through generations.
I would show them what it truly meant to walk a path of darkness, conjuring the unholy and worshiping the damned. They could kill, slaughter, and burn all they deemed unfit. But the reign of their god would not save them, not from this.
Not from me.
Bryanna Bernice is a writer and aspiring author born and raised in the United States. From a young age she found a love of literature and story-telling, her dream to turn a lifelong passion into a career.
Featured image by Adam Wilson on unsplash.
