Nasty Little Witchling

Mother would have lamented my death, even if it was only over the wasted time spent raising me for fourteen years. So, it made me feel like an especially nasty daughter because I felt relieved at hers.

Listening to the way she died stopped me from thinking about my plans. One of the boys in the group I was hiding near described the gory public beheading, his friend smacking him on the arm before he could describe how the inside of a neck looked.

The executioner had to go for two full swings before it got to that point. It might have taken three if Mother wasn't as vain, spending the life she stole on looks rather than strength.

I skulked away through the long grain near where the children played outside the town's wooden walls. They had already moved on to arguing which of them would be ‘it’ for their game. No one wanted to hear more about the morbid topic.

I kept low to the ground until I entered the nearby forest. I realised along the way that it might be my fault she was dead. It had been my job to go into the town and buy the goods we couldn't grow ourselves, but I had absolved myself of that responsibility—painfully.

Mother hadn't explained the intricacies of currency to me when first sending me out, so I returned with fewer items and no change. The week following had been especially brutal for me and my empty stomach.

The next few times I was sent, I purposefully repeated the mistake until she gave up punishing me and went herself. The items I bought were only for her use anyway. The few vendors I interacted with thought I was an orphan—which was true now—doing errands for someone since I came with a list and more roe than someone with my threadbare clothes would have.

Our cottage’s back garden came into view. I was supposed to always walk a different way to it, so a path didn’t form, but it didn’t matter anymore. Mother wasn’t around to punish me, and I could make the grass grow back without fear of her finding out I used magic.

Instead of seeing the cottage’s second storey, there was an illusion of a hole-ridden roof. I was happily surprised the enchantment was still in place. I had been worried that her death would cause the magic surrounding the cottage to fail, but it seemed to be holding.

The lush undergrowth ended, and dead leaves cracked under my bare feet. The area around my home was rotten and warped from all the alchemy chemicals dumped in it. My mother's rituals also sucked the life out of everything in the area, myself included, until I learned to resist its pull. It was probably why I was smaller than the town children.

The garden was left to look overgrown and unattended to fool any onlookers. I pushed the fence gate open and swished my finger behind me to close it. In my joy at throwing around the magic I had worked hard to practise and keep secret, I may have overdone it. The wooden beams of the fence smacked together, and the gate shook violently back into an open position.

I bit my lip, walked back to push it in place and dropped the latch. To redeem myself, I knelt in the ground overgrown with weeds and focused on the vegetables and herbs. Maybe I could do without the ruse of an uninhabited cottage now that the townsfolk wouldn’t be worried about a witch, but it was better to be safe.

The weeds would have made growing vegetables harder since they stole what those plants needed to make the edible pieces, but I had a trick. I separated all the plants in the garden into different sides of my mind: the ones I wanted to keep and those I didn’t. I no longer had use for most of the alchemical herbs and some of the vegetables I found gross, so I refocused.

Sweat dripped off my brow and plopped down near my fingers resting in the dirt.

I’d done this before, but only a few at a time and not the whole garden.

I asked the plants I cared for to extend their roots and forced the others to shrivel up theirs. It wouldn’t kill them all off, but it would ensure I got the vegetables I wanted more often. I could force the whole process, but that had a habit of killing the plant after too many times.

While I was at it, I made the ripest vegetables fall off their stalks and glanced over to where the tubers big enough to harvest lay underground. Letting go of the magic left me feeling empty and drained momentarily. My arms shook while I stood to pick up what was going to be my dinner. I smiled at the freedom of what I could make. No more having to stomach killing for meat, I could use the salt without having the bowl thrown at me for putting too much in, or I could roast the peppers to give them the burnt taste I liked.

“I don’t even need to make dinner at all,” I thought out loud, conjuring water to drip over my muddy haul. I might have been pushing it too far.

My head spun as I stumbled through the threshold, almost tripping on the ledge. I recovered my footing and decided to relax with the magic use. I didn’t have to cram all of it into the brief periods when I was alone anymore.

There was no need to rush.

The door, if it still counted as one, lay in pieces at my feet. The rest of the room looked ready to collapse with sections of rotting planks everywhere. The walls did little to stop the wind, and grass shoots poked through some of the gaps in the floor. Dried leaves occupied the corners of the single room while the fireplace sat bare, not having been used at all in my memory.

I danced across the floor, knowing which floorboards to avoid stepping on while bundling up the vegetables in the hem of my shirt. The ladder wasn’t visible, but I had used it often enough to grab on perfectly the first time. I shuffled up with one hand while the other kept my dinner secure.

My head pushed through the illusion of the roof, a warm glow greeting me. Colourful plants in pots gave my home some vibrance. They dotted the floor and hung from the ceiling, with creeping vines reaching down from some of them.

My first alteration was going to be replacing them with less poisonous plants. My second was going to be using the alchemy station as the new cooking area, most of it at least.

Much to my mother’s disappointment and disgust, it was not possible for me to do anything one would expect of a witch. I could do some magic with the nature around me, but curses, hexes, and enchantments were beyond me. Training me in the latter had been Mother's life work, and I had ruined it.

The cauldrons I needed to move were dreadfully heavy, and there was no chance I would eat anything out of the alchemy one. Mother didn’t only make oral healing tinctures. I was too tired to enact any of my plans and despite the sun only barely touching the horizon, I looked longingly at my small hammock.

I put the vegetables away and was ready to fall into my hammock. I glanced down and remembered how dirty I had gotten trying to sneak close enough to hear why Mother hadn’t returned from shopping that morning. Some of the grass around the town was only tall enough to hide me if I lay on my stomach, which meant crawling through the dirt for a long while.

My head had stopped spinning, so I felt well enough to make the dirt slip off me while I shook myself. A quick kick sent a gust of wind into the pile of dirt, sending it towards the ladder entrance. I slapped my hands for another short gust to scatter it below.

The room started spinning again, so I waddled towards my bed. Once in, I couldn't tell if the room was swinging side to side because the hammock was moving or if it was all in my head.

…

I was used to getting woken up by loud voices. Usually, they were the shrieks of a woman, so the voices of men talking loudly in the distance were alarming.

The hammock almost dumped me out onto the floor as I scrambled to release myself from its embrace. I got most of my body out but hopped on one foot while trying to untangle the other one.

The voices were getting closer.

I half succeeded and landed on my hands and knees near the ladder opening. Sunlight shone through the cracks in the walls below, the beams highlighting the falling dust from my activities above.

The voices were close enough for me to hear what they were saying, or I could have if it weren’t for the entire forest population announcing they were awake. I asked the nearby wildlife to be quiet, then added a ‘please’ at the end when the ravens started to get huffy. None of them responded in any real words, but I got a feeling of acquiescence, some of it begrudging.

The birds liked me best and were the main culprits of the noise. The forest fell silent except for the voices.

A few of the people had a slight weight to their presence that pulled my vision to them through the walls.

“Sir, this isn't a good idea."

“Yeah, everything got quiet.”

“More reason to get this over with."

“We're lucky killing her didn't curse the whole town. You really want to chance it by burning down her home?"

“How do we know this is her home? One of you go on some late-night dalliances? I know she was a looker, but that's beyond desperate."

"Nah, I came to get a remedy for little Josie once, witch swindled me for half my roe...but it worked."

"And we repaid that with killing her? Sounds like some of us deserved to be cursed."

"Shut it, her and whoever else it was shouldn’t have fucked with the baron. We would have left her alone to keep giving us potions. We had no choice."

“We already had to deal with some official doing the execution, we don’t need another coming here to investigate, and find out we all knew about her. Better to be rid of it before we're labelled as sympathisers.”

“I’m not going anywhere near that place. Might turn us into ghouls with how everything around here looks.”

“That's not how it works, just throw the torch in. Stop being a coward.”

There was a bit more grumbling and arguing before someone’s footsteps crunched through the dead leaves. A grunt came from closer than the voices, and a thud from even closer. I guessed the garden, but I couldn't see much unless I stuck my head through the illusion.

The others shared a round of quiet laughter and a few jokes about getting sticks through holes. I sympathised with whoever it was; the crows jeered at me for not throwing seeds high enough to their perches.

But only slightly because it sounded like he was trying to burn my house down.

Another clatter came from below. A wooden pole with a lit rag wrapped around the top tumbled end over end in through the open doorway. I watched as the flames licked the damp and rotten wood without spreading far. Fire wasn’t my favourite, I couldn't understand how it worked. How could heat come from a piece of wood, a rag and a spark? It flummoxed me.

There were no creatures around that used that kind of magic for me to watch and learn from either.

I reached out with a hand, careful not to put it through the illusion and focused on the air around the flames. I closed my fist while picturing the fire being smothered.

I didn’t know why it worked, but placing a lid over stray flames in the kitchen usually put them out. The flames spilling across the floor collapsed back into the rag and smouldered as the torch was smothered.

Creatures outside in the garden leaked out feelings of fear that I confused with my own. The first torch spread to a pile of dry leaves outside, if the brief imagery I snagged from a rodent was accurate.

I thought I could still hear voices outside, but the cracks and pops of the spreading fire drowned them out. The ones with the weight to them started to move away and I poked my head down to see. I meant to be discrete, but my bundled up long black hair flopped down halfway to the floor.

Luckily, no one was there.

I scrambled down the ladder and a wave of heat and smoke hit me as I looked outside. The fire was spreading quickly across the dry brush. I stood and stared until I was sure the presence of the people faded.

The yellowed grass had carried the flames to the dead trees, which then climbed up their hollow interiors. The garden was mostly throwing up smoke since it was all fresh greenery. I ran out and pulled myself over the side of the garden fence. The fire was moving in a wave across the grass to the other cottage walls, where there wasn’t a garden to block it.

I waved my hand out, and a gust of wind hit the approaching flames, but that only pushed it back for a second before it crashed down with more vigour. Stomping on an area with crawling embers worked for three whole tries until I felt my bare feet heat uncomfortably. I tried to surround the area with my meagre magic, but the fire was too much for me to smother like the torch.

My heart was racing. This was my home and I had only been able to call it that for less than a day. I wouldn't have be able to survive in the town without the roe Mother earned.

A branch crashed down, and I flinched back into the wooden wall of the cottage. The birds had already fled. The others who lived in the trees and on the ground radiated fear. I tried to block it out, but the creature in the burrow backed up against the far wall with their heart racing, felt too familiar.

They turned to burrow deeper with their magic.

I threw out my hands to the side and tried to grab the ground below me. It was slipping from my control like loose dirt pouring through my fingers. I heaved my arms upwards.

There was no real weight in them, but they spasmed at the magic I was trying to muster. I held my breath because of the exertion on my muscles and tense stomach.

The ground in front of me shifted and heaved upwards, spilling across the approaching fire.

I half stumbled and half slid down into the new ditch I created and stared in shock at the waist-high pile of dirt. It seemed taller since I was up to my knees in a ditch, but it was still impressive.

What sounded like an entire tree crashed down somewhere behind the cottage and I stumbled through the ditch to the next side. The fire was already climbing up the wall here. I couldn't get to the middle of the it to repeat the same thing. I lifted my arms in front of me regardless.

It might have been my imagination, but it felt easier being on the same level as the dirt I was trying to lift.

One of my arms locked up and spasmed as the ground rolled over. There was still fire spreading up the cottage wall. I tried to get water to rain down on it. Nothing happened with everything being so dry. I scooped up piles of dirt in my hands to fling at it instead.

I climbed out of the ditch to see the last side of the cottage.

The fire hadn’t yet spread that far. An old, overgrown path that had been made from trips to the outhouse stopped it. I took the chance to gulp down air not tainted with smoke and shake the cramp out of my arms.

I worried for a moment about what they would do if they came back and found the cottage unharmed. I leaned against the wall and tried to think of where I could go if I couldn’t stay. The town and a random tree in the forest were the only things that came to mind. Neither were great options.

I had seen and experienced how strange children on their lonesome were treated in the town. It would be worse now that I didn’t have roe to spend or charms to hide me. I pushed off the wall and started kicking dirt on the path to make sure the fire didn’t break through.

A stretch of grass on the other side of the outhouse still connected all the way from the cottage to the raging flames beyond. Even thinking about lifting the dirt with magic sent waves of pain down my arms, so I turned about to look for something else.

The rusty hoe I used for gardening lay half-hidden in the grass near the garden fence. I grabbed it and rushed to dig into the soil, coughing as the wind changed and blew smoke into me. Bone-deep pain started to accompany the weariness in my arms as I worked.

Fire brushed up against my defences but didn’t make it past. Embers threatened to jump over some of the smaller mounds of dirt and were extinguished by the wind before making it. The outer edges of the clearing were almost entirely ash, with the flames struggling to pierce the outer greenery. I took that to mean it was over and stayed to watch until the only light was from the sun overhead.

I trudged back towards the cottage and let the hoe fall out of my grip.

I eyed the invisible ladder once inside and considered collapsing to the floor, but caught myself before my body could agree. With my heart no longer racing and no flames taking up the entirety of my focus, I could feel my arms throbbing with both a dull and piercing pain. Using mostly my legs, I made it up the ladder and rolled onto the hard wooden floor.

My nose was clogged with soot. The dull ache in the back of my mind from whenever I overused magic was also present, but my arms drowned out any of the comparably minor discomforts. I was hungry after not having anything to eat the day before, but I couldn’t imagine sitting up, let alone preparing anything to eat. That frustration pushed me over the edge, and tears started leaking down my face.

I think I missed my mother. They wouldn't have dared if she was still here.