The Witch in the Woods: The Transmigration of Hazel-Anne Davis

The snow had already turned to ash before we even reached the ridge.

I didn't need to see the mountain to know it. The scent was already all wrong. It didn't smell like the smoke from firewood, it didn't have the sharpness of frostbitten pine. Instead, it was like scorched canvas and spoiled oil. It was the kind of burning that stripped meaning from things.

Shadow growled low, tail stiff as he padded ahead of me. His hackles were up.

"Stop," I said.

Yaozu halted beside me. His cloak fluttered in the wind, too light for the cold. We weren't dressed for comfort. We'd left the southern base under cover of night, cutting through snow and thorn to reach the first lookout before sunrise on the third day. Now the sky was gray and indifferent, and the silence was thick.

"It's the path you built," he said.

I looked down. The mountain trail beneath us had once been narrow, hidden by brush, its edges marked with tiny metal pins that only I could sense. I'd laid them when I was nine. They still hummed now—barely.

But something else pulsed beneath the soil—not metal, not my own. Something wrong.

I took another step, then dropped to one knee.

Shadow came closer, sniffed the ground.

"They brought fire," I said. "But not open flame. This was scorched from the inside out. Alchemy. Or something worse."

Yaozu's hand rested on the hilt of his blade. "Are there traps?"

"Not mine," I said. "They wouldn't risk destroying what they want to claim."

We pressed forward.

Each bend of the trail brought new damage—a rope bridge burned away, its anchors melted. A field of healing moss I'd cultivated now black and brittle, stripped of roots.

And then we reached the first cabin.

The roof had caved. Not from snow, but from weight deliberately placed at its center. Too clean to be random. The wooden beams were splintered inward, like something had jumped.

I didn't go inside. I didn't have to.

Instead, I knelt at the edge of the stone walkway, brushing away snow until I found what I was looking for.

My carving.

Three squiggly lines that told the villagers were my traps were.

They were barely there anymore. Scratched out, burned around the edges.

They hadn't just come here to burn the mountain.

They came to erase me. But then again, I didn't know why that always seemed to surprise me. They made their purpose quite clear.

I stood slowly, brushing snow from my knees. Shadow pressed against my side. Yaozu said nothing. He knew this wasn't the time for words.

We reached the main clearing by midday.

My house was gone.

The frame still stood, partially. One wall, maybe two. But the ironwood door was missing. The roof torn back. Not fire. Not siege.

Claim.

They had moved through the space like they owned it. Turned it into a shrine, maybe. A message.

I stepped carefully over a scorched board and entered what had once been the kitchen. The hearth was cold. The floor slanted. My chair was gone.

But the nails were still there.

Bent.

Twisted.

"I didn't do this," I said.

Yaozu nodded. "Then someone tried to control what you left behind."

That was the mistake.

I opened my hand, palm down. The metal in the nails twitched.

Then bent backward violently, snapping out of the wood with a piercing crack.

Shadow didn't flinch.

Neither did Yaozu.

Outside, the snow had begun again, soft and slow. It settled over the burned remains like a blanket, too late.

"We stay until morning," I said. "I want to see what crawls out after nightfall."

"You think they'll come back?"

"Not them."

I turned and looked toward the tree line. "The mountain remembers. Something always does."

We set camp in what was left of the root cellar. Shadow stayed at the entrance, silent but alert. Yaozu and I didn't speak. We didn't need to.

When darkness fell, I rose.

There were prints in the snow that hadn't been there before. Small. Uneven.

Not military.

I followed them alone.

Not far. Just past the edge of the clearing, where the old trapline used to end. I'd strung it with bells once. Not to alert me. To warn them.

Now there was only one bell left.

And beneath it, a boy.

No older than ten. Dirty. Starving. Clutching something in his hand.

He didn't look up until I crouched.

He flinched when he saw my eyes.

I didn't blame him.

I opened my hand. Showed him the metal token that used to hang from my door.

His eyes widened.

Then he nodded. Slowly. And offered what he was holding.

A ribbon.

Green.

Not for Baiguang.

For me.

I took it carefully.

Then reached for his wrist.

He didn't pull away.

"You lived here?" I asked.

He nodded.

"And when they came?"

He lowered his eyes. "We ran. But my sister went back. She thought you'd be angry if they took the herbs you had drying."

I looked past him, toward the snow-covered hill.

I didn't ask if she came back. I already knew the answer.

I stood and lifted the boy into my arms.

"You're not running anymore," I sighed, resting my head against his for a second. "I will protect you."

That wasn't something that I said easily, or ever. I normally didn't do the whole emotional attachment thing. I had people that I considered mine, that I would kill to protect. Here, that was Mingyu, Yaozu, and Deming.

More recently, the Sun brothers.

But now... that feeling was growing to include a little boy whose name I didn't even know.

When I returned to the cellar, Yaozu stepped aside without question. Shadow sniffed once at the boy, then lay back down.

I sat with the child in my lap until he fell asleep.

Then I tied the green ribbon around my wrist.

I wasn't mourning what I had lost.

It was to remember...

I only hoped that Baiguang was ready for what I was going to do next.