Of Witches and Arsonists

The First Day

“In three days,” says the witch, “You will burn your own town down.”

They laugh at her when she says this. The people in this town are always laughing at the witch. She does not live with a man and it has not killed her. They don’t like this. She cures their ailments with herbs that they don’t understand. They do not like this either, even though it keeps them alive. Especially because it keeps them alive. She leaves her hair unbraided, uncovered, flecked with grey like she isn’t scared of age the way they all are. This, they also do not like.

After the witch has shared the prophecy with the town she climbs down from the wooden crate and goes back to her hut. They looked angrier than usual, she thinks. Their brows were heavier with lines and there was something ugly in their laughter that made her think of candles going out. Light to dark, hot to cold. This is what she saw in all of them.

She sighs. These days, she feels exhausted more often. It has less to do with age and more to do with not being believed so many times over. It takes it out of her. She unlaces her boots and sits with her bare feet in front of the fire. She wiggles her toes one by one until they are warm. Then she kneels and brews a hot tonic for her head which has been banging incessantly since the prophecy arrived at her door.

The prophecy arrived in the form of a little girl some weeks ago. The little girl had come to her door and danced, arms over her head, writhing like a snake. She was dared to do this by one of the boys in the village. She didn’t know what it meant. The witch had opened the door to her, watched her dance, closed the door and then consulted the book. It had taken her until today to riddle it all out and she had told the people in the town immediately in the hope that they might listen. This, she had learnt, is not something men are good at doing. Still, she thought if their own lives were at stake they might, finally, open their ears.

The tonic smooths her tongue and she feels the liquid fall through, making her aware of her body and its pieces. Her heart is heavier than it was yesterday, she can tell. Her lungs are larger, fat with air. She already knows how this is going to end but she isn’t a dramatic person. Even as a baby, her mother had said she barely cried. She is still like this now. She drinks her tonic and then darns a sock. She waters the herbs she keeps on her windowsill and fingers their leaves. When she holds her fingertips up to her nose they smell of mint and basil which makes her smile.

Before bed she heaves her hair into a bun and opens the book. It is faded today. It gets like this when it is sad. She rubs her palm up and down the spine and watches the ink strengthen. It has not always done this. In the early days when they were still learning each other it would stay blank for days if she said the wrong thing or shut it too hard - it is prone to bad moods and difficult days. This suited the witch though because like many people, she was prone to bad moods and difficult days too, and so they found a rhythm over the years.

Tonight it stretches open with her touch and reads the witch out a spell to conjure dreams free from aching. The book knows the witch cannot sleep when all she can hear is her joints complaining. The witch is grateful. Onto the page she traces a wave, a windowsill, softness, and the book stirs these into its spell. Already she is beginning to feel drowsy. Her eyelids are beginning to slide. She is looking forward to what she will find behind them.

She puts the book beneath her head and it curls itself around her. “Not long now,” she says into its cover. “Not long left.”

The Second Day

Over an ale the joiner says, “I don’t like the witch.” The men agree. They nod their heads in unison and barely notice the barmaid who is clearing the stains of their drinks from the table under their chins. This is how she likes to be: unnoticed like this. She has been cleaning stains from their table for decades now. Career progression isn’t available for women in this century.

“Burn our own town down? We aren’t stupid. We are not stupid men. We would never burn our own town to the ground,” says the blacksmith.

“We can’t let her say things like this about us,” says the baker, rubbing his stomach.

“I heard a rumour,” says the farmer. He is a man with a low and broad voice that comes up from the floor to meet you. He has been leaning against a post, watching everyone but the barmaid talk, chewing corn in his yellow teeth. He comes towards them, pushes his shoulders between two of the men and lays his palms flat on the table. “Burning,” he says.

“Burning?” says the joiner, who equates rumour with gossip which he leaves to his wife.

“The king’s men are going around burning witches. By royal order. Perhaps it is our civic duty to the kingdom. Perhaps it is right.”

“The king would not do a thing which was wrong,” says the baker, with his head on one side.

“Certainly it is right, then,” says the blacksmith, who likes to agree.

“We have been kind, allowing her to live for so long,” says the farmer, sitting down on the bench. He is glad to be at the centre of things, instead of up on the hill with his sheep. He is tired of feeling so lonely.

They nod at him. “It’s time. It’s time,” says the joiner, disappointed that everyone is looking at the farmer when it was his idea to dislike the witch in the first place.

The barmaid refills each of their jugs and then she hangs up her apron and leaves through the backdoor. She traces the edges of buildings until she is at the house which belongs to the witch. It is slightly farther out than the others but otherwise it is unremarkable. When she arrives she knocks four times as she always does and enters. The witch is sat with her hair down on the bed.

“Will you plait it for me?” the witch says to the barmaid, who is the only person she allows to touch her hair. The barmaid kneels behind the witch on the bed and begins to wind the thick strands of hair together. Occasionally she kisses the back of her neck. Once she has finished the witch turns to face her. They sit cross legged on the bed with their knees touching.

“The men want to burn you,” says the barmaid.

The witch nods. “If not them, it would have been the kingsmen. Men are sick of things they can’t understand.”

“We could run away. We’ll hide in the mountains and live off the land. I’ve grown up here. I know the roots of the trees like a map in the countryside. I know how to drink and eat well from what there is. I know how to survive.”

“Then you know that I am not going to,” says the witch. She puts her hand on the face of the barmaid. She has green fingernails, not from magic but from gardening. Still, she looks alien.

“When will it happen?” asks the barmaid.

“Tomorrow,” says the witch. They look at each other for a long time. Once they have fed on each other’s eyes, the barmaid stokes the fire as the witch brews tonics for each of them. They sit by the heat and the barmaid reads the witch a story from a book her mother gave her when she was a child. It is late but the barmaid is hungry from work and so they heat soup and eat it until their tongues are burnt. The witch puts her index finger onto the barmaid’s tongue and gradually the heat dulls.

“I’ll miss you,” says the barmaid, who is trying not to cry. Unlike the witch, she was a baby who made rivers with her wailing.

“I’ll miss you too,” says the witch. The words catch in her throat. Although she is not an emotional person, does not wear her heart on her sleeve, she knows it will be difficult to leave the woman she has loved in secret since she came to this town nearly twenty years ago. She knows too that it will be difficult to let her body be tied to the wood. Most of all, she knows that it will be difficult to die in all that heat.

The barmaid lets the witch wander through her reverie. Then, when she senses that the mind has wandered as far as the witch wants it to, the barmaid puts her hand between the witches legs and they make love, as they often do, all night long.

This is something the people in this town do not know about it. But if they did, they would definitely not like it either.

The Third Day

They tie her to the stake and the crowd stand around her like crop circles.

“Witch witch witch,” they chant as if they only have one mouth between all of them. “Burn burn burn,” they chant as the joiner comes forward with the flame and turns their eyes orange.

The witch smiles out at the sea of orange-eyed people. She thinks of the pumpkin soup her mother used to make to keep them warm while they were travelling. She thinks of the time her mother gave her the book and said, “Learn everything and you will save people.” Her mother came from a time when things were simpler, when people wanted to be saved. She wonders why people do not want to be saved anymore.

Then she feels her feet begin to heat up and she holds her breath. She pictures the face of the barmaid and her crooked teeth smile.

“Die die die,” they chant as the flames lick her thighs and turn the murderers’ eyes red. “Kill kill kill,” they chant and feel glad, even proud, that they are witch killers.

And their eyes are too full of flame to see the fire at the foot of the witch catch onto a trail of hay and make its way towards the barn which makes its way towards the pub which catches the thatch and now it jumps - dancer-like - around the town.

Their ancestors built their town in a circle to honour the ways the crops grow. They built their village before people burned witches in its centre. The barmaid watches the town from the hillside. She sees the flame in the centre and then the growing circle. She is too far away to hear anything. As the town burns she listens to the sheep, bleating and chewing on the grass around her. Briefly she feels sad that their farmer will not be coming back to them: she worries for the sheep. But then she remembers that all animals were born wild.

She takes the book out of her apron pocket and opens it slowly, just like the witch had told her to do. Inside the book is a map and she follows its lines towards the future.

First published in All Existing Literary Magazine: Issue Two, November 2023