Hexed

2

"Every spell is a journey." 

― Lawren Leo, Love's Shadow: Nine Crooked Paths 

☽★☾

Brynn felt as if she was being stretched thin and then shoved together, again and again until she finally returned to her original shape. Her limbs tingled as she regained feeling. The insides of her eyelids were tattooed with the remains of the bright light that had shot through them. She muttered a curse as she scrambled to her feet — having somehow ended up in a sitting position — and a plethora of aches flooded her body. She almost couldn't wait for her eyesight to fully return; she wanted to teach Joan a lesson for messing with her like this, assuming it was Joan that had done this. But as her vision cleared, she quickly realized that she wasn't where she had started.

There were no store shelves surrounding her, no tinkling of chimes, no sweet smell of incense... In fact, Brynn didn't appear to be inside a building at all. Her eyebrows furrowed with confusion as she gazed at the landscape around her. She was out in the streets of Salem once more, but for some reason the touristy hubbub of people, flyers, and gift shops had disappeared. In fact, some of the buildings themselves had disappeared, and the city felt a little more open than it had before, leaving more room for farmland and woods. The cobblestones beneath her were still rough and uneven, but they looked newer, as if they had only been put down recently. While Brynn was looking down at the ground, her eyes caught on her own appearance.

"What the..." Her modern clothes had been replaced with a black petticoat and waistcoat, white apron and shift, and a white cloth keeping her auburn hair under control that looked somewhat like a bandana. She felt the immediate need to rip all of the clothes off — they didn't feel right at all — but she also didn't  want to be seen stripping in the middle of the street. Brynn tugged at the white cuffs at the end of each sleeve as she desperately thought of how to get out of this mess. I should ask for help, she eventually decided. I'll find someone who might be able to tell me what's going on.

The girl took a deep breath, trying to reassure herself that everything would be okay, before starting off down the street. Her shoes — which were some type of pointy-toed boot — clicked on the cobblestone as she hurried off. She tried her best to look casual, but it was more than a little hard to do so when she was in such a panicked state. This place didn't look like the Salem Brynn had come to recognize.

Relief spread through her as she noticed a young woman stopped at a street corner underneath an unlit oil lamppost. She appeared to be looking around for something, curiously peering this way and that. However, she hadn't seemed to notice Brynn approaching, because she jumped as the girl came up beside her.

"Sorry," Brynn muttered, offering an apologetic smile. "Could you perhaps tell me where I am?" It couldn't hurt to ask, she figured. Maybe I'm overreacting and this is actually some dumb trick. This can't be Salem, right? Or maybe Joan knocked me out and I'm just having a really weird dream.

The young woman took a second to adjust her dirty blonde hair from where it had drifted over her shoulders, pushing it back so that it hung neatly down her back. She eyed Brynn with curiosity in her brown-eyed gaze. "Of course. You're in Salem Town."

"Salem... Town?" Brynn hadn't remembered that extra word being in the city's name. "Does anyone call it anything different? Maybe just, um, Salem?"

The young woman stared at her for a moment, trying to decipher what Brynn meant. "No, not that I know of. Maybe you're thinking of Salem Village? That's just west of here."

Brynn bit her lip with a thoughtful hum. This was getting more and more frustrating;  how was she supposed to get out of whatever nightmare she had been forced into if no one knew what she was talking about? "Oh, okay. Thanks." She stood there a moment longer, lingering because she wasn't sure where else to go.