The Bewitching Hour

✧ chapter thirteen: memory lane

He knows she didn't mean it. He knows that. She wept as she insisted as much, over and over again. But no amount of her apologies ever undid the damage. ...She shattered his memory. She broke it. With a single touch of her hand, she split his fragile young mind into thousands of fragments, and all because she made a subconscious wish that he would not remember his pain. These stones, now, are all that he has to glue his memories back together. She wanted to make up for her mistakes somehow. What right does he have to defy her final wish?

Yorak takes a deep breath, closes his eyes, and chooses the stone that calls to him. He has never watched three visions in one night before, but there's a first time for everything. Colors swim into focus on the surface of the liquid. Right away, he knows this memory is... different. And he knows, then, why he has been so afraid to view it. His blood runs cold at the eerily familiar scenario that plays out.

The witch Krolia of the Clan Marmora prowls through the Feldakor woods in total silence. Her form is that of a black deer, sleek and elegant, antlers like the branches of a birch tree spindling away from her head in impossible spirals and with eyes like violet flames and with legs so long and slender that the hooves in which they end are like merciless daggers. Subtlety, it seems, is not her strong suit. This is clearly not an average deer.

Without warning, and despite the odds, she is confronted by a puny mortal man. A dark-haired hunter with his bow and arrow drawn and ready. Her fur bristles. A black miasma spills from her in glowing particles. A warning to anyone with common sense. But the man is not scared away, perhaps because he lacks it. Intrigued, he grins.

"It's you," he declares. "The witch from the hilltop."

"And what do you know of witches?" Krolia answers in several booming voices, only one of them her own. Her form lurches, and it looks like her spine breaks. The shape of the deer twists and lengthens until Krolia stands there as herself. Taller than any human woman, with alien but regal features and adorned in gold and jewels and billowing robes, ears a fine tapered point, hair like silk, eyes like death and teeth sharp enough to inflict it. Beauty and terror all at once— something Yorak can only aspire to as he is now.

All the while the hunter watches. He is mesmerized, and apparently he is happy with what he sees when her transformation is through. The grotesque nature of the change doesn't seem to register with him.

"So it's true," he breathes. "You can shape-shift."

"What do you want with me? If you intend only to waste my time, or are truly so arrogant as to believe that you could harm me, I will be on my way."

"I intended not to distract you, your witchiness. Not at all! I only wanted to see what everyone else was so afraid of. And now that I have... I hardly see anything to fear."

Krolia contemplates this. She does not appear to move, but she is inches away from the hunter's face in the blink of an eye, her searching expression unchanged.

"Is that so?"

The hunter shivers slightly, but he does not retreat.

"Yeah," he affirms, grin widening.

Krolia, unimpressed, takes her leave. She knows without having to look that the mortal follows, as he makes no effort to conceal his footfalls. She tells him that if he is going to stalk behind her, he may as well make himself useful to her. So she has him assist her in gathering animal bones— if he is a truly a hunter he should know where to procure them. He offers to get her fresh ones and she scoffs, asserting that she has no need for such cruelty. Is it not enough that she must grind their bones for her potions? She has no desire for the deaths of the innocent.

The man is obedient enough, it seems. Krolia makes a bitter remark about how men are as easy to discipline as dogs. She also scolds him about the fact that he insists on staring at her face, though. He asks what he is expected to do in the presence of such beauty and she scoffs. He never once complains as he does the witch's bidding, and so when they part, she begrudgingly gives him a token of her appreciation. A charged crystal, she calls it. An amethyst that should bring him clarity of mind.

"I've never believed in all of that mumbo-jumbo about vibrations," he says as he inspects the present. Krolia doesn't hide her amusement.

"You ought to in this case. I've blessed it with my magick." As if to prove the truth of her words, the gemstone glows. The man puts the cord around his neck to confirm that it fits him, and it does as if it was custom-cut for his neck.

"In that case, I will cherish it. Always."

Krolia raises her head proudly.

"A wise decision," she assures him. "A mere mortal needs all the help he can get."

The mortal in question does not buy into her routine— a wall carefully crafted to shield her— and smiles at her as if she was any one of his neighbors.

"Will I see you again?" The inquiry is casual, but there is hope in his voice.

"...We shall see."

The memory ends as the witch and the mortal part ways, and Yorak withdraws fearfully from the cauldron to fall against the far wall. His chest rises and falls too quickly and his breath is hoarse as he tries to refill his lungs with much-needed air, but he has been so transfixed on the vision that he does not know when he forgot to breathe.

He cannot help but look to his cupboards, where he can see a large glass bottle full of fresh essence of moonlight. He cannot help but recall how he acquired it. Is he doomed to repeat his mother's mistakes, or...? Were they mistakes at all? He wouldn't be here at all if not for that folly. But Krolia would also be alive if not for that mortal. Yorak suspects as much, anyway. Had she not wasted so much of her magick trying in vain to extend his mortal lifespan, she would have had to strength to fight off some silly illness.

Yorak wipes the sweat from his clammy brow and then shakes his head. He is overthinking things, he's sure. He decides that he is only allowing himself to do so because he has not slept in some time.

He clings to that belief as he turns in and he blatantly refuses to dream, as though a lack of his own meaningless nocturnal visions will erase the ones he knows all too well are real.