The Witch and The Dead

The Witch at Home

The hours melted away at Anna's hearth as it wrung the last precious droplets of sweat from her flesh. The backs of her eyelids glowed hot against the fire's light. Her throat ached with dryness. Her muscles pinched like they were hollow. She could not move; she could not think. She just melted by the fire, so porous she could do nothing as the fear and anxiety mixed so smoothly into her being.

She'd yelled to the village to stay away, to leave her be, until the time came. It hadn't been hard to make them listen. After all, she arrived with a cart carrying the body of a demon.

Or, what they all thought was one.

Anna coughed. The pain made every muscle tense and she felt faint. She did not know what the time was now. She could not lift her head to the stars, but they were coming. It was the day that the moon would rule as night.

Father, she mouthed into the flames. What have I done?

What indeed.

Then, she almost passed out.

The witch had awoken sometime earlier in Anna's bed. Anna knew, despite the creature's attempts to mask their slow, gentle breaths. Her father hated her attention too.

Anna wanted to crumble into nothing but ash, and blow away in the breeze, but it was almost time to administer the witch another dose of spinroot. The smoke in the cave had done horrors to their throat. When Anna had finally wheeled them all the way back to the village, they could barely breathe.

So, Anna forced herself up from the hot, unkempt bed of the desert floor. The gravel scraped at her skin, but it was now too tough to cut. Her legs stung as she hobbled to her pestle. Her soles felt as rough as burnt scales.

"So now you wait on demons," her father said. The fire in their hearth continued to crackle. Outside she could just hear the stirring and scuffling and the clacking of stone hammers.

Anna said nothing. There was nothing more to say. He had grown so confident with her silence he could read everything he needed from it. She had learned it had pleased him to know he could count on it. It was like wet clay to him—something forgiving and easy to mold.

It took everything from him just to chuckle, and he wheezed for just as long. Her own throat tightened, still sore from smoke.

She sprinkled the root into the mortar and reached for her worn, stone pestle, but her arm faltered. The muscles were sore and weak. She closed her eyes and stood for a moment with the sensation in her arms. Their weakness groaned in her mind, begged her to crumple. She nodded to acknowledge them. Soon, she promised, then lifted the pestle.

"Six hours..." her father whispered as the root ground between stone. "Six hours is all it would have taken for the stars to finally reveal themselves to you. You were so close. But now time is up because you, my only daughter." He made a sound like his innards were spurting out his lips, then recovered. "My only daughter... is sheltering a witch."

Anna felt her own innards churn. She had not eaten since the camp by the mountains. Carting the witch back had been agony, but the weight had not vanished when they finally arrived. A heaviness was still pressing down at her everywhere. Her body leaned forward in exhaustion as she ground the pestle deeper into the spinroot. The air in her hovel was thin, hot and empty.

She wiped the sweat from her brow. "Maybe caring for monsters is my specialty."

Something stirred in reply, but it was not her father. He simply snorted in irritation.

"I've done a terrible thing, demon," Anna admitted, as much to her mortar as the injured creature recuperating in her bed. She prepared the root as she closed her eyes. Painful blots of light danced against her eyelids.