The Swamp Witch part one
I sat by the riverbank, enjoying the cool summer breeze as I read a book. The grass was soft under my blanket, and the sun, though warm, wasn’t so warm that I wished I had waited until autumn to do this. I missed the water. I missed the rain. Here, where everything was somehow simultaneously wet and dry, I longed for the rain and dreaded it at the same time. Once upon a time, all of this land had been deep under the ocean, but the earth began to rumble and writhe as it twisted, pushing and pulling itself up out of the water to become dry land. Well, sort of dry land. The swamps created, some even high up on what was now mountainous territory, were never dry. Under the surface, no matter where you were, water was always waiting for its chance to reclaim what once belonged to it.
The call of the ocean, even from so far away, was ever-present in my blood. It called to me as the river pulsed past me, inviting me to jump in and drown myself in its wetness. I wasn’t that stupid. I was a strong swimmer, but I doubted Poseidon himself was a strong enough swimmer to survive the undercurrents that churned just under the still surface of the algae-covered river, whose banks I had come to covet as my personal hiding place.
The wind whispered through the weeping willow whose branches I sat under, small sections of its leaves fluttering down as the scent of rain just barely touched my senses. I could feel the rumble of the thunder from the hills beyond and knew that the rain didn’t need my help to be called forth, though had it waited one more day, I would have been forced to summon it, for the garden’s sake.
They called us tinkerers, the gardeners, healers, and inventors of our people. I rarely ventured into town. I knew the grand ladies there would take one look at my broken, dirt-stained nails and snicker. The laughter didn’t bother me as much as the shopkeepers’ not wishing for me to touch even the plainest of their wares. So I wove my own clothes as the birds and rabbits kept me company. I sang with the rain as the thunder and lightning lashed across the sky.
My loom and spinning wheel are rarely quiet during storms. I wove the magick to protect the very people who laughed because that was what my mother taught me to do. It was what she had done and her mother and her mother’s mother before her. For those people in that village were my family, even if they had forgotten.
The first of my family to be born with magic, my great-grandmother was cast out by her father, only to have her own mother follow her into the dark wood that surrounded the village. She would not leave her child to the powers of nature without teaching her something of how to master them, how to live in and among them, how to be a part of them. She had heard her own stirrings toward magick when she hit her maturity, but she had ignored them in favor of tradition. Her daughter, always so strong-willed, had been unable to put the mental shackles back in place once the monthly bleeding had begun. Plus, what better way to hold on to the child you still saw yourself as than playing with the wind and the rain?
The tradition began then, of a boy from the village trying to prove he was worthy of my great-grandmother by helping her re-shackle her power and luring her back to town to mate and marry, but none of them had been able to do it. None of them had deemed themselves worthy. She did, however, manage to find a mercenary warrior to bed her while she tended his wounds. She believed he might have been a half-elf, but she couldn’t be sure. He hadn’t even bothered taking his leathers off since the wound was on his forearm. His golden skin shone under her delicate touch as she tended to him and then bedded him.
When my mother was born, the men stopped coming to get her back, and the women started at first for her knowledge of medicinal herbs and childbirth, then for her wisdom in general. She was the wild sage woman living at the edge of civilization, proving she didn’t need a man. The truth was, the men were more afraid of her than they were of anything else. Men usually needed to destroy that which they feared, and countless women with my grandmother’s skills had been burned as witches. The inquisition didn’t dare knock on her door. They were so afraid, they left her alone.
When the time came, my mother too found a traveler to mate with. My father was a traveling minstrel. A bard of some repute who traveled the lands performing for the people. He saw my mother bathing by the river and approached her. He didn’t know what had hit him when she pulled him under her naked form and took from him what she wanted. He did, however, move on with a smile on his face. He stopped by on his way past every so often until my mother died. She was gathering herbs in the woods when a hunter mistook her for a bear. My grandmother roared in agony before cleaving the man’s head from his shoulders in one fell swoop.
Now an old woman, her heart never mended from the loss, and she gave herself over to the cold this last winter, leaving me to find my own way, knowing I had her and my mother’s incredible talent of knowing things I shouldn’t. I shook my head free of the cobwebs of the past as a sound brushed at the door. A large forest creature sat there looking for safe shelter from the storm, and I let it in, knowing that it would behave while it stayed with me. This wasn’t the first time a creature of the forest had asked for a place to get out of the weather, and never once had they broken or dirtied up anything.
This one was different, though. I could sense in its eyes that it was hurried and tired. It was as though hunters were chasing it through the storm. It was then I heard the baying of hounds and saw it flinch. I brought it closer to the fire and settled it into a spot in the shadows that, if the hunters dared to knock on my door, they wouldn’t know it was there. I then stood watch through the night over the city and my house guest.
At dawn, they came. I pushed the creature into a different part of the small cabin before answering the door. The men were not from the village, and by the way they were dressed, must have come a long way from a distant shore to hunt. The reason why I couldn’t even begin to fathom. “Have you seen a great hulking beast?”
“The only thing I have seen great and hulking are you and your men and whatever those creatures you ride are called.” I made a dismissive motion with my hands toward the strange beasts with forked toes and long necks. Their tongues lolling around bits in their mouths. The wild looks in their eyes suggest that they were not tamed pets but something that would kick their riders to death if given a half a chance. I was inclined to give them that chance. The one that stood behind the group’s spokesperson, his head lowered toward my flower bed, looked up at me as I spoke, and stepped closer. “You should be kinder to your mounts lest they turn their allegiances elsewhere.“What do you know of our mounts, girl?” He sputtered as the creature stepped closer to me, still putting itself between him and me. “I know this one would kick you to death if you act on those thoughts in your head. I know they are looking to be done with all of you, so they can return to the plains they once roamed. I know that you are not very nice to them, and eventually, when the moment is right, they will, at the very least, leave or at the worst, kill you all.” A murmur flew up among his men. I did not understand the language they spoke, but I got the gist of its meaning nonetheless. They were calling me a witch, whatever that meant to them, and I almost shuddered as I felt the hatred ripple through them. The mount remained where it was between them and me. “I know the beast is here. We followed its tracks to your door.” As I opened my mouth to tell him he was mistaken, a half-dressed man whose broad naked chest was only covered by tattoos and scars that whirled and swirled before my eyes stepped out of the room, towel in hand. He used it to wipe the water from his face and wet hair as he walked to my visitors and me. “I am sorry, sister. It would seem you have company. I didn’t mean to intrude. I just couldn’t sleep any longer. My stomach is growling.” I saw the slight plea in his eyes as his face was marked with concern. “It is your home too, Brother. Just because you choose not to use it, it often doesn’t make it any less so.”
He placed a warm hand on my shoulder as he swung the towel over one of his own. “How can my sister and I be of service?” The mount eyed him briefly before snorting. It then joined the rest of them as though satisfied with my safety.
“We are looking for a beast. We followed its tracks to your door.”
My newly found brother just smiled a sinister sort of smile that made the hair on my arms stand on end. His eyes turned cold and deadly as he spoke. His tone was warm as a contrast to those ice-cold eyes. “Oh, I see. So, you are looking for me then? Or is it possible that in the rain, your trackers lost the trail of what you are hunting and stumbled upon mine?”
“He did arrive early this morning, or late last night, depending on how you view it. Woke me from a dead sleep to let him in out of the rain.” I smiled up at him with as much adoration as I could muster.“I should be angry with him, but it’s been so long since he was home, I just can’t bring myself to be upset.”
I stifled a yawn to make my point, and the hunter nodded. “We are sorry to bother you then. Did you ride up on a mount?”
“Yes, and loosed it into the pasture up on the hill.”
I knew there were a few animals up there, but none that most would consider a mount. “Been riding stags again, have you, Brother?”
“I lost my horse to a gofer hole, and a kind stag just happened by and offered to give me a ride.”
The hunter eyed us curiously as I laughed. “We jest, of course. It wasn’t a stag. It was a bear, or maybe a panther or wolf.”
