Chapter 1
Stiles laid in the grass, feeling the cool, green blades beneath his fingers. He felt the warm summer wind glide across his skin.
“You’re going to die, you know.” the witch said to him. Stiles let out a giddy laugh and looked to the left at a bunny on the edge of the clearing.
“I know,” he told her. He looked up at the midnight sky and tried to find the big dipper.
“Why are you laughing then. Have you gone mad?”
“Yes.” he immediately responded. He was mad. Mad that Derek left. Mad that Scott left. Mad that his dad was dead. The witch eyed him from where she was preparing the spell.
“I was told you had a pack. Where are they now?” Stiles attempted a shrug. Scott said that he’d keep in touch, but they stopped talking after about a dozen calls. Derek just left one night, leaving Stiles alone and cold in the house.
Stiles watched a couple of moths race each other towards the witch’s light.
“Hey,” he wondered aloud, “are you almost done?” the witch snorted and shook her head.
“Why, in a hurry to die?” she asked.
“Yep.” he responded.
Oddly enough, the only thought to come to mind was; one Christmas where Stiles and his father had nearly burned down the house trying to recreate a pie. His mother’s pie that she always used to make on Christmas day. But without her there, nothing was the same.
A small explosion caused Stiles to look over at what the witch was doing. There was purple smoke rising up in the air. He watched it dissipate into the night sky, and breathed in deeply.
“You a dog or cat person?” he asked her. She raised an eyebrow at him.
“Neither, I like fish.” Stiles nodded to himself and looked down at the symbols painted on his naked body.
“What exactly are you going to do to me?” he asked. The witch sighed, her annoyance was evident in her body language as her fists tightened and her jaw clenched.
“Why do you keep asking me questions?”
“You’re the first person I’ve talked to in months. Plus, I’m about to die. Least you could do is humor me with conversation before my end.” The witch was silent for a few moments, letting Stiles become mesmerized by the stars in the sky. The grass was colder, and the moisture from the ground soaked into his overgrown hair.
“You were born to die today.” the witch finally spoke. Stiles was confused, he didn’t know what to make of what she had said. After a moment, he became stricken with sadness and fought back tears.
“Was I destined to live a cursed life?” he asked, voice thick and dry. The witch finally walked back over to him with a bowl of thick black paste.
“Who can say,” she spoke softly, “but your misery will end tonight.” She spread the black paste over Stiles’ heart, and when she was done, she set the bowl aside. Stiles was passed out when he was first brought to the clearing, so this was the first time he was able to clearly see the witch. She wasn’t as old as she seemed to be, and her hands were warm where they touched Stiles’ chest. She was dressed in purple robes and set up an old leather-bound book and a mortar and pestle on a rock midway between Stiles and the tree-line.
Stiles knew he should fight to break free. Fight to run away, not giving the witch a chance to hurt more people. But Stiles wasn’t that strong. Before the witch placed him in this clearing, Stiles hadn’t left his bed in weeks. How could he fight to live when living felt like hell?
“Goodbye,” Stiles whispered into the sky, as the witch looked down on him with something akin to sympathy.
She started to chant. The wind sped up thrashing the branches of the trees like whips around the clearing. The symbols on Stiles’ body heated up to an uncomfortable point, causing Stiles to cry out in pain. It felt as if each and every line of the symbols drawn on him was cutting into him deeper and deeper, agonizingly slowly. Stiles could feel every rip of muscle and every snap of tendon. But the pain felt far away like it was underwater. The overwhelming heat was what was fueling Stiles’ screams as the chanting intensified and the black paste on Stiles’ chest started to glow. The light grew so bright and the heat became so unbearable, when it happened, it felt like a snap in a silent room.
The witch stared down at the boy as the winds died down and the emittance of heat and the glow of the paste subsided into nothing. The boy himself was pale but covered in a mosaic of beauty marks. His hair was shaggy and his eyes carried dark circles under his eyes. A poem came to mind, and she spoke aloud:
“Icy daggers numb your skin
Midnight, leeks from your pores
You laugh in darkness
And cry into the soft meadow winds.” She carefully laid the boy to rest surrounded by the soft luscious grass, and brisked herself away through the treeline, gone as fast as she came.
