The stream gently parted around my waist as I sat and tried to rub off the worst of the dirt and soot. My hair clung to me after being dunked in the water a few times, still smelling of smoke. Without the grime covering my arms, I could see what was causing me so much discomfort.

Dark red splotches trailed from my wrist to shoulder with purplish patches intermixed. I was used to bruises, but they never felt nearly this bad.

Despite the sun being out, the water was still cold, and I decided I liked the chilling feeling it gave me over the throbbing pain. I laid back and ran my fingers through my hair as the current carried it behind me. In my haste to wash up, I had forgotten my soaps, but I consoled myself by imagining getting to use some of the scented ones for once.

After waking up in a panic because I'd slept through an entire day, I had tried to level out the soil magically that I had thrown around the day before.

It didn’t work. Even a stray thought of using magic sent a shiver of pain down my arms. I was still worried the townsfolk would come back but didn’t know if there was anything I could do to make the area look natural.

Drying myself off was usually a time to practise magic away from my mother, but not this time. I stood in the cool morning air and let that dry me enough to put on a long-sleeved tunic and pants. It was meant for use in colder weather, but the last of my summer clothes smelled of smoke and were covered in ash, which I could not manipulate. My hair was still wet, so I sat in the sun to wait while debating slicing it all off.

…

I must have dozed off because I awoke with my head leaning on my knees and a strange feeling of excitement welling up inside me. It took a moment to figure out it wasn’t my own. A group of crows had flown in nearby with a strong anticipation of tasty food.

Loud whispers coming from downstream helped me figure out the rest of the bird's vague emotions. Apparently, children were either messy eaters, were kind enough to always feed them, or were inattentive of their lunch. I wasn’t sure which one was more right.

I hid behind a tree to eye the group coming into view. There were a few different groups of children I was used to seeing outside the town. This was some of the older ones and around my age. I knew a few of them and had enjoyed playing together until Mother found out. She disciplined me but I didn’t care, it was a lot of fun to be around others. Mother eventually threatened to harm them since the threats to me didn’t work after the fourth time.

I hadn’t seen them since, but it must have been only a few seasons ago.

Now that Mother was gone there was no reason not to talk with them, so I poked my head out from behind the tree, “Hello?”

A mixture of girlish and boyish shrieks came from the group. The taller boy in the lead spun in my direction with a hatchet raised. After my shock at the reaction, I smiled at the ducking and diving the others behind him had done.

“Sorry,” I said while stepping out. “Didn’t mean to frighten you.”

“That was mean, Valeria,” Trissa said from behind the boy with the hatchet, Jacob. “I’d be mad if I wasn’t happy to see you.”

“Not cool,” said a boy with bright red cheeks. “We thought you were a witch.”

“I told you she’s gone, and I borrowed this from Dad to deal with anything else here,” Jacob said while twirling the tool before looking at me. “What are you doing out here? We thought you left town.”

The other five members of the pack grouped back up behind Jacob as he approached.

“No, I have been…busy. I was just out bathing,” I said, pointing at my slightly damp hair.

“Oh, Mum will be happy you’re okay. She almost convinced Dad to send the watch to look for you. You should have heard the threats she made when Dad insisted there were no orphans in the town. Want me to tell her? She’ll give me an extra lunch again,” he said.

The reminder of food had my empty stomach growling. Over the past two days, I had only eaten a few bites of raw vegetables and the thought of his mum’s cooking had my mouth watering. It made complete sense why the crows got so excited.

“I’d like that,” I said without much thought to how and when I would get the meals.

“Can we hurry up? Father wants me back at the forge after lunch,” a boy said.

“We will,” Jacob said and turned to me. “We’re going to see the witch’s hut. Dad said where it was and that they burnt it down, but there might still be some cool enchanted stuff. Want to come with us?”

I sputtered at the thought of having six sets of hands reaching about to find the invisible rungs of the ladder. “No, I mean, it’s dangerous. What if it's cursed?”

“Dad said she can’t hurt us anymore and that we don’t need to worry,” Jacob said with a nod.

“Your father knows you’re here?” I asked. What if he reported that the building was still here back to him? There would definitely be another attempt to burn it down, and what about all the dirt piled up?

“Oh…no. It’s a secret,” he said with a finger to his lips. “We just want a quick look. The adults never want to show off their enchanted tools, ‘they’re too precious to use.’ What's the point in having them if you’re not going to use them?”

“Come on,” the impatient boy said and grabbed Jacob’s arm to pull him along. The hand barely made it halfway around his arm and I was sure that if Jacob stood his ground there was no chance he’d be dragged off.

I trailed after the group as they walked off in almost the right direction. Trissa slowed to join me and touched my shoulder. I glanced up to the braids in her brown hair and couldn’t follow where each strand curled off to.

“Are you okay?” she asked. “We got really worried when you stopped coming.”

“Oh, I ah, I was doing things for my M...Mistress. I’m okay though,” I said.

“You know my older sister left for the city a few months ago. I’m sure I could convince Mum and Dad to let you stay in her old room. It’s right next door to mine.”

I wanted to say no at first. Mother wouldn’t approve and could hurt them, was my first thought, but I had to remind myself she wasn’t here anymore. I could make my own decisions.

It sounded nice to have people like Trissa around me, but living with me would let them see me more often. They didn’t seem to notice how terrible I was when I only saw them briefly every few days. That would change if I lived with them.

“That’s sweet, but I’m okay. My living area has improved a lot since I complained to you last time.” I had what I thought was a friend and I didn’t want to ruin it. I was an unruly child who couldn’t follow simple house rules and if her parents saw what a nasty brat I was then they might forbid Trissa from speaking to me.

“Wow! How come the hut isn’t burnt?” a boy asked as we emerged into the clearing.

“It’s not a hut, it's a cottage,” I said under my breath.

“Someone’s been digging for treasure here already.”

“No, it looks like the fire breaks we make during the dry season,” Jacob said, but they had already jumped in one of the ditches I had made and were prodding away at the soil with their feet.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

“Do you think the witch would have buried her stuff?” Trissa asked.

“I think I read about people in a story doing that." Said people were seafaring, but I was hoping to get them to dig up more of the area and make my fire breaks look less obvious.

“You can read?” asked the other girl with a look of shock.

I looked at her in confusion and was going to say that of course I could, but Jacob interrupted. “Don’t be rude, Patela, Valeria is quite smart for someone who didn’t go to school.”

He smiled at me and I returned it.

“I’m going to go look inside,” Jacob said and started climbing over the piles of dirt to get to the front door.

“It…umm…looks like it might collapse. Don’t touch any of the walls, the wood looks ready to fall over,” I said in a panic.

“I’ll be careful,” he said with a smile and wave. “I just want to see if there’s anything with mana inside.”

I didn’t really understand what mana was except that people like Mother used it, my worry increased, the invisible ladder probably used that mana stuff. I kept my eye on Jacob as he walked around the room while keeping to his word of not touching the walls. I pointed the hoe out to the three boys who had already got themselves covered in dirt and ash, so they could dig better. The one worried about returning to the forge carved out large furrows in the ground with it, thrice the size of what I had been able to do.

Jacob paused near the ladder and eyed the wall. I was ready to dash in there to distract him when he continued and went out the other side to the half-burnt garden. Patela and Trissa were looking over the boy's shoulders and started directing their digging efforts after they almost dug into the pit of the outhouse. Now that the ladder was safe I was chomping through Jacob’s lunch that he had handed off to me with only a slight amount of guilt. I tossed the last piece of hard crust over to where the crows were, and two dove at it.

No fighting. I have another one, I thought. They eyed each other and the one with the scrap already in his beak took off while the other closed its wings and waited for me to finish.

“You almost hit my foot.”

“No, you put your foot where I was digging.”

“Give it to me, it’s my turn. I’ll show you how to dig properly, I’m a farmer and this is a farmer's tool.”

Jacob walked past the squabble and back to me. “This place feels like there’s something here, but I don’t know where. Maybe they’re right that it’s buried.”

I shrugged, not knowing what to say since I knew the truth and didn’t want to lie to him.

Jacob raised his voice for everyone to hear. “Let’s go back before the kids get let out of morning class, they’d tell the others we weren't around and get us in trouble.”

The squabble over the hoe ended and they started to try to brush the dirt off their clothes, to little effect.

“Can we stop by the stream first?” one asked Jacob. I didn’t know why everyone asked for his permission and opinion.

“Sure, you coming Val?”

I played with the hem of my tunic while thinking it over. I wanted to go, and see if I could stay with Trissa. Eat what they have to eat, and wear their comfortable-looking clothes. “I shouldn’t, I still have foraging to do”

I wanted him to try to convince me, but he was used to my repeated rejections and excuses.

“Okay,” he said. “Let me know if you change your mind.”

I wanted to tell him that I already had. The words refused to come out of my mouth.

Trissa waved back to me as they left towards the stream. I stood and stared for a while before heading back up the ladder. My arms still ached, but I managed to grab one of Mother’s books off the forbidden shelf. She’d been annoyed to find out most of her protective curses and enchantments didn’t work on me, so she resorted to physical restrictions and punishments—which no longer applied.

I read through the first few pages of witch’s scrawl to understand this was a book on poison using different toads. Mother had taught me the witch’s written language when I was younger and she still thought I was going to be a witch myself. What a disappointment I was.

This book didn’t look like her handwriting, so it was something she had stolen or bartered from another witch. It was not very interesting so far, but I didn’t think the others would be any better so I settled into my hammock for the afternoon.

I had to stay and make sure they didn’t come back and finish what they started.

…

I pulled back my arm, ready to throw the book across the room. I stayed like that for a few seconds before sighing and got out of my hammock to put it back on the shelf while cursing the author. It had been one of the more interesting finds, a text on the ‘states of matter,’ and I had hoped to find something on what fire was since it wasn’t a solid, gas or liquid. All the authors wrote about fire was that it was an exception that was analysed in a different book.

I blamed my lack of sleep on the burst of irritation. The past few days had me waking up at every little noise to see if it was the townsfolk coming back. The other children didn’t seem to have told anyone about their excursion otherwise I suspected they would have been. The day wasn’t any better since I had to stay near the cottage in case something happened.

The area around was starting to grow back thanks in part to me. It was partly to hide the extent of the fire and fire breaks, and also because I was bored. I’d been rereading a book on the local fauna and was using it to try to repeat what I did in the garden to the surrounding area.

It was going well despite the slow progress due to my arms still healing. Small blades of grass could be seen poking through the ash with some sprouts of other plants. After a lot of wasted effort and page flipping, I found out some of the previous plants I'd been dumping magic into didn’t like growing in ash.

I was running out of activities to distract myself with since Mother wasn’t there to pile on tasks and run experiments on me. Not that I was complaining, the experiments were usually painful and involved me being still for long periods of time. I often ruined the results by squirming and she had to waste ingredients to repeat them. The memory of it all made me glance to the chest sitting against the wall. The last bastion of Mother’s items I hadn’t wanted to go through.

There was little for me in those books and cursed items. I also no longer needed to wear the clothes stored inside since I probably would not return to the vendors.

Deciding fresh air would help with my building stress, so I started the short walk towards the town. The others would still be in school or helping their parents, but I could wait. The trees looked like they were preparing for fall, and some of their leaves were already turning greenish-yellow. I didn’t know what I was going to do for winter since Mother was not here to earn money for dried goods and rations. But thinking back to Trissa’s offer calmed my heart a bit.

The crop fields started after I exited the tree line with their farmers tending to them. I noticed one of the boys from yesterday kneeling in one and reminded myself to ask for his name—again.

I only got a few glances that I hoped were simply because I was more interesting than their work and not because I looked strange. Besides Jacob, Trissa and the others, plus the few vendors I’d gone to I didn’t ever notice the same person twice. The town itself was also large so there seemed to be enough people that a stranger would be a normal sight.

No one was at the meeting rock just outside the gates, so I sat atop it to wait. Everyone usually stopped work at midday and the farmers at least didn’t go out again after the midday meal. I had no idea what Jacob got up to, but Trissa said she didn’t need to work at her mother’s tailoring store most days.

I watched one of the farmers who had their eyes closed and arm stretched out to the sky. My gaze stuck on the point just above his palm that faced the sky. I didn’t see anything but something interesting was happening. A few moments later my eyes flicked up to the sky to follow that feeling and saw water droplets forming over the area out of nothing, falling to the crops below.

It was magic, but it didn’t feel like the water magic the fish that lived in the stream used. The man caught my stare and smirked. “Impressive, right?”

I nodded, the only person I had seen use magic was my Mother, and hers was often…unpleasant. The fish I had learnt to copy water magic from only used it to swim and fling droplets at insects, so having someone who could actually talk and use interesting water magic was exciting. “Can you teach me that?”

His smile faltered. “I’m sorry, little one, it’s very difficult, and only a few people can use spells. You don’t even need to use mana for this, I just like to show off. Most of this field is actually watered manually.”

I didn't think he had any reason to lie, so I took him at his word. What was my magic good for if I couldn't use their spells or Mother's curses?

The man left to repeat his spell on another patch of field. I kicked my feet against the rock while basking in the afternoon sun. It was hot in my long tunic, but I didn’t want to show anyone the purple, brown, and yellow splotches covering my arms.

Magic that I recognised started moving about under the crops. I spied a moving stem with leafy appendages coming in my direction. I thought a greeting to the baby treant and they changed courses to come straight to me. The small creature emerged from the field and waddled up to my rock, leafy hands levitating a head of corn above them. They offered it to me as well as a chirp they made by vibrating one of their leaves.

I glanced around to see if any of the farmers were watching, I would hate to be accused of stealing and have to spend a day in the town watch’s makeshift cell again. That incident had been the main cause of my refusal to go shopping for Mother.

“Does your parent know you’re here,” I asked. They nodded and projected thoughts of the larger treant and then others like them moving to the fields. Treants needed to use magic to grow and the fields of plants that would be harvested and replaced were perfect for the young ones to practise away from predators. At least that’s what I got from their vague thoughts, it involved a lot of dirt and plants more than explanation. The farmers didn’t seem bothered if they knew, and I was sure they enjoyed having the baby treants around to grow their crops.

I thought back to when I met their parents. Although I enjoyed learning magic from them, the meeting still haunted me.