The reason of the Witch

Questions can be dangerous my child. Sometimes you will get an answer that is more than you are ready to hear.

Why do I hate men? Because on the day I choose to take the name Endora Caine, I murdered my father, my brother, and my husband by the foulest of means.

But I only took the lives of two men.

Yes child, this is not a story for such small ears. Consider this your trigger warning.

Did I use that term correctly? But you still wish to hear? Very well.

The bloodline of the Treorail had been gifted with the ability to see the ebb and flow of magic, to perceive the weaving of a spell rather than just picture it in their own minds or to scrawl it down within a circle. I was told it was from the blood of the fair folk that had once mixed with our own.

It made us powerful, and wealthy. But with each generation, it faded. Sometimes skipping entire generations

My brother who was born within the bounds of marriage. Had it not. My father was then too quick to force his wife, already his own cousin, to quicken with another child. That child was lost and the bleeding it caused took her to her grave, screaming with the pain.

Such do women suffer for the follies of men.

When she had first grown large with my brother Barnaby, she begged for my father to hold back on his lusts. Instead, my father took for his pleasures the girl that had come with my mother as a maid. Soon quickening her womb with me. Bastard born.

He didn’t think to check me for the sight. Not to a meer girl. Not to a byblow who only bore Treorial blood from one parent and the rest from a common born waif.

Such do women suffer from the lusts of men.

My half brother I did love, how could I not with only him for me to play with in my father’s isolated manor? I forgave Barnaby for his bullying and brutalities over and over again.

But not out of love for him, when younger I made him suffer in retaliation for each cruelty. But as we aged he began to be quick to brag and was proud to explain each day the lessons that his father taught him. Lessons that were not offered to me. Lessons that when begged to learn I only received the back of his hand.

But learning from the crumbs my brother carelessly scattered before me was easy, for I could see his spell work as he showed off.

In time as I came to become a woman, and tried to win my father’s love by showing him what I had learned, what I could do, and how much better I was than my brother.

He forbid me to use magic and beat my brother so he would not in his ignorance and foolish pride teach me anymore.

Not because he thought me an unworthy student, but because he needed me to be a meek little girl, powerless before my future husband. My own brother.

If marriage to a cousin would not breed the sight true, then surely a half sibling would do.

We traveled to the nearest church, but my mother did not return with us.

My brother was gentle at first as I came to the marriage bed, for I was his beloved little sister that he had grown up with. But as he grew accustomed to satisfying his lust upon me, he soon began to demand that I perform such acts that could not produce a child.

Yes, granddaughter. The worst you have heard of and feared that you might be asked to do yourself one day in the name of love. If you remember no other lesson that I try to teach you child. Remember this. If someone asks you to do something that you hate, and they insist when you decline, then know that you are only there for them to use, not to love.

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For me, it was to let myself be used, or be beaten.

Such do women suffer from the brutality of men.

I lost my first child to his abuse. I then took such joy in seeing our father beat him for it.

Then my father threatened that if his son could not do better, he would quicken me himself.

This was the end of the girl I had once been, and the end of what I could endure. I could see no way out, other than to kill them, or myself. For I could see no world in which I could run fast enough or far enough that my father could not find me.

I do not think my choice was such a selfish one. I chose them to die.

The duty of attending the gardens had fallen on me as soon as my mother was dismissed. Cut off from my father's books I learned new lessons from the plants and weeds. The molds and fungi. Seeing the movement and weaves as the tiny bits of magic that was in all living things.

Twisting them into things of magic was both wondrous, and with effort, deadly.

Barnaby, I allowed to die painlessly in his sleep. For once I loved him as my brother.

My father I made weak as a kitten and so befuddled as to be unable to shape his magic, or even stand.

As he lay helpless, I brought before him each of his precious books, his artifacts, and other treasures. I pondered out loud in front of him as to what I would do with them. To sell them to his hated rivals, destroy them, or to keep them for my own.

The last of his possessions I showed to him was a humble wood axe. Then I showed him my dear sweet brother’s head, cut free from his now cold corpse with the very same axe.

I had intended to nail my father's hands and feet to the floor, but as had no nail long enough to go through both of his legs like the lord Jesus, I settled for taking the axe to him as well.

Besides, there was no guarantee that leaving him in the house still alive when I burned it to the ground would have finished him. Not for sure. I also did not have the time or inclination to wait and check the ashes to confirm his demise...

From there I fled to the Americas and hid myself away. In time I took a lover for I was young and had needs. I also wished to try to wipe away the memories of my husband's touch.

I was even happy for a time.

My lover would betray me to a witch hunter for he had gained a new younger woman but feared that I might take vengeance on him. There was a reward as well.

By Providence, the witch hunter was nothing more than a charlatan. So he, the men he brought with him and my faint hearted former lover burned instead of me.

Such do women rage for the treachery of men.

From there I took newly made servants of ash and bone and traveled deep into the lands of the red skins.

Truly child? Very well. Deep into the lands of the native people… Are you sure that is what they want to be called now? It makes them sound as if they were ignorant of the evils of men. I assure you they knew of hatred and intolerance as well as anyone that lives in these times.

In any case. I came to live here, respected by what I will call the people that lived here first. They respected my power and wisdom. And when new settlers came to these lands, I made a place hidden away from mortal eyes for those who had treated me with respect.

Even now I shield them from the attention of interlopers such as tax collectors.

So that is why I hate men, my dear child, as you too will with time.

Such is the fate of women for so long as must suffer men.