22) Sacrifice
How long she wandered without purpose she could never say. She dreamed of a rose covered tower on a mountain and the golden haired maiden who lived there. Other nights, in the darkness of her grief, she saw an abandoned hunting lodge that began to fall down in the elements, concealed with a tremendous hedge of briar roses. Sometimes she could hear the bellows of an enormous beast in the night, or the whispers of invisible courtiers. A young merchant bought a house in a port city, and his fleet grew to a respectable twelve ships.
The witch avoided the company of humans, preferring the company of badgers and stoats and wildcats. When she was hungry, she took food from cottages, leaving something random, small and useful in return. In the winter, she came across foundling babes and stole them away from the hillsides with her. She listened for the sobs of young mothers, and left more than one of the foundlings in the arms of a mother whose babe was stillborn or who died of fever or pox.
Where the witch came upon cruelty or neglect, she would wait and watch for signs of the Wolf, a crafty gleam of eye or turn of phrase. Where mean spiritedness was simply a feature of poverty or exhaustion or bad blood, she faded away and moved on, sometimes riding the Mare, sometimes walking with her slow and painful limp.
She found evil in pockets of every community, no matter how tiny or sprawling. She aided where she had a clear opportunity, but often the lives she witnessed were complex. She learned in the first winter that the death of a miller who beat his children left the mill untended for a season or more, causing hunger for all within the township. She discovered that wherever she went, a tinker arrived a few days after. Messages were passed swiftly from town to village to city, apprentice millers or journeymen blacksmiths traveling where they were needed most at the best moments.
Where clear opportunity did present itself, or the Wolf was too deeply rooted, she was drawn to act. The rage woke each time, growing stronger. A blacksmith too fond of brawling and drinking she cursed. He soon found that his fires would not light or that they would burn too hot. Horse shoes would shatter as they were nailed to the hoof, and any tools he crafted would go sour after a season. A cheese maker who was a cruel wife and neglectful mother found that her cows went dry or ate bitter grasses and became bloated, ruining the cheese for weeks.
Word of her passing began to spread, and even if she was not seen, her presence was felt, the most powerful witch in a dozen generations. She found wards against the evil eye painted on doors and windows, and the scarecrows in the fields were fashioned with sachets of trollsbane and the roots of devil's shoestring tied around their necks. Rumors started of gossips and wise women accused of hexing their neighbors or spoiling the bread of their enemies. If there was a pox or an unusual death, some villages would hunt down their shrew or wise woman and more than one of them died in brutal tribunals. Second and third sons armed themselves with lances and swords not against dragons and trolls and ogres, but against witches and sorcery, and many family crests developed sigils and runes to ward against evil.
She felt the eyes and the accusations, and when hunting parties began to run in search of not game but The Witch, her caution and grief and rage became paranoia and fear and anger. Her dreams were troubled, and she saw the tinker keeping watch for her, and Robbie Longfellow trying vainly to catch her scent. Finally, she abandoned the Mare entirely and took refuge in the top of a tall tree. It obligingly wove its highest boughs into a hut for her. When her pursuers came too close and it was time for her to move, the proud tree picked up its roots like a lady's skirts and gracefully walked across the forests, conveying the most powerful witch in a dozen generations to safety.
She took solace only in dreams of Rue and her merchant. He went to the golden haired beauty on the mountain at last, with a briar rose and a climbing rose and an exotic garden rose that grew only in a desert far away. She did not dare attend their wedding as herself, but gathered leaves and flowers and wove them into a magnificent wedding gown for her daughter. She dressed in the garb of a simple kitchen cook, brown smock and linen apron, and put a wimple over her cloud white hair, and watched the wedding from the servant's entrance. The candles were bright and merry, and the couple was very happy indeed, except for Rue's wistful loneliness for her mother.
The witch made certain that the wine was never empty, that the platters were never more than half empty, and that the wedding gifts were all a bit better than their giver intended. She served bride and groom with her own hands, and made certain that Rue's favorite foods were represented. The golden haired woman with laughing green eyes smiled at her, and the wistful look in her eyes lifted.
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Rue and her merchant had three daughters, as he had once been told by a wandering wise woman. The first two, Lily and Violet, were lovely and kind and charming to all whom they encountered. The third was a wild child, and loved running in the woods and collecting plants and charming wild animals out of the trees. Her parents named her Briar Rose, and while no parent should ever have a favorite child, the girl may have been the favorite of the entire family. She had a riot of golden curls and eyes of darkest mint, and she was fonder of reading and birds than ever she was of parties and society. Rue loved all of her girls, but took great joy in her youngest child, and taught her everything she'd ever learned about the land and beasts and the beauty in the world.
Rue died of a sudden fever the same year Lily came of age, and while he was yet in mourning, eleven of the merchant's fine ships were sunk in a terrible storm. Bronwyn was far away, and helpless to nurse her daughter or comfort the merchant she'd come to love as she'd never loved her son.
She was perched in a tree in that far off land, watching a young boy play with his mates. He was the son of the lord's gamekeeper, and always rougher and faster and more brutal than his peers. He was very bold, and today they played at hunting wolves. His best friend was a woodsman's son, a boy who was taller and stronger, but perhaps kinder. The boys were toying with the cusp of manhood, voices beginning to crack and deepen, legs and arms too long for their trousers and sleeves.
By chance, they found a wolf's den. With shouts and thrown rocks and sticks, they drove off the lone thin female who was guarding the pups. The gamekeeper's son crouched and entered the low burrow, and the witch heard the frightened squeals of the pups and then silence. The boy backed out, dragging three wretched bloody bodies and a fourth squirming cub. He threw it at the woodsman's son, who caught it midair.
"Kill it," he ordered, and his friend looked down at the creature. The noises of the wood hushed, but the boys did not notice. The witch slithered down the obliging tree, drawing her long knife. She drew her hood over her white hair and limped forward from the shadows.
"No. Drop it," she commanded, and they struggled to understand the foreign flavor of her words. She sensed the wolf pack beginning to close, and heard the far off horns of a hunting party.
The gamekeeper's boy looked at her, trying to cover his fear with swagger. "You're the Witch," he said, brandishing his bloody knife at her.
"Yes, and you're a stupid boy. The wolves will kill you if they find you here. Drop the pup and run." The woodsman's son looked inclined to obey, but his friend called out.
"No, Alexy, look at her. She's an old woman, a cripple. We'll kill her and collect the reward." His words were fast and she barely followed his meaning.
"Nestor, we should run, look," the woodsman's son, Alexey, watched something beyond her shoulder, and the witch could not tell if it was wolf or hunter or some other threat. He put the pup down on the ground and backed away, hitting his friend on the shoulder with a closed fist as he passed him. Nestor looked beyond her as well, and stuffed the dead wolf cubs in his game bag as he turned to follow.
The witch knelt stiffly and picked up the wolf cub. It was smeared with the blood of its littermates, eyes barely open. Even so, it growled at her, ferocious, even as she brought it close to her chest and turned slowly to see what approached her from behind.
She saw three things as she pushed her hood back. The first was the pack of wolves with her in the morning light, the thin female with two larger females and the biggest male she had ever seen. They were all golden eyed and wary. The second was the flash of afternoon sunlight off of the helmet of a knight in the far distance. The third was an immense pyre being built in a village square at sunset, a charred stake rising up from the middle of it, burnt shackles bolted to a ring at the top.
The cub whimpered, smelling its pack, and one of the larger females advanced slowly. Her teats were swollen with milk, and she was more interested in the pup than the witch. The witch set the pup down and backed away. Silent, the female picked the pup up by its scruff and the predators vanished into the underbrush. The wolf king watched her as the rest swiftly passed and was last to turn and leave.
The witch found herself shaking with reaction, her hands clenched with the spell she had not released. She looked after the wolves until long after the bushes stilled, unable to reconcile the storm of emotion that consumed her.
Thus, she was easy work when the knight's charger erupted from the trees, his lance spearing through her shoulder and pinning her to her tree.