“Grampa, please tell us a story!” Children ran and surrounded a gray-bearded grandfather who had just taken a seat.

“A story you say…?” The old man said while in thought. He produced a pipe and started stuffing it with tobacco.

“What kind of story should I tell you?” He asked. “I have already told you all the funny and beautiful stories.”

“Then tell us a story that is not so beautiful. A scary story.”

“A scary story, huh?” Grandfather looked at the expectant faces of the children. “Okay, you are all old enough to hear stories about secret knowledge and of the strange things happening in the forest. Have you even heard of the witch house?”

“We have, granny has told us.”

“Granny does know much.” Grandfather noted. “But she does not know of this. We have three towns here, Tontla, Valgepalõ and the Nameless Town. In every town the locals claim that they have the true witch house. Either because one of the locals there has arranged a meeting with the witch and then met her, or they have a house where something so horrific happened that people refuse to even walk by it. But events like that do not turn it into a witch’s house.

“The true witch house is not in the town but rather in the bog. Deep in Tontla bog, where a common man has no business going and a place a common man will never be able to find. Before he ever finds it, the bog will claim him from the living. Stories say that my dead father once met the witch.”

“The real witch?” the children asked.

“The real witch indeed.” The grandfather said. “The have now been many years since, but during the presidency of Päts, there was a peat mine in the Tontla bog. The bog was drained, the peat was cut and then pressed into bricks for burning. My father worked there.

“But there were some problems with digging for peat in the Tontla bog. People who worked there often fell ill. They did not want to eat nor drink, their complexion turned gray and they started to shiver, sweat and complain about the cold. Some started losing their hair. None of the local doctors could treat them. The only recommendation was to go on a trip to a health resort far away from Tontla and stay there for a few months. Once, the bog was even visited by important scientists from the Second Laboratory of the Academy of Sciences to be sure that this illness was not some sort of strange radiation sickness.

“But my granny who was still alive back then, knew right away what was wrong. That father had not come down with some usual kind of an illness but with the gray sickness. A sickness some witch had shouted into the bog, back in the days where animals and humans spoke the same tongues. And the windmill in the castle of the below-grounders is spinning this shout around, not letting it fall to the ground, starve and become extinct.

Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.

“Granny knew that if dad wanted to live then we had to pack him some food for his travels and send him back into the bog that very day. In there, he had to walk seven circles around the Tontla bog until he made it to the witch house, where he could find remedy to to his sickness.”

“Did he find help?” The children asked when grandpa fell silent and smoked his pipe.

“Let me tell you.” Grandpa said, taking the pipe out of his mouth. “Mother did not want to hear anything about wandering the bog while sick, but my grandmother managed to convince father to take the journey. He walked a day, walked another, walked even more until he could not remember whether it was day or night nor how long he had feverishly wandered the cool bog. He then finally noticed a small wooden sauna made of rotting wood, sitting on the edge of a bog, near some of the lower birches and it looked quite funny with how out of place it was.

“When father had knocked on the door and then entered the house, he was struck with a surprise. Inside it looked much bigger than on the outside. The walls were tall and thick. The floors were covered in smooth limestone and the building was big enough for a witch’s kitchen with a big stone fireplace. Tens and tens of different secret herbs were being dried on the hot stone, while he could also notice a small bed beyond a screen in the corner as well as a simple wooden table and two chairs nearby.

“Suddenly there stood a young woman in front of father with unearthly beauty. As father described her, she was slightly shorter than him. With long loose hair as golden as the sun, hanging down to her hips. She had a small nose and penetrating blue eyes. And yet she looked like a simple country girl. With some familiarity to her. Father said that looking at her was like meeting the country girls once all over again when he was fourteen.

Indeed, in his eyes the girl in front of him could have been no more than fifteen. She had a long linen dress and bleached linen apron. But at the same time also a sad look in her eyes. She invited father in, undressed him and sat him down behind the table. She then retreated to the fireplace to mix the medicine. Father said that despite having a fever, he felt no cold in the hut. The large fireplace made it so warm that he felt like he was sitting on a stove.

Soon, that unknown country girl came to the table with a steaming mug. She sat down and used her little finger to taste the drink in the mug. Satisfied, she pushed the mug in front of him and said that he will recover if he closes his eyes and drinks the mug all at once, then goes home and stays unwashed for three days, and then goes to a hot sauna on the fourth. She then fell silent, raising her feet on the chair and grabbing them with both hands.

When dad opened his eyes after downing all of the hot and bitter drink, everything had changed. He was sitting bareback in a hut with wind blowing in through the wall and the sky showing through the fallen roof. The fireplace had turned into a pile of mossy stones, and there were no signs that anybody had lived here or even could live here. The only things in any usable state were the table and two chairs.

On the other side of the desk, there was no girl with golden yellow hair, instead there were only three brooms tied together, a couple of pieces of torn cloth and a small pigtail of gray human hair. When father got back home and told us of everything he had seen, grandmother recommended he’d do as the witch had instructed him, even though father himself was sure that all he saw was a fevered dream. Grandmother also said that every witch knows best how to cure her own curse.”

“The witch who treated your father had herself witched the gray sickness?”

“So it seems.” Grandfather said, knocking his pipe empty. “Once a long time ago. A country girl had loved a knight. The knight however broke his word and his love and the country girl learned to become a witch and had tried to curse the knight. She finally turned the knight into stone. But the gray sickness is one of her first failed attempts in cursing him.

“Only later did she learn what became of her curse in the bog. And thus she started to make up for the thoughtlessness in her youth. However, since the curse is now forever in the air due to the below-grounders, the witch is also forever tied to it and not even death saves her from her obligation to keep her curse in check.

That’s quite a story to think over now, isn’t it?”