First Witch's Tale

I hadn’t expected it to be difficult to follow Cemburu. He was no woodsman. He had bragged of riding horses in pursuit of wild animals, and insisted he had killed a giant boar with a spear, but he had never lived in the words like I had. I doubted he knew anything about living off the land. And yet, I had to work to keep him in sight without getting so close he would certainly spot me. It wasn’t easy. He moved from tree to tree, shadow to shadow, glancing back constantly as if he thought he was being followed. I kept my distance as best as I could. If he caught me out here …

The thought irritated me as I kept walking. I wasn’t scared of Cemburu. And yet, I knew he was a decent magician. If he caught me, if he challenged me so far from school, he could kill me and swear blind he had had nothing to do with it. It wasn’t unknown for students to give up and just walk away, without even bothering to tell the staff they were leaving. I had no idea how it was handled, when the student reached his home, but … it wasn’t impossible I might have left the school. Cemburu was certainly foolish enough to think he convince the staff I had gone. Or maybe he would just keep his mouth shut on the assumption no one would consider him a possible suspect. It wasn’t as foolish as it seemed. The staff would not expect me to follow him into the woods.

Our path grew rougher as we made our way further from the school. The undergrowth grew thicker, tainted with wild magic. My eyes narrowed as Cemburu kept walking. Was he going into the deepest darkest parts of the wood, where the Other Folk lived? I knew to keep my distance from their mounds, and any suspiciously neat mushroom rings, but Cemburu? Did he understand the dangers? Or did he think he could walk in and out without consequence? I had no idea what was going through his head as he hurried on, slipping through a nightmare of trees that looked as though they were biding their time before coming to life and attacking anyone foolish enough to come within reach of their branches. There were places the trees were supposed to walk, to move position when no one was watching. I wondered if the trees nearby walked too. It wasn’t impossible. There was a lot of wild magic in the air.

My blood ran cold as I realised what wasn’t in the air. Birdsong. The woods should have been alive; small birds flying overhead, insects buzzing through the air and rodents scurrying through the undergrowth. Instead, the air was silent, so quiet I thought I could hear my heartbeat. It felt as if the whole world was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Ice ran down my spine. My instincts, honed by years on an isolated farming village, told me to turn my back and run. Or perhaps not to run, just to inch away without letting unseen eyes think I was running. I gritted my teeth and kept walking, noting how Cemburu kept walking too. Either he was braver than I had thought, or stupider. He could sense magic as well as I could. Surely, he could tell how dangerous - and unnatural - the world had become.

Except he never spent any time in the woods, I thought, grimly. He has no idea what is normal and what isn’t.

I nearly tripped over the tiny body on the ground. I bit my lip to keep from swearing. The world so quiet that even a whisper might be carried straight to his ears. The body had been a hedgehog, I thought, but it had been so heavily mutilated that I wasn’t sure of anything. Someone had caught the beast, gorged out its eyes and used its blood for … I felt sick as I saw the lines drawn on the ground. I had no qualms about catching and killing a hedgehog - they were good eating - but this was too much. I had to swallow, hard, to keep from throwing up. I’d seen animals being slaughtered - I had raised a pig myself, fattening her for the kill - and yet this was pointless sadism, tinged with dark magic. I was tempted to turn and go straight back to school, to alert the staff to what Cemburu was doing. But I wasn’t sure they would listen. It was difficult to tell what they would do. Instead, I stepped over the body - careful not to dislodge anything - and made my way further into the woods. Cemburu was so far ahead of me I had lost sight of him, forcing me to rely on my woodcraft to track him. I was lucky he didn’t seem to know he was being followed. If he had realised I was shadowing him, he could have led me in circles or set an ambush. I had done both as a young girl when my siblings and I have been practising our skills. No one had beaten me when it came to hiding in the woods.