First Witch's Tale

“Be careful,” Father observed, unaware of my thoughts. “You could lose that very easily.”

I stared at him. I knew, without having to ask, that my stepmother hadn’t known the money existed. She wasn’t a bad stepmother, any more than my father was a bad father, but she was parsimonious to a fault and if she had realised he intended to give the money to me she would have exploded with rage. The value of the coins was somewhat debatable - I had done plenty of bargaining, when peddlers had passed through the village, and I knew it wasn’t easy to be sure what the coins were actually worth - but they were worth something. Her older children could have made better matches if they had brought the money with them.

“Father, I …”

Father cut me off. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “I have been proud to call you my daughter. And if your destiny calls you elsewhere, then I wish you luck. And farewell.”

He nodded politely to me, then turned and strode away without looking back. I stared after him, my heart beating like a drum. I wanted to call to him, to beg his forgiveness, and yet I knew there was no way things could go back to normal. How could they? The idea of me having a normal life had died, the moment I had shocked David. The villagers would never forget. It was just a matter of time until they told my father to kick me out or did it themselves. My stepmother might already be hinting it was time to marry me off or simply tell me to leave. The thought didn’t hurt as much as it should. It was far from uncommon, in an age of high mortality, for families to blend together as widows and widowers sought comfort and support in each other, but my stepmother could not be faulted for pressing the interests of her children ahead of her stepchildren. Everyone did it.

I forced myself to turn and look north, towards the Craggy Mountains. They were clearly visible in the gloom, towering up into clouds that marked the border between the northern realm and the south. Or so I had been told. I knew very little about the kingdoms and princes and magicians and everything else that lurked beyond the borderline, and what I knew could not be taken on trust. I had once met a passing fortune-teller who’d insisted he could tell us what was happening on the other side of the world; Father, not being a fool, had demanded proof of the man’s powers. He’d left in something of a hurry after that! I smiled at the memory, silently blessing the man who had called himself my father, and then started to walk. I didn’t expect pursuit, not any longer, but I still needed to put some distance between myself and the village. The last thing I needed was someone trying to drag me home to Father. That would be embarrassing.

And if they tried, I thought, it would make them the most unpopular person in the village.

The thought haunted me as I walked north. It was not an easy trip, even though I could see the mountains in the distance and as long as I was walking towards them I was heading in the right general direction. I had no trouble finding food and drink - I knew which plants were poisonous, or how to trap small animals and start a fire to cook the meat, or even find water that was safe to drink - and I knew to avoid the deepest darkest parts of the forest, but that then I had to pass near a number of villages, none of which knew me. It was a grim reminder that the most dangerous creatures in the world walked on two legs. Back home, everyone have known and feared my father’s temper. Here …

One village thought me a thief and put me in the stocks for a day. I slipped away at nightfall, after recovering my pouch from the woman who’d stolen it, and made a mental note never to return. Another was in the grip of an army and I found myself threatened with conscription, or worse, before I managed to escape into the undergrowth. A third was surprisingly friendly, until I discovered that the local headsman was desperately looking for a bride. He really must have been desperate. My appearance alone marked me as an outsider, while he knew nothing of my family or what they might give him in exchange for taking me off their hands. Somehow, I doubted he’d taken one look at me and fallen so deeply in love he forgot the practical considerations. No headsman ever born could afford to lose track of reality. It wouldn’t be long before his people overthrew him. And a fourth village was burnt to the ground, the handful of buildings little more than blackened patches of scorched earth. It couldn’t have happened that long ago, I decided, or the village would have been reclaimed by the surrounding countryside, but I never worked out who or what laid waste to the village. There were no bodies, as far as I could tell. My instincts were screaming at me to run. I did, and I never looked back.