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There are stories, of course, that claim she’s seven feet tall and breathes fire when provoked. In the south they say she flayed a man alive, just because. In the shanty villages surrounding London it’s more of a mercy killing, but the point remains that she is generally an Unsavoury witch. Not that there are savoury witches, though Esther lives in hope, which is probably half the reason she’s trekking through the mud and marshes on the eastern bulk of England’s soggy shore. She comes in search of a witch, and she will not leave empty handed.
She’ll be in trouble, when they realise she’s gone, but that’s okay. Mother will clap her ‘round the ear and papa will be in a mood with her for days, but little Addie will grin her toothy grin and ask to hear the story, again, just one more time. Esther doesn’t mind trouble; it is her one of her best friends at this point.
The sky is dark above her. If she was a superstitious sort, she might say that’s an omen, but she ain’t and, anyway, a little rain never hurt anyone. It lashes down heavy. She’s just rinsing out her cap when the sky growls and lightning pierces an otherwise cloudy sky. Great.
The mud is up to her knees, almost, and she can feel herself sinking with every step. This was a stupid idea, she’s stupid, she should go home, she should—
There’s a woman on the horizon, picking her way across the wet landscape, with a handful of wilting reeds and walking stick dripping mud with every step. Her. It must be. Who else would be out here in a storm?
Esther isn’t sure what to do. She’d come all this way to meet the witch, but now she’s laid eyes on her she can’t stop thinking about how maybe the stories are right, maybe she did flay a man alive for no reason, maybe, maybe, maybe…
Her thoughts jump out the window when the witch spots her. Her face changes: pleasant curiosity to sudden fear, an animal in a predator’s glare. Esther, the swooping hawk, puts her hands up as if to coax her like a kitten, but the witch is no timid thing. They are both predators here.
“I won’t hurt you, if you don’t hurt me” she says, but the storm swallows it up. “I’m a friend!” she yells this time, and the witch’s head cocks. Truly Esther isn’t sure if she even speaks English, if maybe witches have their own language, or maybe she speaks in a marsh-language like the belching of slimy frogs in low ponds. Either way, the look on her face is not welcoming.
Esther gulps down her fears. Don’tfreakoutdon’tscreamdon’tshowfear but her heart is hammering in her chest. She’s never been this close to a witch before—the forty feet separating them feels like nothing, really, and can’t witches fly?
Her feet have got lodged in the mud and she probably couldn’t run even if she could possess her legs long enough to make the movement. She’s stuck, and so she does the only thing she can think of. She smiles, a trembling thing, and prays the witch doesn't eat her.
To her credit, the witch looks curious. She picks her way towards Esther’s resting place, using that staff to part the reeds like something out of a fairy tale, gliding on the misty air ever closer, and Esther thinks for sure this is it, she’s going to be skinned alive, the witch is descending on her and… Freeing her muddy boots?
Esther shakes her feet experimentally. Muck drips off, thick as porridge. “Thank you,” she says, because her mother drilled good manners into her, even if you did think you were seconds from death. “I’m Esther.”
The witch is beautiful up close, but it is the kind of beauty belonging to nature, to red glossy mushrooms and winter ice, the ruddy skin of a man hard at work. She is not seven feet tall, closer to five, and she doesn’t have that face the stories described. She is placid, timid even. Her eyes are green as acorn caps and her hair is a mess of tangles but, honestly, the woman lives in a bog, Esther didn’t exactly expect her to be impeccably presented.
“I’m a friend,” she says again, and the witch nods slightly, as if she’s conceding something. “You speak English?”
“Of course,” says the witch. “I live in England. What language would I speak?”
Esther feels doubly stupid now, but she smiles. They’re getting somewhere, and so far neither has killed the other, so this is a good thing. “I just thought… I don’t know what I thought. Sorry. I, uh, didn’t mean to bother you.”
“And yet you came here to my marsh to—what, exactly?” She gestures ‘round at the empty landscape. London is miles away; Esther had trekked for days just to get here.
“To see if they’re true, the stories. Are they?”
The witch rolls her eyes. She begins retreating, but Esther matches her step for step. Her boots are soaked at this point, but she isn’t backing down.
“I just mean… they say you’re savage. They say you’re evil, that you eat babies, that you dine on their pinky toes as if they’re sunflower seeds. They say you skinned a man alive, in London—“
“That was an accident. There were mitigating circumstances. And you oughtn’t listen to gossip.”
“So they’re all false? None of the stories happened? And… how do you flay a man by accident?”
The witch sighs. “Go away, please. This is my bog. I’ll flay you alive.”
“I don’t think you will.”
“Maybe I’ll leave your body out here and you can rot with the pikes picking your eyes out.”
“Do you have a name? I’m Esther, by the way.”
“You already said. I have a name, but names are power, and you are not fit to be blessed with such power.”
That sounds promising, Esther thinks. She’s jogging through the marsh now, and the soggy ground is giving way to firmer paths, though it is still waterlogged and sticky. Her boots keep squelching, whereas the witch glides gracefully, a swan in flight, just above the water’s surface.
“Nice magic,” Esther comments. “Have you always been a witch?”
“Witches are born, yes, not made.”
“Are any of the stories true?”
“Statistically, it’s likely.”
They are approaching a small house, more of a hut, held together by thick screws and rotting wood. It is no palace, but Esther has always wanted to see a witch’s house and she grins now, full of excitement. This is going better than she thought it would.
“Fuck off now,” the witch says, like Esther is some annoying puppy, and maybe she is. Esther frowns.
“I came all this way to see you, when was the last time you had a visitor?”
“No visitors allowed. Go home.”
She can’t face going home. They already think she’s useless with her head in the clouds, dreaming of witches, sinning with her thoughts, and there isn’t much for her at home, only the dusty streets that had once held life. London had been something great, once upon a time, but now it is dust and death, and poison in the air, and everywhere it rains ash.
“I don’t want to go home. I want to start a new life in the wilderness, life off the land, like you.”
The witch turns one-eighty, and scoffs at Esther. Her lips are thin as worms and she chews them rapidly, as if she’s holding back something.
“Life out here ain’t a picnic,” she says. “At least in London you have safety.”
“Aside from the acid rain,” Esther points out.
“Don’t you have family?”
“Do you?”
The witch looks pained, like maybe Esther shouldn’t have said that, like maybe her heart is tearing in two right there in her chest. The witch is beautiful, yes, but pissed, and they’re standing far too close. Esther stumbles backwards.
“Sorry,” she mumbles, but the storm is still raging and the sky chooses that moment to crack in two, and Esther isn’t sure she can bring herself to say it again. Apologies were always difficult for her.
“Go home,” the witch says again, and returns her attention to unlocking her door. She lifts up the staff and taps it on the space where the key ought to go, and something green flits out, like dust, like party glitter. It is probably the prettiest thing to grace the Norfolk Broads in so long.
“That’s so cool,” Esther says. She cannot tear her eyes from the sparkly magic. It kind of hurts to look at, like she’s too close to an open flame, but it is a pleasant pain. Calming, almost, like maybe she could stare at it forever. “Do it again.”
“No.” The door unlocks and the witch steps through, and the spell is broken. Esther blinks.
“I’m sorry for bothering you,” she says, and she is more than a little sad. She doesn’t know what she’d expected from the witch, but she is disappointed.
She turns to leave, and hunches her shoulders against the battering rain. Her entire body could power a water mill with the amount of rain that has soaked her clothes through, and she shivers. It’s cold out here now that the magic has gone.
“Wait,” says the witch, like maybe she didn’t mean to. “I can’t send you out in this weather. Come inside and get warm, just… don’t be asking questions, alright?”
Esther grins, but she keeps it a secret, something hidden, just between her and the rain. She follows the witch into the little house, and is pleasantly surprised. The place is decorated the way that all things used to be decorated before the Fall: neutral, calm, glossy interiors, minimal furniture, a lush rug covering the living room floor. It is straight out of one of those catalogues Addie collects, circa twenty-thirty.
“Nice place,” Esther says, and means it. It’s probably magic but still, there’s no denying the witch has taste. Everything in London is old and crappy, leftovers from the Fall, stuff cobbled together from salvaged materials.
She gravitates towards an armchair scattered with pink circular cushions. Esther has never felt such luxury. She sinks into the body of it. The damn thing’s fluffy as a cloud.
“I wish I could learn magic,” she says, more than a little forlorn.
The witch takes the chair opposite. They stare, each waiting for the other to say something, and the silence is calm, gentle, even though Esther is bursting with questions. They just look at each other, and smile, and Esther feels the witch’s eyes rake across her body, from her rain-sodden hair to her dirty fingernails as she twists her hands over and over in her lap. She feels so out of place in this picture-perfect home. She tries to shrug away the discomfort.
“My name,” the witch says, “is Thora.”
Thora. She’s never heard that before, but then she is a witch. “That’s a nice name.”
“Would you like some tea?”
In London, they haven’t had the spare water for something frivolous as tea in… forever, it seems.
“If you have enough water, I mean, I—“
“Magic,” says Thora, with a smile that reaches her eyes. She’s pretty, Esther cannot help but note. She had thought witches would be ugly things, like the tales go, but Thora is an ordinary if beautiful woman.
“You, uh, get many visitors?” Esther asks.
Thora looks at her, a look that could say decades worth of loneliness. “I’m in exile,” she says, “what do you think?”
“Right.” The way the stories tell it, Thora attacked the man in broad daylight, and peeled off his skin in little strips, the better to swallow, the better to savour his screams.
“I get the odd person, seeking glory. Y’know, seeing if they can kill the witch, bring my head back to London like a trophy. A lot of wanderers, actually, who seem to forget I have actual magic powers. They never fare well.” She chuckles at this like it brings up fond memories.
“Do you… hurt them?”
Thora looks scandalised. “Magic isn’t for hurting, or vengeance, or killing. Magic comes from the Earth, and the Earth is patient, and careful, and generally ambivalent. I can only wield what nature provides. I can manipulate the world around us, as easily as you can manipulate chess pieces on a board.”
“You could make the rain stop, then?” Esther smiles. “Then I could leave?”
Thora catches her smile. “Maybe.”