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The night sky coated the buildings in a deep, almost ink-like darkness as dozens or perhaps hundreds of villagers stood in the ample square. An entire community -men and women, rich and poor, adults and youths- had gathered in the center of the village, standing more or less close to a single mass of amber light shining within the midnight blackness. Had a blissfully unaware passerby spotted the crowd from afar, an ongoing fair or other such event might have come to mind. A late-night market, perhaps, or maybe a well-known storyteller’s exhibition. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing one wouldn’t expect from such a tiny, picturesque medieval village.
But none of the people had shown up to trade, and only a handful were genuinely entertained by the sight before them.
Atop the charred pile of wooden planks, with her wrists bound by ropes and secured behind an upright timber pole, down on her scraped knees was a girl. Her head was bowed in terror as well as shame while strands of long, unkept dark hair hid her formerly pale face, now rosy with despair. Each sob was accompanied by a cough, causing her delicate figure to convulse with every jolt of the muscles in her throat, only visible sign of her fighting a losing battle against the thick black fumes starving her cells. A cough that went on and on, before she was forced to surrender. Her tormented lungs gave out just as the embers had begun ominously caressing her bloody knees.
And just like that…It was how it ended. The life of a girl, no longer a child yet far from a woman, mercilessly ripped away from her long before her time. Now she was never going to make friends her age, get a proper education or comfortably grow old, because her body had been poisoned by the smoke; and therefore her soul could never walk amongst the living ever again. Not that it mattered. She deserved it. There was no other way of stopping her unholy lifestyle. An entire existence spent striking innocents with misery can be redeemed by nothing less than a pyre, after all.
~~~~
Ashley used to see her spell-casting, demon-invoking activities as a pastime. An especially unorthodox pastime which had been passed down from mother to daughter in her family for generations, yes, but still a pastime nonetheless. A game even. It never failed to put a smile on her face, to see misfortune strike the older boys who would harass her simply for being a quiet, introverted child.
It never failed to put a smile on her face when the kids who used to torment her began screaming for their mommies, pain soaring throughout their bodies, some laying on the ground with a leg broken after a fall, others sitting in bed with a fever and buboes over their thighs, with a man in a bird mask standing close by and telling them to start begging the Lord for mercy.
Only once did the results fail to bring a smile on her face. It was the day the townsfolk’s gossip turned into her neighbors catching her in the act of casting yet another tragedy-bearing spell.
She was dragged by her hair from her house straight to the court, the mob lynching her to near-death all the way, and soundly rejoicing when the judge sentenced her to the worst possible penalty.
Ashley’s execution took place the following night, not even 12 hours after her cover had been blown. As if they wished to take her life as soon as possible in fear of further harm, like a fox receiving a few grams of lead as soon as it gets caught mauling a chicken.
-“Y’all are CRAZY!”- a few feet away from the pyre, a disheveled peasant was physically restrained by the guards, his scrawny limbs no match for their burly arms. –“CRAZY, I say! True witches cannot die! She’ll come back! Do you want her to feast on the whole village?!”- His rosy and somewhat swollen face contorted in terror as one of the men took in his hand a fistful of the peasant’s filthy black hair, causing his head to tilt slightly backwards. –“Silence, Red.”- the brute spat, chuckling as he pronounced the nickname which had now replaced whatever moniker had been bestowed on him upon birth.
~~~~
And just like that…It was how it ended. The life of a girl, no longer a child yet far from a woman, mercilessly ripped away from her long before her time. Now she was never going to grow old.
Same went for the rest of the village.
~~~~
Darkness had swallowed the peasant whole. His eyes met nothing but black down the narrow well sheltering him, prompting “Red” to rely on his other senses in order to get an idea of what was happening around him. With his touch he could feel water reaching up to waist-level, and his submerged legs swishing rhythmically below the surface as he struggled to keep himself afloat. His arms were outspread to his sides, hands pressing against the smooth pebbles which made up the walls separating him from the underground soil. But being in the depths of a well meant the pebbles were moist with humidity, making them slippery and in turn unreliable to sustain the peasant as he made an effort to stay afloat.
For how much he despised the cold damp feeling on his clothes, and how much he wanted to block out the pain of his muscles struggling to not let him sink, the peasant forced himself to concentrate right on his touch. The reason being what he could sense with his ears was far worse. Men and women, rich and poor, adults and youths, formerly gathered in the center of the village, now crying out useless prayers for mercy. Even from deep down inside the well he heard the rapid shuffling of dozens or perhaps hundreds of pairs of feet running for their lives.
After a while he stopped registering anything, regardless of the stimuli or which sense was perceiving it. All he could focus upon were his own thoughts. Or maybe those did not even count as thoughts. They didn’t have nearly as much reason within them as the regular ideas and concepts normally forming in his brain. These were wordless impulses, which he had no way to express without actually performing what he was being requested. Pleads to keep quiet and motionless inside the well he had found refuge in, or maybe climb out and run for his life in hopes of better luck than the other peasants, or perhaps find something to use to stun the witch, or-
-“You.”-
At first he no longer felt a throbbing in his chest. Then it came back. Stronger, quicker and pumping far more adrenaline.
-“N-No! NO!”- He begged the little girl staring at him from above, -“Don’t! Please I’ll do anything, I-I-I’ll even be your slave if you need one, but please don’t do it!”- His words seemed to fall on deaf ears as he got no answer in spite of the girl still standing there, motionlessly watching the young man plea for his life. –“Please, don’t! I assure you no-one would believe me if I went and told anyone about it! W-Who could ever take seriously the testimony of a madman?”- She didn’t budge. Red wasn’t sure whether it was a good or bad sign. –“I-I don’t know what to say, just please…Don’t-”
-“Hush.”- An answer finally came from above.
-“I won’t eat you. I won’t kill you.”- Slow words, spoken in a young girl’s soft voice. –“I just wanted to say you’re wiser than you look, especially compared to…them.”- A short pause followed, enough for Ashley to swallow some saliva (and for Red to begin feeling a tiny glimmer of hope inside of him). –“And I was thinking…how about we make a deal?”-