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A witch must be strong. She must be the strongest.
She must control the space she is in— she must demand it.
A witch is not a mere woman to wait a man's tables and stay silent. A witch is not a woman to be asked. She is a woman to ask.
She must not feel hate. She must not feel anger.
She must only take action.
A witch must not take no.
He said no.
He said no and he left with it hanging from his lips like a crooked, iron smile.
No!
To a witch!
Oh, my sisters had whispered of the tales of no for years, I am sure of it. That I, Juta Kamainen, had allowed a man, a human man, to give her no when the offer was given.The witch who allows no is a witch who allows.
And that is no witch at all.
A witch does not forgive easily. And I do not forgive at all.
I took flight in search of this terrible, selfish, arrogant, handsome man and his mouth full of no.
In my search, I forgot. I forgot the bargaining, the pleading. I forgot my love. I remembered only no.
Cloud can fly only so fast, and it can carry hate only so far.
I had hate for the man. I had so much love for him.
I did not know he had another world.
I did not know he had another wife.
A knife wielding son.
A heart full of loss.
He had a mouth full of no, and for that, I gave him one more gift.
From my quiver, I pulled the arrow that I had made, fashioned, painted, sharpened, cursed with his name stitched in my heart and whispered over the fire that blackened the stone. The arrow that waited to be used, when all others came and went.
This had one destination. It would not miss.
It did not miss.
And it was then— then, when the white, cold, snow became red, warm, death that the black, ashy, hate was unstrung from my bow, and not after. When his eight fingered son cowered in the blood of his lost father and the shadow of my bow, and John Parry looked to me for the last time—
He was love.
No.
I was in love.
And so was he. But his love did not reach my slender fingers the way mine clasped around his shoulders— he had his own threads tying him to a wife, a mother, a lover, and she had ignored these threads. Pushed them aside like cob webs.
She had destroyed them, and in this she had created another angry man.
A young man, gaping up at her awful form— full of awe, but awful too. William Parry will be an angry man, bitter like ashes, grey like sad souls.
His eyes were like his father’s.
He was beautiful.
He was pain.
He was no.
He was extenuating circumstances.
He was not mine.