The Last Witch

Her hands would dance atop the water…

The last of the witches lived in a house like any other. A sloped, low roof housed her, kept her safe from the wind that battered and abused every domicile. Dotted further from the cliff’s edge, a hostile huddle of cottages peered up the hill towards her as the moon set, sliding down her roof.

Her voice is like a raven… she sings that terrible song every night…

The only witch left in the world took her place in time, and wandered noiselessly, barefoot, through a pale frost each morning. She never asked the world why it forgot that magic was its lifeblood, the force by which it was stitched together. They forgot they all came from a pearl, from the very waters that grated against the chalky cliffs, eating away. Ravenous.

Dead witches whispered to her, warnings of the wind and water. Salt spray cut her cheeks when she laid her feet flat on the sand and rocks. A nightly performance. Centuries ago, this was sacred. This was guardianship.

She conjures demons from the depths… waves that claw at the clouds…

She held her lantern aloft and bellowed above the sound of the waves.

Mine, mine, mine!

She marked the shoreline with her heels, and none were harmed that night.

Every storm that visited was worse than the last, and children would hide in their beds as men boarded up their doors and windows, as if screws and planks could fight this divine enemy. The last witch trod through the waves and between rocks black as her hair and sharper than her shrill song, glaring at the mounting waves. They backed down, and nobody was harmed that night.

We ought to get rid of her… the storms are getting worse… she’ll kill us all…

The last witch got older, and weaker, but still her song survived each barrage and blow from across the sea. The houses multiplied and reinforced. For fear of her, and of the sea, a village became a fortress.

The next one will be the last…

A girl child was born on a stormy night. Her cries were barely heard over the thunder, but the witch sang with her final breaths to keep the storm miles away from her. A month of storms were scared away that night, but just as the fear was creeping back into the village like the crawling waves on the shore, a deep silence woke everything from their sleeps.

The last witch was dead.

We will have peace at last…

The strings of kites held taut as colors soared above the pale cliffs. Beneath them, chalk cliffs grazed against each other, grinding themselves into powder, little by little, and blowing away in the juvenile wind. Windows that had long been boarded up blinked at the clear sky again. Houses, like lungs, inhaled.

This is what happens, nowadays, when a witch dies… aren’t you relieved?

The blossoms that dressed the witch’s house in pink blew away in a blushing snow. She was gone for good, at least. Faces turned towards the bare face of the moon before going to bed, and all was peace, and all was right again.

That night, quiet as a thief, the waves rippled into the cracks in the stones, throwing foam up between the cliffs, and climbed, climbed, climbed up into the roots of trees and into cradles, searching. There was a girl in a cot in a lonely house, far from the village, almost out of reach, who couldn’t sleep. A sliver of moonlight picked her lock and beckoned her with her lantern toward the waves.

She followed. The first of many.

Like melted silver, she followed the trail of seafoam down the sides of hills. She didn’t stall when she tripped and slashed her foot on a sharp rock, only trod out the pain and followed further. When she stepped into the water, the pain was instantly soothed as a dream flickered beneath the water.

And she was tired. From the revels, from the ache, from the grief of losing the last witch.

There was a face beneath the water — many faces. Many pale faces with eyes like pearls and voices like the spaces between stars. They turned their heads, held their chins dripping above the water, and laughed.

She had no choice but to join them. The first of many.

Her life was taken in a sigh, and her body rolled like a pearl through seafoam, tinted pink with blood.