The Witch Woman's Prophecy

2 | Foster Family |

My mouth was filled with the dark earthy taste of leaf mould when I woke the next morning. For a breath or two I could not imagine why I was lying under a thorn bush, sticky-eyed, stiff and sore. I wrinkled my nose and tried to spit out the damp soil, but could not produce enough saliva to moisten my mouth.

My hands reeked of smoke, and the smell brought back all the memories from the night before. A sense of unreality filled me — it couldn't have happened — not like that. It must have been a nightmare. But nightmares don't leave you cut and bruised out in the woods.

Thorns scratched trails along my back as I wriggled out from my hiding place. The light of the sun dazzled me, but at least I could see again and my hearing had come back although it was overlaid with a high-pitched ringing. In the trees above me, birds sang songs of joy to the sun, but something was missing; there were no sounds from the direction of the farm, not the crow of the cockerel nor the whinnying and stamping of Old Grey, waiting to be let out of her stable.

I spat out the bile that filled my mouth then put my hand to my knife for reassurance. It wasn't there; I'd left it behind in the metal building when I ran from the metal building the previous night.

My head throbbed with remembered pain. I didn't want to go back to the building with its dreadful contents, but returning to the farm unarmed would get me killed if the bandits were still there. I forced my unsteady legs to retrace my route from the night before, feeling more afraid with each step I took. As before, pain stabbed its way into my skull as I drew closer to the clearing.

The thudding of my heart against my ribs seemed loud enough to give me away to any nearby bandits. I hid behind a tree some distance away and studied the building. The greenish light which reached the floor of the woods turned the silvery metal a sickly colour. Nothing grew near it, not even grass or the ivy that festooned the trees like garlands. It was a strange almost-cube whose sides sloped down and out, making it wider at the base than the top. It had no windows, but the doorway had rounded corners. Why it wasn't it a plain rectangle like all the other doors I'd ever seen?

Although I wanted to dash in, grab my knife and rush back to the farm, I forced myself to wait and check for movement, but nothing stirred. The birds continued singing blithe songs above me and there was no other sound, even the breeze had dropped. When I was sure that there wasn't an ambush waiting for me, I crept forward, hardly daring to breathe. In the doorway lay a misshapen lump; the bandit's comrades had abandoned his body. My head throbbed even harder and my throat convulsed, but I put my hand over my mouth and stepped around him into the darkness of the room.

The sudden blade of pain in my head almost made me lose consciousness. I gasped in a lungful of polluted air, swayed and almost fell into the bloody mess as I gagged. I opened my eyes and caught a glimpse of two metal structures in the building, but I did not stay to examine them further. My knife lay against the wall and I snatched it up, turned and leaped over the dead bandit, sprinted back into the woods and vomited into the bushes until my stomach felt as though it was turned inside out.

My thirst raged and I needed to wash the taste of bile from my mouth. As quietly as I could, I made my way to the spring that bubbled up near to the top of the ridge overlooking the farm. Squatting beside the pool below the spring, I saw the dark, dried blood on the brown skin of my hands and under my nails. My stomach heaved again and I scrubbed until all traces of blood were gone and my hands were clean, then I caught fresh spring water in my cupped hands and raised it to my lips. My mouth and throat were so parched it seemed as though the water only moistened my throat without travelling down any further. I gulped down more handfuls of the cold water until I felt that I would burst.

My reflection stared up at me from the pool; my face was covered in dried blood which also stiffened my short, dark curly hair. Although the water was cold, I dunked my whole head into the water and scrubbed until my face smarted and tingled. I scrubbed at my arms too, almost scraping my left arm raw when I mistook the large brown thumbprint-shaped birthmark there for another bloodstain. I stared into the water again, there were dark shadows beneath my brown eyes but now my face was clean.