Forever Green

~ 39 ~ Witches and Snitches

Lenesa chased after the scream, feet flying across the forest floor. Was it Audeste who had hurt someone? Or that Turned faun that followed her—Parnelius?

Her breaths came out in short pants as she ran, Shwei bounding at her heels in fox form.

"You!" she creid when she finally came across the attacker. It was a Turned witch, but not Audeste. The woman looked up at Lenesa's outburst with clouded white eyes and hands dripping red. Lenesa hadn't seen her before—perhaps she lived on a different mountain.

"Get away from her!" Lenesa shouted, looking to the still figure on the forest floor.

The victim, a middle-aged woman with a handbasket similar to Lenesa's, was sprawled on the ground behind the Turned witch, unmoving in a scattered array of spilled berries. Most likely she had braved the forest to pick a few for the Midsummer Week festival. Lenesa just hoped it hadn't been the woman's last thing to do in this life.

"I said step away," Lenesa warned, echoed by a growl from Shwei. The other witch rose up with a hiss, tattered mud-green cloak sweeping back from the woman's body. Lenesa's heart jolted at the blood on the ground that was revealed at the motion.

"It'sss miiine," the witch hissed. "Kill them all. They poison our lands with hate and kill everything they touch."

Lenesa swallowed against the bitter memory of her own killings. "And you don't?" she challenged.

Rather than respond, the witch cocked her head to the right in a sudden, jarring twitch. Her eyes were still fixed on Lenesa, eerily unperturbed, but then she turned and abruptly fled into the trees.

"Get back here!" Lenesa shouted, taking a step to follow, then turning back, remembering the witch's victim. After a beat of indecision, she let it go with a frustrated hiss and ran over to check the woman lying on the ground instead.

It was a lost cause. Now that Lenesa could see clearly, the woman had been cut through the abdomen, bright red blood pouring out of the wound and soaking into the woman's dress. It reminded Lenesa of another injury she had seen, but rather than turn away and give into the urge to block out the vision, she forced herself to stay. Somehow, the woman was still conscious, and was gasping up at Lenesa in wide-eyed fear, hands weakly scrabbling backwards at the ground to escape.

"Are you—" the woman stopped at a blood-spattered cough, "death?"

Lenesa slowly crouched down and took one of the woman's hands in her own, rubbing the back of it gently with her thumb.

"No," she said, voice barely a whisper. "I'm not here to harm you." She noticed how the woman's eyes fearfully darted to the glowing blue fox at her side.

"You're a witch," she gasped, trying to jerk out of Lenesa's grasp. "That's a witchlight."

Lenesa ignored the rude term, and Shwei likewise held back a snarl. "Shh, I'm not going to hurt you," she repeated.

"It hurts," the woman whimpered, scrunching her eyes shut. "Can't you do something?"

Lenesa was thankful the woman wasn't looking, as she was unable to help the tears that fell at the words. She was in the same helpless situation that had haunted her for over the past decade, but this time, she knew better than to intervene.

"I'm sorry," she said, voice cracking. "I can lessen the pain, but that's all."

The woman still had her eyes closed. "Then do it," she demanded, voice raising into a cry. "I don't care if you use magic or not. Oh, of all the realms, it hurts!"