Lesbia Chronicles: Over Witch's Knee

by Ther Renard

  The Blood Witch's lair was not hard to find. Atrocious felt her quarry like a dark splinter in her mind. She was drawn inexorably toward the evil, hurtling over trees and hills and rivers and plains until she arrived at the nothing that was the center of the Blood Witch's assault. For miles around, the land was black and bare, scorched by fire. There was nothing to see and yet Atrocious' vision was fixed on a speck of darkness amid the gloom.

  From speck to outline, she saw a little cottage in the middle of all the nothing. It was black and charred like the land around it, but it had somehow survived the firestorm and a merry puff of white smoke was escaping from the chimney.

  Atrocious touched ground and walked toward the little building with a slow, not quite cautious gait. In that place of shadows her ruddy cheeks glowed through falling ash which drifted from the sky like snow, settling on her braids and threatening to singe her skin. With every step, her feet sank into charred earth, leaving black footprints in her wake. The darkness closed in all around her and ash from the sky coated her skin with dark smudges. All the world seemed to be ablaze but there, in the center of the chaos, was nothing but calm.

  She reached the cottage door and found it ajar. The little hairs on the back of her neck were erect like soldiers as she pushed it open and called a friendly greeting.

  "Hello?"

  She heard nothing, so she pushed the door open. The cottage was almost bare. There was a fire in the hearth, and over it, a large cauldron bubbling away. A few sticks of simple furniture were in evidence. There was a table overflowing with charred pieces of paper and what looked like cooked chunks of meat. There was a bed with a lumpy old mattress, but no sheets or pillows. And there were a couple of chairs, one of which was missing a leg and one of which was missing its back. Atrocious thought she saw remnants of furniture in the fire. There was a wall partitioning off the back of the cottage from the front, so she could not see what lay in the farthest reaches of the sooty abode.

  "Hello?"

  There was a shuffling and a scuffling and then a woman with shoulder length frizzy brown hair and two ground lenses of glass affixed before her eyes came shuffling out of the back, muttering to herself. She wore a plain cotton dress, smeared and faded from years of wear, and over it, a rather nice long burgundy woolen cardigan. She could have been five hundred or she could have been fifty. Atrocious had long ago learned not to guess at age, besides, if this was the Blood Witch of legend, then she was effectively eternal.

  "Needs more salt," the woman said, mostly to herself as she clutched a blue jar. "Much, much more salt."

  "Hello," Atrocious said yet again.

  "Hello," the woman replied, dumping the contents of the jar into the cauldron.

  "Are you... er..." Atrocious almost couldn't bring herself to ask what seemed to be a most ridiculous question. "Are you... by any chance... I mean... are you... the Blood Witch?"

  "Hm?" The woman jabbed at something bobbing around in the cauldron, then hissed and sucked at her finger.

  "Are you the Blood Witch of, you know, legend."

  "You know what the problem is?" The woman gathered her cardigan about her and peered furiously into the bubbling brew. "Good ingredients. You can't get good ingredients these days."

  "It's just, er, I'm the Summoner, I think. And I'm here to do battle with the Blood Witch."

  The woman turned to her, milky blue eyes glazed with disinterest. "You are? Would you mind going outside and picking me three red flowers? Any red flowers, doesn't really matter what kind."

  "There aren't any flowers outside," Atrocious said. "They're all burned."

  "Flammable flopsies," the woman muttered to herself.

  "I'm Atrocious. What is your name?"

  "Magatha," the woman said. "My name is Magatha."

  "Magatha the witch? Magatha the Blood Witch, maybe?"

  "Blood! Yes! Of course, you can always use more blood. It's the perfect substitute for everything." Magatha turned and shuffled off into the depths of her cottage. She returned with a large pitcher of what indeed appeared to be blood, which was promptly poured into the cauldron.

  "I had to substitute blood for the wort juice, and blood for the dragon's tongue and blood for the toad's eyes and blood for the petal sperm and blood for the web of spider and blood for the... well, not blood for the blood. I have plenty of blood. And the gizzards. I had the gizzards too." She pushed her spectacles up her nose.

  "So that's a pot of blood and gizzards," Atrocious said.

  "I suppose so."

  "Still better than rice, I bet."

  "Rice! Yes! Rice! I substituted blood for the rice too."

  "And, er, where did you get all the blood from?"

  "Oh there's always plenty of blood," Magatha said, waving her hand. "They say I could get blood from a stone if I wanted, but there's easier ways to get blood." She smiled a crooked old smile, baring teeth that were suspiciously red about the edges.

  "Had it occurred to you," Atrocious ventured cautiously. "That others might need that blood for other things?"

  "Other things? Like what?"

  "Like living," Atrocious said. "They need the blood for living."

  "Hmmm," Magatha stirred her brew. "Well, that would explain a lot. For starters, it would go a good way toward explain all the dying. Interesting. Very interesting."

  "The fire doesn't help on the living front either."

  "Fire is purifying. Blood is nourishing." Magatha slapped her lips together.

  "Well, perhaps, but you're killing rather a lot of people. Thousands."

  "That's alright. They're always making more people."

  "But the people don't want to die. They very much dislike it. They're quite annoyed."

  "I bring some back for a second go-around."

  "That's not quite the same thing," Atrocious said. "You see, people have minds and hearts and they..."

  "Hearts, very tasty."

  "Yes," Atrocious said, trying to ignore the ghoulishness of the conversation. "Tasty to you maybe, but quite important for people."

  "Ho hum," the Blood Witch said, sticking her finger back in the brew.

  "You're going to run out of people soon, and then what will you do?" Atrocious tried another angle.

  "Run out of people?" Magatha seemed alarmed by the proposition. She lifted her eyes from the brew and fixed them on Atrocious.

  "There's only so many, and you're killing them faster than they can make more."

  "Hm. That is a problem."

  "It is," Atrocious said. "You have to conserve some of the people."

  Magatha considered her position briefly. "I will let ten percent live."

  Ten percent. It was hardly a victory.

  "No, you need more than ten percent," Atrocious said. "You need as many people as possible, otherwise they start to breed with family and then their noses come out backwards."

  "How many percent, then?"

  "A hundred percent of who is left," Atrocious said. "That many percent."

  Magatha leaned down and slurped out of the boiling cauldron, making a loud sucking sound. Blood and gizzards went rolling down her chin as she drew away. She wiped them off with the sleeve of her cardigan.

  "That is too many percent."

  "That is precisely the right number of percent."

  Magatha and Atrocious looked at one another, each finding the other to be somewhat tedious. Atrocious was no longer scared. The great evil before her was not any less evil than she had imagined, it was just less threatening, more pedestrian. It wasn't the evil that cackled over dark deeds, it was the evil that didn't really notice them in the first place.

  Tiring of their conversation, Magatha turned back to her brew. She took another long, thirsty slurp. Atrocious screwed her face up in total disgust as a thick chunk of something or other was caught in the witch's teeth then sucked through.

  "Drip drop yum yum. But it's missing something," Magatha said. "Needs more fresh blood."

  "Fresh blood?"
>
  "All the blood must be fresh," Magatha explained with the air of an expert. "Old blood is sticky ticky tacky hard, only good for candies."

  "Where is this fresh blood coming from?"

  Magatha held out a sanguine finger and dabbed a dot of blood under Atrocious' nose. "Can't you smell it? The blood of a frund."

  "A... frund?" Atrocious wiped the blood away.

  Magatha licked her lips. Her pale eyes drifted coyly toward the rear of the cottage.

  Atrocious turned to look. "What is back there?"

  "Go see for yourself," Magatha cackled. "Go and see! Go and see!" She performed a little shuffling side to side dance, full of the glee of destruction.

  The nine steps it took to traverse the little cottage were some of the slowest Atrocious had taken in all her days. The slower she walked, the slower she wished she could walk. The dread was gathering in her belly, seizing her muscles. With a shuffling gait, she reached the partition, peered into the darkness and uttered a cry.

  The shadows cleared to reveal three figures strapped to boards. Three ashen, pale, still figures riddled with cuts, bleeding into mismatched pitchers and buckets and even a little egg cup.

  Kira. Rogette. Thorberta.

  In a voice breaking along with her heart, Atrocious called their names. Only Kira responded. A faint whisper escaped purple lips. She did not open her eyes.

  Atrocious ran to the warrior's side and tried to stop the bleeding, but there were too many cuts. Too many cuts and too much blood had been lost. There was only one who could have saved her. Only one and she was nowhere to be found. Rogette was in no better condition, and Thorberta - Atrocious could barely bring herself to look at Thorberta. Naked, she was covered in red fur, tangled and matted with her own blood.

  Faced with the hopelessness and the horror, Atrocious sank to the floor and wept.

  Magatha shuffled between the boards, speaking in a raspy whisper. "The doggie, she called your name. And the robber, she tried to seduce Magatha. The soldier. She simply bled."

  "Where... how did you... where did you find them?"

  "They came to me," Magatha crowed. "They came across the ash plain. They came looking for a friend. They came weapons drawn and full of threats. But hacky slashy weapons do Magatha no harm. Magatha took them and tied them down and cut them one day, then the next. Day after day a little more."

  She picked up the egg cup and drained the essence of Bertie in one slurp, her long pointed tongue licking it clean.

  "Magatha watched their hope fade with their lives."

  Atrocious gagged. The fault was hers. She had done this to them. Every moment she'd wasted arguing with Ariadne, every minute she'd spent spent yearning for Ayla, every second she'd turned her nose up at her rice had been a moment Kira, Rogette and Thorberta had bled for her, entirely out of sight and out of mind.

  They had never forgotten about her, never stopped looking for her, fighting for her, trying to save her from death - they had endured much worse than the ending of their lives. They had been taken to the precipice of the beyond slowly and deliberately. There had been no-one to heed their cries, no-one to save them, and yet it had been in her power to do so the whole time if only she had thought to do so. They were so close to death, so close they could no longer speak, nor hear, nor feel. The cord of life had almost been cut, but she sensed that they were still there, still tethered to their bodies.

  The knowingness of whattodoitude came to her instantly. She was the summoner. She had to summon. And she did.

  She summoned.

  She summoned everything.

  Everything that had been. Everything that hadn't been. Everything that couldn't wouldn't is be. Everything that isn't what but was. All of the evertude.

  Birds, flowers, plants, vines, all manner of life burst out of the ether and filled the space, crashing through walls and crumbling foundations. Atrocious cried out with all her anguish and all her pain and pure life came pouring forth, every word glowing with the kernel of creation that sits at the core of every star. There was knowledge too, she saw the hearts and minds of those she knew. She saw their weaknesses and foibles, their strength and their pride. She saw their darkest deeds and their proudest moments. She understood them all, forgave them all, loved them all.

  With every speck and sliver that passed through, Atrocious waned. The world was full of life, but she was shimmering and fading. Little pieces of her corporeal form blinked out of existence as she was put out, a myriad of tiny lights turning off one by one.

  In the aftermath, there was no cottage. There was no ashen plain. There was no dark sky. There were no cries of pain. Kira, Thorberta and Rogette lay naked on a pale green meadow, perfect and entirely intact. Their bodies bore no marks of what they had endured and when their eyes opened to the sunny spring day, they smiled as one.

  "Did she come for us?" Rogette sat up and looked around. "Did she really come?"

  "She came," Thorberta said, "I know she came, because we are not tied up anymore."

  "Are we alive?" Rogette pinched her arm, frowned at it, then pinched it again.

  "We're alive," Kira said. "I know what death is. This is not it."

  "Where is she? Where is Atrocious?" Rogette stood and peered into the distance. "Someone is coming."

  It was not Atrocious who came to Rogette. It was a cool wind, and out of that wind, the familiar form of a woman with black marks swirling throughout her face. She held something in her arms.

  "Ariadne!" Rogette cried her out her name. "I prayed for you. When we were tied up and... I prayed. Why did you not come? Did you not hear my prayers?"

  "I heard your prayers," Ariadne replied as she drew close. "But they were not mine to answer. A goddess is little use to a suffering mortal. A goddess can clad the earth in green and the sky in blue, she can weave the blanket of the stars and she can knit the creatures one by one, but their lives must always be their own. All I can offer are petty gifts."

  "Lies," Rogette hissed, her bare breasts swaying with her rage. "You intervened when you sent us away. You sent us flying across the treetops without a second thought. You intervened when it suited you. But you did not come to us when we needed you. When we needed you, you abandoned us."

  Ariadne's eyes snapped to Rogette, green and gold orbs suddenly venomous.

  "I did not send you to the door of the Blood Witch. You took yourself there. It was your choice. Your destiny. Interference would have been futile. It would have prolonged the war and the suffering."

  Kira cleared her throat. "The war is over?"

  "For as long as it will matter to any of you, yes," Ariadne replied. "I have come to offer what aid I can. Will you accept it, or would you prefer to berate me?"

  "You can take your aid," Rogette said. "And you can stick it in your mphhh..."

  She did not finish the sentence, for Kira had taken her roughly from behind and clapped a firm hand over her mouth.

  Meanwhile, entirely immune to the tension, Thorberta rolled around on her back, sniffing at little white daisies hiding themselves in the grass.

  "Enough," Kira murmured in Rogette's ear. "Remember what happened last time you irritated a witch goddess?"

  Pressed against Kira's strong frame, and partially enveloped by the warrior's long, loose dark hair, Rogette nodded mutely.

  "You see, there are arms to hold you," Ariadne said. "Now, take these gifts before I change my mind and turn the three of you into pot holders."

  Ariadne placed her burden in the grass and began passing out garments to the naked women. For Rogette there was a soft yellow knitted dress that clung to her curves and fell to her knees.

  "That dress is bold and beautiful, as you are." Ariadne spoke words of uncommon praise. "As long as you wear it, you will enchant all those you meet. Never again will you battle for the affections of those you care for."

  Next, Ariadne turned to Kira with thick linen pants and a knitted gray vest trimmed with fur. "You will not need armor anymore, warrior," Ari
adne said as she bestowed her gift. "Your days of battle are done. These clothes are simple, but will keep you warm on the coldest of days, and they will never need mending."

  For Thorberta, she had a beautiful emerald green cloak. Thorberta swung it over her shoulders and put the hood up over her rust red hair. She buttoned each button quite carefully then spun around, pleased with the garment. "Pretty," she declared. "Pretty dress coat."

  "You do not need to hide what you are, Thorberta," Ariadne replied. "But that cloak will allow you to move without being seen if you so desire."

  Kira pulled her clothing on with words of thanks. "What became of Atrocious? Did she survive?"

  "She survived." Ariadne smiled. "Look around you. Look at the grass. Look at the trees. Look at that doe grazing in the distance. Atrocious became all these things."

  "Atrocious is a grass?" Bertie's husky voice piped up.

  Kira turned to Thorberta and put a hand on her shoulder. "Atrocious is gone. She is dead."

  "Dead?" Rogette choked out the word. "She is not dead. She can't be dead."

  "She can't be grass," Thorberta frowned in deep confusion. "She is a person."

  "Not anymore," Kira said, her shoulders slumping.

  Ariadne rolled her divine eyes and extended her hands toward the sky. "This is the day your friend has made. You should rejoice - and be glad for it."

  Thorberta plucked a stem of glass and crunched it between sharp white teeth. She chewed it for a few seconds, and slowly, an expression of cosmic understanding came over her fanged face.

  "Frund tastes like green."

  Chapter Forty Three

  Far, far away, Ayla gazed into a dappled pond. She was all alone, a solitary, tall figure at the edge of water. Her pale hair fell forward over her face, sticking to her skin where tears rolled down her cheeks and plopped down into endless ripples. Her solitude was absolute, but it was not to last.

  Fast, excited, running steps came crashing through the undergrowth.

  "Ayla!" AYLA!"

  Normine burst into the clearing. She was panting with excitement, her impish eyes sparkling with glee, her chin all the more pointy for the broad smile splitting her pretty face almost in two. "We've received word. The war is over. It's over. It just... stopped! Can you believe it?"