by H C Turk
The others were not so jovial now, Miranda gravely pronouncing, “No daughter so strange could be better loved.” And she held her arms out for me to run to her and be embraced by a friend who was truly family.
“Certain troublemakers,” Chloe remarked sternly as she stepped near, “are worth their trouble.” Then gently she reached to touch my weird hair, one pat—perhaps all the contact she could bear—confirming the truth of her words.
Aided by Mother and the firm stranger, Marybelle began placing dry sticks beneath the crock, the three silently at their task as though unaware of the activity surrounding me. They knew, of course, but continued with their portion of the affair as we remaining sisters proceeded with ours. Silent Esmeralda approached me from behind to snatch me from Miranda’s embrace, holding me like a bundle or a baby in her arms as she looked down to my face, her jagged brow knitted as she nodded to the crockery barrel, her visage and gesture as clear as her smell.
“Let’s stew the wench regardless, afore she sucks us dry of pity,” Miranda suggested with a horrid voice.
Gleeful Chloe agreed. Even the unnamed stranger glimpsed up to point her inverted thumb toward the barrel, but this witch had no smile. With a mutual roar I could only consider silly, the three began tossing me one to the other, the silent and the loud, the crooked and the bent. This brief bout of rough flying took my breath and left me with foolish giggles fit more for a sinning child than a troublemaking wench.
Chloe nearly dropped me before I was placed within the crock by Miranda, who moved amongst the busy witches with sticks. Esmeralda with a great gnashing of her several teeth made as though to remove major portions of my face and neck, though of course she would have been revolted to touch me so intimately. Not being basically frivolous, the remaining adults ended their levity as a tapping sounded: Marybelle was striking dark rocks together, dropping sparks onto the tinder below.
Silence came. I looked for someone to aid me from the barrel, for the sticks were now ablaze. I nearly gagged from the stench, my feet were becoming hot, and the surrounding witches were retreating from the fire they hated, the flames they required. I looked for Mother to assist me from the crock, but Marybelle, the eldest, turned to me and spoke an order.
“Pee,” she said, but I did not understand, displaying an ignorant face that at least was honest. Mother clearly explained.
“Lift your dress and pee what you can, girl, before your feet melt.”
I would as soon have complied, but my body would not cooperate. “My person is of no mind to pass water,” I declared with some guilt.
“Pass what you can, child, and be quick,” Mother said.
Unlike sinners who hide their wastes as though ashamed, witches accept the process as natural. Nevertheless, peeing before an audience was as unknown to me as being stewed, my anxiety so increasing along with the heat that I considered leaping out and running. The smell of burning wood was not intriguing here, for my feet were hot—and hurting. Fire I had seen in Jonsway, but such heat was unfamiliar to me. As soon as I felt heat as pain, however, I knew completely the witch’s terror of flames, understanding fire as though sinners had tied me to a stake and set me ablaze. With a final grimace, I tightened my entire body and managed to squeeze a few drops of fluid from my bottom.
“Good a plenty!” Miranda cried as the smell and the sizzling reached my sisters.
The nearest witch then reduced the fire with kicked sand, approaching with Mother to lift me free. Though feeling somewhat foolish and a bit of a failure, I was thoroughly relieved to be away from the greatest fear in our world.
Marybelle was next. Without comment, she lifted her dress, one long leg into the barrel as she straddled its wall, her outside foot near smoldering coals. Revealed was a gash between her legs that seemed a scar, a coarse stigma I knew to be part of every woman’s bottom, sinner or witch, though in my youth and whiteness mine was undeveloped, and not coated with a fine crop of ragged hairs, but sparse fur as though from a black squirrel’s chest.
Hidden by a clumsy boot, Marybelle’s damaged foot supported her outside the barrel with a poor balance, her arm held by that second stranger so that Marybelle would not tumble into the crock—or into the fire. As Marybelle remained for a great period of wetting, her friends kicked sand near her foot to contain the flames, twigs added to the far side to keep the death fire burning.
She came out wet to her steaming ankle, aided by silent Esmeralda and Mother. Miranda proceeded with more difficulty, being briefer in the limbs than Marybelle. A moment and she was sweating piss, but remained within, turning stiff from the heat and strain. Upon her removal, this sister smiled in relief, shaking her tough leg now wet to the knee. All but one remaining witch, including Mother, were spread and held above the crockery barrel, dresses crumpled in their hands as their loins strained and their abdomens pumped. From the stranger gushed a voluminous quantity that nearly filled the crock. The last sister, however, was dry.
“I had no pee within this year,” Chloe informed us. Aware of the import of our task, however, she crammed her long hair into her mouth and attempted to swallow. After most of her coif was within her gullet, Chloe gagged once, then leapt forward with the second retch to throw herself above the urn and expel her hair with a loud belch and a sharp grasping of her entire body, her hair soiled with unrecognized foodstuffs roiling forth in a continual, lumpy rush until the crock was full.
Turning away more bent than normal, Chloe pressed the dripping hair around her neck where it clung to her spine as the remaining sisters fed limbs to the fire with reluctance. Mother and friends examined the plant and animal portions each had brought, deciding none were required. All were tossed aside except the bug torsos Chloe desired to begin filling her stomach anew.
Fires on occasion are entertainment for sinners about which they dance and sing, but flames are serious and unsettling affairs for witches. Dancing is so distinctly artificial that only sinners could have invented the process. To so chase about with no intention of catching anything witches deem foolish. And witches, not being troubadours, take no part in singing or chanting, most of them complaining about the current fashion of speaking to no end. Pronouncements and other speeches at earnest affairs are another sinning invention, witches when so grave as to intentionally initiate a burning being well aware of the purpose with no words needed. Nothing was said until the fetid mix was bubbling and spitting a nasty steam in our center. Then calm Marybelle turned to me.
“This one,” she pronounced, “the cause. She seems not the mere sinner, but the sinner extreme.”
Miranda then scoffed, “So perfect are her sinning traits she could only be our sister.”
Finally, Mother had to say, “She may not be the best witch possible, but neither are we. Nevertheless, she is the best I will ever have. And regardless of the person or appearance, I could not bear to love better.”
“But the time is now for the proving,” Marybelle declared, “for I believe no one has ever been within her.”
No one disagreed. Initially the meaning was unclear to me, and to some extent I feared to learn. Then Marybelle stepped near, and I was not allowed an opinion. She lifted my dress above my waist and without requesting permission firmly held the bottom portion of my body with both her hands, and—to my astonishment—began seeking the two major entrances that lead within any woman, every witch. This was no friendly smelling. Although aware even at this youthful age that the entrance for procreation existed, never had I imagined it subject to probing; whereas the anus, I knew, normally passed material. Now the passage was forceful and from without, Marybelle with twists and firm pressings inserting one crooked finger within each of my most private orifices.
The embarrassment I felt upon comprehending Marybelle’s goal passed with her initial success, for these holes are sealed with muscle, which Marybelle forced open, abrading the sensitive flesh of the area with her strong and stiff fingers. My embarrassment was replaced by pain, the greatest physical p
ain I had ever experienced as I attempted to pull away from her, feeling her bone rods enter as though ripping me; and I knew that my insides were being injured, so great was the agony within me. The thought flashed of Mother’s described rape, and I could not believe something this horrible had occurred without damaging her for life. No child, even one perfectly normal, was worth such torment. Then all thinking was removed from me, for in the next moment I learned how debilitating and inhuman pain can be. At once I cared neither for a witch’s honor nor for the foolish problems sinners caused us. The only salvation I desired was for myself, the only love I felt for Mother the grateful relief to come after she saved me. But she did not. With no concern for my own pride, I made no attempt to prevent the expression of horror coming over my face nor the rasping shriek I exhaled from terror. I turned to my friends with these signals of damage and attempted to crawl away from the sister who dug at my innards, for I knew with certainty that I was being ripped asunder, and knew that nothing, nothing in the world was worth this agony.
So great was my pain that I thought Marybelle locked her fingers within me by ripping through the flesh separating the two areas. But in the following moment, Marybelle removed her hands to hold them upward as I collapsed before her. The pain, though continuing, was so mild compared to the previous misery that I was filled with relief and thanked the greatest God for reducing my torment. Thereafter, I was able to look upward and perceive Marybelle’s actions, for her hands were now covered with my blood, this eldest sister extending her fingers for all to see as she spoke in a voice I could not judge, not pride nor joy nor consternation.
“This is no witch,” she cried. “This is a white witch, and as true as any—she has the internals for men!”
Concerned only with recovery, I did not understand the significance of her words. That ended when Marybelle said to lift me, and they did. I was raised to my feet, and Marybelle began clawing my face. I thought she would smear my own blood against me as Mother had with Lady Vidgeon’s, but feeling her nails dig about my eyes, I understood that she was scraping the sinner woman’s blood where it had mingled with my sweat and skin oil. This abrading was unpleasant, but inconsequential compared to the previous distress. Then our sisters joined us, all standing near to scrape and dig at me, their rheumy eyes and ragged mouths a thrill. Mother was the center of their human force, and though I knew my skin as well as the sinning blood was being taken, I began to share their emotion, for I was part of them, we seven literally joined. So when they said, Raise your hands, white daughter! I did, I lifted my hands and together we formed a mass, individual scents filling my smelling, seven different touches against me, seven different breaths and manners of breathing, different tastes of spittle and textures of skin. Mother then rose in spirit to lead us, her hands upraised as she turned to the crock without the first sinners’ word, kicking dust and dirt ahead to kill the killing flames, all her people following with flailing feet and lifted arms, all hands doused as one through the brew’s steam and into the potion, body blood and piss and puke stirred by hands boiled to bone, skin that would blister, peel, and on some never heal, the agony increasing with the long exposure, pain far greater than Marybelle’s fingers within me, for a witch can come no closer to burning than being boiled. The seven of us cooked ourselves with pride for salvation, yet none could believe that the joy in our family’s success was greater than the agony of our melting flesh, and nothing more horrible nor valuable was imaginable—there was no imagining and no belief, for all of us felt everything.
Upon our conclusion, the gas began to function with no further aid from witches, and we were able to consider our damage, hands held out like animals half eaten by a heat creature. Carried by the air, the season, fumes traveled to Jonsway, where sinners might have noted an odd scent, but only one woman began losing her hair. As we sisters slowly healed, so the lady lost her mind.
Chapter 3
Returning In My Better Memory
Mother sought no guilt from me, though it seemed appropriate for our lengthy condition: hands wrapped in the soft leaves of the Barrule bush, an intense, debilitating pain prevented only by constant applications of poultice made from the noxious brough fly’s larvae. Time passed quickly, for our nights were spent seeking the brough fly by its particular buzzing, our days attempting to crush the larvae between smooth stones, collecting the poultice with hands wrapped like a sinning baby’s butt. We bore the price of our family’s salvation, for this was one baby the sinners would not gain. Feigning hurt mortal feelings, we attended church no more; thus, had no need to enter Jonsway. Witch Miranda, however, made cautious excursions, giving assurance where none was needed that no sinners desired to improve my social state with their generous upbringing. The witch they now desired was my mother.
Martin Vidgeon was lord of Jonsway’s finest country manor, his estate known as far as Europe for horses of distinction. A bored and humorless man, Vidgeon had shown no great imagination in his life until his wife went bald and brainless. Since periwigs were so ubiquitous that a lady’s true hair was seldom seen even by her spouse, the disease of baldness was of small medical concern to Lord Martin, though his missus would have been most embarrassed had not such social factors become meaningless to her; for after receiving fumes of her own responsibility, Lady Vidgeon found her regained blood to be dangerous. Her memory became particularly acute, for not only did she recall each insignificant detail of her life, she described them to husband, children, servants, and every stranger seen on the streets of Jonsway. Lady Vidgeon, however, was soon no longer seen on these streets. After demonstrating an inability to perform average affairs such as dressing properly or covering her exposed scalp with a wig, Sarah was ordered by her husband to remain within the manor until recovered from her illness.
The problem seemed mere illness to Martin until a neighbor mentioned a coincidence, that Sarah had begun suffering shortly after her plans for receiving the Landham child were rejected by the mother. Although not unknown to the manor’s lord, the plan was of less interest than his horses; for whereas the rearing of his seven children benefited from no planning on his part, Martin each morning had individual instructions for his thirty-eight mares and stallions. As though delivered through the air like a thunderclap or sisters’ fumes, Sarah’s affliction clarified in Martin’s thoughts to form a new enlightenment. Although punished with but a ducking, this Landham woman had bodily attacked his wife, drawing blood to engender a poisoning. Her ability to so damage with a touch was obvious: since she was intensely ugly of face and frame and lived in a secluded hovel, was she therefore not a witch?
But of course. Never had the word of God inspired Lord Martin to such passion, for as soon as the idea took hold within his mind, off he went to demand a private meeting with church rector and town mayor wherein he presented his evidence. Since witches were a dangerous breed known throughout Great Britain, the authorities found Martin’s accusations reasonable, especially since they had seen his wife babble. A group of armed constables was thus dispatched to the forest to gain Mrs. Landham for an interview. Her child would also attend.
Mother had no forebodings regarding the sinners’ retaliation for our boil. In her years, she had known witches blamed for bad crops, lame dogs, and broken wagons as the fashion evolved, stemming from Welsh or European stories describing witches’ current causal problems. Sinners would become so rabid over difficulties ascribed to witches despite how clearly the work of God or person that no predictions could be made concerning future allegations. Sarah Vidgeon, after all, was not the first Englishwoman to go bald or lose her mind, understandable asperities considering that the sinner’s brain had never functioned properly.
Sensing men approach from the town, Mother and I at once made our home neat, squaring and flattening our straw piles to resemble the sinners’ beds, discarding the various insects and plant forms lying about for meals. I suggested that we hide in the forest, for the few sinners approaching would never find us in our ow
n familiar wilds. Mother then explained that the men would return often, and if we were never found, they would correctly deduce that we understood their approach. We would thereby brand ourselves as too special for sinners, imbued with metaphysics, dangerous as the devil.
I did not share my mother’s calm. From similar experiences throughout her long life, Mother had achieved a resolve in dealing with sinners. My thinking was not so clear, for I suffered a fear so palpable it seemed an object lodged within me. Despite my terror, I managed to aid Mother in our preparation as she recalled to me how brief and harmless the last instance of sinners’ visitation had been. But I could only see the opposing view, that my mother had been taken by creatures known to kill our kind who demeaned her before the eyes of God and made her suffer from their odd society. I expected no less on this occasion. Mother, however, intended to succeed and survive rather than worry.
We waited outside as though examining a damaged shutter. With no hesitation, three men approached from the forest trail. Mother recognized at least one constable to have taken her before, but I did not understand how anyone could distinguish sinners one from the next—especially the men, who have more evil within any one of their persons than all of God’s witches combined.
Two of the men did nothing but stare at the girl too lovely for her coarse attire. As the third man spoke, the staring pair began walking around our home, finding nothing of interest, passing our crock for rain water, which reeked of Satan’s power only to witches.
“We have come, woman, under orders of Jonsway Township’s alderman, Lord Bulkeley, to gain him your presence so that he and Reverend Corliss may inquire of you about certain activities.”
“And what a delightful way to pass the afternoon it shall be,” Mother cackled as pleasantly as possible. “Might I ask, then, of those activities concerning me as per your implied allegations?”