Deep in the Woods

Awdanna wants to prove she is brave, so she’ll go looking for the witch who lives in the woods. But what she finds instead is quite unexpected.

When people spoke of the witch in the woods, they whispered lest the breeze carry their words to her pointed ears. For all their proximity to the wild woods and the horrors they contained, those on the edges whispered more fervently, their wagging tongues and tall tales distracting them from the gnawing, creeping cold that encased the town in its icy grip. Along the edge of the village, where the mud of the streets melded with the snow of the wilderness and footsteps and wagon wheels churned it into icy slurry, houses hugged close to the walls, as if for warmth as much as the meagre protection it offered. Ramshackle roofs cosied up against the rough wooden palisades, rickety chimneys stretched twisted, gnarled silhouettes towards the slate grey sky with trailing wispy shreds of smoke scraping ashen nails against the heavens.

In the yard of the potter’s house, there was a space. An absence of what should have been there; nothing more than the breeze and small, muddy footprints leading out into the streets.

At the edge of the trees, among the dark twisting branches clawing at the frigid air, tipped with claw-like icicles, there was something that shouldn’t have been there. A splash of colour against black and grey and mud.

Awdanna slip-slid through the trees, cheeks rosy with cold and fear. Her little heart tripped in her chest as her feet slid from beneath her; she grasped at a tree branch and only got a bit of mud on her skirts, which was better than getting it all on her face. In her hands she clutched two things – a sandwich wrapped loosely in greased paper and a raggedy doll with a lolling, wide-eyed face made of rough terracotta. So, really, there was Awdanna and Luthia on the edge of the woods, watching the shadows crawl beneath the snow-laden branches.

She knew her older sister would laugh at her for bringing Luthia, and as much as that hurt there was simply no way Awdanna was going to leave her best friend behind. After all, they were on an adventure.

Old, dried bracken scratched at her arms and left thin red lines in its wake; it caught loose threads on her clothes and threatened to unravel Luthia. Snow crunched underfoot, echoing amongst the branches and rattling hollowly against the empty sky.

Despite it being noon the sun was still tightly swaddled in clouds, the air holding the sharp clarity of crystal as winter cold made the trees creak. With a start, Awdanna shied away from a scraggly bush. Bright amber eyes blinked at her from between the brown leaves, but by the time her heart had started beating again the eyes were gone. She was probably just seeing things.

Coming to a clearing, she saw a large, perfectly circular pond ringed by thin, white trees that were nearly invisible against the snow and shadows. Awdanna skirted around the frozen pool, holding her breath and keeping to the shadows under the trees. The witch could see through the deep moon pools, and the whole point was that she needed to see the witch, not the other way around. The thought of the witch catching her was just too terrible to imagine.

As she tiptoed further into the woods, the thick gnarled trunks grew closer and thicker. Their boles and curves gave them human-like shapes out of the corner of her eyes, and with every crack of a twig or rustle of leaves Awdanna gasped and clutched Luthia tight. But it was only her own footsteps. The forest was eerily silent, all the birds and beasts frozen in time and locked away, for it was said that the witch controlled time itself within her realm, though it didn’t stop Awdanna from thinking she saw bright yellow eyes staring at her from the shadows.

Breath billowing in white clouds like her grandpappy blowing smoke rings, Awdanna shivered and pulled her threadbare shirt closer again her thin body. Frost snapped and crackled underfoot as she approached the Witch’s Cauldron. It was a small clearing, familiar to most children of the outcasts, with a large grey rock in the centre. The stone was hollowed out at the top, a shallow depression where rain water gathered and the witch came to mix curses and spells on moonless nights, though none would dare go to and find out for certain. Awdanna had never been there before, though she had heard stories – her sister whispering tales in the darkness of their house, lips pressed against Awdanna’s ear so that her warm breath gusted loudly in her hearing and their parents couldn’t hear what was being said. Her sister knew these things, because she was brave, and Awdanna wanted to be brave, too. Thus, she crept through the dark, ice-bound forest with her breath trailing behind her like a misty cloak, looking for the Witch’s Cauldron.

Her fingertips were tingly and numb by the time she reached the rock, which made it difficult to scramble up it, by Awdanna managed. She propped Luthia up against the side of the depression once she ascertained it was free of any nasty, strange potions and curled her feet beneath her. Unwrapping the sandwich with clumsy fingers, she broke it into four small pieces. One vanished into her mouth as fast as blinking, and she bumped another against Luthia’s roughly shaped lips, although the doll didn’t eat, as usual, so Awdanna ate that piece too. Then, she tucked the rest back into the paper and waited.

After a few minutes, Awdanna became aware of a quiet, stealthy rustling below her. Peeking over the edge, white fingers and red nose poking over the rough stone rim, she saw nothing save her own footprints on the snow below. The rustling sound was moving around the other side of the rock now, and she scrambled to see what was making it. Nothing.

Peering down from her perch, Awdanna waited. The rustling stopped. Nothing moved.

She waited and watched for long minutes, her breath curling into strange shapes in the air in front of her, but Awdanna saw nothing. Heaving a sigh, Awdanna sat back. Something warm bumped against her back.

With a quickly stifled shriek, Awdanna jolted forwards and tried to turn. Her nails caught on the rock, one pulling a little loose and leaving tiny specks of crimson over the stone, and her foot slipped. It spun out, hitting empty air and then impacting something soft.

As Awdanna stared wide-eyed at the thin, orange tomcat crouched on the edge of the rock, she heard something shatter down below. For a long moment, she was entranced by the cat’s brilliant golden gaze. They were like a fire, an unexpected warmth in the icy landscape, captivating, swirling pools of endless depth. Eventually, though, the cold seeping into her bones drew Awdanna’s attention back to reality. She reached out a shaking hand and tentatively brushed it against the coarse, wiry fur of the cat. It purred at her touch and butted its head against her.

“Hello there,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and roughened by the cold. “You’re very pretty.”

As the cat, purring fiercely, walked around her, Awdanna settled back and turned to Luthia.

Empty air met her gaze,

Her stomach gave a sickening lurch and Awdanna lunged forwards, making the cat’s fur stand on end as it hissed with surprise at her sudden movement. She gripped the edge of the rock with white-knuckled fingers and stared down at the ground. Upon the frozen earth lay Luthia, her head shattered and splintered where she had fallen.

Heedless of scrapes and bruises, leaving thin smears of red on the rock behind her, Awdanna scrambled down the side of the Cauldron and fell hard to her knees next to Luthia. Picking up the doll’s rag body, she cradled it to her chest. Tears froze on her cheeks, sparkling like fine jewels as she sat alone amidst the ruin of her best, her only, friend, the cruel wind nipping hungrily at her ears and nose as it began to rise.

A soft warmth pressed against her side, and something rough rubbed against her cheek. Awdanna opened her eyes to find the orange tabby cat licking the tears from her face, still purring.

By the time Awdanna had no more tears left inside her, her belly was aching and grumbling as if determined to outdo the pain in her heart. Shakily, one arm still holding Luthia close to her chest, she unwrapped the remainder of her sandwich. One piece vanished into her own mouth, but Luthia had no lips to offer the other half to. Awdanna’s brow creased as she thought about it, and after a moment she offered the last piece to the cat. The sandwich disappeared in a flash of sharp white teeth.

Awdanna sat back against the rock. Craning her head back, it seemed far too tall to climb now, with her leaden limbs and empty heart. She would just wait here, she decided. Wait here to see the witch when she came. Even the fact that the witch ate children, cooked them up and gnawed on their bones, seemed unimportant. The cat curled up on Awdanna’s lap, its warmth like sitting too close to the kiln when compared to the cold stealing through her body.

Awdanna closed her eyes.

***

The warm orange glow of firelight flickering on rough wooden walls greeted Awdanna when she woke, and at first she thought she was at home, curled up by the stove. But the walls weren’t the same; they covered with strange twisting roots and paintings in lurid colours, and as she rolled onto her back she saw bundles of herbs tied with thick, rough twine hanging from the bare rafters.

“Awake, are we?” A rough voice, old and scratchy like a hand-me-down woollen dress, came from the dim shadows of a doorway, and Awdanna could just make out a hunched human shape carrying in its curled fingers… a very small, limp child.

Awdanna screamed. The sound echoed in the small house, shaking dust from the rafters and sending a spider skittering off its web and into a corner overhead. In the shadows, the witch, for that was what the shape must surely be, flinched then moved forwards with surprising speed. A gnarled hand, skin roughened with calluses, clamped firmly over Awdanna’s mouth, leaving her to gasp and sob into the leathery skin. Rheumy eyes, red-rimmed and as cold and blue as a frozen lake, stared down at her.

“I believe this is yours?” The witch spoke again, and thrust the limp body towards Awdanna. A rough terracotta face, cracked and chipped, with a gaping mouth and blank, empty eyes stared up at her as Adwanna gasped.

“Luthia!” She grabbed the doll and hugged it close to her chest as the witch removed her hand from Adwanna’s mouth.

“So that’s the little dear’s name. It’s very pretty.”

Adwanna stared down at Luthia, her heart thundering in her ears. Conflicting emotions roiled in her chest – the witch was here! She was here! But…

“She was all smashed…” Adwanna whispered, running a hand over Luthia’s face. She could see, feel, the cracks, but Luthia was whole again. “You… fixed her?”

With a sigh, the witch settled herself into a rough wooden chair. On the table nearby, two bowls of some unidentifiable substance steamed gently. Sniffing the air, Adwanna could smell a strange, tickly scent – mixed herbs and spices filling the air – but underneath that she could almost catch the smell of something like a soup, something warm and tasty. Her mouth watered.

“Come, child. Eat.” The witch gestured to one of the bowls, and Adwanna flinched at the movement. However, when the witch showed no signs of anger and didn’t get up to attack her and throw her into the big leather pot hanging over the fire, Adwanna tentatively slid from under the covers and stepped over to the table. Her stomach growled and grumbled, and she pulled herself up onto the spare chair, her legs dangling far above the floor.

She was so hungry, she didn’t even wonder if the soup contained other children. This close, she could see rough chunks of vegetables bobbing in a thick, pale broth, and her body was gulping the food down before her brain had even processed what she was seeing. Beside her, the witch slurped slowly at her own meal, blue eyes watching Awdanna closely.

“Feeling better?”

Awdanna nodded. She felt great, in fact! The soup was warming her up from the inside, thawing out the prickly knots of lingering cold that had taken root in her bones, and this time, when she looked at the witch, she thought her eyes were less like a frozen lake and more like the warm, salty sea that the travelling tinkers sometimes talked of.

“Thank you…”

“It’s no trouble, child. But you shouldn’t wander these woods alone.” The ginger cat that had kept Awdanna company at the Witch’s Cauldron wound its way between the legs of the witch’s chair and leaped up to curl up in her lap. “Now, let’s get you home, shall we?”

***

The woods seemed less ominous walking beside the witch. With most adults, Awdanna had to hurry to walk alongside them, but the grey-haired woman’s shuffling pace was very easy for her to match. She spent sometime admiring the twisted wooden staff the witch used to walk, wondering if it could really fly. She thought perhaps she could ask, but decided not to, in case it made the witch mad. Instead, Awdanna teased the tomcat that followed them silently between the twisting, tangling branches and old bracken. He slipped ahead every now and then, and the witch followed his path, passing easily through knots of thorny shrubs and over a low, cold stream that rushed past with a gurgle, caught up in its own importance as it hurried down its course.

The trip seemed to take only minutes, and soon Adwanna found herself on the very edge of the woods, her breath-mist mingling with the low haze of woodsmoke that clung to the edges of the town. She could see her house, with its small, empty front yard and rickety chimney tilted so far to the right it looked like it might fall over at any moment. Turning back to the witch, Awdanna swallowed nervously.

“Thank you. Um… Are… Are you the… witch?” It seemed a silly thing to ask, but Awdanna couldn’t quite have said why it seemed silly. On the one hand, she lived in a hut in the woods filled with herbs and strange things and she had a familiar and a big magic staff – of course she was the witch! But… She wasn’t scary at all. She’d fixed Luthia and given Awdanna soup and taken her home and hadn’t once tried to curse her or eat her, so she couldn’t possibly be a witch. Could she?

The lady smiled, carving deep lines around her eyes and mouth. “Of course I am, child. Are you frightened of me, still?”

Awdanna scuffed her foot from side to side against the ground, looking down at the line she was making in the mud. “A little bit…”

“I suppose that is natural. But if you ever wish to visit me again, look for Byron here to show you the way.” She nodded to the tomcat, who was staring unblinkingly at Awdanna with his golden eyes. “Now, go home and be with your family.”

Awdanna nodded, turning and running out into the open space between the edge of the village and the woods. It wasn’t until she was nearly home, still within sight of the towering old trees, that she turned a waved goodbye. She couldn’t see if the witch was still there, amongst the shadows, but she thought she caught a flash of bright orange fur and smiled.