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Agatha finds death murmuring on the bank of a river. Death is peaceful, she realises, the act of dying is not. The body, with half long, brown hair and sharp eyes is covered in a dark cloak. When one glances past her swiftly, the woman appears to be sleeping, then one would realise sleeping in a dark cloak in a sunny spot in the forest is an odd choice. Then, if one were to take a closer look, they would see the grey, wrinkly skin of the woman and realise she is dead.
The killing had been done instinctively. Agatha is still uncertain how she does it. Her magic mends foreign power to her own, the act itself is not unlike stumbling over a tree root when fleeing and the body catching itself, placing feet in odd positions, twisting the rump and arms in any way necessary to keep on running.
The woman – Agatha had forgotten her name – had been civil. She had met her earlier this week, had allowed the woman to read her palm. The woman had paled then, recomposed her expression quickly, but she had seen something in the lines of her hand. The folds of her skin told a story of horrors the woman was unable to put to words. She had said Agatha would be powerful one day, would defy age old rules, would blacken hearts. Then the woman had rushed away, ran up to her mother, and leader of the coven of Salem and the two women had spoken in hushed voices. Agatha had ignored their sharp glances, felt judgment prickle up her spine and wrap around her ears.
They met again this morning on the riverbank. The woman deemed Agatha’s behaviour suspicious, accused her of rebelling. Agatha had ignored the nagging voice until she couldn’t, and when she jumped up the woman had her magic ready in her hands, seeing Agatha as nothing but a threat. Agatha called her bluff, threw a ball of magic at the woman’s feet without expecting more than a proper scolding for disrespecting a fellow witch. Bluffing, the woman was not, for she attacked Agatha instantly and then Agatha’s magic took over, sucked the woman dry and left her dead on the bank of the river.
She had not wanted to kill her, had not wanted to antagonise the woman – not in the way it would result in the woman’s death. The woman was high-strung, she tells herself, trigger happy, would have attacked any witch here in Salem if they looked at her wrong.
She looks at the body a last time. A shame, for the woman had come from far to study with Viradectis and learn the deep magic of divination. A shame, because Agatha is finding it hard to feel sorrow for her. She turns around and pushes through the low berry bushes, then halts to grope her bag, to check she left no incriminating evidence behind.
“You foresaw yet acted as if you were without the knowledge.” A voice, cold, factual, not unpleasant, says from behind.
Agatha stops rummaging through her bag, wills magic to her fingertips yet allows not one drop to seep out of her. It tingles, begs to be let out, to run wild like the other witches allow their magic to be. Agatha hushes it to a silence, pulls the imaginary leash tighter, and turns around to face this new woman at the riverbank. Quietly, she hopes she has seen enough death for today.
The new woman is standing next to the body, wears a dark cloak which shields her whole body from view. The fabric seems to ripple like the shadows at the bottom of a creek. She carries herself tall, keeps her head upright, speaks in a calming voice, and Agatha can no longer make out specific words. She woman is in conversing, though the recipient of her conversation is lacking.
“Hey,” Agatha calls out, already thinking of ways to pin this body on the stranger.
The woman turns her head, which Agatha expected, but what she didn’t expect was for the woman to turn her head away, to stare off into the forest. And when Agatha walks towards the woman, pulling her skirt from the clawing branches, she blinks and the woman is gone.
The body lies on the forest floor, silent, soulless. And Agatha flees upstream, sits by the waterfall for the rest of the afternoon. There, nestled on the rocks with her knees pulled up to her chest, droplets of waters dusting her arms and nose, she is nothing. Her body as still as the rocks around her, passing animals see her not as a human nor a creature, merely a displaced boulder, or a rotten log.
A blue jay flies by, lands not too far from her, acknowledges her not, merely pecks at the ants scurrying across the sun-warmed rocks. A little later, an imposing elk walks by. He enters the river with his front legs, and for a moment it seems as though he will jump in and brave the steady streaming water, then he lowers his head and drinks. He does not stay to admire the sunlight catching the mist wafting up, the pastel colours of the rainbow which brings Agatha peace.
Then she sees it, the first animal acknowledging her presence. Dark eyes from behind the waterfall, and Agatha cannot remember a cave existing there, hidden behind the stream. And so, ever curious and adventurous, she leaves her bag on the rocks to see whatever curious creature is staring at her with those humanesque eyes.
-
“… all alone, that young Maude.”
“She’s but a woman, a human woman. That distracts them from us.”
“We cannot go thinking that, Evanora. The accusation was based on goose shit.”
“Evanora has a point. Besides, they usually don’t go accusing more than twice a month. We won’t see the duck-scale for another week at least.”
Evanora Harkness, sitting at the head of her dinner table, looks up from the witches around her, stares at her daughter standing in the doorframe. “Look who has finally decided to join us.” Then, after a long pause and eyeing her daughter up and down she adds, “Why are you only wearing your undergarments?”
“I went to the waterfall, Mother. Thought I saw a creature behind it. Turns out there is no cave and thus no creature behind the water.” Her mother looks at her with an irritated incredulousness. After a long silence she adds. “The clothes took too long to dry.”
One of the witches, Isolde, bursts out laughing. In any other situation, Agatha would have thrown a witty comment in her direction to shut her up, but now the laughter melts away the tension, the pathetic petulance which creeps in Agatha’s mannerisms whenever she is toe-to-toe with her mother.
“A creature?” Viradectis asks.
“Yes. A creature with humanesque eyes.”
Viradectis turns to Evanora. She says something in a rushed whisper which Agatha cannot make out. Her mother looks surprised, displeased, then pulls her face in a neutral expression.
“This meeting is finished. I have things to ponder and spells to study.” Evanora waves her arms, dispelling the witches.
They all rush past Agatha, all but Isolde dare not to look at her. They know, Agatha thinks, her heart sinking at the realisation, they know I have done it again. She glances at her mother, who is collecting papers with hastily scribbled notes from the table, and figures she can slip upstairs to find something dry to wear.
“Agatha.” Her mother calls as soon as she sets foot towards the stairs. Her voice is calm, threatening like the silence before a hawk strikes. “You know not of a village woman named Maude, do you?”
Agatha does know of a village woman named Maude, rather, she knows the softness of her breasts, of her warmth of her mouth as she engulfs her fingers. She knows best of all how Maude liked to be rubbed, only one finger, soft and teasing until her sharp teeth bit in Agatha’s shoulder, then more pressure, faster, steady, until she whispered Agatha’s name. She had known her for multiple nights but hadn’t seen her personally in a month.
“I know of her, yes.”
Evanora stands up, still analysing the papers. Agatha likens her to a teacher, or a clergyman, someone about to preach, rather than a mother wishing to bestow knowledge upon her daughter. “Maude was put on the duck-scale today. The thing pushed the duck high up into the air, but of course it didn’t matter, the townsfolk had made up their mind.” She looks at Agatha now, sternly. “They had ‘indisputable evidence’ of her being a witch. Of committing witchy activities.”
“It wasn’t me, mother. I haven’t spoken to her in weeks.”
There is that look. A singular eyebrow raised above relaxed eyes, the dissonance, tension unmuted in a forced calm. Evanora doesn’t believe her, chooses actively not to, and all her life Agatha does not quite understand why. She is no stranger to withholding information, but outright lying to her mother she will not, cannot recall one moment she did so. Some childish residual beliefs, she figures, a small part of her soul still believing harm will befall the world if she wrongs her parent.
“I’m not lying mother.” And it sounds pathetic. She, a full-grown adult with the power to kill the most powerful witch, sounds like a lying, pleading child. “I promise, I would ne-”
Evanora raises her hand, wills Agatha into silence. “I shall not hear it. And I forbid you from committing more of your nightly activities.”
“Mother, I am discreet. I make sure of that.”
“Be it so you are as discreet as the sun bleaching my clothes, then I still forbid it. I want none of your unnatural behaviour. It’s gone on for too long. Shouldn’t have been going on at all!”
Agatha opens her mouth, closes it with a clack of her teeth. She throws her bag and wet clothes on the floor and turns around, marches through the front door back into the forest.
-
The many rivers around Salem slither through the forest like snakes. If one were to follow a river closely, stick to the edge, and walk from the sea to the spring, the walk would be tenfold longer than if one were to follow the general direction of the river. On one of such walks Agatha had continued to follow the direction the river seemed to go, trusted it to slither back to her after a few minutes of walking straight ahead despite the sudden sharp turn. She did not find the river, instead she discovered a lake. She fully believes this lake to have been previously unknown, for else one of the villagers would have set up a fishing shack. Fish are plenty, for they made their abundance known by jumping out of the water and biting at the many insects.
Since the discovery, Agatha had made a small hut, just large enough to seek shelter for the rain. She decorated it with dried flowers and kept her primary spellbook there. She came there when she was frustrated, happy, in need of private training session when she lacked behind, needed peace, wanted to scream. She came there often.
And so, angry and with new magic in her hands, she rushes to the lake. To enjoy the view, she tells herself. And while she enjoys the view, she can test the limits of the magic of the dead divination witch. She starts out easy, catches fish in the water and transforms them into blue jays and cardinals and chickadees. The forest fills with the sounds of panicked birds as they scatter in all directions.
She watches them, feels their rushing heartbeats in the residual glimmers of her magic. She focusses on a cardinal, his red colour easy to follow as it flitters across the surface of the lake and there she sees her again. The cloaked woman is standing on the opposite side of the lake. Agatha’s skin prickles as she is alerted to something. A rush of magic, a whiff of a smell she is unfamiliar with.
She gathers her magic to her hands, expels it in powerful bursts to fly across the lake, to intimidate the being stalking her. The bursts falter, struggle like a tired beast and Agatha stops, allows herself to land only a few meters away from where she started. The second her feet touch the soft ground of the earth the magic gives in. Agatha watches her purple fizzle out like a burnt-up candle and when she looks in the direction of the cloaked woman again, she is gone.
Agatha screams, throws a burst of magic in the direction of where the woman once was and enjoys the sound of a tree falling down.
“That tree had a longer life to live if it wasn’t for you.”
Agatha jumps. Turns to the source of the voice and there she is, the cloaked woman. At first, she assumes the woman to wear a woollen cloak, but when she looks closer the fabric is thinner, textured to look like bark, or the shadows leaves cast upon the forest floor. Her skirt is long, falls to the floor and fans out, seems to disappear with the ground, brown leaves covering the outer edges. Remarkable, Agatha thinks, and then she realises she doesn’t even know what the woman looks like, her face ever hidden in shadows.
“Show your face,” Agatha says, hears her own voice waver. “At least make yourself known before you kill me.”
The ground trembles ever so slightly, as if to snicker. From the robes slender arms appear as light as bone. Slowly, the fingers fold around the edges of the hood, pull the garment away from the face and the first thing Agatha notices are the eyes. Those dark, humanesque eyes. Only then does Agatha register her face, or perhaps it had shaped itself merely a second before Agatha takes note of it. A pleasant woman is what she looks like, her skin tanned by long days out and about.
“Why were you stalking me by the waterfall?” Agatha asks it instantly, gathers her magic in her shoulder, ready to shoot at the slightest sign of animosity.
“I should ask the same question. Why do you seek me?”
“I do not seek you. I don’t even know who you are.”
The woman smiles, the corners of her lips curl up without showing teeth. “You know who I am.”
“I do not.”
Agatha hurls a ball of magic at the woman. It isn’t enough to kill her, Agatha has done too much of that already, merely enough to stun, to scare, to be left alone. The woman raises her arms in an X in front of her body, catches the full force of the attack and disappears with the smoke.
-
Agatha doesn’t see the woman again until the evening Maude is killed. The villagers of Salem have gathered by the field at the edge of town. The stake is primitive, a hefty pole pinned in the earth with a collection of firewood at the bottom, nothing like their ceremonial stake by the waterfall. Maude is screaming in her cage, but it is quickly drawn out by the jeering of the townspeople, which erupts into victory screams when the poor woman is dragged to the pole and tied to it. She screams of her innocence, pleads publicly with the human god all the villagers believe in.
At the start of the murderous movement of the villagers, Agatha had watched with bated breath, hoped desperately it was true that humans do not feel each other, have no method of sensing her heartbeat. Had they been able to sense it, smell the rush of adrenaline which took over Agatha’s still body as she stood and watched someone after someone die after being accused of being a witch, then they would have turned their pitchforks and axes towards her. But now, unable to count the deaths related to the persecution of witches on her own hands, Agatha feels nothing. Her apathy perhaps a symptom of defence, a method of distance, of shaping fear into something more tolerable.
When it is over the townsfolk retreat to their houses with a sense of calm, of truly having defeated the enemy this time. And Agatha stays, perhaps to pay respect, to mourn the warmth Maude once provided. The wind scatters the ashes of wood and human flesh, and then Agatha sees her again, the woman clad in dark cloaks.
She runs towards the woman, knows the woman had something to do with Maude’s death. Implicated her, toyed with Maude’s feelings by showing a glimmer of magic, manipulated the whole town and led them to believe they had never seen a woman clad in dark cloaks.
As she gets closer, the woman merely stares at her, a hint of interest strung across her face. And then someone calls Agatha’s name, and she ignores it for she must talk to this stranger first, and then she is called again and this time she cannot ignore it, so she looks back, sees urgency on Isolde’s face and when she looks at the strange woman again, she is gone.
-
“Do you want to be accused? Is that it?”
“I am investigating these accusations and you are actively sabotaging me.”
Agatha is placed on a chair in the far end of the house, away from any windows or doors. Most of the witches in her house carry disconsolate and perturbed expressions, and Agatha should have known this congregation wasn’t about her action just now.
“What if one of the townspeople had seen you flee towards the forest the second they burned a witch? What do you think they would have assumed?”
“I saw a woman, mother! At the edge of the forest.”
Evanora shares a glance with Viradectis. Viradectis shakes her head.
“It’s the same woman from the waterfall a couple of days ago, I swear mother. I thought she was a creature at first. I swear she must be the cause of all this!”
Evanora wills her to be silent. Looks at her fellow witches around her, and sighs deeply. “Adelgild was found dead and now we have another stranger wandering about our panic sodden town. It might be easy to connect these events, but we know nothing but Agatha witnessing her.”
Agatha searches her mind to connect a face to the name of Adelgild. She comes up blank, but knows better than to ask ‘who?’
“Viradectis has foreseen a darkness taking over, a murdering of many witches. It might be easy to assume this woman to be connected to this, but we shall not behave like common townspeople, we need proof of possible evildoings of this woman before we start pointing fingers.”
The witches murmur in agreement. Soon after, the discussion switches on how to avoid being accused, how to protect oneself from the villagers, and then Evanora encourages everyone to go home.
-
A few days after Maude’s passing, it was decided by the elder witches no practicing of magic was allowed. Classes for young witches had already been cancelled a month ago and Agatha felt restless ever since. Her magic needs to be let out, to live, especially after killing Adelgild that morning on the riverbank, she could feel Adelgild’s magic whirl inside her, unsatisfied, unwilling to become one with the rest of her magic.
She finds herself by the lake again, whips the magic around, wills it to transform rocks into trees into deer into a gust of wind so large it must reach the town. She wills the magic to become a flame, to ripple purple across the sky, to shield her from the harm which may come. Then a voice comes from behind, comes from her.
“How does it feel?”
Agatha turns around, sees the woman standing on the roof of her shelter. Agatha wonders how she got up there, how the roof hadn’t collapsed under her weight. The woman’s skirt drapes down past the walls, swallows the hut.
“Your magic,” the woman points at Agatha, “how does it feel when you use it.”
Agatha shakes some tension from her shoulders. “Feels good.” Is all she says.
“The texture,” the woman clarifies, “the shape. Is it thin, a diffuse flow or solid like a rock.”
“It’s everywhere,” Agatha says after a short moment, “flows from my toes to my elbow and licks at the underside of my skin like the water of a river.”
The woman sits down, puts her elbow on her knee and lays her chin in her palm as she watches Agatha. She points at Agatha again, playfully, and Agatha notices her long curled nail is clawlike. “There is your problem. You need to concentrate it, create this ball so dense it wants to implode and explode at the same time, and only take as much as you need.”
“How do I do that?”
The woman simply smiles smugly, looks away as if she heard something and when she returns her gaze on Agatha there is an animalistic hunger in her eyes.
Agatha tries to follow the advice of the woman, imagines the magic inside herself to be as spread out as the lake behind her, lapping at the edges of her being in calm waves. Then she imagines bunching it together like a pile of leaves, a pool of mud, and slowly but surely it sticks where she wants it, collects in her chest in a swirling, pulsing ball of power. And when she guides it to her hands, she takes only what she needs, feels long arms of magic reach outwards, spread from the centre of her chest to the tips of her fingers in a controlled stream. The ground disappears beneath her feet, and when she opens her eyes, she is hovering above the ground.
“Agatha!” A voice calls from the forest. Rushed footsteps crush leaves and from the bushes Isolde comes running towards Agatha. “Agatha, you must come to town promptly. Fishes are falling from the sky and-”
Isolde stops when she sees Agatha, sees the purple fog coming from her hands, sees the witch hover steadily above the ground and land without the slightest hint of blundering.
“You’re not supposed to be able do that,” Isolde says instantly.
And they both know it is not about the act of practicing magic. Isolde, like any young witch, practices her magic at her own pace, in her own secret spots. It is the act of flying. Forbidden for young witches with immature magic, for they lack the subtlety of practicing safely lest they get discovered by flying in an uncontrollable dash above the trees.
“I figured it out on my own. You must concentrate your magic, and it comes out much stronger.”
“Yes,” Isolde responds hesitantly, “Yes, I know. But how do you know? You weren’t-”
Agatha narrows her eyebrows. A spill too much, a secret slowly unravelling. Isolde has always had issues keeping her thoughts inside. “I wasn’t what? Wasn’t supposed to know that? Know how to concentrate my magic?”
Isolde looks around with wide eyes, looks for a distraction somewhere and finds none. “Yes.” She says after a long moment of silence.
When the pressure of a plain of earth becomes too high, it cracks with a loud, thundering sound which rumbles across the whole plain. The ground shakes, throws trees and houses to the ground and it feels like the world is turning upside down. Agatha had expected this to happen at the revelation, wanted it to happen, but instead, the breeze breathes through the trees like normal, and somewhere in the distance a jay calls.
Agatha looks up at the strange woman on the roof of her hut, finds comfort in her unwavering gaze. She is an owl spirit, perhaps, and has chosen to follow Agatha for whatever odd reason. But her reasoning is disproven then the woman says, “this is what I actually came for.”
“Viradectis had a vision.” Isolde explains. “Said the coven would find their demise, that you were heavily implicated but couldn’t quite tell how. Evanora decided to halt your progress, to prevent you from getting too powerful.”
At the mention of her mother’s name, Agatha starts to see white. Her fists burn red hot, magic pulses out in erratic waves. She wishes to rip the trees from the soil, to set all houses alight, to end this tyranny controlling each choice she makes.
Rushed whispers and a fog of yellow magic shake Agatha back to reality. Isolde is conjuring a Whisper Wind, ready to send a message back to town for all witches to hear.
“No!” Agatha screams, motions for Isolde to stop but shoots a ball of magic in her rage. She misses. It flies past Isolde’s face and sends a tree tumbling down. Isolde pales, sends the Whisper Wind on its way and assumes a fighting stance, yellow magic with sharp spikes pulsing in her hands.
And Agatha drops her hand. She had always liked Isolde, liked how she couldn’t inhibit herself at times, and knows this will be her demise. The purple fog doesn’t retreat, starts to slip out Agatha’s feet and into the ground, and Agatha looks at Isolde, knows what the witch is thinking, and knows she cannot change fate for divination is not her skill. Isolde shoots a warning beam at Agatha, but Agatha’s magic knows not of warnings, detects only danger and quickly engulfs the beam, wrestles it harmless, then drains the magic from its source.
Until the last few seconds, Isolde resists Agatha’s power, but then her eyes fall to the woman on the roof, and her terror shoots through her magic as she relinquishes it all to Agatha. Only then, when Isolde’s body rests on the forest floor, does the woman climb off her roof. She stalks over to Isolde, glances at Agatha and Agatha leaves. Allows the woman to do whatever she does in privacy.
-
Agatha hadn’t expected the coven to take this long. She watches the sun sink past the treetops and is cast in shadows. The breeze is cold now, the first signs of winter prickling her skin. When they finally find her, having followed her restless heartbeat like a compass, she assumes them to be the strange woman at first, for the two witches are dressed in dark cloaks only used for ceremonies and trails. Before anyone speaks, blue magic bubbles up from the ground and ties her feet to the floor.
“Agatha Harkness,” one of the witches speaks, “we have a witness accusing you of possessing magic above your age and station. Magic knowledge you have stolen.”
“I have not!” Agatha calls out. Alas, the witches grab her arms despite her protests, drag her through the dark forest at such a rapid pace Agatha twists her ankles trying to keep up.
She is brought to the ceremonial stake by the waterfall. Sees her hooded coven members encircle the raised stone stage. Evanora Harkness is the first to pull back her hood, she speaks the words in a cool, detached tone and the world once again stays silent as Agatha’s world is turned upside down, as her own mother accuses her of a treacherous act she has not committed.
Agatha tells the truth.
“Mother!” she pleads. And it is pathetic, and childish, and full of disbelief as Evanora once again chooses not to believe her own daughter. She fears me, Agatha realises, fears my power. And she is lying to everyone to justify what they are about to do.
When the beams of magic pierce through Agatha’s core the pain is excruciating. The magic is too much, claws at her skin and will rip her apart from the inside out. Then she hears a rattle in the breeze, and she remembers what the strange woman taught her. Concentrate it, create a ball so dense it wants to implode and explode at the same time. And Agatha does so, and Agatha screams, and suddenly the pressure lightens, and her purple flows out from her and into her coven members, and when she sucks them dry it feels euphoric, and she cannot stop.
The bodies hit the forest floor as dry husks. When Agatha walks to her mother’s body, it looks alien, only a vague resemblance of what she once was, or perhaps she finally looks like who she has always been. Agatha takes her locket, a keepsake, a remembrance of violence. Agatha leaves the place for it reeks of death but once she is up in the air something in her mind clicks. She returns to the scene of the crime.
“You came to find me.” The strange woman stands on the platform of the stake, oversees the dead bodies.
Agatha lands in front of her, feels the smoke of her magic whirl through her skirts. With two hands she grabs the hood of the woman, slowly lifts it up and off her head to reveal her pretty face.
“Who are you?” Agatha asks.
“You know who I am.”
“Yes,” Agatha responds, “I know what you are. But who are you? What is your name?”
An expression ripples across the woman’s face. Surprise, perhaps, but something else too. Intrigue. Something hopeful. The ground seems to shudder, flutters with excitement.
“You met me by the river,” the woman speaks with a hushed voice, a tenderness which had been hitherto unfamiliar, “so you can call me Rio.”
“Rio,” Agatha breathes. She cups Rio’s cheeks with her hands, feels the warm pliancy of her skin. She feels real, human. “It’s nice to meet you.”