There’s a rumour that a witch lives in the forest, that she brews awful concoctions to sell to naive travellers. Some say the potions are just tricks but other swear by the rumours that people have died from drinking them. She has several names in the lore but is most commonly known as the Wretched Witch of Marikan Falls. She is blamed for most of the issues the modest village has; droughts, hurricanes, poor harvest, villagers going missing, anything of the like. Fearing her, they have even tried to burn down the forest, but it’s too thick, too wild and protected. Every couple of years, they beg the gods to rid them of her and they hold a ceremony of sacrifice. The witch watched it the first time but couldn’t watch it after that. The slaughter of animals for the sake of human welfare was something that irked her. And thus the village was flooded for a fortnight. With only their own ideas about the witch in the forest, none could ever figure out her true identity, but if they thought about it without such fearful bias, they would realise that there was no way they could be living by the home of a wretched witch; for they were still there each year, the village still standing no matter what would happen.

Kylus was a woman for Marikan Falls who questioned the cruelty of the witch. ‘It doesn’t make any sense,’ she would say to herself. ‘If she wanted to harm the village, she could just wipe us all out.’

‘It’s because of her cruelty,’ many insisted. ‘She tortures us instead. It’s all for her sick enjoyment.’

Kylus would stand in front of the forest from time to time, her arms crossed and her head cocked as she watched it, as if waiting for the witch to pop out and say hello. She had been warned against going into the forest since she could comprehend the stories her parents told her, and as a child she did indeed fear it. But then Kylus grew up and was married. She had not a great amount of love for her partner but did as her parents had asked her. When it was discovered that she could not bear children, that man left her. She was pitied by the other villagers but they all thought that there must be something wrong with her. Kylus, however, felt freed by the divorce, only burdened by the reality of never being able to have her own children. She trained as a village soldier, cutting her hair off and walking around in men’s clothing. Rumours spread about her and she watched them distort like ink in water. It was then that she wondered about the witch in the forest. She thought that the witch should surely know what it is like to be considered an ‘other’ to the village, an ‘outsider’.

One day, the murky talk about her got the better of her, and Kylus stepped into the forest. She thought she would feel different since the villagers always told the children to never set foot inside the forest as the evil miasma would suffocate you. Instead of being strangled by evil intent, she found that the air was oddly clear and crisp. The forest that surrounded Marikan Falls, essentially cutting off the village from the falls, was thick and twisted. Kylus hadn’t realised just how wide the trees were. They were all painted in beautiful moss and gentle breezes blew through like small pats on the shoulder.

Kylus tapped the hilt of her sword as she started moving forward. It wasn’t a fancy sword, not even a nice one—not a chance the blacksmith would be handing over a quality sword to a woman—but she had wielded it enough that she was confident she could at least fend off the beasts that roamed the forest. Her footsteps were quiet, almost muted by the soft soil beneath her feet, occasionally crunching on a leaf or a twig. She thought about all of the stories about the witch, trying to piece together what she might come face-to-face with if she did indeed see her.

‘She’s as old as the village,’ some said.

‘She’s older than the kingdom,’ others would proclaim.

‘But despite her age, she’s young and very beautiful. That’s how she manages to lure so many men to their deaths. They all walk into that forest after her and never come out.’

Kylus hadn’t actually heard of any men venturing into the forest and not returning during the time she had been alive.

‘Her eyes are a soulless white!’

‘Her hair is like a black cloud that billows around her.’

‘Her skin is porcelain. It glows in the dark, brightest when there’s a full moon.’

And so Kylus imagined a woman of great beauty, astonishing beauty, with black hair that sprawled out around her, little moons in her eyes and ivory skin. She wondered if she would be tall or short, as that was a detail no one really cared about when telling the story. They always said that she was slim, something that often made Kylus look at her own muscles.

Birds began twittering nearby and as she walked by them she had a feeling that they were watching her. She started to see more animals moving, bugs, birds, lizards and at one point a deer in the distance.

‘She controls the creatures of the forest and orders them to attack trespassers.’

‘The forest is filled with crows and snakes that all do her bidding. She gets a lot of poisons from the snakes.’

‘I heard that she can turn into a giant snake, and that she feeds on men that way.’

Kylus kept her eyes out for a giant snake, but didn’t see one. She wondered what colour it might be. Would it be black because of the witch’s hair? Or porcelain?

‘She spreads plagues. Sometimes you can hear her chanting in the forest when she wants to bring a catastrophe to the village. She stands on top of the falls and wills them to thicken so that the river floods us.’

The forest was dimly lit in a comforting kind of way, making Kylus occasionally forget what she was doing and just get lost in thought as she walked underneath a blanket of serenity. ‘Maybe the miasma doesn’t affect me?’ She saw flowers starting to pop up everywhere, in all sorts of colours, shapes and sizes, beautiful pockets of petals of every colour she could imagine. She could faintly hear the sound of rushing water and started moving towards it.

‘She enchants the water so that children are hypnotised to walk into it, and then she drowns them.’

‘They once pulled a child’s body out and it had bite marks and claw marks all over it.’

Kylus thought of the fires, the floods, the sicknesses, the times men went wild under her influence … all things that she had seen plenty of times in other towns. But no one had a forest witch to blame there. ‘Wretched,’ she murmured to herself. ‘There’s not really anything wretched about this forest.’ The puffs of flowers smelled like the sweetness of life, and she admired all the different types of plants.

‘She concocts potions. She casts spells. She curses people and places.’

‘Maybe this is part of the enchantment,’ Kylus told herself as she neared the waterfall. She inhaled. ‘Soothing me before snaring me.’ She spotted a pair of crows eyeing her and they began to talk to one another in deep caws. As she continued on, she noticed that they were following her. Though she was still clutching the hilt of her sword, something told her not to draw it.

‘He’s a funny one.’

Kylus froze and looked up into the trees where there were now five crows. She waited for a while and when they just continued to watch her, she went to take another step forward.

‘It’s been a very long time since someone has come this far into the forest.’

‘Do you think he’s also here to try and kill her?’

She looked up, still as the crows spoke to each other.

‘I think that’s a woman,’ one added.

‘Oh, is it now?’

‘She better not be here to try and kill her.’

‘Tired of these dumb humans.’

‘Not her fault she flooded the village. They should’ve stopped slaughtering innocent animals.’

‘Not her fault she started the fires with a lightning storm. They shouldn’t have been trying to set fire to the forest.’

‘Terribly selfish things, humans are.’

They continued on and on and Kylus finally shook herself to attention. She was equally intrigued by what they said as well as the fact they were speaking. ‘Hello? Are you familiars of the witch?’

‘What?’

‘Familiars?’

‘She can only have one familiar.’

‘And that’s Aldin.’

‘Aldin would be angry if he heard you say that.’

Some of them began chuckling.

‘Can you tell me where she is?’ Kylus asked them.

They eyed her more closely this time.

‘Why?’

‘Why? Yes. Why?’

Kylus wasn’t sure how to answer, realising she didn’t really know. What had she hoped by going into the forest? ‘I just want to speak to her.’

‘About what?’

‘I’m not sure,’ she answered.

‘She’s not sure.’

‘Is she honest?’

‘Is she dumb?’

‘Maybe both?’

There was a long silence and Kylus was sure that they were communicating with each other quietly. ‘Up on the waterfall,’ one of them eventually said. ‘You might get there by tea time.’

‘She loves tea time.’

The five crows launched themselves into the air, one at a time, and headed off into the trees, talking to one another about whether or not Kylus would make it back out of the forest. She stood there stunned by the encounter before finally continuing on towards the sound of water, trying to move uphill as she digested what had happened.

When she finally made it to river, she saw the great Marikan Falls for the first time in her life. They fell from a great height, pounding into the river and spitting up clouds of water. The water was cleaner than she had ever seen, like liquid crystals that shimmered in the dimming light. It was then that she realised the light was in fact dimming. She could have sworn that she had only been walking an hour or two, but it was well past midday according to the sky. She looked up at the falls, guessing that the crows were right about it taking her until tea time to get up to the top.

As Kylus began the ascent, she wondered more about what she had heard the crows say. The image she had of the witch was softening as she mulled over their reasons for why she had lashed out on the village. She was surprised no one in the village had thought about it like that before. That perhaps they were being rightly punished for things they had done.

She wasn’t sure how long she struggled against the steep slope but once she reached the top of the falls, she was mesmerised by the view below. From there, she could see forest as far as the eye could see. She knelt by the river, a little bit away from the cliff edge, and refreshed her face and drank from it. When she stood back up, she saw that there was a little wooden and stone cottage up ahead, smoke puffing from the chimney.

Kylus walked towards us, wondering if the smoke was from a brewing cauldron. Her thoughts were interrupted, and she stopped as she realised that what she had thought was a fallen log, wasn’t a log at all. She stilled, but it wasn’t the same as it was with the crows. Her blocked prickled and her fingers twitched for her sword. She had seen large snakes before, but this snake was so large that a man could walk into its mouth. It was as black as midnight, with the edges of its scales glinting like stars. It zoned in on her, its eyes a glowing yellow. It darted for her and she fell back with a scream in her throat.

‘Aldin!’ The snake stopped in mid-air, an evident scowl on its face. ‘Please don’t make a mess of the yard.’

She wasn’t sure how to react. Kylus sat there watching as a small girl made her way forwards, dragging her little hand across the snake’s body. She had a small crow in her hair and was holding a wicker basket. She was small, maybe five or six, and her skin was chestnut, not porcelain; her eyes were grey, not white; and her hair fell about her in tightly curled tumbles of black, the only aspect of her that was accurate.

‘Hello,’ the little girl said as she stopped in front of Kylus. She held the basket to the side and it began floating in mid-air so she could extend a hand to Kylus.

‘You shouldn’t touch them,’ Aldin hissed but the little girl hushed him. He eyed Kylus and she was certain that if she drew her sword, he would swallow her in one bite, whether the little girl protested or not.

Kylus moved slowly to her feet and held her hands up to show that she wasn’t a threat. The little girl was still eagerly holding her hand out. She crouched and took the little girl’s hand, who shook it more than she needed to and held it longer than she needed to.

When the little girl let go of Kylus’ hand, she beamed up at the Aldin. ‘I just shook hands for the first time.’ Her grin was so bright that Aldin’s frustration melted. He pulled his head down close to hers and chuckled. ‘No one’s ever made it up here before,’ she added. She took back the basket from the air and put a hand up to her head to tickle the baby crow. ‘Are you from the village?’

Kylus straightened up. ‘I am.’ She paused. ‘Are you … are you the daughter of the Wret–Witch?’

The little girl blinked before laughing. She nodded her head towards the cabin to get Kylus to follow. ‘No,’ she answered. ‘I’m Billow. Come on in. It’s tea time.’

Kylus followed after her, her confusion only growing. She glanced up at Aldin who laughed, adding a sinister vibe to his explanation, ‘She is the witch.’