The Woodland Witch
Available Now on Amazon
“Ring the bell, my dear witch, and I will follow you gladly.”
A Woodland Witch hides deep in the dark forest. Her plague, fuelled by dark magic, strikes at the heart of the village and its people, their skin rotting whilst they still lived.
Determined to prove his worth, a man storms the woods to defeat the evil witch, but what he finds is not warts, toadstools, and deadly spells, but kindness and beauty. The witch is not wicked at all.
Yet the fact still remains. She caused the plague. Her death could end it. He must choose to save his village or let them die to save the witch.
A standalone Crooked Atlas Story.
Read a taste below…
It wasn’t the echoed shrieks that bothered me. Nor the late-night cackling or whispers of ancient magic. Those are the things everyone else always said, and I have never been ‘everyone else’.
What bothered me most were the hollow cries that always howled through the trees deep into the morning, desperate and alone.
I’d been into the woods so many times before, always sure to stay well clear of the boundary placed for our safety. ‘Beware. Witch,’ the signs mouthed, letters scratched deep into the rotten wood, claw marks of the spirits that lurked. Yet, on that dark and eerie night, I wanted to see more, to venture deeper into the woods and witness the magic that gripped the roots and the leaves for myself.
In some ways, I could understand what the witch might have been feeling that day, for I, too, had been shunned by the village. ‘That food was for the hungry!’ my mother had yelled at me. ‘Are you going to tell them they must starve?’ was all I had heard for days, not just from her but from the villagers too, when I had to explain that the bread meant for them had gone to the family of deer I had found shivering in the woods.
‘They need to eat, as well,’ I explained, my eyes not meeting my mother’s scowl. ‘They were going to die. I had to help them.’
I earned a smack for that.
I understood that each of us had a duty to one another in the village—it was the only way we survived—but to me, that was part of the problem. Our only goal was to survive. Jealousy crawled under my skin whenever those wandering travellers passed our village, their steam-powered machinery propelling them south towards the major cities. In my dreams, I imagined them scooping me up from my bed and taking me with them.
The villagers were content as they were, rejecting any help from the mechanical cities’ outside influence. They didn’t want to see beyond a mile from their front doors. Maybe that was fine for them, but not for me. I wanted more. I needed more.
That’s why I crossed the boundry that night.
A lingering disappointment hung over me as I edged deeper into the trees. I had expected a cauldron of bats to swarm me the moment my foot crunched the fallen twigs on the other side of the threshold, but when nothing came, I felt almost cheated. Did dark magic truly seep into the roots of the very trees beneath which I stood for shelter from the rain? Was there even a witch there at all?
She was never seen, at least not in human form, but stories of her magic echoed through the tavern every night, each sighting more terrifying than the last. I’d never believed them: drunken exaggerations and implausible logic were what I thought when I listened to the chatter from the kitchens. That was until only a few nights before, when I saw for myself an experience far beyond any realm my tiny mind could grasp.
It was the colours I saw first through the fog that clouded my window. Purple streaks of light bled through the canopy of the woods, right where I knew the witch lived. At first, I didn’t think much of it. There was beauty in the display of light, but nothing practical, nothing that showed real power. Then, as though the Gods had heard her howls, the skies converged above, their might rumbling through the night like a growling nightmare. Lightning struck the trees by the witch’s house, forcing my body to leap away from the window and curl up beneath my bed.
When I finally found courage and climbed back to the glass, the lightning struck again and again, each bolt brighter, fiercer than the last.
After what felt like hours, it finally stopped. The light was no longer purple. It was a vibrant green, glowing like poison to the woods. Had the gods given her the lightning? Or had she taken it from them? Either way, there was power on her side. Power I needed if I was ever going to survive out there when I ran away from the village.
As I sank deeper into the thick trees of the forest, the moon offered less and less of its light. I always thought the dark never bothered me, that it was an irrational fear, but that night, the shadows beneath the leaves held devilish eyes that watched me take every step. They didn’t howl, they didn’t intervene, they just watched, waiting. For what, I didn’t know.
I thought it would take me longer to find the house than it did. I had assumed it would be hidden away, perhaps guarded by a wall of trees that would lead me astray. Yet there it was, quiet and unassuming, right where I had thought it would be.
There were no gargoyles or flesh-eating plants. No black cats or gardens of warts and toadstools. Not even a pumpkin or an oversized cauldron. How very disappointed I was.
Still, I had made the journey, broken the rules of the village—there was no reason for me not to go a little further. The door was so inviting, after all. The wooden panels were a warm shade of brown, and with its little knocker shaped like a cat’s nose, how could I not feel welcomed inside?
My fingers clutched the knocker tightly, and I took a deep breath, forcing the terror down. Then the bangs came, crashing against the wooden door, but my hand hadn’t moved. The knocker remained still in my grasp. I had not struck the door myself.
Magic flowed through that place, and in that moment, I knew I was far out of my depth.
Read more May June 2 on Amazon…