A Witch's Calling

Not many people know this, but we witches don't burn.

I land in Myrtle's yard gracefully before disembarking from my broom. I've only visited once before, but she wasn't ready then.

She's decorated her house with candies and giant spelled sweets to entice the little ones. I sigh in sorrow as I feel the recent presence of two children, a boy and a girl, fleeing. Fear clogging their aura's as they do so.

I could hear the witch's screams miles before I landed, but I didn't worry about another finding her first; not many come to aid the likes of us. But I do. I am always listening for our cries, our calls for help. We may not burn, but it's certainly not fun to be trapped in a fire pit. I don't waste time, letting myself into Myrtle's home easily and opening the grated stone pit built into her kitchen.

“I told you this would happen,” I sigh, disappointed. I had hoped she wouldn't go this far, wouldn't attempt to harm innocents. But here we are. Maybe this time she'll listen.

Myrtle looks up at me with fire in her eyes. “You can't begin to understand." She climbs out of the stone oven, pushing past me with barely a glance. Swatting at her clothes, she puts out the smoldering little fires that come along with her. "Those children," she grumbles. "Thinking that shoving me in my own oven would stop me from cooking them. I don't burn, stupid!" she screams out her window, but not at anyone in specific. Her face is red, though not from the heat of the fire.

Her anger reminds me of how I found Rebecka, so boiled in her hate. Now she makes the best turnovers in the land. We all have our specialty and with time, I believe Myrtle will find hers too.

“I told you that I did understand,” I close the oven door, and look at her, my hands softly covering each other on the top of my broom.

“Their father…” she looks sharply to the floor at her side, hate swimming in her eyes.

“Why don't you tell me the tale over some tea, hmm?” I'd found talking about a tragedy, giving it voice can lessen its power over the witch who carries it.

“You know the tale,” she shoots back at me. Swinging her full body around she stares at me, her eyes attempting to drill holes in my head, but they don't phase me in the slightest. I have seen more hate than she can imagine in my lifetime.

“Yes I do,” I agree. It is, at its heart, a simple story, a simple horrible story. “But I would like to hear it from you. Perhaps the oh-so-reliable gossip has gotten a few details wrong.”

“They generally do,” Myrtle mumbles, as if not wanting to admit I'm right.

“Come on have a seat.” I usher her to the kitchen table before beginning to open cupboards and drawers, looking for the items needed for tea. I fill the kettle with water from her well, then carefully slide it into the stone oven she was so recently trapped in.

The whole while, Myrtle stares straight ahead, her eyes glazing over. I wonder if she even really sees the two cages in front of her, both made from entwined webs of licorice and iron. I know she certainly can't see the one she herself is trapped in.

"Now," I say, bringing her attention to me as I sit across from her, blocking her view of the candy-coated cages. “Start at the beginning."

She blinks, refocusing on me. “You know there is no need to start that early. It starts the way most stories do. I was young, innocent, and untouched by the violence of this world.”

I nod. It is the story of many. Nettle for instance. Her trauma happened when she was young too. She was very unsure and scared when I brought her to my bakery. I found Nettle not long after her incident. I remember guiding her shaking hand to build the frosting on top of a summer's kiss cupcake her first day. For her, it was someone she trusted.

I've brought many witches in from the fire; I hope I can do the same for Myrtle. Last time she wasn't ready, not able to listen. Perhaps this time she will be.

“He was handsome, kind,” she sours falling deeper into her story, “or so I thought. It wasn't kindness but flattery, fattening me up with his sweet lies of beauty." She rushes toward the two cages I can only assume the children escaped from and spits in one. "Pig!”

“It's not the children's fault for their father's mistake.”

“It was no mistake, friend. He took…” she withers a bit, her fierce form quaking as she stands momentarily still, staring at the cages. "He took everything from me. Left me in the woods alone after… after what he'd done.” She holds herself, her eyes not moving. Her mind most likely lost to the horrors of her past.

The kettle whistles, bringing us both back to the present. I stand, the rough sound of the chair's legs against the floor adding to the broken silence. Myrtle tilts her head away from me as I go to the whistling kettle, perhaps to wipe at the mist forming in her eyes.

I wait as she returns to her chair, still clearly stuck between there and here, then and now. I use a wooden paddle to draw in the kettle back from the fire. With cloth-covered hands, I pour the boiling water into two mugs, before dropping herbs in both.

“He is not the only bad seed,” I tell her, placing a cup in front of her.

“He is the one I know of. He is the one who hurt me," her voice low. The steam coils up from her tea cup. A bit of relaxation seeps into her as she takes a breath of the soothing scents.

“His children didn't. Yet you seek vengeance on them?” I point out.

“I seek to hurt him.”

“I see.”

We sit in silence for a minute, stirring our teas and waiting for them to cool.

I want to break the silence. To tell her more about my bakery, about how it has helped many witches, women with pasts like ours, to find themselves again. Some stay, finding their calling there. Others move on, take the skills learned and do something else. None of us seeking out vengeance.

But I had tried that last time. Talking did not work. Telling her of others did not work. So I sit and wait for her to speak.

And she does.

“Do you think me a tragic villain?” she asks, seeming in a deep state of contemplation.

“No, I think you a tragic victim. But that does not give you the right to hurt other innocents.” I tentatively take my first sip of the hot tea, testing the temperature.

“He got off scot-free!” She screams, jumping to her feet, her hands pressed flat against the table. “No one punished him. I even…” she wavers again, “…I tried to tell them.”

Though she doesn't specify who them is, she doesn't need to.

“But they wouldn't listen,” Myrtle stands fully, straightening her spine, no longer leaning over. Picking up her power as if speaking to a crowd, not a single individual in a small barren kitchen. "They wouldn't listen to me so… so I waited. I watched. He took everything from me, so I will take everything from him. I will kill those children no matter how old they grow. I will hunt them to the ends of the earth if I have to!”

I take another sip, carefully swirling it in my mouth before asking my question. “Do you have to?”

“I just said that I did.”

I place my tea cup down gently. “Myrtle, please sit,” I gesture and she does, the sound of impact making the chair creak a bit.

She humphs and crosses her arms, looking away from me.

“If you do that, which by all means I'm not here to stop you, but if you choose that path, he will have won.”

“No, I will. I will take—"

“Yes, I understand your plan." I cut her off. "But by making your entire life about him, about that moment he hurt you. Raped you.” The use of the word, unsaid all this time, hangs in the air, and I can see the tears she's desperately trying to hold back. “Then he is the villain who has won.”

Not all the witches I help were violated in such a way. Some had their children taken away unfairly. Others bound and beaten for being who they were.

“So… what?" She looks at me, her voice angry, her face hallow. "He just wins? He gets to just ride off into the sunset with his wife and kids and he leaves me out in the cold with nothing to call my own? How is that just? How is that right?”

“It's not. But how is this right for you?” I gesture to the cages behind me.

She looks away again.

“Seeking revenge on him is not how you win.”

“How do I win then?” she challenges heavy with disdain and disbelief.

“By moving on. You've tried to make it right by speaking up, but the world is too broken, and you are not responsible for the world. You cannot change it alone and you cannot change it by seeking vengeance on one man. Our world is full of men like that, full of cruel evil that invades our lands, our lives…our bodies."

She fidgets, clearly uncomfortable, but listening.

"The way to win," I continue, more encouraged now that I have her attention, "is to show them that we are stronger together. That we can live our lives, full and rich with love and friendship. That we can ring our arms together and magnify our voices until they must hear us. How we win—" I lower my voice as I step down from my soapbox "—is by healing ourselves and reaching a helping hand to others who have experienced the same and similar hardships.” I reach my arm across the table extending my offer.

“You?” she asks surprised.

I nod. "The evil in this world are many. To beat them is not to create more evil, more hatred, but to heal our wounds and band together with others. So—" I pause, giving her a chance to let the idea settle in her mind “—will you band with me?”