The Witch of Barnett part 2

Angelica wept, curled up on the floor of the wagon’s rusty iron cage for most of the morning and late into the afternoon. As her tears subsided, she sat in silence listening to the wagon as it creaked and cracked, traveling along the bumpy dirt road. She curiously began to look around, scoping out the scenery as if she were planning her escape. She had never been this far from her village before; the trees weren’t like the tall swaying pines that surrounded Barnett. The trees in this part of the forest were much shorter with a lot more branches and were covered in a greenish gray, stringy moss that draped down from the trees like curtains throughout the forest. It was a beautiful, yet mysterious and eerie at the same time. It was late in the evening when the forest broke into a clearing that ran along the coast of the island. As the wagon began to round the large bay, Angelica watched the most beautiful sunset off to the left as the sun fell behind Vark Castle high on a ridge overlooking the sea. Tritus brought the wagon to a stop beside a small stretch of sandy beach and began searching the area for firewood.

Angelica stared out watching the waves roll across the gorgeous crystal blue sea, crashing onto the white sandy beach. As she scanned the surface of the water with her eyes, she noticed three dark gray dorsal fins circling a couple hundred feet off the shore, still close enough to make out the shadow of the sharks’ bodies just below the water’s surface. One shark was slightly larger than the other two. A chill ran down her spine and excitement bubbled up through her stomach. She had never seen the ocean before, nor a beach, but seeing a group of sharks circling in the bay was something that just this morning would have been a farfetched dream of an overactive imagination. For a moment it made her forget that she was on her way to the massive castle across the bay to meet her death for a crime that, until this morning, she didn’t even know she was guilty of. How could they kill her for being a witch when she didn’t even know she was one; she had never practiced witchcraft or magic; she had never seen the contents of the chest before; she had no earthly clue that she was a witch?

Tritus returned just before dark with an arm full of firewood and built a fire on the beach. He went to his wagon and pulled a large flask from underneath the bench seat of the wagon. He took off the lid and took a few healthy swigs as he walked around the iron cage, stopping in front of Angelica, holding his flask out as an offer for her to drink. Angelica didn’t move, she just glared at him in a cold hateful stare. He splashed some of his brandy in her face then spit at her “Don’t worry, Witch, tomorrow you’ll be dead, and the world will be a better place” he snarled. He took another sip from his flask then turned and went over to the fire and made himself comfortable on the beach and drank himself to sleep.

Angelica’s mind was a whirlwind as her head twisted and turned to all the different sounds of the night here. Back home all you heard this time of night was frogs and crickets with an occasional hoot of a barn owl. Between the creepy forest behind them and the rolling waves of the sea Angelica was overwhelmed. Angelica just sat in her cage, taking in all the sounds as the night grew late. The fire had died down to just a mound of glowing embers and the night was lit only by the high half-moon and the thousands of stars sprinkled across the purple black sky. Angelica had finally settled enough to lay back and take in the beauty of the stars. She had seen stars a million times back home but out here even they looked different from the sky she knew back home.

Her moment of rest was disturbed when she heard a quiet scuffle of the sand. She looked over toward the sound and found a cloaked figure hunched over Tritus removing something from his waist. The figure quickly approached the wagon door and began to unlock the chain in which held Angelica captive. The cloaked person looked up at Angelica and she could barely make out Maggie’s face hidden in the cloak. As Angelica began to ask her why she was here, Maggie quickly held her finger up in front of her mouth, glancing over at Tritus sleeping. She slowly opened the squeaky door in attempt to make it as quiet as possible.

When she got the door opened, Angelica slipped out and the two quietly creeped down the road into the forest. A little way into the forest, Maggie had tied her gorgeous sorrel and white paint, Duchess. The two climbed up on Duchess’ back and took off in a full gallop down the road back to Barnett. They rode in silence the rest of the night as if Tritus could pop up at any time. They entered the clearing just outside Barnett’s city limits as the morning sun began to rise. Maggie led Duchess off the road and across the fields so they could quietly slip into town through their back yards and out of sight of all the town’s citizens. The beautiful golden yellow marigolds were a welcoming site for Angelica. She hadn’t been through this field since she and Maggie were children.

“Why did you do it? Why did you risk your life like that to save me?” Angelic finally broke the silence in which they had ridden all night.

“They would have killed you; we have to stick together now that the secret is out.” Maggie replied, never turning back, just focusing on getting them to their houses as quickly as possible. “We have to leave Barnett; now it’s no longer safe for us. When we get home, run and quickly pack only the things you must have. We must travel light; then meet me at the stables” she continued.

Terrified of what would happen if they were caught, Angelica rode in silence replaying the events of yesterday in her mind repeatedly.

When they arrived at the stables back behind their homes, they parted ways and went and gathered their belongings. Angelica ran in her house, gathered as many clothes as she could stuff into a couple old canvas sacks, along with a few other personal items around the house. As she started to leave the cottage again, she was frozen in her tracks at the door as she heard the music coming from the attic once more. She ran upstairs to the chest and laid the sacks on the floor as she knelt before the chest. She opened the lid and dug around until she came across the old book still wrapped in its brown paper bindings. She unwrapped it to find an old leather-bound book covered in odd signs. The book was titled “Fearfellow Book of Shadows”. She recognized some of the signs as symbols of witchcraft though she didn’t know what they meant. She stuffed the book into one of the sacks, shut the lid on the chest, grabbed her belongs and ran off to the stables, where she found Maggie already tying Duchess up to her father’s old wagon. Angelica threw her sacks in the back of the wagon and climbed up onto its bench seat. After Maggie finished tying Duchess to the wagon, she joined Angelica on the bench and they left their homes and the stable, where they had grown up playing in the past, and they embarked on their next journey through life.

They started off further across the marigold fields and further way from the road. “Did you get the book?” Maggie asked looking over at Angelica, grinning ear to ear.

“How do you know about the book?” Angelica asked, puzzled. She hadn’t told Maggie about the book. She had only just learned about it herself yesterday.

Maggie chuckled her cute bubbly little chuckle and said “Really Angelica, Nana was your Grammy’s lifelong best friend. Surly you don’t believe she had been a witch this whole time and Nana didn’t know.”

“I guess I didn’t think about it, this is all so new to me.” Angelica replied, gathering her thoughts.

“No worries, I know somewhere we can go to learn our craft.” Maggie said smiling behind those big blue eyes, and freckled pale face that managed to match her fiery red-orange hair perfectly. As she pulled her own old leather-bound book from the front pocket of her faded light blue gown, the two disappeared into the forest, leaving their lives and the town of Barnett in the past.