The Witch and her boy
The witch carried her boy through the rain. His small body hung limp in her arms, blood soaking through her shawl where the soldiers’ boots had struck. The forest swallowed them whole—branches clawing, roots slick with rot. By the time she reached the hovel, her breath came in sharp, ragged pulls.
The shack crouched beneath a tangle of ivy and fern, its roof sagging under the weight of years. Moss coated the doorframe, and the smell of peat and wet earth clung to everything. She kicked the door open with her heel, the hinges crying out like old ghosts.
Inside, the air was close and green with the scent of herbs drying from the rafters. Jars lined the shelves—brown glass filled with curled roots and powders, things that had once been alive. She laid the boy on the narrow bed, its straw mattress crackling beneath him.
His face was swollen, one eye darkening to plum. The blood that streaked his temple had already begun to dry in thin, copper flakes. He had gone to the park near the butcher’s yard, where the Redcoats patrolled. Too bold. Too much his father.
The witch moved without a word, her fingers trembling only once before she steadied them. She reached for the mortar, dropped in a clutch of crushed leaves—willow, comfrey, nettle—and ground until the pestle sang against the stone. A pale-green paste bled out from the mix, smelling faintly of rain and iron.
When she returned to the boy, she wiped his face with the edge of her sleeve, sweeping away the grime with a mother’s tenderness. Then she took the salve in her fingers and spread it across his bruises. He flinched, jaw tight, eyes shining.
“Easy now,” she whispered. “It’ll burn before it blesses. The pain’s the part that leaves.”
The boy swallowed, his throat raw. “Will it make me strong like Father?”
Her hand froze. For a moment, the hut fell silent except for the wind pressing against the boards. She looked at him—the same sharp chin, the same defiant eyes—and saw the world trying to take him too soon.
“No,” she said softly, her voice breaking like frost underfoot. “It’ll only make you live long enough to try.”
The boy’s eyelids fluttered. “Thank you, Ma.”
She brushed his hair from his brow and whispered something old, something the world had forgotten. Outside, the rain fell harder, washing the blood from the earth but not from her hands.
