First Witch's Tale

Chapter One

Chapter One

On my fifteenth birthday, I ran away from home.

It was something I had been mulling over for the last two years, ever since I’d turned into a young maiden, ever since I had realised I had magic. I had grown up in Bramble Fire, and never gone more than a few miles beyond the town’s perimeter, but I had never truly fitted in. People had pointed and whispered from the very first day, when my father introduced me as his daughter, and it had never gotten any better. The magic just made it worse. Women with magic were dangerous. Everyone said so.

I hadn’t meant to hurt David, really I hadn’t. But he had tried to kiss me and I had panicked and my magic had sparked and now when he looked at me I saw nothing but fear in his eyes.

I’d laid my plans carefully, ever since a passing Peddler had told me the news. I had packed a knapsack with everything I needed, everything that belonged to me. Never let it be said that I was a thief, picking what rightfully belong to others. I did my last set of chores as I waited for nightfall, for the brief hour between sunset and complete darkness, then slipped out of the house - bidding my siblings a silent goodbye - and made my way across the fields to the trees. I was a skilled woodsman. There were few who could match me when it came to slipping through the forest without being spotted. As long as I left without being noticed, I would be well away by the time the alarm was sounded. If it ever was. I suspected Bramble Fire would be quietly glad to see the back of me.

My father caught me at the edge of the fields.

“And where,” he asked, “do you think you are going?”

I tried not to flinch, caught red-handed. My father - Gurdon - was a decent father, as fathers went, but I was trying to run away from home. I hesitated, torn between the urge to tell him precisely where was going and a strange guilt for leaving him and the rest of the family. Children had obligations to their parents, including the obligation to look after them as they grew older. I might not be a son, or even his eldest child, but I still had duties. And I was planning to travel much further than one of our neighbouring villages. If something happened to my father, I might never hear about it - or if I did, it would be too late to do anything about it.

Father cocked his head. “Where?”

“Whitehall,” I said. The peddler had told me the castle, the school for young magicians, was now accepting female students. It had been rare for women to be schooled in magic, unless she wanted to be a hedge witch, and even then the training had been very limited. “I’m not coming back.”

The words cost me. I had grown up with the disdain of the entire village, but my father had never treated me as anything other than his daughter. The idea of abandoning him didn’t sit well with me, even if there was no other choice. I couldn’t bear the thought of marrying a farmer boy and bearing his children, spending my entire life as a broodmare … if, of course, I could find a man willing to marry me. There were no secrets in small towns and everyone knew what I’d done to David. No one believed it had been an accident.

Father studied me for a long moment. I looked back at him. We made an odd pair. It was easy to see why the old woman muttered darkly about just who, or what, my mother had slept with, nine months before she died giving birth to me. Father was just like the rest of the villagers. He had fiery red hair and pale skin, a short and muscular body, and a practicality that sometimes made him appear cold and uncaring. I was tall and willowy, with dark hair and darker slanted eyes that made me look very different, compared to my siblings and step-siblings. If my mother had lived, Father might have wanted a few words with her about just what she’d been doing before conceiving me. There were plenty of stories of young girls who found themselves courted by the Other Folk - or, more likely, by passing peddlers. It spoke well of Father that he had accepted me as his daughter, right from the start. No one would have blamed him for casting me out to die.

“It’s a long walk to the mountains,” Father said, finally. “Are you sure you want to go?”

I blinked in surprise. I had envisaged a hundred versions of this conversation, but none of my imaginations had suggested it would go this way. Father would have been within his rights to march me back home and lock me up, before selling me off to anyone willing to take me. Or to turn his back on me and tell me to get lost. No one would blame him for that either. The chatterboxes who insisted I was an unnatural child would tell him I deserved little else.

“There’s nowhere else to go,” I said. The magic burned within me like a fire. The idea of trying to quench it was unthinkable. So too was the idea of replacing Hilde, the local hedge witch. I knew the price she had paid for her power, the isolation that came with her role. “I have to go.”

Father said nothing for a long moment. I wished I knew what he was thinking. He had five children and seven stepchildren, all of whom were more inclined to spend the rest of their lives in Bramble Fire or the neighbouring villages. The farm would not die without me. Indeed, my absence might even help. It was unusual for a daughter to inherit her father’s farm, but her husband might stake a claim on the lands. I wondered, not for the first time, if Father had been concerned when I’d started walking out with David. It would have complicated his life, and his children’s inheritance, if David had had a claim to a share of the farm.

“I don’t fit in here,” I said. “And you know it.”

“Yes, but you are still my daughter,” Father said. “Are you aware of the dangers?”

I nodded, curtly. The roads outside the villages were known for being dangerous. The forests were even more inhospitable to passing travellers. We knew little of what was happening beyond our villages, but it was clear there were risks in travelling beyond the known world … particularly for a woman. The peddlers were about the only people who travelled far from home and while their lives seemed wonderful, I knew they were often precarious. It was quite easy, I had been told, for a peddler to discover his trade goods were worthless, or to be robbed by poor or desperate villagers. And very few - if any - peddlers were women. It was young men who fantasised about becoming peddlers, not young girls.

“Yes, Father,” I said.

I wondered, suddenly, how he had known I was planning to leave. I had thought he was fast asleep, along with my stepmother and the rest of their conjoined brood. Where else could I go?

Father met my eyes. “Is this about David?”

I shook my head, not daring to speak. Father had always been good at sniffing out lies. The truth was … I was ashamed of what I had done to him, and yet I was unwilling to give up practising magic. And that meant the villagers would eventually drive me out or kill me if I refused to go. I understood their feelings - everyone knew magic was dangerous, and doubly so if a woman had magic - but if I was going to leave I want to go on my own terms. The idea of living alone in the forest, publicly shunned and privately consulted by everyone, simply didn’t appeal. I wanted to be something more.

“Very well.” Father reached into his pocket and produced a dark leather pouch. “I told myself I would give this to you the day you left, either to marry or … something else. Take it with you, and go with my blessing.”

His lips quirked. “And if you do become a great lady, give us your blessing in return.”

I took the pouch and swallowed, astonished, as I felt the money inside. It was unusual for any of us to have more than a couple of coins, if any, and there was little use for it in the village. We bartered with our neighbours - near or far - trading goods for services or vice versa. I had wanted to take a little money with me, when I left, but I had none. The idea of Father giving me money he didn’t have was just laughable. And yet, he had put a pouch in my hand … where had he even gotten the money?

It wasn’t until much later that I figured out the answer.

“Be careful,” Father observed, unaware of my thoughts. “You could lose that very easily.”

I stared at him. I knew, without having to ask, that my stepmother hadn’t known the money existed. She wasn’t a bad stepmother, any more than my father was a bad father, but she was parsimonious to a fault and if she had realised he intended to give the money to me she would have exploded with rage. The value of the coins was somewhat debatable - I had done plenty of bargaining, when peddlers had passed through the village, and I knew it wasn’t easy to be sure what the coins were actually worth - but they were worth something. Her older children could have made better matches if they had brought the money with them.

“Father, I …”

Father cut me off. “I’m proud of you,” he said. “I have been proud to call you my daughter. And if your destiny calls you elsewhere, then I wish you luck. And farewell.”

He nodded politely to me, then turned and strode away without looking back. I stared after him, my heart beating like a drum. I wanted to call to him, to beg his forgiveness, and yet I knew there was no way things could go back to normal. How could they? The idea of me having a normal life had died, the moment I had shocked David. The villagers would never forget. It was just a matter of time until they told my father to kick me out or did it themselves. My stepmother might already be hinting it was time to marry me off or simply tell me to leave. The thought didn’t hurt as much as it should. It was far from uncommon, in an age of high mortality, for families to blend together as widows and widowers sought comfort and support in each other, but my stepmother could not be faulted for pressing the interests of her children ahead of her stepchildren. Everyone did it.

I forced myself to turn and look north, towards the Craggy Mountains. They were clearly visible in the gloom, towering up into clouds that marked the border between the northern realm and the south. Or so I had been told. I knew very little about the kingdoms and princes and magicians and everything else that lurked beyond the borderline, and what I knew could not be taken on trust. I had once met a passing fortune-teller who’d insisted he could tell us what was happening on the other side of the world; Father, not being a fool, had demanded proof of the man’s powers. He’d left in something of a hurry after that! I smiled at the memory, silently blessing the man who had called himself my father, and then started to walk. I didn’t expect pursuit, not any longer, but I still needed to put some distance between myself and the village. The last thing I needed was someone trying to drag me home to Father. That would be embarrassing.

And if they tried, I thought, it would make them the most unpopular person in the village.

The thought haunted me as I walked north. It was not an easy trip, even though I could see the mountains in the distance and as long as I was walking towards them I was heading in the right general direction. I had no trouble finding food and drink - I knew which plants were poisonous, or how to trap small animals and start a fire to cook the meat, or even find water that was safe to drink - and I knew to avoid the deepest darkest parts of the forest, but that then I had to pass near a number of villages, none of which knew me. It was a grim reminder that the most dangerous creatures in the world walked on two legs. Back home, everyone have known and feared my father’s temper. Here …

One village thought me a thief and put me in the stocks for a day. I slipped away at nightfall, after recovering my pouch from the woman who’d stolen it, and made a mental note never to return. Another was in the grip of an army and I found myself threatened with conscription, or worse, before I managed to escape into the undergrowth. A third was surprisingly friendly, until I discovered that the local headsman was desperately looking for a bride. He really must have been desperate. My appearance alone marked me as an outsider, while he knew nothing of my family or what they might give him in exchange for taking me off their hands. Somehow, I doubted he’d taken one look at me and fallen so deeply in love he forgot the practical considerations. No headsman ever born could afford to lose track of reality. It wouldn’t be long before his people overthrew him. And a fourth village was burnt to the ground, the handful of buildings little more than blackened patches of scorched earth. It couldn’t have happened that long ago, I decided, or the village would have been reclaimed by the surrounding countryside, but I never worked out who or what laid waste to the village. There were no bodies, as far as I could tell. My instincts were screaming at me to run. I did, and I never looked back.

The landscape grew rougher as I neared the mountains. I fell in with a couple of travelling bards, who were kind enough to point me to the mountain pass and let me stay with them until we reached the nearest village to the magic school. I didn’t hang around. My experiences had taught me that bards were not always welcome, particularly in the more isolated villages. And besides, I wasn’t entirely sure of their motives. It would be very difficult indeed if they hadn’t been friendly. Bards had a bad reputation for seducing young women and I doubted the local villagers would take my side if I found myself trapped. They might consider it preferable to a bard seducing one of their daughters.

I had been told there was a well-kept road leading directly to the castle. The peddler who had told me that had either been lying or been misinformed. It could have been either. The road was far from well-kept, little more than a rocky track leading up through the mountain pass. The forests were so close to the roads that there was almost no room to hide, if someone who might be unfriendly appeared in the distance. I had been careful to avoid men on horseback, and convoys larger than a handful of men. They had bad reputations. I didn’t think I was a runaway serf - my father had been a freeman - but they might have different ideas. For all I knew, I had left my home kingdom behind weeks ago. I haven’t crossed anything that resembled a borderline, but I was pretty sure no one had marked the borders so carefully. And no one would speak for me if I were caught.

The road grew harder to follow as I neared the castle. I could feel the magic in the air, currents of power swirling around the mountaintops, drawing me onwards despite my doubts and fears. I had magic - I could feel the power beating within my breast, I knew what had done to David - and yet I had no idea what sort of reception I’d get, when I presented myself at the castle. I hadn’t met many magicians. They rarely passed through the village and when they did children and women were kept firmly out of sight. The only one I’d spoken to was Hilde and she had been a hedge witch. I was fairly sure the magicians didn’t acknowledge her as one of them.

My fears grew stronger as I walked on. Sweat trickled down my back as the road widened suddenly, revealing a small stone wall. It looked like a joke - I could jump over the wall easily - but I could sense raw power crackling around it. It was like staring into the sun. My soul quailed, just for a moment. I almost wanted to turn and walk away. It wouldn’t be that hard to find a place to live in the forest, or someone willing to take me in. There was always room for a young woman willing to marry a widower, no matter her background, if she was willing to raise her stepchildren as her own. My lack of apparent family would be a bonus. I wouldn’t have any grasping relatives demanding a share of the family inheritance.

And then I saw - or sensed - the magician, standing by the gap in the wall.

And I knew the die was cast.