The spring air was warm with the promise of summer and the wild pastures between the hills were full of sweet bursts of lilac and honeysuckle and valley lilies. Their scents sharpened as blooms were crushed underfoot by a young pair running hand in hand, too engulfed in one another to notice or care. 

As soon as they had found shelter in the shade of their hidden grove, Cjiela pulled Lewine into a kiss, tangling her fingers in her hair. They broke apart when they couldn’t keep from grinning. Lewine’s cheeks hurt from smiling. She picked Cjiela up by the waist and spun her around, tripping and pulling the both of them to the ground in the soft moss. She cushioned her slighter companion’s fall with her own wide and tall body, folding herself around her. The both of them ached with laughter until they had to roll to lay side by side as they fought to retrieve their breath.

When their mirth quieted, the only sound was the sway of the trees that guarded their little paradise. The last of the sunlight danced across Cjiela’s face between their shadows, and Lewine gratefully claimed the opportunity to admire her beauty—the waterfall of her long raven hair spilling from beneath her bonnet, the brush of freckles across her skin, the gather and flow of her linen layers across her sturdy form, toned from years of toil in her family’s orchard but still plush with sweet curves. Lewine took up one of Cjiela’s hands and pressed it flat against her own, fondly observing her own scars from the smithy against Cjiela’s callouses, the tan tone of her own flesh against Cjiela’s pallor, the height of her own fingers against Cjiela’s shorter ones. 

As she shifted her hand to cup Cjiela's cheek, a few sprigs of hair shook loose from her bonnet and fell in her face. A few strands were dove-white scattered in the rich black, ones Lewine has never seen before.

"Has it really been so long?" jested Lewine, curling the pale strands around her finger. "I was gone little more than a week."

Cjiela laughed. "To me it was ages."

“How I missed you, my love,” mumbled Lewine, gazing into Cjiela’s eyes, green turned to gold in the rich evening sun. She still hushed her voice to say it, but the words were sweeter in her mouth than any fruit. 

“Not as much as I missed you,” returned Cjiela, winding her hands behind Lewine’s neck and playing with her braids. “Whenever you go off to sell in the city I am left sorely lonely, and this time I worried I would never see you again for all my days. I have great joy that you are back, for I have incredible news to share.” 

“I am anxious to hear it,” said Lewine. 

“Do I have your trust?” asked Cjiela. 

Lewine gave a small bow and gestured for her to go on. Cjiela pulled her hair to the side and turned her back to Lewine. She pushed the layers of her dress from her shoulders, exposing the flesh between her shoulder blades. There sat a long and wide silver scar running in a slash across her spine, barely visible, as from a childhood injury. 

“I am marked now, as you are,” said Cjiela with a smile, placing a hand upon the star-shaped birthmark on Lewine’s knee. “A sign we both are special, the way my mother used to say of your mark.” 

Lewine frowned. “I have never before laid eyes on this scar, not once in the hundred times we have bathed or lain together. Where has it come from?” 

She ran a light touch over it and found it was harshly in-set, like whatever had made it had cut very deep, and yet it looked as thought it had healed remarkably well. Cjiela shivered under her touch before redressing and turning back.

“On the first day of your journey to Gifead,” she began, “I was fetching water from the river and I dropped your necklace.” Cjiela smiled down at the simple stone that had hung round her neck for years. “The yarn broke. I left the water and turned to chase after the stone as it tumbled down a hill, but I tripped. I fell head and heel over and over until, at the bottom, I landed upon a boulder and broke my back. The pain was terrible. I couldn’t move. I thought surely I was to die. And then I did.”

Lewine stared with eyes framed in generous white, a chill in her stomach. “I don’t much like this jest, Cjiela.”

“No jest, my friend,” assured Cjiela with a soft grin. “Only the truth.” 

“If that were so, how could you stand before me now, flesh and blood, alive and unharmed? It is impossible.” 

“But it is. It is a gift, Lewine, a wonderful gift I have, and many others, too.”

Lewine shifted away from the other woman, rising back to her feet. “You’re frightening me. I don’t understand.”

Cjiela rose with her. “Watch, and I shall show you.”

Lewine stood frozen and staring as Cjiela took a deep breath, braced against a young oak tree, and mumbled something Lewine could not understand. 

Before her eyes, the tree began to wither and decay as if with rapid age, the bark becoming brittle and grey and the moss blackening to mush as the trunk was shed half-bare. The leaves erupted in a rainbow of dying colour, green to yellow to orange and brown, cascading in a great spinning cloud all around them like autumn had come and gone in the length of a breath, leaving the boughs winter-naked. In a moment, the rotted core could no longer hold itself up, and the whole tree creaked and groaned as it tipped over. Lewine had to jump backwards a few leaps more to avoid being caught in the branches as they crashed to the ground, many of them snapping into bleached white piecemeal upon the ground and scattering like discarded bones. 

Cjiela stood in place and smiled down at her work, panting with exertion and glowing with pride. 

“See?” she said. “I am powerful, Lewine, endlessly powerful. I lord over life and death itself.” 

Lewine was silent a long moment, shoulders stiff and lips parted, unable to bring any words to her tongue. If only to confirm what she had just witnessed, she bent and picked up a wilted leaf, which crumbled away to smithereens in her hand. 

“My love?” beckoned Cjiela with a nervous hiccup of a laugh. She stepped towards the other woman and Lewine flinched backwards. 

“What manner of curse is this?” she mumbled, looking from the skeleton of the leaf to the face of her lover. The whites of her eyes shone blue in the gathering tide of night. “What has happened to you?” 

Cjiela’s face twisted with hurt. “You gather wrongly, my love. These gifts, they are mine alone—they are who I am. I have only just discovered them. It is a long tale to tell, but we have all the time in—”

“I do not wish to hear it,” breathed Lewine, her voice trembling. “I am frightened, Cjiela.”

“You need not fear me, Lewine my love.” Cjiela held open her arms. “I would never hurt you.” 

Lewine began to back away and stumbled when her heel caught on a root. Cjiela reached to steady her, but Lewine held up a hand to ward her off.

“Don’t,” Lewine warned. Tears spilled from her wide eyes and her chest heaved like a rabbit. 

“Lewine—”

“Please, leave me be.”

With one last look at Cjiela, that most familiar of forms standing in front of the oak she had felled, Lewine turned and ran from the grove and did not stop until she reached home. Cjiela did not give chase. 

The wax of the solitary candle in the smith’s house had burned low by the time the witchfinder darkened the doorway. He was a tall man with a clipped white beard and walked with confidence, a heavy scent of herbs and oils carried with him. His outfit draped in chains of silver and the long blade of the same metal as at his hip were signs of his trade as much as his smell and the violet scarf around his neck. 

“My daughter is just inside,” said the smith, ushering the witchfinder across the threshold. “Lewine—this is Witchfinder Caius.”

Lewine sat trembling with cold tears at the dining table, flanked by her mother who kept her protectively underwing. Her parents had argued about what to do when Lewine had burst into the house so distraught, but had eventually come to the same conclusion. 

“Hello, my dear,” said the witchfinder. He crossed the room and knelt before Lewine, a soft smile on his mouth. “Fear not—you’re safe now, miss, and with your help I can assure the safety of everyone else in your village. Your father has briefed me on what happened—could you recount the tale for me in full?”

Lewine hesitated, nuzzling into her mother’s side like she was still just a child anxious at the market. Her mother rubbed her back and fixed the blanket about her shoulders. 

“Go on, Lewine,” her mother encouraged.

So she did. Witchfinder Caius listened intently and nodded along to her tale, brow drawn. When she had finished he rose back to his feet with one final solemn nod. 

“Please, sir,” begged Lewine through her sobs, “she is my oldest and dearest friend. My heart breaks at the thought of any harm coming to her. Please, promise she too will be kept safe.” 

The witchfinder stopped and wiped away one of Lewine’s tears with the pads of his silver gauntlets, which were so cold they nearly burnt Lewine’s cheek. 

“Fret not and keep heart, Miss Lewine. If indeed your friend is enchanted as you say, I can offer the cure. I will make it so she poses no threat to anyone, herself or otherwise.” 

Lewine’s father bowed low to Caius. “Our deepest thanks, sir. We don’t have much coin to offer for your service, but—”

“I’m sure you’ll figure out something, good smith,” replied Caius, smiling and bracing the smith’s shoulder. “After all, what is of higher worth than the safety of your family?” 

Dawn sparkled across the thin autumn frost as Lewine carried the day’s buckets of milk from the barn to the house. She paused halfway to lean upon a fence-post, wracked suddenly by a feeling of great nausea, but it was not long before it passed. She harrowed to think she might be falling ill—there was far too much to do at that time in the season and as the strongest and most capable of the house, most of the duties fell to her. 

Lewine waited at the door and called to the farm’s cat, Alis, planning as usual to give her the last of what the buckets held once she had filled the jugs she was to sell. Alis did not heed her beck. Lewine figured she must be chasing the great gathering of birds that had come to the field that morning and went inside. 

“My love, have you seen the cat about?” Lewine called into the cottage, ducking through the doorway. The stone walls were quiet, the only noise from the fire in the hearth. “Anthony?” 

A quick sweep of the inside showed no sign of her husband or her parents where she expected to find them. 

The foul smell of char reached Lewine and she crossed to the hearth where the potatoes Anthony had set to roast had burned. She quickly removed the pot from the hearth before the whole thing went up in flames and narrowly avoided burning herself. Worry sparked in her chest when she saw her husband’s cane in the same place it had been by the table when he had kissed her good morning before she’d gone out to the barn. 

“Anthony? Mother? Father?” she called. Her voice did not carry far in the house, and she was about to try again outside but stopped dead when she turned around. 

Sat across the room on the edge of her and Anthony’s bed was a woman with long unkempt dove-white hair and keen green eyes dressed in a deep blue travelling cloak, having appeared silently all at once. When Lewine saw her face, she choked on her breath. 

“Hello, old friend.”

“Cjiela,” whispered Lewine. Her name had not passed her lips for years. 

“This is a very charming farmhouse,” said Cjiela. “It looks cosy. Is it cosy?” 

“How did you… what are you doing here?” asked Lewine. As discreetly as she could manage, she reached behind her for Anthony’s cane. 

“It’s been such a long time, I thought a visit overdue,” answered Cjiela. “Do you remember when we were young and we talked about building a cottage like this out in the woods, with painted tiles in the garden?” 

“How did you find me?” 

“Did you think that moving away would keep us apart? We promised we would always find one another.” As Cjiela straightened to her feet, her voice sharpened. “Or have you forgotten that as well?” 

A thick quiet filled the room. Lewine gripped the cane tight behind her back as her eyes burned with fearful tears. 

“What have you done to them?” she demanded, her voice weak but desperate. 

“It’s such a lovely life you’ve built in this place, Lewine. I suspect you’re very happy here.”

Lewine nodded, pressing her lips to try and keep her nerve. 

“Do you know where I’ve spent these past years whilst we were separated?” asked Cjiela. Her gentle temper was beginning to unravel. “When those men had their fill of torturing me and found they could not kill me, not for good, I was locked away in a tower, chained with enchanted silver shackles that severed me from my gifts. For years I was alone, surviving on bugs and dew and sometimes not surviving at all, but each time I was brought right back to that horrid place. Not even death could save me. And all that because my dearest friend, my dearest love, reported me as a witch.”

“Cjiela, I beg you believe me, that is not what I wanted—I was scared for you, I thought Caius could help you, could cure you. I thought I was helping you. I never imagined that they would—”

“Seven years,” Cjiela cut in, returning to strained and icy tranquillity. “I spent seven years in that tower, while you fell in love with someone else and made a beautiful home with your family, far away from any memory of me. You abandoned me.” 

“I thought of you every day when you disappeared,” cried Lewine. “They told me they were saving you. I’m so sorry they hurt you, Cjiela.”

“If there is any fault to be had,” said Cjiela, venturing closer, “it is yours.” 

When she was close, Lewine swung the cane at Cjiela’s head with all her might, but Cjiela caught it before it struck her and tore it away. She backed Lewine into a corner and loomed before her, her features slowly shifting in the shadow to something greyer and gaunter, her eyes flashing with a milky sort of fog. 

“You took everything from me,” keened Cjiela, reaching a hand out to thumb at Lewine’s cheek, and for a moment a flash of old fondness haunted her face before twisting into a mask of wild rage. “So now shall I do the same for you. Your husband and parents I have already killed and left out in the field for the birds. I wished to prolong their fear, to hear them each beg as I had begged my torturers, but I couldn’t risk you hearing their cries. And now, there is but one thing left for me to take.”

Lewine’s tears glittered bright in the wisps of sun cast in through the window from the wind chimes that played their delicate song just outside, the chimes Anthony had made her as a wedding gift. 

“Then do it,” she whispered. “Kill me.” 

Cjiela laughed. “I haven’t come to kill you, Lewine,” she said. “For you, that would be a mercy.”

She lowered her hand from Lewine’s cheek to her belly and pressed her palm firmly there. That nausea came back all at once, rising in a deluge of twisting agony. Lewine shrieked in pain and would have collapsed if Cjiela had not held her up, pressing her into the corner. Lewine felt wetness between her legs and saw a bloom of red across the front of her dress.

“I want you to live—live as lonely and empty a life as I. No family, no lover, and no child.” 

Lewine was barely conscious when Cjiela released her, leaving her collapsed and bloodied on the floor. She scarcely heard the final words she gave before she departed:

“I shall wait for you to find me next time.”