by Deirdra Eden
“You’re engaged?” I asked. These were dangerous questions, but Hazella seemed to be giving information freely.
Hazella shook her head. “Not yet, but once I gets my young, powerful human body, I’ll be stronger than even the Shadow Lords.”
Bright winter light shone through the window and reflected off the shelf of dusty jars like a rainbow chandelier. Snow blanketed the ground and blocked the roads to the villages.
“There didn’t use ta be this much snow in England,” Hazella complained. “Erebus be stealin’ the heat of the earth to forge weapons for his army. You’ll see. They be commin’ soon, and I won’t be standin’ in their way.”
I huddled in my bed of straw behind the stack of firewood. My frosty breath billowed into the air as I pulled a thin blanket around my head. I didn’t understand a word of Hazella’s disturbed statement. I wish I understood how crazy people’s minds work, without having to go crazy myself.
I peered through a gap in the woodpile. Hazella sat next to the fireplace and stared at the flames while playing with a gold coin in her hand. I let out a long sigh. I hated winter. Not only was it cold, but Hazella never left the cottage. I was stuck in the same room with her until the snow melted.
The hag fingered her old ruby necklace. “Just a little more time,” she murmured. She stood and dropped the gold coin in a bag, then stuffed the bag into a box hidden inside the fireplace mantel.
I pulled the blanket tight under my neck. There was nothing special about the necklace. Hazella probably stole it off a dead person. She had a habit of robbing from graves.
I watched the shapes of my warm breath float into the chilly air. It was pathetic entertainment—but my only means to fight the monotony of winter.
A loud snort echoed through the cottage, followed by a heavy snore. I peered over the woodpile. The old woman finally fell asleep.
Hazella’s book lay open on the table. My heart raced. I had to see inside. I couldn’t read, but the pictures were in vivid color. I wanted to admire the art before Hazella destroyed the book to hide the secrets within.
I focused on the book and crept toward the table. My adventurous heart pounded. I placed my hands on the book. My fingers traced the scrolling art of thick brush strokes. Hazella snorted and stirred. I held my breath. The old woman rolled over and snored again. I exhaled, then turned the page.
I sighed and wondered what knowledge the book contained as I turned the thick yellowing pages. I lifted the last page and caught my breath. An image of the ruby necklace stared at me from the parchment. Its rich beauty seemed out of place among the images of herbs and animal parts.
Cold fingernails clamped onto my neck. My hands shot off the book like it was a poisonous serpent. My teeth snapped together. Hazella was going to kill me. I just knew it.
Hazella didn’t say a word before she tossed me out into the deep forest snow and slammed the door shut.
The white world momentarily blinded me. I put my hands to my eyes. I jumped to my feet and pounded on the door. “Let me in!” I screamed.
Hazella ignored me and drew the curtains.
I knew it. She was feeding me to the wolves.
Trickles of warm blood ran down my neck where her nails had stabbed into me. The wind blew through my thin nightgown, chilling my skin. Every snowflake under my feet felt like needles pricking my red toes. I ran in place, lifting my aching feet from the frozen ground. The snow under me hardened. I slipped and fell onto the sharp ice.
“Ugh!” I cried out. Blood beaded on my scraped knees. Now, I was mad. I threw my fists into the snow and pounded at the ground. Even though I was hurt, I should’ve run away last summer.
I buried my face in my hands and cried. I hated feeling sorry for myself. I had been strong for so long. Now, repressed emotions of fear and anger surfaced. “I don’t belong here. I don’t deserve to die like this!” I wiped my face on the edge of my nightgown.
Through hot tears, I watched the winter world melt away. Warm mud plastered my legs and feet. Steam rose from the mud and surrounded me in a blanket of wet fog.
“What’s happening?” I grasped a handful of autumn leaves, which had fallen before the winter snow buried them. In my hands, the leaves smoldered and burst into flames.
Golden flames billowed up my arms and danced in shimmering waves off my skin. I was on fire! My shriek echoed off the hills and the dead trees as surreal terror consumed me like the fire.
The mud on my legs dried to hard baked clay and flaked off onto the ground. I tried to run. The snow sizzled around me and melted into streams of water with every step I took. I swatted at the calming fire enveloping me like a warm bath. I brushed the last of the flames from my hands and arms. I expected to see burned flesh, but my milky white skin glistened like the snow. I was warm, but not charred and, somehow, the scrapes on my knees and neck had healed.
I held my hands up and searched each finger one by one.
There was something wrong with me. Fire had spewed from my hands, and I wasn’t burnt. If the superstitious witch knew what happened, she would suspect demonic power. “What sort of creature am I?” My hoarse whisper was thick with dread.
I shoveled snow over the warm ground to hide the evidence of my fiery outburst. My red fingers and toes ached for warmth again. How I wished for a cloak. The deep winter snow covered my feet and frost coated my eyelashes. I bit my lip and tucked my fingers under my arms next to my ribs. What if I didn’t have to suffer? What if I could summon a little fire, just to keep my fingers and toes from freezing? The cottage curtains were still drawn. I pressed my ear to the door. Hazella snored deeply.
No one cared about me. If I was going to survive I would have to look after myself. I stiffened my lip and clenched my hands until my knuckles turned white. “I’ll show her. I’m going to live!”
I grasped a fistful of leaves. Flames burst to life and danced in my hands. This wasn’t normal. Fire was supposed to destroy whatever it touched—not heal. The flames skittered up my arms in showers of golden sparks. I tightened my jaw. What if I really was a witch like Hazella? What if Hazella was right and we were sisters of power?
My breath quickened. No. No matter what I was, I would never be like Hazella. I had to keep this power a secret until I discovered what was wrong with me.
The wood slab barricading the door scraped open. I dispersed the flames, checked for any traces of ash, and faked a shiver. The door swung open.
I slumped my shoulders, keeping my arms around myself, and I hobbled inside toward my bed. I didn’t dare turn and look at the witch for fear my expression would betray my secret. I leaped behind the woodpile onto the straw and threw the blanket around my shoulders.
Hazella pulled a red hot knife from the fire and demanded, “Give me yer frozen feet.”
The old witch kept a jar of black fingers and toes on her shelf of potion ingredients. The jar was empty now, and obviously, she planned on harvesting more from me. I screamed and tucked my feet under my body.
Hazella snatched my right leg.
“No!” I shrieked and jerked away.
Hazella grabbed me and wrestled me to the ground.
I kicked and writhed. The heat of the knife brushed my leg as Hazella gripped my foot. “No!” I sobbed.
The witch released my leg. I pushed myself into the dark corner, tucked my knees to my chest, and covered my toes with my straining hands. Warm tears rolled down my cheeks and hit the dirt floor. “Please,” I begged, “don’t cut my toes off.”
Hazella pointed the red knife at me. “Yer toes aren’t frozen. How’d ye stay warm, girl?”
I wiped my face on my sleeve and thought fast. “Chimney,” I muttered.
“Yer lyin’.” Hazella dropped the knife in a bucket of water. The water sizzled as the knife landed with a thud at the bottom. Hazella raised one eyebrow, distorting her already hideous features. She leaned close and sniffed the air.
I quietly tested the air too, but could only smell Hazella’s bad
breath.
“Yer not covered in ash, but yer smellin’ like smoke,” Hazella mumbled. She kicked the bucket of water and turned the dirt floor into mud.
I repressed a smile that would’ve landed me back out in the cold. Adrenaline rushed through my veins, and my skin grew hot. I pressed my palms together to keep the fire of triumph from erupting out of my hands. I had finally gained a victory over Hazella.
A gust of spring air whirled through the underground cottage, distorting the firelight. Hazella entered and slammed the door. Loose debris showered down between the beams of dirt ceiling. The insane woman bounced across the room in a dance, happily singing. Her shrill voice sounded like a bag of feral cats.
I gripped the edge of the pot and soapy scrub brush. Hazella hadn’t noticed me. Usually, she glowered over me or wandered in and out of her secret back room, making snide comments about my work in passing. This time, she hung her bag on a peg protruding from the wall above the fireplace.
The bag flopped back and forth on the peg. Whatever poor creature Hazella had caught struggled for life and shrieked like a teapot about to boil over. Images of frogs, dragonflies, and squirrels trapped in that bag came to my mind. Hazella always caught those types of creatures, but she never built cages for them. She usually killed them, or chopped off their legs so they couldn’t run away.
Hazella chanted inaudible words in a melodic rhythm as she gathered sticks, spider webs, and Shadow Wolf fur from her collection of ingredients. Hazella made a stick frame and meticulously weaved the spider’s silk and wolf fur into a tight net around the box frame to make a cage.
The old witch put food and water in tiny thimbles and set them in the cage. She was feeding it. Whatever it was, she wanted it to live.
Hazella snatched the bag from the wall and shook it. “Quiet, you!” she said to the creature. Hazella eyed me. I quickly looked away and pretended not to care.
I couldn’t understand. Why did she want this particular creature to live? For that matter, why was she still keeping me alive? There had to be a reason Hazella wasn’t following her usual pattern of capture and kill.
The witch covered the cage with a rag to hide the creature from view. “I must leave quickly. Time be runnin’ out.” Hazella grabbed her bag and set a knife and glass vial on the table. “Girl, fill this now!”
I knew exactly what that meant. I clenched my teeth together, took the knife, and pierced the skin on the palm of my hand. I pressed around the wound to make the blood flow into the vial.
Hazella scowled. “Don’t be selfish!” She reached for the knife. I grabbed it before she could and made the cut a hair deeper to increase the flow.
Hazella snatched the filled vial, put it in her bag, and prepared to leave while I bandaged my hand. She wouldn’t say what for, but every week, she left the cottage with a vial of my blood, but this was the last time she would harvest anything from me.
I gasped under my breath, “Harvest.” That was the only reason Hazella kept anything alive. I glanced at the rag-covered cage. What was she harvesting from the poor creature?
Hazella pointed to the door. “Ye keep outta the cottage while I be gone. Ye hear now?”
I nodded, trying to look innocent and somber. Every cell in my body raced with adrenaline as I walked out the door. This was it. Not only would I escape, but I would liberate the creature in the cage as well. The strange fire that had enveloped me last winter had made my legs even stronger than before the wolf attack.
I picked up the axe, the one I would take to protect myself from the wolves, and I started chopping wood for the fireplace outside the cottage. Usually, Hazella forced me to stay in the cottage while she was gone. Obviously, this time she didn’t trust me alone with the new creature.
Hazella hobbled down the path toward the villages with her bag of potions and my blood over her shoulder.
I pretended to do my chores and chopped wood until she was out of sight, then bounded to the edge of the clearing and watched Hazella amble around the bend. She was finally gone. I raced to the cottage, threw open the door, and dashed to the larder. I grabbed a few handfuls of bread and stuffed them into a bedroll.
I approached the cage and slowed my pace so I wouldn’t startle the poor critter Hazella had caught. I lifted the cloth from the creature’s cage.
Glittering silver light scattered across the tabletop.
A strange, but beautiful, creature looked at me with big azure eyes and pleaded, “Help Cassi! Please help poor Cassi!” Her voice chimed like bells.
I covered my mouth and stared at the tiny, winged girl. Her skin shimmered and antennae crowned her head of untamed, dark curls.
“What sort of creature are you?” I knelt beside the cage to get a better look at her. The angelic being put her hands on her hips and shook her head. “Cassi be pixie, of course! Do not you know pixie when you see one?”
“No, I’m sorry. I’ve never seen a pixie before.”
Cassi danced lithely toward me and grinned. “I Cassi, and you?”
“Auriella,” I whispered. “I’m going to get you out of here.”
Cassi nodded. “Auriella save Cassi from mean old witch?”
I blinked twice. It felt good to actually hear my name after being called “girl” for almost an entire year.
Though the pixie smiled, her face looked tired, and her wings drooped behind her back. If I had wings, I would have flown away from this place a long time ago.
“How did Hazella capture you?”
Cassi took a deep breath, and I could tell it was going to be a long story. “Cassi swimming with fish friends. Fish friends to Cassi. It’s fairy treaty with water world. And Cassi splashing, and Cassi has no magic when wet and …”
“Hazella trapped you,” I said, cutting Cassi’s story short. I longed for the conversation, but there wasn’t much time to escape.
“Yes.” Cassi looked amazed that I knew how the story ended.
I leaned over the cage. “No door?”
Cassi shrugged her shoulders. Her wings glistened in the dim light from the fire, now burned to glowing coals. “If Cassi touch cage, spiders come.”
I sighed. “Just because the cage is made of spiders’ webbing doesn’t mean spiders will come.”
Cassi didn’t look convinced.
“I wonder if there’s a hidden door.” I picked up the cage. Paralyzing images of hungry Shadow Wolves invaded my mind. They brushed against me and snarled. The alpha wolf stood in the corner of the room and eyed me with inhuman hunger. I lunged back and dropped the cage on the table. The mirage faded as soon as my fingers broke contact with the web and fur mesh surrounding the pixie prison. I scrambled to my feet, frantically searching the room for the Shadow Wolf. “Did you see that?” my voice quivered.
Cassi looked around the room and raised one eyebrow. “See what?”
I stared at the web and fur. “It’s a magic cage,” I realized out loud.
Cassi bowed her head. “Mean old witch trap Cassi in scary cage.”
I knelt and rested my chin on the tabletop. “Don’t worry, Cassi. We’ll find a way to get you out.”
“Let’s go now!” Cassi shook the stick frame and rattled the cage.
“Hazella is crazy, but not an idiot. Something awful might happen if we try to leave the cottage with you still inside the enchanted cage. We’ve got to find a way to open it or break the spell.” I pressed on the edges of the stick frame, careful to avoid the web and fur mesh. “I wonder if it’s some sort of puzzle.”
The hours passed as I picked and prodded at the enchanted cage.
A tuneless song buzzed through the woods. I raced to the dusty window and peered outside. Hazella meandered along the path and stopped on occasion to add a plant or mushroom to her bag.
“She’s coming,” I whispered.
Cassi cowered in the corner of the unopened cage.
“When she leaves again, we will get you out,” I promised and tossed the rag over the cage. I shoved the bread b
ack into the cupboard, tucked the bedroll behind the firewood, and dashed to the door.
I fled outside to the small garden and picked at some weeds. What if Hazella hid a key somewhere? Or maybe I needed to recite a riddle to get the cage to open? Hazella loved riddles. Everything she said and did was a riddle to me.
Hazella stood over me.
I burst out, in the best whining voice I could muster, “I’m so hungry. You didn’t leave me any food, and I couldn’t go into the cottage. Can I please eat something now?”
