Witch Heart

There was once a witch who needed somewhere to hide her heart, for witches must not keep their hearts near - the danger to their lives such closeness would bring is not to be borne.

She looked about long and thought — there were so many places you could hide your heart but they would not do. People were terrified of witches and were always out looking for hidden hearts in order to destroy them.

She would not hide her heart in a swan , a stork, a duck, a redbreast, a pigeon, a seagull; she could not hide her heart in a cannon, a dyke, a lock, a thimble, a doll, a pocket; she didn’t want to hide her heart in a horse, a bulldog, and elephant, a tiger, or a whale; she refused to hide her heart in all sorts of towers, any type of statue, under a root, or at a crossroads; she was too proud to hide her heart in a fallow field, a cracked stone, a blasted tree, a rusted weathervane.

She was in a quandary; a thorough dither as to her course, when one day, walking in her beautiful garden of exotic tempting flowers and various witchy herbs she cocked her one good eye across the brightly painted fence running between her property and that of her neighbors, an unprosperous husbandman and his pretty wife.

“Ah,” said the witch, “I can hide my heart in her.” But not too fast, thought the clever witch. I must study on all the possibilities. She studied, her good eye was very keen, it told her very soon what kind of man the unprosperous husbandman was, of how his failures were in the bottle and the wagercup, of how his hand was heavy against the weak and defenseless against the strong, it told her many things.

“Oh I know you my lovely” she said, for she always called someone my lovely when she saw that they were evil, for the knowledge made her feel so good in the baddest of ways.

Assured in her path she approached the husbandman, she offered him money “My wife!?” he said “My beautiful wife? What should I do without her” But then it was explained that though his wife would killed and her heart removed the witch’s heart being put in its place would revive her; the husbandman’s obligation was to watch over his wife thereafter, and keep her near, so that the witch would always know her heart was safe — and for this he would be richly rewarded.

The next day the witch disguised herself as a poor woman with a basket of crisp red apples and went up and down the street so that the young wife would see her. She went first to all the other houses without success, she went up and down the street looking dejected so that they young wife would see her. She went up and down the street without success and finally she stopped at the house where the young wife was alone, all alone.

“Would you like to buy one of my delicious red apples, my dear? I have been up and down this street all day without success, my dear, they are a very good price to you, if you will be so kind to help a poor old woman out”

The pretty young wife reached for an apple.

“Oh no my dear not that one, this is the best apple for you. The most crisp, cold, delicious and lovely red.”

Immediately she bit the apple the young wife’s vision swam, her eyes clouded, there was a thundering in her ears and she fell in a fluid motion — first at the knees, then the waist, the back and finally her neck, all her body fell forward and turned in a heap.

Immediately after the young wife fell the witch tore off her disguise and produced her sacrificial knife. She removed the young wife’s shirt and dug with the knife under the skin. She dug and cut out the young wife’s still beating heart.

Then the witch got on her knees and claws and placed her mouth over the wound from which the young wife’s heart had been dug and with a snakelike convulsion of her torso and neck she disgorged her own heart into the open wound.

Then the witch got back up and sat cross-legged to stitch the wound back tight with a strong blue-black thread, and after she was done stitching she put the shirt back on the young wife, squirreled the young wife’s heart in her own pockets, and went home whistling a witchy tune.

The young wife, whose name was Mary, awoke shortly thereafter. She stood up and was afraid,; she could not remember anything after biting the apple. What could have happened to her that she forgot, there was blood all over the floor and on her too.

Mary went to her bedroom, to where her only treasure stood, the great polished steel mirror passed to her through her mother from her grandmother. She disrobed and washed the blood off her white skin and then she saw to her horror, beneath her breast, a small cruel jagged smile of blue black thread, newly stitched over where her heart beat strongly against the blushing skin.

The witch went home whistling a witchy tune, she took Mary’s heart from her pocket, she turned it curiously back and forth in her clawy fingers and then crushed it to powder which she sprinkled over her herb garden.

Mary nearly fainted when she saw that beneath her breast a cut had been made and then stitched together again, she had suspicions, that her good nature regretted at once, against the poor old woman and her apple the both of whom had so mysteriously disappeared along with a part of her memory.

But even with this terror of the unknown and unexplained she knew she had too much work to worry over the past, there was blood all over in the entrance to the house, her husband should soon be home and would naturally be infuriated if it were bloodied and unkempt.

The unprosperous husbandman when he came home was curious, had the witch come and done her evil? He would have to be cunning, he told himself, to find out “So Mary” said he “how has your day been?”

“Why, fine as always”

Her face was so white and evenly composed that the unprosperous husbandman cursed inwardly, but then he thought she might well have had time to study her lies waiting for him and conceal any fears or doubts beneath blandness, so he asked another question “What, has no one stopped by all day, no one selling anything?”

“No one, good husband” Her face was white and unruffled by the question, he knew she would not want to admit buying anything, not even a single apple when they were so very poor, for if she did he should beat her. He felt himself growing rather warm with the frustration that he could not trick her to an admission “Are you trying to make a fool of me!?”

“What do you mean?” Asked Mary, afraid that he had talked with one of the neighbors and knew she had spent what little money they had on an apple from a poor old beggar woman.

The unprosperous husbandman jumped up and went for her, her struggles were mainly to cover herself from his cruel blows.

His blows were very cruel this time. A stupid man he still knew how and where to hit so that it hurt but did not bruise nor deform. He especially did no5 want to bruise nor deform his beautiful wife for then her use for him and his pleasures would be halved.

Struggling he ripped the shirt in two that covered her body and saw in the moment to his satisfaction what he looked for, a jagged line of stitching over where the witch’s heart beat and made Mary’s skin burn. “Well then” said the unprosperous husbandman “there’s enough of that for the night, let’s off to bed with you and remember who rules in this house.”

Then they went off to bed, Mary covering herself with her hands that the stitches were not visible and wondering if her husband had marked them, her husband with a cruel jagged little smile playing across his otherwise blocky face for he knew the witch had done her evil and thus it was sure to follow with gold on him.

Lying together in their narrow bed, so dark they could not see each other’s faces Mary felt her husband’s squat thumb and blocky fingers fumble across the stitching over where the heart beat.

“He knows, he knows” she thought “He knows what happened to me today. How does he know, but how? “ His flat short thumb and fingers petting that stitching which marred her white skin was the most frightening of all she’d felt that day.

The witch went to bed in her musky candlelit room and drew the thick soft coverlets over her heartless body and then lay her long elegant fingers pointed footwards on the velvet quilling and she slept.

The next morning, before her husband was fully awake, Mary jumped from the bed and ran to the great steel mirror to examine her naked body. As always there were no bruises from her husband’s mishandling but still beneath her left breast lay the blue-black evidence of missing memory.

“So it wasn’t a lie, a dream” she thought “it wasn’t, the mirror tells always the cold truths. .

“Come now,. Mary, make us some breakfast and quit your preening. You’re pretty enough for my needs.

In the following days the fear that oppressed her mind grew, all sorts of terrors and suspicions attended her waking or stalked through her dreams.

There was not one of her neighbors she could trust. Hadn’t they all been leagued with the crafty old peddler woman? Especially she developed an aversion to the lady whose house abutted theirs; whose exotic flowers bloomed and whose herb garden smelled bewitching through the windows. It seemed that whenever Mary went out in her own garden the neighbor was in hers and standing so close, with only the bright fence for separation, made the heart beneath Mary’s breast beat like a runner’s. And how the lady cast glances her way and smiled made Mary to shiver, she felt there was an enemy’s look if ever.

Though she dared not say to her husband all she suspicioned for the punishments such forthright speaking would bring she hinted her disquiet.

“Perhaps we could sell this house and move somewhere else?” she inquired.

“What are you trying to do, ruin me? I finally have me a good situation and you want me to just up and ditch it to satisfy your womanly whims!”

It was true, the unprosperous husbandman had come into a good situation of some sort although his habits had not changed and although he still went out late in the morning, gambled and drank all day and came home without a penny strangely enough he could afford to the same the next day and the next and so on whereas before his bouts of riotous living had perforce been broken by short intervals of employment now it was as if he’d found a well full of an ever-replenished supply of gold, and as if every day he went forth and filled his pockets at the well. Still this good situation was not reflected at home, there was no more money than before; no there was less, the housekeeping budget slowed to a trickle and the unprosperous husbandman ate more often at the local houses yet complained when he came home if the meal was not to his standards and called his wife, with a particular sneer “heartless woman” for that she did not care for him to the extent his new position required.

Often enough this insult to his standing was answered with a beating, a ripping of clothes, a nearly open inspection of the scar beneath her breast and the statement of its being bedtime.

“What is going on?” thought Mary “And why?”

One morning the unprosperous husbandman woke before his wife, he pulled the covers slightly down from her still sleeping figure and grinned at the scar like a conspirator. He got up and dressed and as quietly as he could left their bedroom.

She opened her eyes, jumped from the bed and threw a rough gown on. Stepped into the two black slippers she’d readied by the door and with her heart pounding like a conspirator’s she left the room.

She left the house cautiously, following the unprosperous husbandman as he strutted the street running left from their door; his cane gesturing extravagantly through the air at his leg’s extension, its ferruled point tacking sharp on the pavement to punctuate his striking foot before rising again, composing in the air a new fanciful dance apace with his cocky stride.

He turned left at the corner, he circled the block and at the street that mirrored theirs, at the back entrance of the woman’s house that abutted theirs he stopped, glanced nervously about, but could not spot his wife hidden in a mass of vines grown over the dully painted fence that defined their neighbor’s property line along the mirroring street.

Nailed on the post of the dully painted fence was a stone in the shape of a man’s inverted heart, he struck a-rhythmically on this stone with the knobbly end of his walking stick three times and the witch came out of her house.

The witch came out of her house, her hair was like a bed of black needles, her skin the pallor of the whitest corpse, her lips the red of sacrifices at midnight.

“Witch, witch” said the husbandman “Give me money, give me gold for I know what you would not have told”

‘“Mortal man, if I truly feared your tongue I would have cut it long ago and ate it at the half-moon glower, but I have pledged and pledges I pay, gold you shall have and on they way “saying which she pressed coins into his palm, golden coins and she laughed with turning back in her house the log blue nails of her hands glinting like strange gems.

The husbandman went on his way, and his hiding wife could hear the fattened purse that slapped against his thigh when he walked and rang like evil laughter.

Mary ran home, the heart in her chest was beating like a madman at a weak door as if to break it “Evil, evil, evil” said she “Badness, badness, badness” Though she could not grasp its meaning she battled aside the cobwebbed malevolence that clung about her thoughts. She must escape, she would escape; she knew not what she must escape.

Great fear never spurs resolve, but grows ignorant wings instead an so for Mary a flight that should have been minutes was hours of vain fluttering and caged cries about her house, continual going to the windows of her kitchen that saw out upon the witch’s house, the witch’s garden, and the witch, there, elegantly dressed and pruning weeds, seeming to see in through that very window at her fearful captive, amused with poisonous secret knowledge.

And for this reason Mary did not come from her house, and the heart seemed to beat a terror beneath her breast, as though to rend the mortal cloth. And Mary to the beat of her heart’s terror ran relentless without accomplishment, gathering the worthless accouterments of escape, impossible escape.

Such escape is never coming, it always shows its absence of plan and transparent goal. When thus her husbandman, prosperous with drink money, came home, it was an argument of disarray outraged his drunken eyes and the argument was in effect one against his pursestrings and his prosperity — that his wife would betray him, and steal from him the witch’s heart on which his wealth depended, and with great wrath at this threat of unearned poverty his hand went to the silver-handled dagger he carried, an assertion of his new riches and their privilege.

What defense had she, who could not ward his fists, from the steel he now thrust brutally at her panting breast, tearing at her homespun bodice, tearing at the white scarified flesh, tearing and piercing finally at the heart that moved beneath the inexorable point like a panther, speared.

There was no defense, the unprosperous husbandman with the violence of long training and deep drinking fell on his wife and drove the dagger, like a spear on the quarry and the heart within her was pinned; it was pinned, it struggled, and stopped.

By the Eastern wall of Ravenhölme that day was seen a rook, flying from somewhere within the city, away, and carrying in its beak a shape the watchmen cried out at, and that seemed to answer and mock their cries with a voice much like a woman’s.

This story was written by IG Agent 71 and is one of the stories in the forthcoming collection of stories from Phantaz.