by Jessica E. Kaiser
The story has been stolen from me.
Stolen like the life of my mother and mutilated like the feet of my beloved sister. Minstrels sing it. Sometimes, a woman haggling over the price of squash will mention it. Once, a little girl told me that when she grew up, it would be her story. Everyone knows it, and yet no one does.
You want to know what it was before it was twisted out of my grasp and into a different form? Child, everyone knows the story, and what I tell you will make no difference to them. The lovely stories are the ones that people remember. But come, sit by me. Sit here, next to the fire, and I will tell you my tale, for it makes no difference to them, but it does to me.
Before the theft, the story began in a place far from this place of flat land and grain. The forest was my home when I was a child. Dark green and damp brown, with narrow pathways between the towering oaks, the forest was my playground. Just barely, I remember a time when I wandered alone amidst the gloom while my mother tended her garden. Then came Gerthe, my sister and best friend. Hand in hand, we played in the woods. We created elaborate games, ones with rules that only the two of us could understand, and when Mother asked what it was that we did in the forest all day, we would giggle.
Our little cottage, nestled almost under the trees, was far from the village, but we received quite a lot of visitors. What Mother grew, in the tidy little garden sheltered by the forest, was witchweed.
Witchweed was rare then and is even more so now. It is a contradiction in itself. A plant called a weed that is nearly impossible to grow. While the plant lives, witches cannot approach. The witch I saw walk closest to it was still more than a dozen yards away when she collapsed to the ground unconscious.
Dead and dried, witchweed enhances a witch's spells far beyond any level she could hope to achieve with her own power.
Gerthe and I ignored the merchants, and they in turn ignored us. They came and they haggled with Mother and then eventually they went away with their potted plants and their crumbling leaves. Went away to sell witches' bane to country folk who still hung iron over their doors to ward away the faeries. Went away to sell witches' hope to city folk who thought magic was a useful tool. Meanwhile, Gerthe and I played in our forest, and never thought about a father, not when the three of us--Mother, Gerthe, and I--looked so very much alike we were simply younger copies of her.
Then he came.
When the bay horse drawing his wagon trotted into the yard, we thought he was a merchant just like all the others. He stepped down from the seat and began speaking with Mother. Gerthe and I withdrew into our forest then. Neither of us was very comfortable in the company of other people.
His name was Durren Westwillow. I learned this when Mother explained to us that she would be marrying him. Marrying Durren She would be Mistress Analiese Westwillow, she told us. I think then was the first time in my life, at the age of twelve, that I heard my mother's first name.
"What is marriage?" I asked her.
When the merchants came, Gerthe and I vanished into our forest. Mother occasionally went into the village, but neither of us ever went with her. The men who came, they were always alone, and the occasional woman, whether witch or wisewoman, was never accompanied by a man. She laughed, and ruffled my hair. Durren was outside, and did not hear. I smiled at her laugh, and said again, "What is marriage?"