The Witch and the Way
First, she’d have to pick out all the bones.
It was the Way her mother had taught her, old rituals akin to magic. The Way scared Mother Superior and Sister Dear, though the witch suspected her young fellow novitiate had more of the Way in her than she ever would God. The witch had seen Sister Dear’s empty eyes as she lifted them to the cross during silent prayer, how her fingers lingered on her own body as she stripped off her habit, the sensuous movements like those of a snake shedding its skin. There was a time years ago when the witch might have caught Sister Dear’s hand on their daily walk and pulled her into the trees, covered her eyes and told her to listen to how they sang. Taken a stick and turned over the soil, turned up the maggots and worms who fed on flesh and made the soil rich and ready for planting. Brushed a thumb over her lips and shown her how false her God was that He had to make his Word flesh when the Way has always been present there.
But the witch had been threatened with burning before, and she knew better than to make herself known.
Sister Dear watched now as the witch kneeled in the ashes on the pretense of cleaning up a spilled pot of beans. It wasn’t a lie, not in the slightest, and the witch had made herself enough of a klutz these past few weeks that when she overturned the pot into the flames, Mother Superior had only sighed and told Sister Dear to assist the cleanup. The other novitiates filed out, the draping sleeves of their habits held over their noses as a damp smoke billowed from the fire’s remains. The witch settled herself amongst the spreading damp, and Sister Dear threw herself into a nearby chair and dropped her cheek into her hand.
“You’d best hurry up,” she said, “else we’ll miss the archbishop.”
The witch held her tongue, reminding herself she neither needed nor wanted another’s help. This way, Sister Dear would not see her separate the beans from the bones she’d let fall from her sleeve, bird and rat bones she’d been collecting for the past week ever since the archbishop had been announced. She’d have preferred more time, as it does not do well to rush the Way, but she’d prepared more complex spells under more pressure and with less time.
The successes and failures of those previous attempts mattered not in this moment. The bones she plucked from the steaming ashes were no longer sun-bleached white but sooty black. She would rinse them one more time — carefully, with damp fingertips and a tender touch — and that washing would leave behind the soot that had settled itself into the ridges of the bones, veining them with the secrets the Way always leaves behind.
From her place at the table, Sister Dear blew out a sigh like a horse.
“I will not be much longer,” said the witch. She dropped several beans into the pot beside her. The bones disappeared into her sleeve once more.
“You’re better off just sweeping up the whole mess,” said Sister Dear. “There will always be other beans.”
Sister Dear spoke like a spoiled child. The novitiates were not to tell of their lives before the convent, but the witch knew the stench of money that wafted from Sister Dear’s every pore. She may never have been truly wealthy, but she’d known enough comfort to expect an endless supply of food. The witch turned and glanced at Sister Dear beneath modestly lowered eyelashes, and the face she saw in the sun’s dying light was another’s, one the witch had known long ago. Lovely like Sister Dear, and seeing the Way as a pretty pet until it bit her hand and made her bleed. The witch hardened her heart against Sister Dear’s rosy cheeks and turned back to the ashes.
There was another loud sigh. It struck the witch then how dainty it still was, the deliberation behind its messy finish. The witch wondered whom Sister Dear had perfected it for. The gentlemen who chased her, charmed by her pretty face and even more so by her inelegant attempts to discourage them? The father who doted on her yet found himself disenchanted with his daughter’s wayward rebellion? The village boy she’d truly loved who took her as she was, and she found herself taken with, and whose arms the patriarchs found her in once they’d decided enough was enough?
The witch shook those thoughts from her head. It was not her place to speculate on such matters. She realized she’d been rubbing her thumb along the side of a bird’s hollow bone, and she looked to see that the soot had come off on her hand, revealing a ridge better suited for a love reading than for what she’d intended the archbishop. The witch sighed, quiet enough that Sister Dear would not hear, and tucked the bone into her sleeve.
After another moment of sifting through the ashes, she grasped at the mantel and hauled herself to her feet. “I’ll take the pot,” said Sister Dear. She’d moved like a sudden breeze. The smell of lavender fell from her habit, and the witch wondered how she’d snuck in the perfume. “And you can scrub up this soot so Mother Superior doesn’t have both our heads.” She picked up the pot and blew from the room, leaving behind a silence that weighed on the witch’s hunched shoulders.
She stared down at the ashes. Most of the mess was confined to the fireplace, but there were some dark, spreading stains on the stone beyond. The Way would have her clean up behind herself, leave not a trace, but then the bell was tolling above the chapel and she needed to be gone. The bones thrummed with potency, ready to be unleashed once she’d cleansed them to reveal the Way. The witch stared at the door through which Sister Dear had vanished, the lavender smell still on the air.
The witch shuddered once, then turned the other way and fled toward the river.
