Witch

• Alison Jones, Grade 10, Shoalhaven High
• Short Story
• 2001

Finalist in the 'Zapped! 2001' competition

They were coming, she could hear them, see their burning torches through the front window. She didn’t have long, she must hurry and finish the spell, and once they got here she would be taken to the Town Square and burnt.
She threw in the tacastry and began the incantation.
‘Pik yi mukyl intapa cori. Goddess of life I envoke thee.”
She hurried through the rest of the incantation. She finished as she heard the crash of the front door being broken in. They burst into the room just as she muttered the spell to make her cupboard transparent. The angry mob grabbed her and dragged her from her home.
These people had no mercy, they were frightened. In Tabitha’s 18 years she had learned people were usually scared of what was different and always scared of what other people feared.
Tabitha was blindfolded and slung over the back of a horse, she could feel a strong but apprehensive hand on her waist making sure she didn’t slip off and escape. She could feel her skirt snagging on the branches.
The scratching of the branches stopped and the sound of the horse’s hooves clop, clop, clopping on the ground changed to a clip, clip, Clip. The horse she was held to stopped and the hand on her waist tightened. She was pulled from the horse and bound to a hard, cold post on a platform that was raised above dried leaves and branches ready to burn.
The blindfold was not removed, Tabitha knew why. The peasants believed she could channel witchcraft through her eyes. It amused her to know the daft bats were so scared of her they couldn’t think straight, because if they could they would have gagged her so she could not say an incantation.
She felt the heat rise as the flames began to lick her tattered skirt and the cry went up.
“Burn witch, burn. Let your evil no longer dwell in our village.”
Tabitha waited feeling the heat become more intense but never scorching her skin. She muttered a quick spell under her breath and the blindfold fell from her eyes into the lapping flames. This worried them a little but they decided since she was already tied to a burning pole, there wasn’t much she could do. Fools, maybe being scared senseless makes you lose track of time, but the idiots hadn’t realized she had been tied to a burning stake for almost 10 minutes, and though the flames were now up to her waist she was calm and unburned.
Then she said it, the last word to the incantation she had begun just before they stormed her house.
“Kiramatpuklia”
There was a loud bang, for people who called themselves witch hunters they didn’t look very used to seeing a witch. She had one last glance at their terrified faces contorted with fear before she was pulled through the layvan tunnel and was quite comfortably living in the 19th century.