Waiting for the Witch
The abandoned warehouse reeked of death, and there were animal carcasses in various stages of decay lying here and there. Most were skeletons, with just a bit of rotting flesh stretched over the bones. I wasn't sure what kind of creatures they had been in life, but I assumed they were deer. Or maybe large dogs. You would have thought that there'd be lots of flies around such a place, but there were none.
In my dream, I walked in this same area, and I lay down on the broken concrete, which had yellowish stains and was littered with bones, and I rolled in the rotting filth so that I smelled of death. That way the witch would whisk past me without killing me. But I could never do in the waking world what I did in dreams. Here and now, I hardly wanted to breathe. The stench would go in, and I felt that I needed to swallow, but didn't want to. You swallow, and the smell seems to go down in you, and is then incorporated in your system. Still, I wasn't going to let a little discomfort discourage me from meeting the witch.
The first time I saw her, she was sitting alone on the stump of a tree near the edge of the orchard. It was past midnight, and there was a low fog, near the ground, and when I got near her, she said, "I want the snow-white dog..." I sat next to her and saw that she was looking far in the distance. Squinting in the direction she was looking, I saw a very large white dog far away, so large I almost could have thought it was a horse.
"I want the snow-white dog," she said again, and it occurred to me that perhaps she was deep in a trance or something, and was not even aware that I was sitting next to her. "The snow-white dog has lots of warm blood," she said, breathing in very deeply. You could clearly see the abandoned warehouse from where we sat, and you could almost smell the bones, but not quite.
"Blood?" I asked. She turned on me, with a murderous look in her eye. If I hadn't known she was a witch, I knew now. I sensed that I had gone completely white, and that she knew I was about to faint from fear. "Yes, blood," she said, and touched my forehead with a long, ice-cold fingernail. Immediately a warm trickle of blood rolled down my face. I don't know what perverse impulse possessed me, but I licked my lips, and just as I did so, the blood dripped onto my tongue. The witch continued to stare at me with a fierce expression, but suddenly couldn't suppress a smile, and said, "Good, isn't it?"
I smiled back and had a spark of hope that I wasn't going to die as I sat there. She reached over and grasped my hand with an extremely powerful grip. "You're going to have to come with me," she said. "I need a new apprentice." I stared at her, thinking my life was never going to be the same, and I was somehow thrilled about it. She pulled me along and crouched in the shadow of the stump. I crouched next to her. She produced a container of salve and said,
"Rub this on your thighs, we need to get out of here."
I did as she told me, and handed back the container. I started to wonder what she meant, but I soon felt a strange tingling in my legs. Then the tingling was duplicated in my head as sounds. As I listened to the tingling, I noticed we were far above the field where the white dog was. The wind was blowing fiercely in our faces at that altitude, and the tears were just streaming out.
The witch said "Shhh!" and we were hiding behind a group of trees near the field where the white dog was running. It appeared to be coming near us. "It looks more like a horse to me," I said, and the witch hauled off and slapped me across the face with a backhand. It was a horse. As it got nearer, I could see it was a very strange looking horse, with a braided mane. The witch dashed out from behind the tree and grabbed the horse's bridle, laughing to herself. Then she had me get on the horse and she started walking, guiding it into the forest. Feeling exhausted, I lay my head on the horse's neck, and almost immediately fell asleep.
I woke about an hour later, just as we arrived at the witch's house. She tied up the horse and helped me down. We patted the horse for a while, then began getting it some food and water. As the horse was eating, the witch calmly extracted about two pints of blood from a careful incision on its haunch. The witch carefully closed the wound and rubbed some herbs on it. After the horse was finished eating, the witch untied it, spoke gently in its ear, and then patted it on the flank, and it set off again in the direction it had come. "Won't it get lost?" I said. "Horses never get lost," the witch replied, "They trace back every single step on a return journey." Now that the horse was gone, I asked, "How will I get back?"
"Back to what?" the witch said. "When you're captured by a witch, it's best for everyone if you just stay the course."
"What will I do?"
"You will give up your old life, and the fairy tales they force-fed you from a young age. You will pray to a new god, one who is not afraid of the human consciousness. A god who will not set rules and limitations, but instead, release the mind from all bonds and boundaries. Finally, if you succeed, you will discover your instincts."
"And then?"
"Then my work will be done. You won't need me anymore. You'll be free to go. Or stay. At that point, you may begin to live as nature intended."
"Is there such an intention?"
"Oh yes. Though it is impossible to see in this world full of falseness, for all but a few. And they are thought to be insane."
"But I love this world," I said, "I love the houses, and the barns, and the woods and the orchards. And I love books and stories, and when the teachers seem to care about children."
"What about the unfairness of it all? Is it fair that you should have to work as a servant to others more wealthy?"
"No, it isn't fair, but I still love this place, this world."
"You think of leaving it, though..."
"Yes. I think of running away with you when I see you dashing behind the trees."
"If you can hold on to your love of these things, even after the falseness overcomes you like a breaking wave, perhaps you won't have to come to me. In the future, you will not live in a green place like this. As a woman, you will wander through the wastelands of cities, and you will see great wealth, side by side with abject poverty, and you will see it through the eyes of one who is poor. And how you will feel, then! The pain, the frustration, the injustice, will swirl in you as the filth and trash swirl in the dirty streets. Then it will be the easiest thing in the world to forget all this. And if you forget, a darkness will settle all around you, and you will feel that you don't know how to get out. At your lowest point, they will count on you to fall back on the lies they fed you in Sunday school. But, will you promise? Think back, years from now, and remember that someone who cared for you told you to follow your instincts. Will you promise? Will you please try to remember?"
"Yes. I promise. I mean, I will try to remember," I said. The witch left quite suddenly, without really saying goodbye, changing shape in the shadows, and when I looked again, I saw only the trees.
-ellie
O, I liked that very much, ellie. Thank you!
Do your dreams ever pain you?
N~
Like, wow Ell.