The Wytch's Solitude

Chapter 4

                   Wood splintered and sent slivers of oak flying in all directions. They never reached the ground, vaporizing into smoke just a moment before making contact as the hit a magickal wave of heat. Though the chair was broken, it might still be serviceable as a stool, but Lissa wanted to burn all the pieces into dust. She tried, but her magick didn't respond. In her loneliness she could hear it laugh at her. She knew it was her imagination, but it infuriated her nonetheless.

                   Her head snapped over to the door. Once already she had considered just trying to get outside, but realized it was a futile thought. The wards on the house itself made it immune to her gift and were a piece of art in and of themselves. The Elder of the village, whom she had only met a handful of times, spent most of his life savings to have them done. No matter what she tried it would have no effect. The seals were quality work. She might as well try to punch her way through a brick wall as thick as she was tall.

                   The seals on the house were what bothered her, though. There were several windows she could climb through, though opening them was a difficult task due to hinges that hadn't been oiled in years. The front door was also unlocked. She had opened it once herself, but was just as trapped as ever. The seals prevented magick from passing through, and being human, she was partially made of it herself. Stepping through would be a death sentence. Only Maston could pass through without worry, and he had abandoned her again.

                   Maston. Lissa's hair darted around with sentience. It was angry too and had a strength could only be considered unreasonable. Whenever it touched the cut on her cheek it made her cringe. Her hair, like a swift blade, had grazed her. For all this prison was supposed to accomplish, she still had little more control over herself than when she was younger. She was hungry and that only made it worse. She still had a small chunk of the bread she was given, but it was stale now and a touch moldy, and she had a single slice of the pie left. She could eat the bread, but the texture of that congealed, hardened rhubarb made her stomach rock just thinking about it.

                   She walked up to one of the windows and stood before it, looking out through the dusty glass pane. She didn't even notice the bodies any more. The sill was lined with the carcasses of insects, which too had some trickle of magick required to make their chitin bodies work. At least, they used to. They had just enough momentum to fall inside when they passed through the large crack in the glass, though they were dead before they ever hit the ground.

                   Energy fanned out in a wave and rebounded off the warded glass and dried up as it failed to make it through the hole. There may have been a wall there for all that it mattered. Years ago the effect would make her wince as the magick, so closely tied to her body, withered, but she had toughened up now and her eyes bore at Gliccal down the way. She could see smoke rising up above the bushes that otherwise obfuscated her view. She spit through the small hole and it landed on the other side.

                   Lissa had once thought trying to use her saliva to tear down the wards and seals from the outside, but it hadn't worked. No matter what she tried, the magick may as well have never existed once it passed through the barrier that surrounded every nook and cranny of the shack. She didn't even believe it would have worked, so little control she had. She leaned forward a little and the floorboard groaned in protest.

                   She thought about the past. It was a bitter moment which made her dislike Maston just a little less, but it also made her like him a little more, in a different way. “Why don't you tear down the seals for me?” she had asked. He was only nine at the time. He shook his head fervently. For a kid, he was assuredly the bravest person in the village at the time. It was the first time he had been to the shack, been in this room, and though he peed himself when her magick had tried to slay him, he never ran away. He had even come back.

                   She clenched her teeth together and, in the perpetual silence of the empty den, she was made entirely aware it. She could hear the enamel grating together. It looked like Maston was getting tired of her, now, so infrequent the visits were. What had she done wrong anyway? Sure, she was a little rough around the edges, but he shouldn't blame her for it.  She stamped her foot and winced. She had a splinter and bent down to deal with it.

                   The tiny shard of old wood was in there pretty good. Her nails didn't help much at all. In all her boredom, she always bit them so they were little more than nubs. Her administrations caused her to bleed, but not much more than a drop, as she attempted to squeeze the sliver out with pressure. It finally came free. She thought it so insignificantly sized, but yet it caused...she thought of herself.

                   The Elder had been right for locking her away and keeping everyone safe, but had been so cruel to do it at all the same. He hadn't even the kindness to end her. She limped her way back to her feet and looked once more to the window. She did a double take and squinted. She could see Maston walking up, but what was he doing at this hour? It was much later normal, later than he usually risked coming out. She masked her surprise and wandered through the dimly lit room and into the kitchen. She picked up the broken chair, sat it in the same spot it always sat, and placed herself on it like she always did when he came to visit. It had a little tilt now. She cursed herself.

                   The door didn't open. Instead, she could hear Maston's young grunts as he did something outside. Over an hour passed, but only Lissa's eyes moved, following the sounds. Her magick seemed curious too. Occasionally a little lash of color or a beam of light would shoot off her body, each reaching to where the sound seemed to have come from. The more she waited, the more the wait irritated her.

                   Why is he just taunting me?

                   Her mind didn't make it much further down that line of thought as the sounds outside came to an end and were replaced by the sounds of shuffling feet. She ran to the wall and nearly crashed into the counter top. “What are you doing?” she demanded angrily at the space in front of her, shouting at the wall. The counter top froze as her hands touched the granite surfaces. Frost crept along, radiating from her fingertips until the cold merged together to form one circular shape. She got no response. She tried to dig through the granite, but was unsuccessful, though the pressure she put on the stone was uncomfortable.

                   She heard the footsteps become distant and then disappear altogether. Maybe she was just going crazy. With a palm to her forehead to test her temperature she made it back to her stool and slumped down. She forgot that it was broken. The tilt of the chair and its missing backrest caused her to tumble backward. She crashed to the ground in a mess of limbs.

                   When Lissa regained consciousness, the first thing she noticed was the stabbing pain in her side, followed by the stickiness of fresh blood slowly pooling to the floor. She moaned as she probed her side and found parted flesh that stung to the touch. Seizing the rend with her hand, she cauterized the wound. She didn't have any other choice; she had no bandages or anything she could part with to dress the injury. She howled like a wolf. After many intolerable gasps, the pain began a steady ebb and flow instead of taking up every drop of her attention. Lissa kicked the broken stool out from under her with a force unbecoming of her size.

                   Wait, did her magick just do what she wanted it to? She probed again and found the seared flesh. She could smell it in the air and could still feel the blood that plastered her drab dress to her buttocks. She tried to conjure a light, and it wouldn't come. Coincidence, then. Instead of the effect that she wanted, the air became colder and colder. The more she shivered, the more she ached all over. The floors and the walls were soon covered in ice and her breath caught in the air.

                   She lifted her head. Flipped to her good side. Stood up slowly, careful of the ice. Hurt her skin on the icy floor. She stumbled back to the counter and tried to listen for her friend and betrayer. It would have been appropriate if she heard crickets chirping, but it was completely silent. She was alone. He might have headed back to the village, but he headed the wrong way for that, probably covering his tracks.

                   Strength filled her body once more and her recent injury stopped pulsing after an hour or so, but Lissa didn't feel much like moving. Her hands had frozen to the counter tops. She was sure they were frost bitten. She couldn't feel them any more. Maybe this was to be her fate, murdering herself after murdering so many others. This house had been her hell, Maston only a false hope to make the lonely days worse. It was only justice.

                   Lissa had always assumed it would go one of three ways. Either her magick would kill her, she would suicide by walking through that door, or she would just be forgotten altogether one day and starve.  Each death had the same ending; she'd rot in the house and no one would notice. It would be decades later when she would finally get a burial; when everyone had forgotten about her entirely and she was just a story to keep children in their beds at night.

                   Giving in, she broke her fingers free and, sure enough, the tips of her fingers had a tinge of purple to them, but it wasn't that bad. That alone wasn't enough suffering to kill her. Some of her skin tore off, stuck to the stone. It was grotesque and perfect. She turned to find a place to curl up so she wouldn't shatter when she fell, but she stopped. She looked back at the wall, covered in an icy glaze that sparkled from the moonlight that made its way in from the other room. Her heart fluttered.

                   She turned the corner into the privy. It was a door-less room just off the kitchen with a wooden base and a hole. It was the most recent addition to the house, made just for her before she was sealed in. It smelled pretty bad normally, but her senses were null. She peered out through the hole in the wall where a knot used to sit before it dried, shrunk, and fell out onto the other side.

                   In nothing more than a minute she was running. Her muscles ached, her side threatened her body to collapse, she was still cold, and the more her fingers warmed the more her nerves cried in pain. She breathed in the fresh air for the first time in seven years. She raced westward after where Maston's last footstep was heard. Afraid she would be caught and her freedom would be just a dream, she settled for laughing only in her mind.

                   Behind her, the brittle wooden house burned. She could hear the panicked shrieks of the villagers below, crying out that she was free, but by the time they arrived she would be gone. They'd think her burned up with everything else if she was lucky. If not, she'd just have to keep running. She was never going back, even if it killed her. Even if she had to kill them.

                   In the darkness of the night, as she was scratched and cut by brambles, running blindly toward the west, she caught sight of a small scrap of paper with a silver mark on it. She kept running and smiled. Maston was leaving her a trail of shattered steel.