The Cunning Man || ONC 2021

1: Accusation

 There is never any occasion in which an accusation of witchcraft lends itself to a positive first impression. Take, for example, my own damn wedding night. Hostilities began when I dropped my new wife's hand like it was an eye of newt.

"I beg your pardon?" I hissed down at her with narrowed eyes and false offense. "Witches are women."

It was an ignorant and dismissive statement, but I couldn't help myself. The pulse in my jugular pounded out a rhythm of pure panic. I'd been called a witch once before and had barely escaped burning alive because of it.

"Not every witch is a woman," she insisted.

I had no counter-argument to that. As far as the stereotype goes, it would shock no one to know that my mother had been a witch. But it was her father who had been such before her, and now me after them both.

I needed space. I moved away from my newly-wedded wife, until what was supposed to be our marriage bed stood between us. I rubbed a hand over my ever-present five 'o clock shadow and eyed the black-haired beauty across the room with uncertainty.

"What makes you say I'm a witch anyway?"

Mrs. Nora Pellar put her hands on her hips and narrowed her eyes at me in a wordless challenge. "Are you really going to stand there and act like you didn't feel that?"

"Feel what?" I insisted on playing dumb.

"Magic," she said, her tone unamused. "That was magic when we touched."

I smiled slow and sly, in an attempt to redirect. "Attraction could be described as such."

Her full lips thinned in an expression that clearly communicated, "don't even try me".

Well then. So much for seduction. I stifled a sigh.

"Sheriff --"

I cut her off. "Cade, please."

She ignored me and carried on with all the tenacity of a damn bloodhound. "-- I felt magic. Your magic."

"And what, exactly, does my magic feel like?"

Her smooth brow furrowed in thought. We stared at each other for a few moments before she finally found the words to describe what she had felt.

"Like...electricity. It made all the hairs on my arms stand up," she rubbed her puffed yellow sleeves from forearms to elbows. "And all along the back of my neck. It was powerful." She frowned even further and tilted her head to the side. "You're powerful."

That was the most terrifying thing she could have said. I had often wondered if my 'Gifts' had grown in proportion to my own physical maturity in the past decade. I had never wanted the suspicion confirmed, however.

My mother had been powerful. My grandfather, too, from the stories I had been told of him. But with that power had come persecution and shortened lives. I resisted the urge to reach up and press my palm over the small painted disk that lay hidden against my chest. I had long feared that one day, my magic would outgrow the charm that had been made to keep it suppressed. After all, my mother had said, magic always found a way to manifest.

It would now seem that it had, thanks to a woman I had vowed to love and to hold 'til death did us part. Thanks to her magic, which I had both felt and seen.

It was my turn to narrow my eyes at her. "Would take a witch to know one, don't you think?"

"I am not the witch in this room." She drew herself up with indignation.

I cupped one elbow in the opposite hand as I again ran my fingers over my mouth. It was a nervous gesture of mine, a reminder to think before I spoke.