In a Land Far Away: An Anthology

Hexed

By _fionathewriter_

Part One

THE Black Forest, better known by our people as Schwarzwald, is a place unlike many others, though you wouldn't know it at first glance. The quaint, southern Freiburg town in which my brother and I reside is hidden amongst the greenery of our beautiful yet treacherous country, riddled with poor villagers and children who go outside to play only if they collect berries while they're at it, too. The river is far from here, too far for anyone's liking, and hunting is forbidden after five in the afternoon when the sun begins to melt away. No good comes from being outdoors at night, not when the darkness suffocates the land like a festering cloak no one can escape and we're all as good as dead.

This is the kind of place where children go missing on a regular basis, bound to never return. Hans and I have heard many a story about friends getting snatched up by the Witches, and we've had the displeasure of hearing their brief, shrilled screams in the middle of the night as we held hands from across our parallel beds, eyes closed as we pretended they were deer instead of kids. Needless to say, we never saw them again. Not Klaus Müller, not Florian Schmidt. Not even Scarlet Rot, whose father works as a woodcutter daily and often warned his daughter—and my brother and I—about the dangers the Forest posed.

God help us.

I sip at the cold Suppe in front of me, gently kicking Hans underneath the table with my foot. The meal has no real taste for me to savor—it's like consuming vegetable-flavored water, only there isn't much vegetable to begin with. This winter has been very brutal to our little German settlement; crops seldom grow around here, so many families go to bed hungry. They, like us, have also run out of firewood, ruling out the chance of warm food to eat during dinnertime.

Hans glances at me wearily. If we'd been filling our bellies with some proper bread, butter, and meat, he'd be smiling wide. We live to poke fun at one another—it's all we can do in this remote town where everyone knows everyone and there's nothing exciting to do. But right now, he's hungry. I can see it in his features, like I'm sure he can see it in mine.

I offer a ghost of a grin as Hans' attention goes back to his soup, and I watch him dip the spoon into his bowl and back out again until he's lost in the motion. The reason for this hunger-related pain and suffering has a lot to do with the Witches (Die Hexen) who rule our world. Die Hexen are something of a dilemma even when we steer clear of the woods entirely, frightening as the prospect may be.

Their dark magic is known to weaken during the winter season as the cold seeps into their cracked skin and wrecks havoc on their powers. They don't hunt, they don't make the commute on their broomsticks to this far part of the forest where the villagers live, not the way they would if it were spring or summer or fall. Instead, once a year on Christmas Day, they require something of all villages: youngsters, anywhere from the age of infancy to eighteen. (I'd assume that they don't prefer babies, however, as they aren't particularly high in meat content).

Deep inside the forest, close to the border of the Swiss lands, they bake these village children into pies like the monsters that they are, replenishing their weakened systems until the snow leaves and they can relish in the warmth of a new earthly cycle. This year's selected Dozen is yet to be announced. Should they fail to arrive at the other end of the forest—a clear miscalculation on the parents' part—the Witches swear to unleash Hell on our village once they regain their strength in the coming months. They vow to slaughter all the parents and steal their children, after which, they'll eat the babies first and force those of reproductive age to copulate, giving rise to a new generation of eventual victims...