Witch Hazel

Chapter 1.1

I walked to the keep's gates, a basket under one arm. The wind nipped viciously at my exposed cheeks, so I pulled the dark furs lining my hood closer around my neck. I could feel eyes on my back as I scurried over the cold stone floor. Carefully, I tugged up the edges of my gloves.

With thick gloves and heavy sleeves, no one could see my hands shaking.

"Anna!" a feminine voice cried out

I turned to see Roselyn. Roselyn had grown tall, now topping me by half a head or so. Her creamy skin turned red at the tips of her nose and the top of her bosom in the winter chill. Playing with her dark red girls at her bosom was a healthy babe. She strode over to me, tucking her child under one arm so she could put the other around my shoulders and usher me toward the keep doors.

"It's not fair, the things they say" Roselyn said, as her child cooed

"Rose...you don't have to-" I protested.

"No! I do." Rose turned back to glare over her shoulder "We both know it easily could've been me that bastard set eyes on two years ago. Me alone in the keep and you happily married with a child on your hip. Maybe the others have forgotten but we all stood moon-eyed about him as he rode in here. We were all equally stupid."

"It's not the talking I mind so much," I said, frowning slightly "It's the way they laugh at my father. The way they mock him-"

"Disgusting!" Rose snorted

I pursed my lips. As much as I loved Rose some days getting cut off constantly wore thin. 

"I see that face. Just let me finish, then I'll listen." Rose said, grinning at my expression "Hear me out. They talk like he just sold you to some snake oil salesman. But I remember. Don't you? How dead quiet it was here.  Hells-"

I shh-ed insistently.

"Hells" Rose began again, nodding and speaking more quietly "There's an entire generation of young ones missing and people here turn a blind eye."

"Mr. Faliday." I reminded her, "Don't forget him."

"Aye." Rose looked down at the baby in her arms. "They take everything from us. Our free time, our sleep, our common sense, our looks."

"I've told you before Rose," I smiled "that paunch about your waist you're always on about is in your mind."

The baby began to cry as they reached the keep steps.

"He's probably just cold."

Rose laughed.

"You people of Perdale pretend to be learned but you've forgotten tradition. He's got his furs. Exposure to the winter will strengthen his humors." Rose leaned forward to kiss me on the cheek "If you can pull yourself away from the forest and your work rooms, come see me and the mister for supper."

I nodded. But before reaching on the door, she turned back to say one thing.

"Go easy on them Rose. It's winter. People are always meaner when they're hungry."

I knocked and the heavy oak doors pulled back. Two guards per door. I remembered when they stood tall, with grand green cloaks. But these days they slouched and smelled like cheap wine. I had never grown to the height everyone expected when I was younger, leggy, and shooting up like a sprout. But even as my peers outgrew me, my world seemed smaller than ever before.

The inside of the keep was dim and flickering by the light of a large hearth. The scent of pine needles filled my nostrils as I walked down the hall. Here they used pine needles to soak up spilled drink for easy sweeping after supper. They'd used straw once, but it had been a hard harvest and all the straw was needed for the cattle.

I hurried down a spiral staircase before hurtling past a small cast iron door and shutting it behind me. The room with it's low arched ceilings was...safe. Thick legged tables groaned under the weight of dried herbs, mortar-and-pestles, and half-finished projects. Old fat books filled similarly over-burdened shelves, as well as lay stacked up against the sides. 

Breathing heavily, I dropped the basket and flung my cloak to the floor. I put my back up against the wall and sunk down, to the ground with my belongings. My breath shook. Finally, I pulled off my gloves to look at my hands.

"Gods above," I murmured and closed my eyes. "It's getting worse."

I'd read about panic attacks in one of the old books down here. But after actually seeing someone have one the other day, I realized that this wasn't it.

My body hummed with energy. Everything almost itched at a bone deep level, like when my back-most teeth grew in. Violently I began to tug at the straps on my bodice. I needed to...well, I didn't know what I needed. I grabbed the basket, walked it to the desk by the window and slammed it down.

The pages on the tiny book that lay open on the table fluttered, and I flipped impatiently back to my spot. 

Clarity: For use when the world seems obfuscated, the spidery hand writing read.

I would normally have laughed at the almanac. Love potions. Pfft. Except in cleaning out my bridal bedroom those two years ago I'd found this among my mother's things, tucked in between dusty old candles and a lace shawl. It was so small it could lay flat in my palm. The leather cover was a rich purple but otherwise blank. I didn't know why, but as the handmaids had bustled about with their tidying I'd slipped the booklet into my belt.

"Mother, if you can hear me from wherever you are" I said, rolling up my sleeves "I...guess I just hope this brings me the whatever clarity it brought you."

I grabbed a handful of my scavengings from the basket: witch hazel. I crushed the eery yellow-tendriled flowers in my fist and pushed them into the nearest mortar. I could feel my body respond to every pound of the pestle as I ground the flowers into paste. My skeleton groaned, as though it was too constrained by my tight skin.

I reached for the clear jar on the windowsill. The liquid inside had congealed into a lightly opaque green, like stained glass.

"Left to cure in moonlight", I found myself reciting as I unscrewed the top.

The sound of stone on glass chittered lightly as my unsteady hands knocked the lips of the containers together. Carefully, I tried again and managed to get most of the witch hazel paste into the jar. 

The page had no help remaining, just a blank stretch. Yet I somehow felt my hands knew what came next. In a gesture foreign that felt utterly familiar somehow, I dipped two fingers into the jar and smeared the gel on my closed lids. One. Then the other. It was greasy to the touch and smelled of moss.

Then I opened my eyes.

"Oh." I said.

The world was alight like a firefly.

A/N: Writer to writer, you know how lovely feedback is! 

If you made it through two chapters, leave me a ★!