Tame Your Fears

Maiden, Mother, Crone

2016

Everything hurt. And Agatha was running. Barefoot with her contractions getting worse by the day, Agatha ran. She ran deep into the woods, letting the sharp sticks and stones under her to ground herself to her task. She ran into a tree, chest heaving as she leaned against the bark and threw off her cloak, hands shaking as she frantically cut into a lemon so she could gag herself more effectively. She had to hide. She had to protect him.

Her hair was sweat soaked, falling in front of her face in stringy clumps, and her nightgown dirty from her panicked leave when she appeared, dressed in the green cloak Agatha had woven for her days before. Rio walked slowly, careful not to startle her, as if Agatha could move now. The pain was too great, the cost too much. Agatha was a fly stuck in a spider's web.

"No." Agatha whimpered, pressing a hand to her pregnant belly, "No." She tried again, pleading ever so slightly, shaking her head. Rio knew how much she wanted this, how much she needed this. She could not take this child away before Agatha could even get to know them. Rio approached anyway, did not stop, seeming to glide across the ground.

"It cannot be." Agatha tried again, slipping back into her old way of talking, the pain too much to keep up with any other expectations.

"It must be." Rio said softly, stopping a few feet away from her, sounding sad.

Agatha felt rage, how dare Rio act as if this is not her doing. As if she could not stop this. She pressed a hand to her heart, using the other to support herself upright with the tree bark, "You do this and I will hate you forever." Rio said nothing and Agatha felt another contraction sweep across her body. She was running out of time, "Please let him live!"

She cried out, trying to bite back the pain in her voice and failing. "Please, my love! Please!" Agatha's body betrayed her when her mind would not listen. There was no time to hold her child in, they wanted out now but Rio had not yet agreed. They could not take their first breath until Rio agreed. "Please!" She begged now, full heartedly honest for the first time in a long while, "Please!"

Rio sighed, "I can offer only time."

Agatha bit back her moans of pain just enough to ask her question, "How- How much time?" She closed her eyes, throwing her head back against the tree, "How much..." She opened her eyes and Rio was gone, not even a rustle of leaves to reveal her leaving. Agatha's time was up anyhow. She pushed and pushed and pushed until it felt like she had no more energy left and then...

A baby started to cry. Agatha blinked, her mind foggy with pain as she lifted up the pink bloody creature she had produced, staring into his green-blue eyes. She took a shaky breath, smiling despite the weariness she felt in her bones, "I spoke no spell. I said no incantation. You..." She pulled her baby boy close to her chest, looking up at the sky, "You were made from scratch." She wiped the blood from his skin and kissed his forehead, "My perfect child. You shall have the world in your hands."

Agatha rocked Nicholas in her arms as he cried, hungry and tired and sick, approaching the last place she had seen the coven. She knocked on the door, shushing Nicholas gently as they waited on the edge of the front porch. An older woman answered, still wearing dresses Agatha had long left behind in her life, and looked expectantly at her, "Sister, come forth." She waved them closer to the door, but Agatha did not dare try and enter, she could feel the protection wards woven into the house.

"Is the little one well?" The older woman asked in a shrill voice, hesitantly holding her hands out to take Nicholas from her. Agatha could understand the caution, not many witches lived in these rural parts anymore and even less were particularly friendly.

Agatha pulled her swaddled son closer to chest and looked up at her through her lashes, trying to look younger than she really was, "Blessed be. We have not eaten for days."