Transmogrify - Legend of a Witch

"Grandpa tell me a story."

"Riley dear, aren't you too old for stories?" he asked, amusing. His youngest grandchild had only recently reached her seventeenth year. Not really a child anymore, but not yet an adult, Riley would be married off in only a few seasons to start a family of her own. He might as well indulge her.

"Please Grandpa Alex?" Riley pleaded, "I'll go to sleep right after."

The elderly man's face sagged, not just from age, but from a tiring and endless work, day after day. A change from the norm would be nice for once. He leaned in, voice low, so only Riley could hear him in the family's small wooden house. In the rooms adjacent were his own empty room, the room of Riley's spinster sister, his daughter and son-in-law's room, and the family kitchen and den. "Alright, just one," he whispered. "Did I ever tell you the story of the witch, Lorelei?" Riley shook her head. Alex slowly inhaled deeply through his nostrils, reminiscing. He took a match from his pocket, lighting a short candle made from pork fat. The tiny light cast a shadow on the wall, and weaving them with his words, Alex began his tale.

"Generations ago in a valley, not too far from here, was a boy unlike that of any boy seen there before. The men in his village grew to be farmers, loggers, or travelled to trade. Nat, that was the boy's name, hated working in the fields. He socialized with the women in town: helping with knitting, raising the younger children. The busy mothers in town adored him of course, but the men began to grow suspicious. At a young age, Nat's parents abandoned him, claiming their son had been switched by a Changeling. This wasn't true of course," he assuredly Riley with a pat on the hand, "but no one in their right minds would allow a Changeling into their home. He left rejected and alone, wandering into the mountains for weeks on end until he reached the mouth of a cavern. Peering in, Nat heard the trickle of water and saw the glint of reflection within. He hadn't found a clean stream or spring for several days, so he ravenously flew into the cavern to drink." Grandpa Alex took a sip from the cup Riley kept by her bed, quenching his own thirst. "He drank and he drank until he was fully satisfied, then he stripped himself bear and bathed in the cool, refreshing water. For the first time in a long time, Nat felt happy, but he also did not leave the same. He didn't know it, but folks around those parts believed that the waters of that pool made your inner most self become who you were on the outside. Men and women who were handsome, yet cruel were cursed with animalistic features to show the ugliness in their hearts." Alex bared his teeth and formed a terrible expression lit with odd angles from the candle's light. "Nat was not cruel at heart though, and the waters worked their magic, transforming him into a woman more gorgeous than he had ever seen. In the reflection of the pool, Nat cried with joy, for the face staring back at them was still their face, but now their true face. Nat renamed herself Lorelei, after a water spirit said to inhabit places like these. Over the next few days, Lorelei discovered that those who visited the pond in the cavern were no longer affected by its water. Instead she could alter their features through contact, as if the powers of the pond had transferred to her. Time and time again, people would visit her in her home in those mountains, hoping they would be made beautiful by her magic touch, but instead were twisted into hideous visages by her touch. Eventually people stopped traveling into the mountains all-together, in fear that Lorelei would cure them with her witch's touch. Only once did someone ever get what they wanted from her. A woman about your age who had run away from home, found the witch Lorelei, and was transformed in a man. He lived a humble life and had a beautiful family. And that's the story."

"Is that a true story Grandpa?" Riley asked skeptically.

"Of course! You think I would lie to you, my little pimpernel?" He smiled, caressing the side of her smooth face with his aged, cracked hand.

Riley chose her words carefully. She loved her grandfather; but didn't know how to say what she thought: a dormant fear reawakened by his tale. "What if someone felt the same as Nat? What if they too wanted to become a Lorelei? Do you think they could still find her?"