Short Stories, Tall Tales

- A Difficult Decision -

It was a solemn, wintry and woeful Wednesday morning in the sleeping village of Mantlewood, where the pale and sickly dawn had awoken no one spare a lonely rooster screeching through the streets.

It was at this moment that Alice startled half-awake to the drumming of iron-clad hands on her door. Her breathing decreased to short, gasping intakes of the cold, winter air, getting smaller and smaller until they were like the inaudible echoes of wind rattling her windows. Alice quickly fumbled for her glasses, her small hands making the sign of the cross as she heaved herself out of bed. Who could it possibly be? Skittering across the room, she peeked out of the window, and immediately froze.
Outside, silhouetted against the pale milkiness of snow, were three men clad in a deep, crimson armour.
Alice stumbled backwards, cursing as he elbow smashed against the bedside table, her looking glass shattering on the floor.

"Not good..." she huffed, "not good!"

Sensing movement inside the house, the eyes of the three men trawled toward the window, almost lazily. With a quick slash of their blades, they tore open something near their feet. Alice cursed.

"Wolves!" She bellowed, "they've send bloody wolves to get rid of Alice, the Great Witch Of Mantlewood!"

She could hear them now: deep, guttural sounds, speaking of something so vile, so ancient and evil, that Alice felt her very bones shudder. They promised death.

Quickly, quietly and as smoothly as her creaking bones would allow, Alice heaved herself through her escape hatch, arms cradling a satchel of precious herbs and medicines which the vines seemed eager to latch onto. Stumbling out into the crisp, fresh now, her eyes, out of old habit, darted in the direction of the Town Square, the residence of her coven, renowned for their charms and potions that calmed even the most haughty cold.
It was at this moment that she realised that she had to make a painfully difficult decision: she could go back and tell her coven of the witch-hunters and their wolves who had arrived in Mantlewood, thirsting for witch blood, or she could escape into the cover of the ancient, shadowed woods and save herself.

"Oh, heavens," she whispered, "what have I gotten myself into?"

In the distance, lamp-light flooded a patch of darkness untouched by the sun, flickering once, twice, thrice. Her coven. Oh, how she yearned for their comforting community! Hastily, she fumbled in her satchel for her cross, mumbling a quick prayer before planting the wooden figure on the ground. Then she ran.

Vines tugged at her getting hair and fear gnawed at her stomach as she dashed for the cover of the woods, a hunting horn sounding in the distance. It still wasn't too late to go back; she could sprint back to Mantlewood and warn her coven, if she wanted to, only if she wanted to - but that would mean risking her own life. Alice wailed. She may have been a brave, courageous witch when she had been younger, but time and weariness, along with the numerous deaths of her friends at the murderous hands of witch-hunters, had chipped away at her heart, leaving a single word carved on it: survival.
And yet, sprinting through these woods, a pack of ravenous wolves within earshot lumbering after her, Alice could not prevent her mind from guiltily flitting to thoughts about the coven. Her coven.

Go back, go back, go back! Her mind screamed.

"N-no, I can't!" She blubbered to herself, and kept on running.

The wolves seemed to be coming from all directions now, and in their wake followed a trail of deep gouges and splattered mud.

Suddenly, Alice burst into a clearing. The meek sun had grown into a flaming fireball of light, melting the snow into a white slush. And in the distance, to her utmost relief, rang the thundering roar of a waterfall, behind which lay the doors to an underground cave carved out by the witches of old. There, she would reside until the danger had passed. There, she would be safe. Her eyes trawled to the distant horizon. If only the same could be said of her coven, whom she had left behind.