The Witch of Willow Lake

One

It had been a year since that night I watched my home burn. Marks on the wall where I had carved lines to keep track of how many days had passed told me that today was day 369.

However, despite all those passing days, I still recalled the event as if it had only happened yesterday. All the memories burned vividly in my mind as if they were etched into my brain like bright, neon tattoo's.

My parents never came, nor had my brother. I stayed curled in my bed for days, my eyes fixated on the door, waiting for them to come through the door and tell me everything was okay. However, after three weeks, I came to realize, they were never coming.

At first, I told myself they were still back in Willow Lake, trying to repair the damage done. They just needed a few more days before they came for me. However, days turned into weeks, and weeks turned into months. Now I was in the safe house alone, hunting small animals, picking wild berries, and drinking water from the lake nearby to sustain myself.

It was mine and Zachariah's sixteenth birthday in only two weeks, and it would be the first birthday I spent without my family, without my twin.

Turning sixteen in our village was a tremendous ordeal. At least, for Zachariah and the other children.

For him and the other childen our sixteenth birthday was the day the powers we held came to full fruition and they graduated as full, fledged warlocks.

In all our history, every warlock got a small taste of the powers at the age of ten, after years of learning about our powers and our history. Learning about how our powers were our battery life, every time we used our abilities; it would drain us. You could comfortably live to be over one hundred if you rarely used; however, you could also die well before thirty if you abused them.

That was, except for me. I never gained powers, unlike my twin brother. Women in the coven did not have powers, the other women, like my mother, were simply humans. Only the men were warlocks.

I was not even supposed to have been born. The families would only bare one child, a boy to pass the powers onto. Even those men who tried to have children after their first born found themselves unable to father another.

For years our village had been terrified of me, so much so, my father built the safe house to hide us away after an execution order had been put on my head when I was just a baby.

It was only because my grandfather was head of the coven that we were granted exile, instead of execution. He had somehow convinced everyone else to agree to sit and wait to see if I developed powers or not to decide a fate so permanent and awful.

On my tenth birthday, as Zachariah's powers began to blossom and I stood there weak and powerless, it was clear my powers were never to be. At the time I was relieved, although a little envious as I watched all the wonderful things my brother could do, but without my powers, we were welcome back within our coven.

To an outsider, their decision may have seemed horrible, awful, harsh and outright inhumane however, I understood their reasons.

Our coven had been afraid because, in all our history, which backdated to the early fourteen hundreds, there had been only one female warlock. She had grown to be far more powerful than any other we had ever known and turned rouge.

In eighteen hundred, she'd rallied a small army and fought against our covens eight bloodlines. When the war had ended, only four survived the Popes, the Williams, the Edwards and finally my family, The Davenports.

She was so twisted and cruel that the evil witch had watched on as she burned her mother and father alive in black fire.

She was assumed dead after a mighty fight arose between her and my ancestors. Although, while my ancestor's body had been found, her's never was, For a long while after, everyone feared she lived, however, years passed and our coven relaxed. If she had survived, she'd surely have died after time.

However, when my parents fell pregnant with Zachariah and me, the fears arose again. Twins had never appeared in our history, and I was the first female born since Elizabeth, The Rouge One. I was also being born as a Davenport, the strongest of the families, and the coven leaders.

However, still here I stood, almost sixteen and nothing but a mere human girl.

I threw my minimal belongings into a fabric sack I'd fashioned out of the skin of a deer — a little food and a canister of water along with a compass.

I couldn't stay in the safe house anymore; being here had become too hard. Even a year on, I still found myself desperately wanting them to walk through the door. I needed to start a new life, as a human, like I was. I planned on stopping by Willow Lake, one last time as I headed out. I had no idea where I was going to go or what I was going to do. All I knew is that I wanted to see my home one last time and leave it all behind me and start anew.