The Song of the Malificae

6 Years (1)

The first witch burning she witnesses is when she is only six years old, when she doesn't yet know of her powers. Though their village is more isolated from other villages or towns--being farther up the Bernese Alps--the witch hysteria has caught up to them as well, especially with the failing crop season.

One who supposedly brought this misfortune upon them has been rooted out, is being burned on the stake. A woman verging on her late thirties with a black mole low on her back, found with strange herbs in her satchel that she said were used to treat her child's tremors.

The girl watches the woman's skin redden and blister, hears the screams of agony, smells the burning flesh, feels the heat billowing in the air. She squeezes her eyes shut, buries her face in her mother's rough skirts, slaps her palms over her ears.

"Why are they doing this, meuti?" she whimpers, voice muffled against cloth.

Her mother reaches around and tangles her fingers in her daughter's limp curls. The fire reflects in her eyes dully, and she stares on with her face flat, any emotions hidden behind a mask.

With a tight voice she replies, "Because she made a pact with the Devil. Burning her is the only way to punish her soul for its heresy."

She unwraps the girl's fingers from her skirts, turns and crouches in front of her. She blocks the view of the burning woman, but flames spread out around her head, create a glow along the strands of her light hair. The fire still seems to flicker in her eyes, dark.

She glances around quickly. Clutching her daughter's arms, she whispers fiercely, "But secretly it's because they despise those different than them. Because they're afraid of what others like--" She cuts her herself off. Corrects herself, "--what others may be capable of."

Standing, she looks again at the woman, gripping her daughter's hand. "Do you understand, Liridona?"

The girl nods.

Her mother looks down at her, shakes her hand.

Liridona nods again. "Yes, meuti."

They turn their backs on the burning pyre, leave behind the crowd chanting, "Burn the witch, burn the witch," walk home. 

Their house stands on the outskirts of the village, lonely on the higher slope of the mountain and edging toward the forest as if for company. Stones are jammed together to make a modest one-storied building with a loft for the children. 

Liridona lives with her mother and two younger sisters—twins who had stayed home with their neighbour. Though 'neighbour' is whoever's farm is closest to theirs, and in this case, it belongs to an old couple, Gobhard and Hildegund. The family of four has a small field of wheat that they manage, which is faring slightly better than the rest of the town, reasoned to be the crisper air they breathe higher up.

In the days following the burning, people are doubly paranoid, looking at women with suspicion, waiting for them to mutter a spell or wave their hands in the air with sparks flying. But the nightmares in Liridona's sleeping mind last longer than a few days.

At night, she sees the woman tied to the post, burning in the fire. The flames twist into faces that sneer at Liridona, threatening, terrifying. The crackle of the fire is voices that growl unintelligible secrets, laugh with the pop of burning wood as if it knows something she doesn't. 

She wakes with heavy breaths and fast heartbeat, sweat plastering her nightdress to her skin, forehead and cheeks burning with the residue of the fire's heat. She calms as the even breathing of her sleeping sisters become the gentle rhythm of a lullaby. They probably dream of sunshine and dances in fields of crocuses. Liridona falls asleep to these thoughts, until the grass and flowers burst into flames from the heat of the sun and the field burns around her as a stake tears through the soil to rise up behind her and ropes whip around her body, tying her so tight that her breathing chokes off.

She wakes again, in dawn's light, with the sweat and the heat. But she is freed from the night terrors for another day. She goes about her daily chores, helping her mother in the kitchen, the fields, cleaning around the house. The work is so monotonous and repetitive that she can't help when her mind drifts away. Liridona replays the burning in her mind's eye, hears her mother's words repeated in her ears.

When Liridona looked up at that witch she didn't see evil, didn't see the wish to inflict harm on anyone. She saw only tears of pain and suffering, and demons don't feel that, do they? When the girl walks through town and passes by the magistrate or one of his officers--who offer her a handful of nuts--they tell her stories of witches. They say witches can do all sorts of evil magic: make a man throw up frogs, spread diseases, bring horrid weather, and of course, ruin crop season. "Keep an eye out for those witches, child," they always say in the end, looking her dead in the eye, faces grave. Do they have a tremor in their voice? Can she sense their fear?

"Liridona!"

The girl startles, drops the pot she was drying with a clang of metal against wood. The dishcloth drifts from her hands, shrouding the pot as if it hides from something sinister. Her mother looks down on her.

As if she knows what her daughter had been thinking of, she says, "Don't dwell, schätzli. It'll haunt you, make you afraid to be who you are." Half her face smiles, the right corner of her lips lifting up.

Liridona flickers a smile hesitantly, nods as though reassured.

But then her mother says, with a sigh in her voice, "And soon enough it'll come around again." She glances away from her daughter. "Let's make some bread, shall we?"

Liridona forces away thoughts of the burning until they lay hidden, trapped beneath a pot beneath a cloth. Eventually, they pass from her dreams, her consciousness. But then the next witch is found.