The Song of the Malificae

12 Years (5)

The wood is soaked through, refuses to catch a flame. The sisters share a grin when the villagers give up trying to light it that day, and the next.

But the third day of non-stop rain, villagers peer up at the sky and rusted gears in their mind turn. They whisper to each other, suspicious of a greater power trying to prevent this execution. Only, the villagers do not think it's God, as Liridona naively hoped.

"We're worried, schwöschter." One of the twins speak up later that afternoon as they clean around the house for the old lady. Her voice is low, as if afraid someone will overhear, or maybe afraid of what her older sister will think.

Liridona looks at them, eyebrow raised questioningly.

"What if we can't stop it?"

"What makes you think that?"

The twins exchange glances. Shrug.

"We're not going to stop, not until meuti is free," Liridona says fiercely, anger suddenly welling up in her chest. She hates that she is the only one who believes that anything can be done, that everyone doubts her, that everyone has given up.

The twins pinch their lips closed, brows drawn together, shift foot to foot. Their scrub brushes are held tightly in their hands, dripping water on the wood floor. They're silent.

"All right?"

They nod slowly, eyes cast away from their older sister's face, her almost frightening expression.

The three girls continue the symphony with the clouds that night. The twins grow exhausted, worn, their energy draining as they drain their magic. Only Liridona's cross words force them to continue, to draw their hands through the air no matter how heavy their arms grow. 

When Liridona takes over, earlier than planned, she cuts into the world's song abruptly. The usual flowing song is filled with jarring notes, keys on the clavichord pounded by heavy, inexperienced fingers. Liridona floats around within the song, wincing at the awful composition. She rearranges notes, guides it back to a song that echoes the beauty of the natural world. Then she plays gently with the slurred notes of water till morning.

The fourth day, she and her sisters arrive at the pyre to watch them feebly attempt to light the fire again. They are still several metres away when they hear the shouting. Up ahead the crowd bunches up around the stake where the witch is already tied. From afar they can only hear a garbled mess of words until they come up closer.

"The Devil is trying to save the witch! He will not let her burn!"

Another voice shouts from behind the three young witches, sounding right in their ears, causing them to jump and spin around.

"If he won't let her burn, we'll stop her another way!" The man plows past the girls—Liridona catches her sister by the arm before she can fall—, pushing his way through the crowd, repeating his cry, and others sound their agreement, allow him to the front of the crowd. Others untie the witch from the stake; she falls to her knees, ankles and wrists still bound by rope. Her face is full of terror, raw and naked, bared for all.

The girls are stuck on the outskirts of the crowd, with confusion and fear carved upon their faces, frantically trying to peer around and through the mesh of bodies. And the rain seems to freeze in mid-air, just a moment, as the man grabs the witch by her hair, flips her onto her back and straddles her hips, his burly hands wrapping around her neck, squeezing squeezing squeezing, and her face reddens reddens, eyes widening, veins popping, and the crowd only cheers on, "Kill the witch!" and some turn their faces away, afraid and horrified, but no one steps in, and then the rain falls again, harder than before, and there are screams ripping apart a young girl's throat, screams ripping apart the world, and lightning cuts across the sky down onto the horizon.