Despite the fact that they were sisters, Cornelia and Lydia were reacting very differently to their current situation.
“Lydia, do stop with the weeping and the carrying on,” Cornelia said with a sigh, barely audible over the sound of her sister’s wailing.
This stern rebuke, of course, only made Lydia sob louder and more dramatically. Cornelia rolled her eyes, and began to pace. There had to be a way out of here. There was always a way out, if only one could find it. Even if that way out takes a lot of time and pain, a voice in the back of her head reminded her, and Cornelia shrugged it off. If the time came for that option, she’d deal with it then. For now, there had to be a simpler option.
Ignoring her sister’s continued cries, which were subsiding slightly, Cornelia strode over to the door, testing it once more. Still locked, and of course they were in the newest building in town, so there were no rusty hinges or moldy spots of wood to take advantage of. Cornelia cursed softly. There wasn’t even a grate in the door, so she couldn’t talk to whoever might be outside.
There was one tiny window, high up on the wall, that was covered with iron bars. No way out of there, either. Cornelia paced again, thinking. There might not be an easy way out, after all. Her last resort might be her only option. She knew no help was coming from outside; they had promised each other that if one or any of them were captured, the others would not intervene. It was the only way that at least one of them could make it out of this scenario.
“Lydia, it’s time,” Cornelia said coldly, shaking her sister’s shoulder. “There is no way we can make it out of here without being detected. We have to work now, and quickly.”
Lydia hiccuped. “I-i-is there really n-n-no other way?”
Cornelia sighed. “I’m sorry, little sister, but this is the only way. We knew this would be a possibility.”
Lydia looked morosely up at her sister. “But what about-”
“She can’t help. Remember what we promised each other?”
“Yes,” Lydia sighed, then scrubbed her hands across her face, wiping away her tears. “Let’s get this over with.”
—
As dusk fell, the sisters were lead from the constable’s office, through a crowd of angry villagers. Cornelia and Lydia were composed, walking calmly through the throng of people. It was a hard business, being a witch in this country. They had thought that a small town surrounded by wilderness would be easier to hide in, and that the people there might actually appreciate their gifts, but the sisters had been wrong. The isolation, the fear of woods around them, and the worry about adequate supplies had riled up the townspeople, making them paranoid, hysterical.
But even as they approached the pyre, saw the stakes rising high into the sky, saw the hatred on the faces around them made grotesque by the flickering torchlight, Cornelia and Lydia retained their composure. They remained quiet and complacent as they were tied to the stakes, and as the leaders of the village tried to quiet the mob so they could make their own grand speeches, the sisters smiled so faintly that it could have been a trick of the light.
The constable, tired of all the yelling and the ineffectual efforts of the preacher and the mayor, finally let out a piercing whistle. The crowd became quiet, a subtle murmur instead of a deafening roar.
“These women,” the preacher proclaimed, finally able to make himself heard, “have been found guilty of witchcraft!” At these words the crowd bellowed again, and it took several more minutes for them to be quieted.
“The punishment for witchcraft,” the preacher continued, wiping sweat from his brow with a stained handkerchief, “is burning.” He made a gesture for the constable to light the pyre, but as he moved forward, his torch blew out.
“Do we not have the right of last words?” Cornelia asked, and her voice silenced the mob around her. The mayor and the preacher looked at each other, flummoxed, but it was the constable again who took charge.
“Go ahead, witch. Say your bit, before the fire burns out your tongue.” His grin was almost manic, and he didn’t seem to notice the way Lydia’s attention suddenly focused on him as Cornelia began to speak.
“We go to our deaths tonight, knowing that while our bodies may be destroyed, our souls will still haunt this place.” She smiled sweetly down at the crowd, and a collective shiver ran through them. “You will hear us in the wind, in the birdsong. You will hear us in the lowing of your cows, and the clucking of the hens. You will hear us in your children’s laughter, and their cries. You will hear us evermore, and you will recognize our song.”
And the sisters began to chant, a low, melodic, mournful sound, as the townspeople again started to yell and scream, and as the constable moved forward with a fresh torch, lighting the wood beneath their feet. As the fire moved higher and higher, their chanting grew louder, until it turned into shrieks of pain, and finally silence.
After a while, watching the fire without the screams began to bore the villagers, and they dispersed back to their homes. A lone figure watched from the woods as the fire eventually burned lower and lower, until there were only embers left. When they were alone, just as the first rays of the morning sun began to tease the horizon, the figure darted forward, and reached up, up to the charred bodies of her sisters, and reclaimed the crystals that hung from their necks, that the villagers had not found.
“I will carry on, sisters, as we had decided,” Tabitha murmured, draping the two crystals on their silver chains around her own neck, the three stones nestled together. “I will move on, find another town somewhere else, that I may find peace.” She glanced around the square. She needed to hurry; the sun was rising in earnest now, and she wouldn’t be alone for long.
She looked back up at her sisters, and brutal anger marred her features. “You never let them forget,” she hissed. “Make sure they always remember what happened this night.” A breeze brushed past her cheek, and another tugged at her hair, and she smiled fiercely. This town would never know peace. She pulled the hood of her cloak over her face, and walked away from the charred remains of her sisters, not looking back.
—
The constable was the first to hear it. The chanting of the witches worked its way into his dreams, then his waking hours. He heard it in the whispers of the wind, in the calls of the deer in the woods, in the giggles of his children. It became so loud, and so persistent, that it drove him mad. He locked himself in his office, and was eventually discovered, knife in hand, throat slit.
Then the preacher began to hear the chanting in the hymns the congregation sang, in the church bells, in the scribbling of his pen as he wrote his sermons. His body was found drifting in the pond behind the church, with rocks weighing down his pockets.
One by one, the villagers who had burned the witches went mad, hurting themselves or others, until finally the village was silent; everyone was either dead, or left the area, hoping to move away from the witches’ curse. Travelers avoid the ruins of the town, and the children who go there on a dare claim to hear the chanting still.
© The Lightning Tower, 2020