His head was shaking very slightly from side to side as colour flushed his weathered face. He started his speech quietly, almost calmly, but with every word he grew louder and fiercer.
"Do you mean to leave the blame for your actions at my door? I suppose you'd say that it was I who dragged you into this witchy wood and threw you to the demons! The nunnery is the place of the woman with genuine spiritual gifts and perhaps those who cannot be married; but not of those too ungrateful to marry!"
I was so horrified by this speech that my next words were issued in an awful harrowing screech.
"What would there have been to be grateful for? Throwing a girl to a man is no different than throwing her to a demon!"
"There is no other way." His last words came stilted, but deliberate. "This must be done. But I cannot watch." He turned away from the twisted scene before him.
It was in this moment that I lost my nerve. I flew into a white-hot rage. My body burst with bright gold flames. Every inch of my skin glowed with the radiant horror of staring straight into the sun. I hurt all over, as if my skin was blistering and my bones burning to charcoal. The heat was so punishing it was like Death's own kiss; but the fire did not maim my body. The flames rose from my screaming skin in glorious ripples, surrounding my visage like a lion's mane or an angel's halo.
"You will stand, and you will watch." I commanded, "You will watch me burn and you will know my fate first hand. My blood is your blood and you will watch it boil. You heard my cries as I entered this world and you will hear them as I leave it."
My father flinched, but he did not turn back to look at me, he continued to walk away.
The other men stood still as stones, their faces frozen in contortions of shock and fear, their hands clutching anxiously at their weapons and branches.
"If you will not watch," I heard myself scream, my flattened palm held aloft, "May you always be blind!" Magic surged through my arm, strong and terrible, like an invisible vine it grew from my hand and pushed its way determinedly through the trees and into my father's skull. I felt his fear. That's all that was there. No regret or love for me, just fear. I snatched his sight from him with disgusting ease. Squeezing the vessels and tissues of his eyeballs until his sockets were filled with nothing but pungent red gore.
Revenge was so effortless that I found myself laughing as I reached out magically for Mildred's husband. I didn't concern myself with his thoughts. I just did what needed to be done, crushing the fists that had so often beaten my sister, into useless mangled shapes. He screamed with pain, but it only spurred me on.
Now I turned to my next victim, ready to inflict whatever harm was most fitting.
"Enough of this," Kasita spat, pointing her staff at the Bishop, but using all her supernatural mite to constrain me, "Leave. Now. Before anymore harm is done." Needing no further instruction, the band of men fled.
Curled into a ball on the ground, my manic laughter stumbled into sobs. This was what it was to be a witch.
***
Many moon cycles passed and I soon settled into the routine of my new life of liberated exile in depths of the forest. Each morning I rose with the first rays of sunlight that crept nervously over the dark brow of the mountainous horizon. I threw my white hooded cloak around my naked shoulders and collected a wicker basket on the crook of my elbow, before heading out barefoot to my favourite clearing.
It was the very early spring, the ground was carpeted with crystal frost and partially opened snowdrops bordered the narrow pathways. The tiny Eden was a clear, cool pool, crusted with ice, veiled with a thin, low-hanging mist and surrounded by tall ferns and bracken. I gulped the cold dry air, and it clung to the insides of my lungs before I exhaled, watching it leave my lips in fragile ghosts of fog. Under the fabric of my cloak my body trembled with the fresh thrill of the cold, goosebumps patterned my thighs and my nipples stood out stiff and expectant.
Confident in my solitude, I discarded my cloak, leaving it to hang from a nearby branch. Then I stepped purposefully out onto the glazed pond, the freezing ice momentarily sticking and burning the soles of my feet. I channelled my magical energies, from somewhere in the pit of my stomach, to spark through my nerves, through my hips, thighs, calves and ankles, down to the bottoms of my feet and into the ice. It melted away into the warming pool, so that I stood, relatively firmly, on the surface of the water.
I had not anticipated the sheer physicality of having magic, I could feel it palpitating and riving in my body at every moment, like having a second heartbeat.
Holding my arms out slightly to my sides, palms facing upwards, I closed my eyes softly and felt the weak morning sunrise cast its yellow light across my nude form. I thought of the demon Prince's eyes on my body, their hunger waiting to be satisfied by the pleasures of my flesh. My arousal bloomed. The bud between my legs begged for attention. I bit my lower lip and let myself sink a little way into the warm water, so that my feet were submerged, but I still floated.
Patience, I'd learnt, was everything. I splashed my feet gently in the water, so that my inner thighs rubbed one another and my clit was pinched tightly between my damp lips. Then I let my hands wander over my breasts, weighing them in my palms, squeezing them gently, trailing my fingertips over their chilled, sensitive, flesh. The water grew hotter, vapour rising from the surface into the crisp air. I sunk deeper, the balmy water lapping at my knees.
I slid twinned fingers into the wet of my mouth, and coated them with moisture. Sucking at them, remembering the great mite of the Prince's member, for which my fingers were a pitiful substitute.
Though everything else above my tickled knees was dry, the folds of my flower were flushed with wet cream. I pinched and pulled at the tender points of my nipples, and allowed myself the vanity of hearing my own elated gasps of sexual gratitude. I thought of how the demon had luxuriated in me and I searched out that pleasure for myself. Whenever I was alone, I found myself thinking of him.
I pressed my two fingers into the damp folds that concealed my wakeful clit. I worked my fingertips against it, becoming ever more enraptured with the thrill of my own body, until I could bear the chill against my skin no longer, and I sank blissfully into the hot water, submerging even my head.
Beneath the surface my skin flushed with delight. The heat was a heavenly comfort after the cold of the air. For a moment I held my breath. My finger circled my clit softly; the hot water seeped inside me, filling my cunny, but leaving me unsatisfied. My eyes were closed as I focused on the intricate work of building my excitement. I rose for air.
When I lifted my head and shoulders from the water, I was full of vitality. The cold air on my glowing cheeks struck me wide-awake. I slid my paired fingers into the hot channel of my cunt, pushing out the water with each plunge. I licked my dry lips as I started to pant, and laid my head back against the bank of the pool.
My magic shuddered involuntarily in my fingertips, sending humming energy through my aching clit. With my other hand I grasped blindly at the water, muttering the words of an elemental spell. My palm chilled. Then I lifted a solid cylinder of ice from the water. Its edges were wet, already dripping as it began to melt. I popped one end of the thick icicle into my mouth, working and shaping it with my tongue, pushing it to the back of my throat. Pleased with my toil, I slid the ice cock out from between my lips. Quaking with want, I rubbed the ice across my clit and purred with the contrast of feeling. Then pushed it, slow and deliberate, cold and hard, deep into my cunt. I let out a lusty moan as it stretched me open.
As always, I tried to pace myself, but I soon gave in to the demands of my flesh. I fucked myself with abandon. One hand massaging my clit, the other pounding the plaything in and out of my chamber with all the ferocity I could muster. I ground my hips against it, seeking that begging spot. I gasped and moaned and squealed. The ice grew smaller in my hand, but my body begged for more. I tried to cast the freezing spell again, but found I was no longer in possession of my language. The ice had melted to nothing, and it was a torrent of heated water with which I now fucked myself. The water surged in and out as fearsome as a tidal wave. Miniature whirlpools sucked at my pink nipples and throbbing clit. To feel so much stimulation was overwhelming.
I gave myself to the water. All at once my thoughts fell away. I was kissing the cosmos, my body shuddering and flexing, my mind transported. Mouth open. Eyes closed. Sheath clenching. Each shimmering second washing over me in a wave of heat. Through my clit to my very fingertips. I savoured the sublime magic of it for as long as I could. My skin trembled with the ecstasy and exertion of it... until it slipped away.
I swam languidly to the opposite edge of the pool. It was a beautiful life.
***
Home in the forest was with the woman to whom I felt I owed everything. Kasita was my teacher, and my family, my lover and my world. You might ask why it was not of her I thought when I slipped out to bathe alone? Such questions troubled me, and I did my level best not to dwell upon them.
"You are so much changed," Kas smiled affectionately as me, tucking a strand of my straw-coloured hair behind my ear, "I never dreamt that first day that you'd become so... "
"So what exactly?" I laughed, drawing her close into my embrace.
"Strong." She said approvingly, grinning and shaking her head.
She was right. I was strong. My encounter with the Prince of Azure had transformed me utterly. My new senses seemed almost too numerous to count, and I often didn't know I was using them until occasion required me to articulate them. I knew at all times, night or day, rain or shine, inside or out, what the phase of the moon was and the exact appearance of the map of the constellations in the sky. (Before, I could not have even pointed out The Great Bear.) I knew the tides, their ebb and flow, the songs of whales and what they meant, if water was safe to drink by the smell of it. But at this moment in my young life - I had never laid eyes upon the ocean. I could manipulate fire with my breath, rousing a tiny ember to bonfire in an instant. I knew which plants were poisonous (though, I still needed Kasita to tell me their names and how to harvest them) and which song belonged to which bird. Even at a distance, I could feel the little frantic heart beat in each sparrow and each crow; and I could stop them with a cruel thought and watch them fall from the trees. This was how we ate.
I was physically strong too, easily able lift barrels of water, or fell a tree. Or most pleasingly, to throw Kasita over my shoulder and haul her, squealing in mock indignation, to our shared bed. For while in the daylight hours she taught me literacy, ritual and herb-lore; by nightfall she taught me how to make love.
