"Lie down right there."
Lena tried not to stare at the witch - just as she had tried not to be too nervous all day long. Her father had sent her here and she had always hoped that it would take a bit longer until she would have to take this visit.
Other girls before her come to visit the witch who was living in a little hut at the mountain side, near the little village where they had all grown up together. They had to come here, before they got married because the witch was the one who would testify that they were still virgins, that they had been good girls.
And now it was her turn. Her friends had never talked about what had happened up here and she was nervous. After all, she didn't really feel ready to get married and the proposal from an older man who had come to talk to her father about her from the city had come as unexpected as the snow, that had started to fall down from the sky since yesterday evening.
At least it was warm in the little hut - the fire kept the freezing cold outside and Lena followed the order, carefully sitting down on what resembled a bed but was way more comfortable than the one she had at home.
Her eyes went to the floor - the old witch was ugly. She wasn't a lot taller than Lena but old and thin and she had long, old, haggard hands and fingers with long nails. The hair on her head was grey and so thin that you could see her scalp in some places and her face...a huge nose, wrinkled, old skin and rotten teeth with almost reddish eyes that pierced right through Lena's heart whenever the witch looked at her.
"Lie. Down." The witch looked at Lena an carefully pronounced each of these two words. Lena nodded, lying down on her back and trying to take deep breaths while she looked at the ceiling of the hut where herbs were hung up do try.
"How are you going to test..." she started to ask but fell silent as soon as the witch hissed and motioned for her to shut up.
Then, for a little while, nothing happened. Lena listened carefully but no, nothing and she already started to believe that the whole test would simply be a magic trick when she felt cold hands grabbing her ankles and placing them on the bed so her legs were propped up a bit. Then the same cold hands slowly shoved her skirt upwards, the disgusting nails slightly scratching on her skin and causing her to shiver despite the heat in the hut when she felt the hands reaching the inside of her upper legs where no one had touched her before.
Lena wanted to push her skirt down, she felt vulnerable, wrong, but she also felt that she wasn't allowed to do, that she needed to trust the witch so she fixed her eyes on the ceiling, on a bouquet of herbs that she didn't know and she tried to concentrate on finding out what it was to distract herself.
That didn't help for long - the fingers reaching her most private, intimate part, her womanhood and a long nail sliding along her lips, poking in between them in a way that made Lena quiver.
"Please..." she said, realizing when the word left her lips that she was begging, from the bottom of her heart, that she didn't like what was happening, that she wanted to get up, leave, die out there in the cold but in now way could she accept that old witch touching her like this.