Young Writers Society

V. Ana

It was a humid mid-morning when Ana left the couch behind and drew herself to her feet. She had lived on the witch’s couch for weeks. First, according to Esther, in a fitful, fevered sleep. Then, in the kind of tired, boring wakefulness that gave her headaches and made her long to have the fever back.

Esther sat on a stool in front of the tall, wooden table in the center of her kitchen cracking the peel from a clove of garlic. She had done her hair up in a severe french braid, though strands of grey lingered around her face. She did not look up at Ana when she stood. “Very impressive,” she said, dryly. “Now take a few steps and show us what strength you really have.”

Ana rested one hand on the arm of the couch, the other curled around the little human turning in her womb. She sat back on the cushion and curled her fingers into the duvet. It unnerved her to be so incapable, so helpless. Every passing day she could not stand or walk or run weighed on her. She thought about her cellphone in the back of the cab she’d abandoned. What a simple thing it would be for the driver to pick it up and call her husband. To tell him exactly what had become of the pretty little wife who had gone dashing into the forest like a child in a fairytale running away from home.

She had wound up in a witch’s cottage, after all.

“If you want me to leave,” Ana said, settling her shy stare on Esther, “isn’t there some magic you can do to make me strong?”

“It’s not so straightforward as that,” Esther said, and broke another clove of garlic under the flat side of her knife. “Magic isn’t what you’ve read in stories.”

“Then carry me,” she demanded. Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes and it made her blush, embarrassed. Her hands shook against the blankets. If she’d been home, Mike would have already been shouting. Stop crying, or I’ll give you something to cry about. “Take me back to the road and leave me there.”

Esther dropped the last clove in a small cast iron pan on the table. “I would like so much to take you out of this forest,” she said. “But I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Frankly,” she said, and stood to move the pan from the table to the range. “I’m not sure what that would do to you, or to your child.”

Ana shifted her hands to her womb. Ever since she had woken up in Esther’s cottage, her little human had felt...different. Bigger. More alive. She had told herself it was natural. This was how it felt to grow a human inside her. But she had never had a child before, and hadn’t had a mother to teach her. “Is,” she began, her voice tearful, “is there something wrong with it?”

Esther dropped a bunch of dried rosemary into the pan. “It’s too soon to tell.”

“Why?” Ana forced herself to her feet and tumbled forward, dropping to her knees. A sob stuck in her throat. “If you’re going to keep me captive here, I deserve to know why.”

Esther set a lid over the pan and crossed the room, the conservative heels on her worn leather boots tapping the hardwood floor. She knelt, crossed her hands on the sharp curve of her knee. “You’re not meant to be here,” she explained, her voice soft. “It is an eternal place, this forest, and not one humans are meant to be able to enter. There is a Veil, a bit of ancient magic woven around the wood in the trees and the roots that grow deep into the earth. It’s clever. It takes you as you come and turns you about, sends you wandering lost until you wind up again at the road or the back of some farmer’s field. It doesn’t let anyone through, not in a century.” She extended a hand to Ana, an offer of help to her feet. “If you’re a captive it is not my doing, but I swear to you and all that is good for my home, I will return you to the other side.”

Ana looked up at her. Esther was earnest, but she was afraid. It sulked at the back of her gaze like it did her husband’s. A fear that bred anger. Ana had watched it take her husband, the man who had carried her into his truck when the varsity soccer team drank too many hard lemonades on the school soccer field after the state soccer tournament. He had touched her so gently, then. Helped her home and snuck her back through her bedroom window. Kissed her lightly across her knuckles and told her, I’d like to see you again, kid. Under different circumstances next time. Once they were married, his anger turned him dark.

She steadied herself, and asked what had been weighing on her. “Are you captive here?”

“No,” she said and the fear turned to sadness behind her eyes. “I’m not.”

The little human grew still in Ana’s womb, as if it were listening. A buzzing like the static between stations on the radio crawled into her ears. “Why did it let me in?” she asked. “The forest.”

Esther lifted her to her feet and settled her back onto the couch. She drew the duvet over her and lit a trio of candles positioned on the end table at Ana’s head. “I don’t know,” she said.

“You don’t know?” Ana demanded, pushing herself up by the elbows. She felt faint, the static growing louder in her ears. Esther crossed to the range and took the cast iron pan in a dishtowel. She carried it to the cottage door.

“Where are you going?” Ana called after her.

The witch propped the door open with the toe of her boot and turned back. “I’m going to protect you,” she said. “Whatever you do, do not leave this house.”