The first witches didn't need brooms to fly. The first witch, ever, was a village healer. She would gather plants, flowers, roots, the venom from reptiles, the poisons from insects, and clays from the banks of rivers and ponds. She ground bark from the trees, and made poultices of leaves. She was doula and midwife, and mother to new mothers. She was a scientist of nature, and a philosopher of humanity. And while she applied her remedies to the body, she used the power of words, songs, and symbols to bring about a change in consciousness in the mind of her patients. The body and mind, in harmony, provided the most fertile ground for recovery.
The villagers called this "magic."
Until one day, when she was unable to save the beloved son of the chief elder. So called holy men, from other villages, had been steadily gaining influence with their idea that the words, songs and symbols were enough, if the spirit believed strongly enough. They called this "faith." The spirit was a third place, separate from the mind and the body, and in fact completely independent, they said. All were equal in this, in the beginning. And the words and songs and symbols could be learned by anyone. They would not teach it to just anyone, only those deemed worthy, but the egalitarian trappings were enough to convince more and more people every season.
The holy men hated her. Her patients repaid her healing in food, or cloth, or building materials, not in coin. If her patient had nothing; she charged nothing, and she healed them the same. Every patient who had the means to do so, would give her a little more the next time. They had known, before the holy men, that everyone is in danger of suddenly having nothing, and that it would not always be a result of their own actions.
The holy men demanded coin for their services, and the coin soon became a convenient measure of faith. Those without coin, lacked faith, and were not deserving of their spiritual salvation.
The chief elder had resisted these holy men, and had taken his son to her for healing instead. And the boy had been recovering, albeit slowly.
But while the holy men knew nothing of healing, they knew quite a bit about poison. They tainted a skin of goat's milk, and concealed it among the villager's offerings of food for that morning.
The boy died that evening.
And the chief elder, in his grief, found faith. He wailed and wept and gnashed his teeth, and declared that magic was evil, as the holy men had been saying all along, and that they would not suffer her to live.
The chief elder, the holy men, and many of the villagers, stormed the home of the healer. She lived away from the rest of the village, near the edge of the white cliff overlooking a tumultuous sea. They dragged her from her home, and, as she watched, they burned it down.
They beat her, and threw her down at the edge of the cliff. As she lay on the ground, at the very edge of the white cliff, her blood mixed into the chalk of the white cliffs. This very source of chalk (now turning red from her blood) had been a key ingredient for soothing upset stomachs of many of the villagers who were now striking her, and she thought back to how she had shown them how to mix it with a bit of water, to make a paste that would keep their teeth clean and strong. She smiled at the thought, and it was that which brought tears to her eyes, not all the pain she had endured.
Seeing her smile, and her tears, the crowd grew quiet and fell back. Except the chief elder, who grew even more enraged, and with a cry, lifted her slight frame, and flung her from the edge of the cliff towards the jagged rocks below.
And instead of falling, she flew.
She flew.
THE END
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Might have been listening to Anoana by Heilung while I wrote this. Goodnight, and I love you all.
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