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They hung garlic from their doors in great braids and intricate wreaths. Silver locks kept windows sealed shut from more than just the cold. Axes glinting in tree stumps were a subtle warning. The fires that burned at the heart of the village and its edges warned away the darkness that crept from the woods. All that howled would be silenced, and all that differed would die.
Fareeha Amari had killed her first beast at six, was a skilled hunter by twelve, and twice the size of any man in her village by eighteen. She wore the skin of a wolf on her shoulders, chewed garlic, and kept her axe in her belt even at home.
Of all her people, she feared magic the most.
It was not the undead that haunted her, not ghouls or vampires, but the wind-sharp howling of the wolves. A blood curse, from a witch many centuries dead that had quarreled once with her family, noble hunters who had killed her familiar. Every Amari since had bore the curse, the mark of the wolf. It had driven her mother from their village many years prior. Though a foul tincture could keep her unswayed by the moon, the youngest and last living heir still isolated herself at the edge of the village.
For that reason alone, nobody suspected her of harbouring what she most feared within the walls of her own home.
Sat by the fire, she looked only a young woman. Her hair like spun gold, her skin like fresh fallen snow, her slender body and finest face, she could have been nothing more than an extraordinarily beautiful girl.
Fareeha could look at her and almost pretend it was so. When she was peaceful in her sleep, or turned with her back to her. So long as she could not see her face, Fareeha could forget, for the wickedness revealed itself only in her eyes.
Cat eyes, of sharpest, brightest yellow.
The other marks were hidden, only shown when stripped and bathing for the first time. Scars upon shoulder blades, where wings once sprouted. Teeth marks at her breast, where once a familiar sucked her nipple. Black markings up her arm, where she had been marked by magic. All the signs of a witch. A powerful witch.
A witch of the woods.
She was quiet, Fareeha reasoned, and did not use magic. She sat silently, or boiled her tincture for her, or cooked and cleaned for her. When Fareeha returned with a kill, she helped skin it, took its bones, and buried them in the forest. They ate together in silence. They slept apart, Fareeha in her bed and the witch before the dying embers of the fire as Fareeha had bid her. Fareeha woke to the sounds of water boiling and quiet singing.
It was most difficult, to not let witch become wife in her mind, as she stood naked in the doorway of her room and watched as delicate hands prepared tea and buttered bread.
No, Fareeha thought, it was most difficult when she smiled.
The witch had promised no magic, that so long as Fareeha gave her shelter she would go without and starve herself of her most natural need. Her broom and staff were snapped over Fareeha’s strong thigh, though the splinters were kept wrapped in fur beneath her own bed.
When she smiled sweetly, Fareeha could only remember the tears in those wretched eyes, as she had watched the wood bend and crack.
It was no smile for her, but a plea for pity and another night she might be permitted warmth before her fire. Fareeha wished it was for her, yet she knew wishing was for children, and she had long since grown.
Watching with tired eyes, Fareeha downed another vial, the nearly full moon visible just beyond window and tree.
When she turned back to the fire, it was to find her witch on her side before it, curling up and stretching weakly. Her hand rested near the flames, playing with ember and ash. Her eyes were closed, yet Fareeha did not go unseen.
“Wolf?”
Fareeha prickled at the name, but it was whispered so affectionately she could not bring herself to anger over it. “Witch?”
“Do my eyes unsettle you?” she asked, lifting her hand and releasing a fistful of black ash.
“They are witch eyes, I could not trust them were they my own.”
“I wish not to unsettle you.”
She did not answer, letting only the sound of the rain on the window speak for her.
It did not stop the witch from saying, “I have given up all power, all right, they are no longer a witch’s eyes.”
“It does not change what you are.”
A pause, before the witch demanded, in that voice to sway the hearts of men, “Bring me a knife then.”
“A knife?” Fareeha clarified with curiosity.
Running her ash-dipped thumb over her eyelid and turning so she was laying on her back, the witch gave a single nod. “So I might cut out my eyes.”
“No.”
“Yes,” the witch breathed. “I can not return to the woods, and I must make myself fit for your world now. If my eyes unsettle you, I must be rid of them.”
“You would be blind.”
“I have other senses, and what is blindness if I may never leave this house?”
“You are not my prisoner,” Fareeha said firmly.
“Nor am I your guest. I have not a place in the world, but here before your dying embers, and if it should mean I must cut out my eyes to keep what little place I do have, I shall.”
She was not harsh, nor sharp. Quiet, and Fareeha watched as tears mingled with the ash, running black down her cheekbones. “If you have magic, you can hide them.”
“Magic can not hide the marks of a witch, wolf. Only your knives and blades can, as the last village I sought rest in taught me.”
Fareeha could see how her back tensed, wings that were not there spreading beneath her. “You would not blame me for it?”
“Not if you sit with me after, call me a name you choose, and tell me I am human enough.”
“A name?”
“My name is that of a witch, given to me by a witch, for a witch,” said she.
“Will you come when I call the name I give you?”
“Eagerly,” the witch replied. “Will you guide me while I learn to see without sight?”
“Happily,” Fareeha said, earnest.
“Then bring me your knife, but let me look upon you long first,” said the witch, sitting up from the fire and opening her eyes. The thin pupils widened as she looked upon Fareeha. “Let me cast one spell, before I forsake magic forever on.”
“Proclaim it first.”
Standing, the witch approached with a hand outstretched. “With magic I wish to remember your face, so that it may come to mind as if I am sighted whenever my other senses do detect you.”
“Why would you wish that?” Fareeha asked, stepping back from the hand that fluttered at her cheek.
“All that gives me pause in my certainty I could live without eyes is your smile.”
Fareeha shuddered as the ashen hand touched her cheek. “Your seduction will not sway me, witch.”
“If it disturbs you, I shall never say another word more upon it, and I shall take your knife now.”
Hand at the sheath, Fareeha hesitated. “Why do you want to stay with me? If I give you my knife, is it not the same as taking your wings? Will you tell the next person of it, before they take the skin from your arm, or cut your nipple from your breast?”
“Clothes will hide all else, and you can name me, dress me, I will come at your call, speak not a word, so long as I might stay by your fire and know that there is a place for me that is warm and I am safe.”
“Why me?”
The witch frowned and felt her shoulders fall. “I thought a wolf would understand.”
“I am not a wolf by blood, it was your kind who did that to me. We are not the same, I am not the monster you are.”
“Then with your knife I will cure myself of my wickedness, and stand before you anew.”
“If I do not understand, why stay? Why me, if I am not the wolf you wanted?” Fareeha demanded, hand shaking at the handle of the blade.
“You allow me scraps and embers, that is more than any other of the North would give me, and without any home I can return to, I am a pitiable creature,” the witch whispered, hand warm as it cradled Fareeha’s cheek. “Pity, when one squints, can so nearly resemble love.”
“Love?”
“Hush now, wolf, and hand me your knife. I will be right by morning.”
Fareeha swallowed, but did not unsheath it. “Do you love me?”
“Do you believe a witch able to love?”
“No.”
“Then there lies your answer,” she said, though her smile was that of sadness again. “And if a witch can not love, I ask only more fiercely for your knife.”
“Taking your eyes will not change what you are.”
“Then take my arm, my breast, my tongue, my heart, take it all until I am bones in the fire, or until you find me right to keep. I should rather be half myself with you than all a witch and free.”
“Why?”
“You would not believe me if I told you.”
“Tell me.”
“I love you.”
“I have been unkind to you.”
“More kind than most.”
“I have made you sleep in cinders and cook for me, I have hated you.”
“I have slept in cinders for you and cooked for you, I swore off magic for you, let you break my staff, snap my broom, I have loved you.”
“Did you think those things would make me love you?”
“I thought they might make me human for you.”
“You will never be human.”
“Nor will you, but I can cut myself into pieces until I am no longer a witch, you will always be a wolf.”
“Why would you want me then? If I am a wolf in your eyes, a beast, a monster?”
“Witches are not afraid of wolves,” she said in a reverent whisper. “We are the same, we could have met and danced naked beneath our shared moon had you accepted your birthed skin and come into our forest.”
“The forest is dangerous.”
“To humans who do not understand it. Not to witches, not to wolves.”
“I am a human.”
“Then take your human-made blade and make me a human. You will live ignorantly and I will live blindly, as all humans do.”
Fareeha swallowed hard, unsheathing the knife and holding it out. It glinted sharp silver in the moonlight, sharp enough to pierce the hide of a wolf. A delicate hand reached for it, stroking its blade. “Witch?”
“Quiet, wolf, and think of the new name you will give to me come sunrise.”
“Will you be happy?”
“Will I be yours?”
The blade glinted as the strong hand turned it. “Could a human love a wolf?”
“With all her heart and yet more.”
There was a moment of consideration. “Can I know the witch’s name first?”
“Humans can not know a witch’s name, lest they grow to pity her.”
“Can a wolf not know?”
Cat eyes shining in the moonlight, the witch leaned up and around a true smile whispered in a gentlest voice, “Angela.”
“Angela,” Fareeha repeated gently, will failing her.
“Say it not again, call only the name of your human, who with all your human heart you might one day love.”
“Once more, please.”
“As you wish.”
Sheathing the knife, Fareeha held her palms to ashen cheeks and whispered, “Angela.”
“Your knife.”
“Once more, I beg you.”
“Peace, wolf.”
“I beg you.”
“Only once more.”
“Angela,” Fareeha breathed, shaking as she held her.
“My new name, if you please.”
“I do not please. Once more.”
“Fareeha,” Angela whispered, helplessly.
“Angela,” Fareeha whispered back, breathlessly.
Stroking the ash from Fareeha’s cheek, Angela trembled and closed her eyes. “Your knife, please.”
“Open your eyes for me.”
“I can not.”
“Then tell me a story.”
“A story?” asked Angela, feeling Fareeha gently bundling her into her arms.
“Tell me of the forest we will run to come morning, of the way your name will sound when I howl it.”
“I have not a home, not when my staff lays charred in your hearth.”
“Not charred, only split, in the coverings beneath my bed, to be returned to you.”
“Fareeha?”
“A soft heart beats beneath my breast.”
It was a truth she had long denied, beneath armour and a wolf’s pelt, behind a blade. She had long been ashamed of it.
Her witch did not allow such shame, when in that gentle voice she breathed, “You were kind to me.”
“I knew to first look at you I would have loved you were it not for your eyes. Faced now with the thought of never seeing your eyes again I am terrified.”
“Has my name so changed your mind?”
“More than so.”
“Is it?”
“A name to put to such love is magic its own and has righted my mind and settled my heart. I have loved you.”
A moment of hesitance, a hand on her chest, pressing, not pushing, as she asked, “What of your tinctures? We have not the alcohol to boil in the woods.”
“What use will I have of them in the forest, with a witch to aid me in my howling hours.”
“The woods will not like a human brought back to them.”
“What luck, that I am a wolf.”
“Luck? Mere moments ago you were adamant it was a curse.”
“If a human can not love a witch, I should sooner spend my life in wolf’s fur than another moment resembling what might hate you.”
“A wolf at heart is a wolf enough.”
“Then let us run, through the trees and away from fire and fear, to a home that might be ours, to a world of witches and wolves and all things wild. The world I see in your eyes and smile.”
Angela dipped her head, resting it on Fareeha’s chest, before she was tucked near the hearth. A warm weight came heavy behind her. “We will leave after sunrise.”
“Say once more you love me.”
“I love you.”
Fareeha turned Angela so her back was to the fire and they were face to face. “Open your eyes for me, Angela.”
With a flutter, the cat eyes opened and filled with love upon first resting over the familiar and warm features of Fareeha. Angela smiled and whispered, “Do they not unsettle you?”
“What unsettled me was what I felt for you, to look a witch in the eye, and know I could not help but love her.”
“Does that unsettle you yet?”
“Not so, as love and the moon no longer frighten me, and now I will let both call me home.”