This began from musings I had earlier this month. The beginning chapter is but a preface, the following chapters will be much longer. The bolded name at the beginning of each chapter indicates the point of view.

It is a 17th century tale of an angel that appears to a young, naïve girl. The seduction that ensues is swift and powerful. However, things are not as they seem, and what one may perceive to be kindness, may in fact be nothing short of malice.


Bella. 1680. England.

The smell of burning flesh is both revolting and pervading. It seeps into everything: your clothing, each strand of your hair, even the spaces under your fingernails.

The witch burning on the pyre screamed in agony, her feet roasting in the flames while the rest of her body remained unmercifully pristine and unburned. The wind carried the smoke quickly to the west, not allowing the treacherous whore the pleasure of suffocating before the flames enveloped her. It was a sign of God's vengeance that she remained conscious for the entirety of her ordeal, a sign that her heretical screams and rumors of witchcraft were true.

This I was sure of.

However, despite the fact that I knew she was a witch. Despite the foul utterances that escaped her mouth, I felt pity. Pity for the poor, lost creature that writhed on the pyre in agony so great it nearly brought tears to the eyes of even the most hardened of hearts. It is not easy to watch someone burn alive.

I turned away in disgust and fear. Disgust in watching her flesh roast, disgust in watching the crowd around me yell in eagerness for her to burn faster, to increase the number of rushes beneath her so that the fire burned quicker. The crowd surrounding me was dirty and smelled of body odor. The poor did not have the luxury of washing their bodies as the wealthy did but chose not to do. Washing weakened the heart – every intelligent person knew that.

I began to elbow my way out of the crowd, my steps quickening with fear. There was something about the witch's screams that bored into my brain, terrifying me. Something about the unintelligible mutterings that escaped her mouth frightened me, seeming as if she was conjuring her last, yet most powerful, spell. As I reached the end of the crowd, I turned my head to gaze upon her one last time.

Our eyes met. My dark brown and achingly average eyes met her beautiful ones. She was young and strikingly beautiful, with a thin and strong body and hair as dark as a raven's wings. I had never in my life seen anyone as beautiful as she.

It was said that between her legs was a witch's teat in which she suckled her animal familiar – a bat – providing it with her lifeblood so that it would do her bidding. Some of my neighbors had said that they had even seen her frolicking during the Witch's Sabbath in which she danced naked in the moonlight and fornicated with demons. But, as I looked at her, it almost seemed difficult to imagine that this lovely creature, with dark skin and dark eyes, could be anything other than gentle and achingly sad. Her cries grew angry as our eyes met. Her wailings, which once were so full of sadness and pain that I had wanted to save her, grew to angry shrieks. A hatred entered those beautiful eyes as we gazed at each other, a hatred so deep and powerful that I felt my organs tremble inside me. Her dark hair whipped viciously around her head, the wind encouraging the flames still further up her body.

As the wind increased, as the flames devoured her body, climbing higher and higher, as those dark eyes stared into my soul, the young maiden began shrieking in a language I didn't understand. Foul words flowed from her mouth. The crowd around us gasped in fear, each believing that she was cursing them individually. However, it was only me that her eyes met. Only me that seemed to be the one chosen to meet her wrath. My ears strained to hear her above the crackling of wood and the mutterings of the crowd. As I heard her clearly for the first time, my skin chilled.

"Cave, qui venit in forma enim Dei, non est. Incendemus te, et detrahent te: et in inferno, ut me incenderunt."

She spoke in the language of the papists, in the language they used to speak their superfluous incantations during mass. The Catholics who had once ruled this dithering, wet island insisted on using Latin in their masses, despite the fact that no one but the wealthy and the clergy could understand it.

This is what most struck me. That the witch spoke in a language once deemed exceedingly holy. Yet what spewed from her mouth was anything but.

"Exarserunt sicut ignis absumet" she repeated, again and again, as the fire slowly peeled away her flesh.

I did not understand what she said. Perhaps if I had, the events to come would not have surprised me so. Perhaps I would have known, understood, and not fallen victim to the treachery of those full of malice and evil. Perhaps I would have perceived false kindness as nothing more than hidden manipulation. But I did not. And my ignorance doomed me as much as the witch had doomed herself.

I stared back at the beauty in the fire, the woman who had once been my lover, and knew that she was cursing me for what I had done.

For it was me that had sealed her fate and caused her to burn.


Thoughts and reviews are indeed appreciated. I shall be using my double degrees in History to help with this narrative.

As always,

Oriana.