Memories of Magic
I was surprised at how angry I was at the woman in "The Witchfinder". I tried to figure out why and then realized that it was because she was so terrified, but there must have been a time before the Purge when magic was seen for the good it could do. So I wrote this both for that and because I decided that merlin was being sort of obvious... Anyways, enjoy. :)
She had seen the smoke change. It had gone from a white, cloudy blob to a clearly defined horse.
She knew it was magic. It had to be. What else could it be?
For a few moments, she had been terrified. Absolutely terrified. Yet… she could still remember.
She had only been a little girl of about seven when she first saw magic.
A tall, dapper young man had smiled at her and conjured up a bunch of floating, rainbow bubbles for her to play with. Her mother had smiled at the man and given him a coin.
She was eleven when she befriended a magic user.
The magic user had been a pretty Druid only about five, but the child's cheer and little tricks had charmed her. The tricks had been harmless and beautiful acts of magic.
She was fifteen when the Purge began.
She was fifteen when she was taught to fear magic by the king.
She was fifteen when she watched her Druid friend burned at the stake on her ninth birthday.
She was fifteen when she started forgetting that magic could be beautiful.
And now, she had seen a pretty trick much like the one that man and her Druid friend had delighted so much in creating.
She was no fool. She could see that it was the peasant boy with the dark hair and grey-blue eyes that had done it. Why else would he deny seeing the smoke horse? Why else would he yell at her to wait and stop?
The boy had looked and sounded nothing like her friend nor the man, but when she opened her mouth to tell the king that it was him, the boy standing beside the court physician, that had committed this act of treason, those two faces were all she could see.
It was too late to stop this now, but she knew in her heart that she would not give the boy away. She owed him that. She owed her friends that. She owed all of magical folk that. She owed the kingdom that.
