The crone ignored the clatter of dirty coins and dusty heirlooms and shifted in her chair.
"Did you bring all that I require?" she asked, though she saw the payment clearly and knew its worth - while meager - was sufficient. Tilla, weathered like a gnarled oak, had long ago found that feigning blindness made her more believable.
"Y-yes," the girl faltered. "I'm s-sure that's enough."
Tilla grinned in her horrible, jagged way.
"It's all you have, isn't it?" she said.
The girl ashamedly nodded then, remembering the witch was blind, loudly affirmed. Too loudly.
Tilla cackled.
"Go on, then, sit down. Put your hands out," she ordered and her customer obediently complied.
The girl was plain with skin toughened and browned from years of hanging laundry out to dry. Her hair was like straw but clean. From the looks of her, Tilla noticed, she had it better than most lifelong servant girls but, like most servant girls, harbored ridiculous dreams of rescue by a handsome prince on a white steed. If only she were beautiful enough...
They always believed beauty was the answer. Not just seventeen-year-old maids. Women of all ages and circumstances, and men, too. When they learned Tilla could not change the hearts of others, they all made the same request.
Make me beautiful.
Ignorant, vain fools.
Tilla arranged an array of curious objects - a crow's foot, human teeth, the dried husk of what was once a toad. None of these things bore any sort of magical significance, but her customers had certain expectations. If it kept food on her table, Tilla was willing to play the part.
She closed her eyes and bowed her head.
"By adjornum and mephesio," she improvised. "At the great goddess Ishtar's whim... speak unto me your heart's desire! Speak thrice! And it shall be done!"
The girl did not hesitate.
"Make me beautiful! Make me so beautiful that he cannot think of another! Make me so beautiful that no man can sleep once he has seen my... my beauty!"
Tilla uttered more nonsense and moaned as if overtaken by spiritual passion. Then, all at once, she stopped.
"It is done," she whispered upon opening her eyes. "See for yourself!"
She handed the girl a cracked hand mirror and watched with disgust as she marveled over her unchanged reflection.
"Oh! Oh Tilla... it's wonderful! I cannot believe it! Is it me? Is it really ME?"
Tilla only laughed. It would be years before the poor child understood the nature of the true spell. Perhaps she never would. It was fed, after all, upon vanity. The more she admired herself, the more beautiful she would believe herself to be. Beauty was in the eye of the beholder, some said, but few under the spell were ever the wiser despite the loneliness that continued in their wretched lives.
"Now away with you," she hissed. "And do not return or the spell will be broken forever!"
The girl immediately fled Tilla's ramshackle hut, gleefully laughing and still clutching the broken mirror.
So ended another day for Tilla, the old witch of Annweiler. For money, she performed petty charms and curses. Magic - if it could even be called such - that scarcely existed outside the minds of her patrons. That is not to say she did not possess greater skills. Indeed, she knew a power darker than midnight, though she was wise enough not to utilize it for trifles. Such power, however, was not enough. One day Tilla would die, and she knew of no spell that could save her from death.
Yet.
There was a legend of a man who had escaped death for centuries. It was said that whoever drank of his blood would live forever. According to legend, the man was eventually felled by some fantastic creature, the nature of which varied in every story. Some said it was a dragon. Some said it was a werewolf. This mattered little to Tilla, for while she could not yet avoid her own demise, she knew that the man of legend had existed. And she knew how to raise the dead.