I have to admit I'm conflicted about this one because it is really taking liberties. I hope it doesn't offend anyone.
Retelling Tales
Witch They Called Me
Witch they called me, but Witch I was not.
Mad, raving, touched, hysteric, heretic - all these, all these and more I was called, but the worst of the accusations was Witch, because all those other labels, or call them diagnoses, if determined to be accurate, attract Treatment.
If it is found that a person is a Witch, there will be Penalty.
Since madness is caused by stones in the head, Treatment can involve a scalpel to the forehead in order to excise the stone causing the affliction. Treatment can be confinement, Treatment can be forced embarkation in the company of a shipload of other deranged individuals, all with a destination of nowhere.
But Penalty is death.
When the voice first came to me in the night, warning me of an upcoming war, I was young and fanciful, and not yet about to worry for my life, despite the content of its utterances.
"There is an army on its way, and you, Isabella, are the ony one who can stop it," the voice told me.
My eyes sought its owner in the absolute black of my chamber but there was nothing to be seen.
"Who are you? Is this a dream? Why have you come to me?"
"I have come to you because you have a gift - you alone can defend your people against what will happen. The horde is powerful, it is inexorable, it will leave nothing alive in its path, and without your leadership everybody in this town will perish," the voice said.
"When will it come?"
"Even now it is being assembled, but the organization and training will take some time. The leaders are recruiting, and they seek only the most vicious, the most merciless, the most remorseless of soldiers. In maybe a year, maybe two they will come."
"You are frightening me, and I don't believe that this can be true. We are a small town and there is nothing of value here - no gold, nor metals, nor precious stones. We have only timber and water. Why would an army invade us? What could they want?"
"You."
Over the months I began to lose sleep as the voice came to me night after night. If the voice belonged to an actual entity, and spoke the truth - there was grave trouble ahead. If the voice was a conjurance of my own mind, I was insane, and would have to hide the fact, or face the consequences. So I told no-one, keeping my fears to myself and suffering alone through the long days, awaiting the darkness when my tormentor would revisit.
"You must stop coming. You must leave me alone."
"I cannot. I am impelled to your side - you are the one, the only one with the power to defend your people."
"Who are you? Reveal yourself!"
Every night I implored him, and I lit candles but the indistinct shape of him shrank back into shadows, and even slipped silently through my window when I attempted to approach him. One night, however, he didn't. He stood resolute and unflinching in the golden glow from the candle, and I drew near him, holding my little candlestick and raising it as I realized how tall he was.
An angel's face looked down at me, beautiful and perfect.
"Have I died?" I asked him, and his solemn expression became one of concern.
"No, but why do you ask me such a thing?" he said.
"I am surely in some sort of purgatory, and I don't know what I have done to earn this. You look like a being from heaven, yet the things you say to me could only come from the devil's mouth - your tales of murder and carnage and rampage. Am I being tested, to determine my worth for the afterlife?"
"You are worth the afterlife without testing. You are strong and pure and honest and brave and there is no question of your goodness and your deservedness. No, that is not why I am here," he answered, and his face bore sorrow now, deep and affecting.
"Why are you here?"
"Because this legion will come, and you must stand against them. You will not be alone, as I have a small but very fierce company of fighters, and we will attend you in the defense of your people. We cannot drive this enemy off, as they will never give up in their goal, we must kill them all."
I sank to my bed, knees trembling as they always were when he began his talks. My hands trembled to, and the unsteady candlelight flickered even more.
"My father - he is in the constabulary. He can send word to surrounding villages and summon aid..." I began.
"Isabelle," the angel murmured. My name on his lips stirred unfamiliar feelings within my breast. "Isabelle, you know the times you live in. You know what is said of those who make wild claims, who speak of events yet to happen. If you mention this to anyone you will garner the suspicion of small-minded ignorants, and if you persist you will face persecution. You can only talk of this with me, and I will help you plan, and when the time comes I will be at your side, and we will face this terrible enemy together."
"Who is this enemy?"
"They are evil incarnate. They feed on the living and they will wreak devastation upon the population - male, female, young and old."
"How do you know these things?" I cried despairingly.
"I will explain soon. I will tell you everything. Please Isabella, trust me, and be as strong as I know you are."
Daily I went about my life, which was housekeeping for my father, and nightly my visitor came. The initial reason for his contact with me, which was to warn me of the impending war, was never entirely omitted from the evening's discourse. He told me many tales of heroes and champions, of victories won despite seemingly insurmountable odds. I was familiar with David and Goliath - he taught me of Mulan, a girl who disguised herself as a man and joined a great army, and of Spartacus, a slave who proved to be a great tactician and warrior who led a rebellion against the Roman Empire.
I grew greatly in knowledge, but had to hide that knowledge within me, as to speak of the things I had learnt would arouse mistrust.
For a year the nocturnal visitations continued, the low murmuring, the angel's face and form, so beautiful in the night of my room. He never touched me, indeed, I wasn't sure whether or not his form was even solid. He could have been as insubstantial as the air he seemed to glide through with a swiftness and ease that awed me.
"Are you from God?" I had asked him, increasing the fervency of my prayers lest I should be found unadoring and insufficient in my worship, but he insisted he was not.
"My name is Edouard. I am neither God nor angel, nor spirit, nor quite man," he had replied, with an incompletion of facts that was not enough answer.
"Are you real?" I whispered. "Are you ether or matter?"
"I am matter, just as you are," he answered, his angel face grave. Although he was sitting next to me on my narrow bed, I had long ago dismissed thoughts that he intended any impropriety. If my father, or anyone else had known I entertained a man nightly in my chamber, with barely a distance of inches between me and him, a choice assortment of names and their accompanying accusations would have been leveled at me, but I had maintained a silence all this time and no-one knew of him.
"Material, corporeal, tangible. Take my hand," his voice said.
He extended a hand, and I did too, but before my fingers could make contact, he issued a warning.
"Isabelle, I am cold."
I touched him, and it was true. I enclosed his hand fully in mine, and there was no warmth in it. He was as someone dead, lifeless, without the heat of blood.
"How can this be? Why are you like this?" I asked.
With a sigh, he took his hand from mine and ran it through his hair.
"Sooner or later, I had to tell you this, and I am glad it is later and you have had the chance to know me a little, and trust me, I hope. I mean you no harm - you must believe me. If I had any malicious intent, it would have been evident by now. Isabelle, I was once as you are, but I underwent a change, and now I am something different - I am Other. I am ageless and sleepless, I cannot suffer ailments or afflictions, and I am immortal."
He had told me many things, strange and wonderful and hard to give credence to, but this was the strangest.
"I do not have a beating heart, nor any breath," he continued, and raised my hand to his chest. Holding my palm flat against his breast he watched, and waited as my hand rested there for two or three minutes. Truthfully, there was no movement, either of the surface to indicate breathing, or below the surface, where I should have felt the regular and gentle throb of his heart.
I had asked many times what he was, and he had never told me. "What are you?" I asked again, and this time he had an answer.
"My kind has not been named. The creatures that will come here are just such as me, but I am not malevolent towards mankind as they are. I seek to lead a peaceful life, they seek to invade and oppress and ultimately destroy. You need not be afraid of me, Isabelle, and you need not be afraid of them, for I will be with you. I am preternaturally strong - "
For the first time ever, I interrupted him.
"You have said you are immortal, and you have said this enemy is just such as you. How is an immortal foe to be defeated?" I asked, with growing unease.
"Decapitation or fire," he answered.
"You would have me face an unnatural army, each of them stronger than ten men, and I must carry a sword in one hand and a flaming torch in the other? I am just a girl!" I cried, dread imbuing every word, a shuddering setting in to my limbs and my heart beginning a clamor of fright and denial.
"I am sorry, but yes," he said, and he could not have looked more sorrowful. "As I told you, I am assembling a force of fighters, and we have made an alliance with another group of warriors who for centuries have been our sworn rivals and together we will be an opposing army. You do not yet know of your extraordinary power as you are untried, but you will be vital to the salvation of your people."
I shook my head. "You are mistaken. Go now, and leave me, and do not return. I do not believe in your unnatural creatures, and your war, and I have no power. Henceforth I will lock my window against you."
"Isabelle, if you forbid me entry I will not disobey you. But I will always be close, and I will hear you if you ever call for me. Any time you say my name, I will come to you. And doubt it not, the events I have foretold will come to pass."
As quietly as ever, he passed though my window, leaving me shocked and upset, more disturbed than I had ever been by his predictions and dire claims. I should have reported him to the authorities from the very outset, as breaking into a house in the middle of the night is punishable by imprisonment. He would not have been able to bother me further had he been in a cell.
Somewhere in my mind though, or perhaps in my heart, I believed him.
Somehow, I knew the iniquity he spoke of was a reality, and it was approaching.
It was only a day later when my father told me news had come from a nearby village that there had been some sort of animal attack, and the victim, though armed and an experienced hunter, was dead.
"Wolves," my fatherr muttered, as it was well known that wolves hunted in packs, and were capable of strategizing - employing manoeuvres that were almost human in their cleverness and calculation to bring down prey.
"Wolves," I nodded. "Were they seen?"
"No." My father spoke grimly. "But they were clearly rabid. The body was only identifiable by the scraps of clothing found nearby. These animals are extremely dangerous."
He told me of a plan to gather some men of the town together and look for the wolves' resting place. During the day, the beasts would be lethargic, as they answered the devil's call at night with their howling.
"Sir, will you take care? I am fearful this day, as deer and rabbit have been so plentiful this past summer that predators have no need of killing humans."
"Isabelle, we are seasoned men all, and wolves are but dogs. We will have sticks and knives, and we will shout at them and drive them off. They must find new territory elsewhere, and this problem will be over by nightfall," he assured me.
By late afternoon none of the men had returned, and their wives had come to my door. They crowded there, with an air of alarm and urgency, all of them, and they pushed one among them forward, urging her to speak.
"Mistress," she began, voice shaking. "I sent my son to the hill at the town fringes to see if he could espy the men on their way home, and he returned sweating and crying, having run all the way back to me. He said he heard terrible noises - shouting and even screaming, as though something horrifying were happening in the trees. We must all barricade ourselves inside our houses, and we must all pray for deliverance from the wild animals."
"God is displeased with us. We are sinful, and unrepentant. We do not give thanks, we do not make offerings," another voice wailed, and soon all the women were moaning.
"Our menfolk are being mauled out there by monsters sent from the devil, and we must pray."
"We have not been abstemious. We are guilty of gluttony and sloth, we have been venal..."
Sounds of great anguish rent the air, and some women began to beat their breasts.
"Stop!" I shouted, into the melee of panic. The women began to hush one another, and eyes turned to me. Before I could speak, a group of adolescents came running through the street, charging to my house.
"We have been on the hill and we have seen something dreadful. A tribe of - warriors advances," the first of them panted, with terror in every outline of his body. "They are several dozen in number. They walked straight out of the river. Their clothes are covered in blood, and blood drips from their mouths. They are attired in black and they are all deathly pale, and their eyes are red. Their leader carries the head of the fisherman who left this morning to track wolves."
The women began crying again.
"Everyone, listen to me!" I ordered. "Where are your children? We only have a matter of minutes! You, and you - " I began pointing, dividing the women into groups. "Gather all the children, assemble everyone under the age of seventeen behind the inn. You, Jakob - you are the son of the council leader. I charge you with the safety of the children. Find all the horses you can, and with your friends, use the horses to take the children away. Everyone else - return to your homes and get axes or long knives, and firebrands. We will meet this enemy with fire and blades. I will wait for you on the the north side boundary, nearest the river. We must try and hold them off to give Jakob and the children the best chance of escape. Go NOW!"
The group scattered, and I stood for an instant, waiting until no-one was in earshot.
"Edouard. Edouard," I said.
He was at my side.
"Already, you are magnificent in your courage," he breathed to me.
"You said you would bring others with you to fight in this battle," I reminded him, as he took my hand. "Where are they? And how many?"
"They are here. They are around us, keeping themselves concealed until the fighting starts. Some of them are of startling appearance, and we will have to explain to your people," he answered smoothly, and with no warning he had picked me up as though I were light as a cat, and somehow gotten me onto his back. I clung to him as he ran, and I had never known man nor beast to be so swift. Within moments we were at the town's periphery, and I could see the invaders then, walking up the hill. They were unearthly, as unearthly as Edouard was, but while his face had shown countless expressions to me over this past year, theirs showed none. Their countenances were fixed in grimness and they looked neither to left or right, simply coming onwards and upwards.
People from the town began to gather around us, murmuring prayers. Catching sight of Edouard, their agitation grew.
"Isabelle, you must warn your people that there will be wolves fighting today, on the side of right," Edouard muttered urgently, never taking his eyes from the approaching attackers. "They are humans who take wolf forms, and they will not hurt fellow humans."
How did I go from being a girl who swept a house, and laundered clothes and sheets and tended a garden to being a leader of a small army, defending home and lands against a band of soldiers intent on feasting on my fellows? I could not know if what Edouard said about these creatures was true, but I did not want to hesitate and risk the lives of those he told me I could defend.
Even as I pondered on the words that would inspire and assure the people who were facing a deadly enemy, great shaggy giant shapes appeared bounding from either side of us, and set upon the dozens advancing.
"Friends!" I called, as horror began to spread behind me. "Fear not! These wolves are on our side, the side of right, and they fight for God's cause. We are not alone in our battle, we have unlikely allies! Form a line across-wise behind me, and another line behind that, and hold your torches high, as these revenants sent by the devil cannot face fire!"
"And here is my own battalion," Edouard said to me, his voice easily carrying despite the noise that had begun to rage all around us. There was snarling from both the wolves and the demons below us on the hill, and the crackling of the flames behind us. More of the colourless people appeared from the woods, and fanned out, flanking the furious battle that was underway, and then diving in.
"Isabelle, we must isolate the leaders and kill them. Without direction, the others will lose their way. I must go down there," Edouard continued.
"No, please," I urged, suddenly frightened beyond measure. I only felt safe with him beside me, and furthermore, I realized with a jolt that I did not want him hurt.
"You can shield me. You can protect me. This is your gift and your strength, and you must employ it now. Think of an aura that will surround me, and your mind can make it real, an invisible structure that none of them, for all their strength and their viciousness and their cruelty, can penetrate. I know you, Isabelle, and I have faith in you. We will prevail," he murmured to me, and in a flash he was running.
A shield? An aura? I had no conception of what he could mean, but I watched him leap straight onto the back of one of the unnatural creatures as it wrestled with a wolf, and I thought with great fierceness and conviction that I wanted him to be unhurt. I saw one of the others come and strike a great blow which surely would have knocked him to the ground, but it seemed to slide instead of making a connection, and he gave no indication that he had felt it. As I continued to watch, and continued to project my certitude that no harm should come to him, I noticed that though many of the foreign fighters threw their fists at him he seemed charmed, and immune to their violence.
The engagement was brutal indeed though, and there was much bloodshed. The strength of the combatants was unbelievable and horrific. None were armed, but heads were being twisted from bodies, and limbs torn off as well, streams and rivers of red, red blood flowing freely, glistening wetly on the grass, and turning the air hot with its iron-rich odour.
Despite the efforts of Edouard's fighters the skirmish was being forced up the hill, the clamour and shouting coming closer. The smell of fear was behind me, the villagers agape in horror at the grisly scene, and at the prospect of a violent and bloody fate as I renewed my efforts with Edouard, not that I had wavered. Trying frantically to locate him, I saw a flash of hair a brighter red than his. It was a veritable mane, tossed on the sea of heaving bodies like a pennant on a storm wind. To my horror, when the flailing limbs of opponents parted for a long enough moment for a clear line of vision, I saw that the hair belonged to a woman. Her face was a mask of rage and hatred as she battled with a wolf which had its fangs sunk deep into her shoulder, its paws clawing at her abdomen. She grabbed handfuls of the animal's shaggy pelt and wrenched it away from her, neither noticing nor caring that its jaws never let go of her and it tore away a chunk of her flesh. From the glimpses I caught occasionally of Edouard's head, it was towards this woman that he was heading. She was ferocious, and I drew in a gasping breath, a prayer on my lips for greater courage, and for him to have the strength and fortitude to do what he needed to do.
I wasn't even sure to whom I was praying. I was aware of a repetition in my head of the words, "Be safe, be sure, be strong, be true," and even as they sounded to me without my utterance, I felt the shield around Edouard shift and tilt, but I held it steady, and it was almost as though I could see it - a shimmering in the air around him, enclosing him. With my exhortations, and the outpourings of faith I was sending towards him, the shield began to change and expand. To my astonishment, it spread around the man next to him, and the man beyond, and to the nearest wolf, and then the next. Although I knew no-one fighting under Edouard's command, soon I could identify them by where my shield fell. There were far fewer of them than their opponents, but now under my mysterious protection, it appeared as though they couldn't be hurt. They began to inflict wounds more in number than before, and more in degree.
It took another hour, but eventually the invading army was stopped. Bodies lay ruined and mutilated on the battlefield, while some of the combatants had fled back towards the river and the woods. Edouard staggered to me, his hair now stiffened and caked in blood, and plenty of it on his torn clothes and exposed skin, but he appeared miraculously unharmed.
"Send your people home, but tell them to leave their torches. We will take care of all this, and they don't need to see it - they've seen enough."
One by one his wolves came to me, and his people came to me, and he introduced them, but there were too many names for me to remember.
"I will see you to your home, Isabelle, and then I have more to see to. The head of the opposing army has met her end, but the stragglers must be apprehended and eliminated lest they attempt to seek vengeance at a later date. There will be a bonfire here tonight to destroy the remains of those we killed - you may tell your people that it is a victory celebration, but tell them they must stay indoors. Tomorrow they will need to send for the children, but tonight everyone must rest. You are all safe."
Relief and exhaustion overtook me then, and I slumped against his chest. He was very cold, the exertion of the past few hours having failed to warm him at all.
"Come, Isabelle," he murmured, gathering me up, and he carried me home, and took me up the stairs to my bedroom, bringing me a damp cloth and washing my face and hands and then tenderly laying me on my mattress.
"We will patrol the area, but we will keep well back from the town. The war is won. And Isabelle, I know people by their scents. I couldn't pick up the scent of your father on any of them, which means he must be alive somewhere. I will look in the woods for him tonight, and see to it that he is brought back to you. You entire town has been spared but for the one unfortunate man whose head they took, and they are utterly defeated. There are matters I must attend to now, but I will return in a few days. Sleep. Sleep peacefully and await my return."
I was asleep before I saw him slip beneath my casement.
The next day the children were fetched, and the town celebrated its delivery from would-be oppressors. Too tired to attend the proceedings, I rested, and waited for my father.
He arrived that evening, startled, but telling me that in the course of his investigating the wild animal attacks he had journeyed to the next town, where attacks were still taking place. Having assured himself of my safety, he felt he had to return where he was needed. I knew Edouard was taking care of matters but was reluctant to inform my father of that fact, so I bid him take care, and told him I would see him in as many days as it took to resolve the issue.
But unexpectedly in the following days, people in my town averted their eyes when I passed them in the street, and suddenly became hard of hearing when I greeted them.
While my father was still away, a mere two days later, I awoke to the sound of pounding, as though fists were striking wood, and upon opening my door found a group of townspeople there.
Surging they were, none wanting to be the first to speak, yet all apparently bursting with things to say.
"How is it that you knew what to do the day of the attack upon our town?" a voice eventually asked, and I could not identify the speaker.
"How is it that you were in league with wolves and demons?" the inquisitor asked.
I had wondered if I might face questions as to my obvious prior knowledge of the occurences of the battle day, and of my co-operation with Edouard, a stranger of the same appearance as the evil ones.
"A voice came to me and told me of the terrible things that were to happen, and so I had forewarning," I answered.
"What voice?" came a quiet, mistrustful enquiry and I understood then that this group was a self-appointed deputation.
"The voice of an angel," I answered firmly.
A member of the town's council pushed his way through the small congregation of people and came to stand at their head.
"An angel? Where did the angel speak to you? And when?" he asked, brows furrowed.
"He spoke to me in my chamber, at night."
"You were visited at night, when you were alone in your chamber, by an angel?" he queried.
"Yes, sir, I speak nothing but the truth," I answered.
"And why did you believe this manifestation to be an angel?"
"Because of the glory of his voice and his face. His beauty surpassed that of any mortal man. It was clear to me that he was come straight from God in Heaven."
"And why did this angel speak to you?"
"He said that I alone of all the people in this town would have the ability to save our people from the oncoming attack."
Throughout this discourse had been mutterings and whispers from behind the man now facing me. He cleared his throat and the noises stopped, as all seemed to hang on what he was about to say.
"There will be a hearing," was his pronouncement.
"Sir - what manner of hearing?" I asked, now perturbed.
"You will be questioned by and in front of more learned persons than myself. Representatives of the Church and those in governance of the area wish to know the details of your claimed visitations and annunciations, and the identity of he who informed you."
"Am I being accused of a crime?"
"You will be informed of the time and place at which the hearing is to take place. Your absence will indicate guilt."
"Sir! I am guilty of nothing! I am an honest Christian and I seek only to serve God and obey his directives!" I gasped.
"Honest Christians do not hear voices in the night. Honest Christians do not receive harbingers of death, or collaborate with demons and fiends in animal form. Honest Christians do not claim to portent the future."
The small crowd drifted away, and I shut my door, collapsing on the floor behind it. I was being vilified, having committed no crime. It seemed the councillor had already tried me in his own mind, and condemned me. At the upcoming hearing, I would be found either insane or wicked. If I fled I would be hunted down, as my fleeing would be interpreted as an admission of guilt. There was no possible good outcome for me.
I was not ashamed, though. I had acted in what I thought was the common good. At no time had I let self interest rule me, and I had not let fear be my master. On the morrow I would face my accusers with my head high, and faith in my heart - for surely none could consider me guilty of witchcraft - nor deem me a raving lunatic? Was the town not now safe - and all the children spared?
They came for me in the morning, and my hands were secured as though I were a common criminal. I was marched to the law court, and the streets I traversed were lined with those who had followed me to the battlefield. Some held handkerchiefs over their mouths, eyes glassed with tears, yet spoke not in my defense, and some - some shook their heads and cast doubting, sideward glances, and their lips moved in silent utterance of the dreaded accusation which, if upheld by the court, would result in my execution.
The one who could save me, could exonerate me, could uphold my claims was nowhere to be seen or heard, despite my desperate pleas in the night. But then - what material defense could he offer me, being a supernatural creature himself? I prayed to God, as well as to my angel, but neither had answered, and I faced my accusers alone.
I was questioned as to my background, my childhood, and my beliefs. Everything about me had always been ordinary, and I answered to that effect. Everything, that is, until the angel. As far as I knew, I had done no wrong, broken no laws, and committed no sin. An angel had visited me and prophesied to me, and I had acted on his advice, which I took to be God's word. As a result a town had been saved from monsters.
Yet the accusers sought to discredit me. Apparently my crime was that I took the word of my angelic advisor and did not consult the church on the matter of the demons who would have defiled our town and slaughtered our people. I should have spoken first to the minister so that he might have prayed for guidance from the true God. I should not have believed that a voice I heard and a vision I saw were of Divine origin. I should not have claimed them so, nor acted on their advice.
A written statement was prepared detailing my wrongdoing, which I was asked to sign. Able to neither read nor write, I was reliant upon a member of the court to read that statement to me. However, it called for me to denounce Edouard as a figment of my fevered mind. Due to its falsehood, I could not make my mark upon it.
Thus, a verdict was reached, and a sentence passed.
I was afraid, a little, and at the same time jubilant, for I would go to meet my Lord, and I would be joined with my angel in Heaven.
Upon the morning I was led to the location that would be my final earthly place.
Edouard had told me he would come when I called for him, and surely he would come now - either to deliver me, or to be my guide.
A masked man bound me, and another masked man set a torch to the fuel at my feet as I raised my voice and called...
My voice rang true, high and clear, and I knew my angel flew to me, as I flew to him...