Soliloquies Anthology 30.1

By Coralie Olivier

Disclaimer: This could be the beginning of something bigger.

Whenever they dared to speak of her, the people of Nuncaster called her The Lady of the Eadwynn woods. If they felt brave, they’d hiss the moniker of The Blighted Lady. Gytha was her name, and on that morning, she was tending to her garden.

Gytha, knees stained with dirt, was digging the old piece of iron she called a spade under her mature onions, leveraging each one out of its bed. Once freed from the earth, she picked them by their long green stem and brushed their frail yellow skin, checking them for rot and bugs. But, as usual, they all looked near perfect. 

As she examined the next one, her harvest was interrupted when a crow perched on the low roof of her house. The bird had traveled the whole of the woods to warn her and she, who’d had no one else to speak to in centuries, had learned the languages of all the animals in her cursed forest. Someone was breaching the border. The crow had seen the fool slicing a path through the thick, thorny bramble, diving deeper and deeper past the hungry hedge that surrounded Eadwynn woods.

The witch’s shoulders slumped with resignation. Certainly, another knight had come to try to kill her. They wouldn’t go far, but their agony would be slow and loud. The least she could do was give them mercy. Picking up her basket, Gytha brought her harvest to her front door. Then, she brushed the dirt off her dress and washed her hands in a bucket of cold rain water. Walking to the edge of the woods used to take a short hour, but now it was half a day of trekking. She wrapped her traveling satchel over her shoulder and tied her water flask to her belt. Glancing at her garden, where half of the vegetables still lingered, she sighed. Of course someone had to breach the barrier on such a beautiful, fruitful day. She picked up her hand scythe and set out to meet them.

She followed the crow over trees and under bushes. The heart of her forest was a tangle of nature. Ancient trees toppled by bad storms now served as the epicenter of life; mushrooms grew on the surface while bugs lived under the brittle wood. Birds preferred the still standing trees, nestling deep in the shadows of their crooked branches. Rocks had been carpeted by moss so long ago that they’d forgotten they weren’t one and the same. In a pond, handsome green frogs entertained the avid drinkers who came for refreshments. That morning, they were a small group of deers. Gytha walked past them without disturbing them.

Only the trained eye could make out the limit of the lively Eadwynn woods, the serene forest she had sought to protect all these centuries ago, and the land the barrier had eaten. Gytha only traveled there if she had to. She felt the shift in her bones, as if one was entering a different circle of hell. Around her, the woods seemed the same, as nature had followed the path of the barrier and taken its place once more. The younger trees stood tall, the water streamed through broken stones, and the animals went about their lives, unaware that none of this should have ever happened.

Gytha had long since lost control of her curse. Its protection had turned to destruction as it advanced on the land, year after year, swallowing more and more of the outside world into her domain. It hadn’t always been like this. At first, for many years, the barrier stood steadily in place. Until one day, with no explanation and all at once, it had inched forward, and hadn’t halted since. She couldn’t stop it, no matter what she tried. Soon, the south side would reach the ocean, but then she had no clue if the bramble would continue its course into the salt water, or if the waves would finally stall its progress.

Soon enough, she came upon the first of many grotesque, rusted sculptures once called a knight; the dull, empty shell of the armor entangled in thorns. The ones left standing had been swallowed by the bramble, arms out as if grasping for an exit that they would never find. The ones on the ground, at least, had managed to drag themselves out before the poison took them. They all used to have a name, and Gytha used to know them all, but time had erased them from her memory, like the weather had sanded the pretty colors off their armor. Some of the knights lay scattered in the bushes, a mess of metal and bones like a puzzle waiting to be assembled. Gytha saw a pair of boots sticking out of the mud, the shin bones planted within but nothing else.

The witch stopped before entering the next circle, to fill her water skin at a nearby spring. Her distorted reflection trembled in the pool when she glanced down. Long, stringy blond hair fell in irregular strands to the small of her back, curtaining her oblong face. Underneath, one pale gray eye freckled blue with a hint of gold stared back. The other was gone, absorbed by jade lichen-like growth, full of small leafy encrusted protrusions. It began at her forehead and grew like a natural eyepatch over her left socket. This had been the price to pay for her curse, which at the time had felt fair. Now, as the bramble ravaged the countryside, she would have much rather given all of her. At least, she wouldn’t have lingered to see the destruction she’d wrought.

When she caught up with the crow again, it was perched on the ruins of a farmhouse. Only its wooden frame lingered now, hidden beneath leaves too thick to let the sun through. This used to be the house of someone she knew, someone whose face itched the back of brain as she failed to recall who they were. A family perhaps? As many children who could fit in the small cabin, and two more on top of that. These would have been fields, though it was impossible to tell with all the trees in the way. The ruination of this house wasn’t her doing, however. It was already a pile of burnt rubbles when the bramble had swallowed it. The honor of the wreckage went to the conquerors.

As she placed her hand on the wood, memories of a time long forgotten oozed out of every corner of her mind. As long as she lived, she would never forget the boats and their dragon heads emerging from the fog. The massacres. The fires. Having to move, always, to run in hope of outpacing the invaders, until there was no place to run but this forest. And that spell, that cursed spell she thought would protect this sacred place.

When the thoughts became too strong to stand, Gytha removed her hand from the rotted wood and turned to the crow. After shaking its obsidian feathers, it took off again toward the border.

Near the edge of the forest, nature hadn’t had the time to colonize the earth yet. She reached a river and found a man-made bridge with flat, empty fields on either side, and a stone farmhouse standing tall on the other bank. There were roads here, and fences, and bags left by the front door. Perhaps someone had promised to come back for them, but the bramble had arrived too quickly. Its path was marred by upturned dirt, as the roots slithered ever onward.

Finally, as the sun arched back toward the ground, Gytha reached the ever-shifting border of Eadwynn woods. Here, nature was colder and darker, the bushes too dense and thorny to pass through. White lichen coated the trees, and the staircase-like ruffs of mushrooms bled on the bark. No animal sang, no birds but the crows dared to fly. Ahead, a splash of spores into the air told Gytha where to go. The crow landed on the broach branch of a nearby oak and cawed, looking down at the new victim of the blighted woods. Gytha approached with care.

A young woman had fallen through the low hawthorn trees and writhed on the ground, letting out screams of agony as she crawled away from the bramble, searching for the dagger she’d dropped. The hawthorn had clawed deep gashes in her pale skin; its rank fruits had stained her clothes with brownish juice, which had sipped to her skin and burned, acid-like. Gytha had seen it all before. The red blotches on her hands caused by poison oak. The rancid purplish cut on her cheek left by the branch of a brutish oleander. Soon, the other crows, alerted by her screams, would assemble to await their feast. Only they didn’t fear blighted flesh. Once they’d had their fill, more carrion would crawl out of the earth to pick her clean, until the only thing that remained was her white bones.

Still, as the young woman slithered in the dirt, Gytha watched and wondered how far she would go. Rarely had she seen anyone manage to get this far without armor, not that those pieces of metal had ever saved anyone from the woods. When the young woman, blinded by fiery tears, finally wrapped her hand around the handle of her dagger, Gytha decided it was time to put her out of her misery. She stepped closer but the woman pushed herself on her knees, then, to Gytha’s astoundment, stood on her feet. She brandished her dagger, cutting the air twice as if battling ghosts, before she managed to gather enough wit to turn her attention toward the tall woman by her side.

“Don’t come any closer, witch,” she hissed.

Part of her dark hair had fallen out of its plait and clung to the sweat on her forehead. Gytha couldn’t determine the color of her eyes, as a red veil over her cornea made her cry abundantly. Upon looking at her features, an image was drudged up again like a dead body caught in a tidal wave. A cruel man on the back of a horse, watching the carnage below. A conqueror in search of a crown—one, Gytha assumed, he had found.

“You came on a fool’s errand,” the witch informed her, not at all afraid of the dagger pointed to her neck. “You’ve ventured too far to turn back now.”

“I,” the young woman hacked, and her voice broke with pain on a single word, before she caught her breath again. “I am Princess Sidwell of Nuncaster and you,” she pushed her dagger ever closer to the witch’s skin. “Your reign of terror over this land is over.”

Gytha felt nothing as the metal touched her skin. The princess’ arm was weak, and in fact, she wondered whether she had the strength left to nick her. Gytha had been on the other end of a blade too often to fear it now. She grabbed the Princess’ arm and it became obvious that, because of the agony she felt, Sidwell was no more than a wisp of straw. The princess couldn’t fight her off any more than she could stab her, and Gytha had to do the work for her, bringing the dagger against her throat. Lichen, like blood, pearled out of the thin cut and spread over the wound before turning on the weapon. Sidwell yelped at the sight and Gytha let her go. The princess crashed back into the dirt, losing her grip on her dagger. The lichen dried and fell away, and it was as if the witch had never been cut.

The last of Sidwell’s consciousness was leaving her; her eyes fluttered and she started howling again. Her chest heaved as she labored to breathe, and her screams turned to words of desperation:

“I need to stop the curse…”

Gytha pulled her hand scythe from her belt and placed it against the young woman’s throat, who swallowed against the cold metal, the promise of a final relief. The thinnest line of red spread on her throat, and it seemed to bring the girl back to her senses.

“No, please. I don’t want to die. I need to stop the curse. I’ll give you anything. Please. Save me, please.”

It was as if, in her feverish delirium, the girl had forgotten that she’d tried to kill her not a minute before. Gytha kept the scythe against her throat. Few had begged for their lives when she’d come for them, because few had had the coherence of thoughts to do so.

“You cannot stop this curse. Believe me, I’ve tried. It expands against my will, seeking gods know what, and it will continue to do so long after you are gone. Until only I linger, trapped in a cage of my own making.”

Her grip on the scythe had slackened, moving an inch away from the princess’ throat, and so she readjusted her hand on her gardening tool and pressed it against her throat once more.

“I can’t die,” Sidwell begged, her wet voice blubbering each word. “I’ll give you anything. I’ll do anything. Please, please, please, I beg you.”

Gytha couldn’t understand why she was so reluctant to end the young woman’s suffering. Perhaps it was because it had been so long since she’d spoken to another human, as terrible as their conversation might be.

“Even if I healed you, you would be stuck in these woods for the rest of your life. Death is preferable.”

“I want to live. Please, help me.”

She fainted, her final supplication a whisper on her lips. Gytha considered the wounded stranger at her mercy. She’d never had a companion in her cursed solitude. There might not be any way to save the young woman, whose poisoning at the hands of the bramble might be too far gone. But if she lived, she would have a debt of blood to pay. Though her mind wasn’t entirely made up, Gytha set the scythe at her belt and picked up the unconscious young woman, throwing her body over her shoulder.