Page 1 of A Forest Witch

1

Autumn

All my life I never knew who my mother was. I didn’t know whether she lived amongst our small little community I’d been raised within or not. I didn’t know if she was dead or alive.

I didn’t even know her name.

The witches in these woods kept their secrets close to their chests and even if she did live among this community the others would never tell me, not that I’d ever dare ask any of them.

They were all excellent secret keepers.

And keeping their children safe from greedy, evil men was supposedly the reason we were all out here in the first place. I was always a bit of a skeptic and had never been able to simply be a blind follower.

It made me a bit of an outcast amongst the small community, but I never minded being different or on the outside looking in. If I’d been meant to fit in then I would have. Or, so that’s what I told myself to make myself feel better.

I didn’t have many friends here and I wasn’t winning any popularity contests. I was more than okay with that though.

Long story short, I didn’t feel like I fit in with my community and I didn’t hide my feelings from anyone.

It wasn’t exactly that I thought I was different or better than anyone.

It was more that I thought there was more to life for me than this. I didn’t mind living in the woods, I loved being one with nature, but I always thought there was a coven out there just waiting for me to come along and complete them.

I wanted that, a coven of my own.

I desperately wanted a family of my own.

I wanted to be a part of something other than a giant community where you were only a small cog in a really big, dysfunctional wheel.

I wanted to be considered special to someone in my life.

I stupidly thought I was destined for it. Mostly everyone else thought I was stuck up for it. I’ve heard people whisper things about how I thought my “shit didn’t stink” and how one day I’d get “taken down a peg, where I belonged.”

I never understood it because I wouldn’t say these kinds of things about others in my community. I wanted peace, love, and happiness for everyone, no matter what they felt about me.

We were all raised together, taught to supposedly share everything we had, and in some cases that included all of our feelings. Which is why I shared mine even though they weren’t received in a well light. You didn’t hide anything from your family, it wasn’t how our community was supposed to operate. Though I was bad because I did things sometimes and hid them, I never lied about it when caught though.

I constantly craved privacy and a little space. All of which made me as much of an outcast as our community allowed one to be. It used to bother me more but now I just lived my life to the best of my ability.

I didn’t mind being an outcast of a sort if it meant I stayed true to myself.

Being true to myself was something very important to me and I wasn’t willing to compromise that no matter what. Not everyone was always true to themselves and I refused to be a liar, even if it would have made my life so much easier.

There were enough liars in this place without me being one also.

Liars and hypocrites, the whole lot of them. But we weren’t supposed to talk about that.

I knew there was a different way to live that normal people without magic did successfully. I even knew that there was another way for witches to live amongst their covens.

We weren’t supposed to talk about any of that either.

The Council of Elders had been known to punish the outspoken amongst us. I had been punished twice already, publicly, before I learned to keep my mouth shut and myself to myself. It wasn’t easy but I managed it. Punishment was akin to public humiliation and torture and that was not fun for a proud witch like me.

This whole place was hard for a witch like me.

I wanted so much more for myself and I didn't think it was wrong to want such things. We were taught it was wrong to want such things though.

“Get your head out of the clouds, girl,” Nell, the shriveled up old lay who ran the kitchen tents snapped at me. “You’re here to serve up food, not day dream. Every day it’s the same damn thing. I have to tell you, you never get it, and you never change. Don’t make me have to tell you anymore today. I’ve run all out of patience for you and I’m just going to start punishing this behavior of yours.”

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