The Witch of Weirwoods

“Tea?” the witch said, moving about her little thatch-roofed stone cottage, gathering a kettle and the ingredients to brew. “Can’t have a talk without tea, can we? What would my neighbors think?” She laughed as though she’d made a great joke. “Oh dear me, I haven’t any neighbors, have I?”

Shriva could only wonder at the eccentric woman and the letter she’d sent inviting her to tea. She was nothing like the stories said to expect. Rather than bent with age and a face made hideous by warts and hairy moles, she was quite lovely, in an ageless sort of way. Long golden tresses fell in waves down her back, and blue eyes sparkled like glass in the firelight. She wore a stout woolen dress slashed with cream across the breast with just a bit of simple embroidery on the shoulders and moved with a motherly grace that put Shriva at ease.

“Shriva is such a lovely name,” the witch said, bustling about various cabinets and over to the stone hearth, where she hung the kettle on a hook over the flames. “Your mother named you well, Shriva. A lovely woman, she was.”

Shriva blinked.

Had she told the witch her name? She was sure she hadn't. Then the rest of what the witch had said hit her. “You knew my mother?” Something quickened in her chest.

“Oh yes, dear,” the witch seemed puzzled for a moment by the various tea leaves she was setting out for the water to boil. “I knew her quite well. I did.”

Shriva didn’t believe the witch. Her mother had never mentioned knowing her. All she’d ever said was that she lived in Weirwood and kept to herself, though she disagreed with her way of life. Nothing more. The rest of the town seemed to revile the witch, thinking her evil and hungry for the flesh of children.

“My mother also named me well, my dear,” the witch said with a hint of a smile quirking on full lips with a natural hue that caught the eye. “Both me and my sister. A good mother, she was. Full of love and the light of goodness that shined from her heart. I miss her so very much.”

The kettle whistled, and the witch moved to fetch it from the hearth. Shriva’s eyebrows rose when she seized the hot metal in her bare hands without so much as a yelp.

“I’m sorry to hear about your mother, ma’am,” Shriva might be the guest of a witch, but she meant to maintain her manners. “Lost my mother winter past. Blood fever. Still doesn’t seem real.”

The witch brought the kettle to the table and poured two steaming cups of tea that gave the air a pleasant scent. Shriva sipped as the storm that had threatened all day finally broke outside. The wind gusted fat raindrops against the cottage’s two little square windows and moaned through the eaves.

“Oh, I know, my dear. Blood fever, such a dreadful disease,” the witch settled across from Shriva and gazed at her over the rim of her mug. “My sister refused the tonic I offered, which would have cured that Blood Fever. Always was stubborn, my sister.”

Shriva’s mug hit the reed-strewn tile floor and rolled away.

What was this witch getting at? Was she a mad woman?

“What are you saying?” Shriva’s voice sounded distant as her head spun. This was some kind of trick. The witch was trying to trick her. But why?

“Why did you ask me here?” Shriva resisted the urge to stand and dart for the door but couldn’t stop a glance over her shoulder. “Why did you really ask me here?”

The witch set her mug down and smiled fondly. “Why, my dear,” she said. “You’re the only family I have left.”

Her eyes darted to the cup of tea on the floor, then back to Shriva. “We will be friends forever.”