The Honey Witch

Chapter XX





Too restless to sleep, I grabbed my field jacket from the coat stand and cautiously stepped out into the chilled night. The revenant no longer guarded the door, but I was not convinced it wasn’t watching. The call of an owl echoed in the nearby pines and the single warble of a tree frog answered from the stagnant pools along the Cutler.

The air felt contained under the deceiving stillness of the lowering moon, spreading its waxing light through a lattice of shadows and fragrant oleander.

“Ana…” I sighed without forethought into the cloak of darkness.

The owl called again, this time further into the boughs. Again, the tree frog replied from the shaded expanse.

“I’m here,” the whisper of Ana’s voice rolled against the entire chamber of the gloom.

I looked over the lawn for a trace of her presence. “I don’t know where you are.”

“Follow me, Ethan,” her voice invited. “Follow.”

“Ana, I can’t find you,” I answered.

“Follow…” her voice begged. A vaporous breeze brushed against my jacket sleeve and rustled the leaves of the oaks.

I reviewed the immediate area again and sighed with a quiet frustration. The fiendish white dog yelped twice from the back lawn. I stepped guardedly around the corner of the cabin, relieved to find the beast did not call from its ghoulish barrow behind the cemetery fence.

It occurred to me that should I follow the creature into the moon-shadowed forest, I would never return from its rooted and moldering bowels.

It also occurred to me that should I turn away, I would not reach any hoped for destination with my limbs unscathed.

The animal’s eyes glistened with what I imagined to be a plea of reassurance that, indeed, if it wished to rip my throat, it would have been done long before this moment.

“Ethan, my love,” Ana’s call entreated from deep within the shadowy weald. “Why do you linger so? Follow me.”

With my first cautious step, the white canine bolted ahead and I followed: followed through the deepening murk of nocturnal sounds; followed between the shards of moonlight; funneled through the galaxy of lighted fireflies darting past my field of vision. I followed until the following appeared endless. The deeper I traveled passed the forest trees, the more I realized I would not find my way out anytime soon should I lose track of the ghostly guide, and certainly not in the dark.

It was then I realized I had, in fact, lost sight of the spectral creature.

A stab of alarm gripped my intestines. “Shit.” I took three steps ahead and lost my footing against a splintered log. I felt the scraping of dried bark sear the skin above my right eyebrow.

“Dog?” I called out uneasily. I rose to my feet and brushed the clinging chips of lichen and loose bark from my jacket and hands. “Wolf? White wolf?” Which is it? Dog or wolf? Perhaps neither, but only resembling either. A specter. Neither real nor unreal.

“Damn it, where are you?” I shouted into the unyielding density of empty response. Despite the odds at failure, I considered turning around. Looking behind, the tangled undergrowth and low branches had undoubtedly bounced back from the initial intrusion. I faced a miserable feat in attempting to retrace the same route. As the full realization of my plight took its depressing grip, an abrupt breeze brushed through the moonlit silhouette of the trees. I felt the sweeping cool against my face.

“Follow,” the current of Ana’s voice urged. “Follow, follow, follow…”

Had I not succumbed to the methods of her inviolate sorcery in the many hours before this, I would have held to the inherent idiocy of tracking rushes of air to the body of her voice.

And so, I followed, a seedling to her flow, until coming to an open grove that under the light of the moon, I clearly recognized as the guarded alcove Fitch and I had broached weeks earlier.

The wind evaporated all sound while it retreated between the barked columns of half a century old trees, and I soon stood alone under the deafening strain of impenetrable silence.

Would she now accuse me of stealth and corruption? Of cooperating with the enemy, by engaging in improvident theft of remedies hidden in the dank hollow of dead oaks? Had the hour of recompense arrived and with it, the regret of having followed the temptation to begin with? Would I languish under the moss in eternal benefaction of desire for a Lagori woman; my only companion the discarded remains of another era’s hapless lover?

“You are here…” Ana’s disembodied voice fluttered through the damp air.

I turned a full circle slowly, alert to any hazard against self-preservation, yet fatalistic enough to dignify sudden defeat.

“Yes,” I responded with reserved fortitude. “But where are you, Ana? I can’t see you.”

A chime of feminine laughter eased the silences between the forest gap and surrounding thickets. Still, she eluded my vision.

Under the pull of a sudden exhaustion, I begged: “Ana, if you’ve any pity…”

“Here, here,” she beckoned tenderly.

My back against the striking width of the moon, I looked up into the ghostly atmosphere.

“Good God…”





~*~