The Mantis Corruption - Book Three - 2. Chapter 2 - Tisa & the Witch, Part One

The natural northern border to the land of Xin was formed by a mighty mountain range, and from those craggy peaks ran a powerful river, the Ru. Long ago, its waters carved its path that snaked through the western region for hundreds of miles. The river provides an abundance of fish for the people, as well as a means of transportation, and several villages dot the banks on its journey south. To the east, a vast region of rolling hills and dales stretches to the sea, but in the wastes beyond the Ru River, there is only death.

Far to the north, in the shadow of the mountains sits the village of Kestapoli. It straddles the Ru River where its waters first reach the flatlands, and a portion of the village is located on either of the river’s banks. Kastapoli is the smallest town of Xin and the greatest distance from the capital. Rapids rage upstream, but the village is positioned at a bend where the river becomes calm and placid. The two separate sides of Kestapoli are very similar, with cafes and taverns along the waterfront, and residences set back behind them.

Just upriver outside of Kestapoli lived a woman who the villagers referred to as the witch of the whitewater. They thought of her as a feral hag who did not belong anywhere except on the outskirts of society. Her hovel was little more than a cave, one she dug for herself beneath the roots of a great old tree beside the churning rapids. Her hair and skin were always caked in mud, and she kept herself wrapped in strange scaly material. She could occasionally be seen talking to the trees or even shouting at them.

People from Kestapoli visited the witch of the whitewater from time to time, for it was rumored that she could see the future. Later, when they were a safe distance from her, back in the village, they whispered that her mind was broken from knowing too much. Some claimed that she was hundreds of years old. It was even said that the priestesses of Ruburge far to the south once came to her for the eldritch wisdom she possessed.

Youths sometimes dared each other to see who could creep closest to her dwelling, before fleeing in terror and giggling to shake away their fear. During the high festival of the spring equinox, some of the little Kestapoli girls and boys dressed themselves in rags and pretended to be the witch of the whitewater. They disheveled their faces and hair and bodies with leaves and mud. Then they chased the other children, and whoever was caught needed to give the make-believe witch a sunberry in order to continue playing the game.

Sunberries grew wild all across the northern region of Xin, and on the rare occasion when a villager went to visit the witch, they brought her some of the little red fruits, which she loved and ate constantly. Their juices were thick, and every equinox, the children would have stained fingers by the end of the celebrations. The witch’s lips were permanently crimson.

Tisa was only 13 years old the first time she visited the witch.

The grimy woman was seated on the dirt of the forest path as Tisa approached her home beneath the tree. Out of sight, the rapids roared; the river was close. This region of the forest was rocky. Huge boulders were strewn through the trees, as if giants had thrown them around long ago. Compared to the grasslands, the area felt magical to Tisa, and it added to the witch’s mystery.

She was staring right at Tisa as she rounded the bend in the trail, as if the witch knew that the child was on her way. Of course, that was why Tisa was there; the witch knew the future. However, nothing could have prepared the girl for the unusual appearance of the woman.

“You ain’t gonna like the answers,” she hissed before Tisa said a word.

The witch was thick, a stocky and muscular woman with broad shoulders and strong thighs. Physically, she was angular, and her jaw was like a brick. Her mussed appearance gave her a chaotic quality that made her seem animalistic.

Tisa thought to herself that the witch did not even appear to be all that old. Her red-stained lips were strange-looking, and when the witch smiled, she looked crazed.

The woman stood, and things became more shocking for Tisa.

Her full height was about the same as the girl’s, but there was more to her form than that of a human. Tisa tried to hold in her surprise, as the scaly material that the witch kept wrapped around her opened and revealed itself to be a pair of wings. They extended and spread behind her. The wings looked like they belonged to a mythical dragon, but they looked heavy and Tisa thought that they did not seem to provide the witch with flight.

Beneath the mud that obscured the color of her hair and caked her skin, she was naked, and Tisa was surprised to realize that almost every inch of her was covered in strange markings. They were not simply discolorations, but instead, Tisa could see three-dimensional ripples of textured skin.

The witch was wearing what might be described as jewelry. Skulls from many animals were strung on a necklace that draped down between her bare breasts. Bones were tied to her fingers and forearms, and there were even some tangled in her hair.

She turned and waved for Tisa to follow her, and as she walked, her wings synchronized with her legs and swept forward and back with each step. The witch nodded to Tisa and entered the muddy hollow beneath the tree.

Tisa sucked air through her teeth. The game of being dared to sneak toward the witch’s house was a far cry from standing at the doorway, ready to enter. She looked back over her shoulder in the direction of Kestapoli, but Tisa knew that she needed the witch’s wisdom, and she entered.

“You ain’t gonna like it,” the witch said again in a singsong voice. She reached over her shoulder to one of her wings, gritted her teeth, and took hold of a single scale. One sharp yank tore it free. The witch rolled her eyes, as a tiny trickle of blood dribbled down from the self-inflicted wound.

She looked at Tisa and chuckled malevolently. “It’s bad news.”

Tisa furrowed her brow and asked her question. “How do I die?” she demanded. It was not the question that was truly plaguing her mind, but she had not formulated that one completely.

“Horribly,” the witch replied.

“I already expected that,” Tisa responded in a confident tone. She was nonplussed by the woman’s dramatics. “When, where, why, how? What else can you tell me?”

“But you’re already so old,” the witch said to the 13 year old girl. “You don’t need to know those things. The information will arrive soon enough, even without your knowing it.”

Tisa gasped. “So, it’s going to happen soon?”

“You’re already dead and you just don’t know it yet.”

Tisa scowled. She was not afraid of the witch, unlike everyone else who was. “I’m not dead,” she retorted.

“You’re dead, and I am fresh and clean in a holy place where I don’t want to be.” Suddenly the witch screamed, “And it’s all your fault!”

Tisa staggered back.

The witch stuck the wing-scale into her mouth, gulped it down with a drink from a mug of foamy green liquid, and she became motionless. Her gaze was down on the floor by her feet.

Tisa waited.

Nothing happened.

Within the quiet stillness of the witch’s home, moisture condensed and dripped with tiny splashes onto the floor.

Then the woman raised her head, and her features were gone, replaced with many glowing eyes that covered her entire face. The eyes simultaneously looked right, then up, left, and finally down. In unison, all the eyes blinked, but when they reopened, each was a bright white void.

Tisa was breathless. A tear even welled in one eye, as she beheld a being with such radiance, that it could only be described as beauty. This woman was not frightening, as Tisa’s fellow villagers thought; she was magnificent.

The witch’s body became rigid and she remained motionless, as a voice emanated from her mouthless form.

“You will die after killing many,” she began. “You will die in agony surrounded by suffering masses. You will die by accident. You will die in pieces, like the pieces of others you will create. Your questions are answered,” the witch concluded, but her face of eyes remained.

Tisa frowned. “What questions? Those answers didn’t tell me anything that I wanted to know, and I’m not even sure what you thought you were answering. I haven’t even asked you anything except how I die.”

“Yes, and all four of your questions are answered.”

Tisa frowned. She knew what she needed to do, and she closed her eyes. In the air between her and the witch, a hole opened like a void in reality. From it, Tisa caused a black flower to rise. It bloomed, then it disappeared along with the void.

“Now do you understand why I came to see you?” Tisa asked.

The witch’s many eyes continued to glow with light that did not illuminate the cave, and she replied, “I knew why you were coming here before I was born.”

Much of what the woman said made no sense to Tisa.

“I’m one of them,” Tisa declared. She then asked in a quiet voice, “What am I supposed to do?” Her question may have been rhetorical, but the witch responded to her.

“The hunted, nature’s forsaken, Shifts some folks call us.”

“Us?” Tisa asked. “I knew it! You’re one, too, aren’t you?”

The witch stretched out her arms and her heavily-scaled wings, and Tisa thought she should feel awkward with the naked woman standing in front of her. However, the strange markings that twisted all over the witch’s skin were mesmerizing, even beneath the layer of grime; Tisa could not look away from her.

“There is a child who is the inverse of you,” stated the witch. “The child is trapped.” Her wings lowered, and the voice that came from her continued, “Then the I must do that thing which the I has always avoided because the I was afraid. The I must see the time that the I has forever refused to look into, and in so doing, reveal all the truth of the universe to the self.” The witch sighed. “And the I will be one.”

Tisa was confused. “Be one what?” she asked. “The eye?”

“All time is exposed to the I, but there is one time that the I cannot look into until ’tis that time.”

“Okay,” Tisa said, not following the witch, “so how do I find the trapped child.”

“The child has not yet been born.”

Tisa scrunched up her face. “So, let me get this straight. You’re not going to tell me anything useful about my death. You’re talking nonsense about time, and now there’s some kid who isn’t even born yet,” and Tisa hesitated, “but someday is going to get trapped somewhere?”

The witch did not reply, but her arms dropped, and she knelt down in the mud of her hollow and said, “You will not save the child.” Her face full of eyes blinked. The light faded from them, and all but her two normal eyes vanished. She reached out, grabbed her mug, and took another swig of the green beverage.

Tisa groaned. “You’ll never be clean, not living here.” She stepped up to the witch and scratched a flaky bit of dried mud off her cheek. “What’s your name?” Tisa asked.

The witch responded in a gruff deep voice, as if she was trying to impersonate a man. “Monster,” she stated.

“No,” Tisa replied gently, “not the things people have called you. What’s your real name?”

“Harbinger of wickedness!” the witch yelled.

Tisa tried to console her. “Calm down. No one is going to hurt you.”

“The hideous whore!”

“Please,” Tisa pleaded, “these things are not what you are!”

“Destroyer of dreams, hateful whisperer, pockmarked princess, the vilest visionary, sorceress of eyes, witch of the whitewater!” she screamed.

Tisa closed her eyes again, and she caused multiple voids to open like discs of shadow in the air around the witch. From each, a little black flower extended, and the witch fell still, as she watched the blossoms grow.

“Be calm,” Tisa whispered to her. “What do I call you?”

“Liovia,” the witch replied. Her eyes were fixed on the flowers.

“Liovia?” Tisa repeated.

Over the following months, as the spring rains soaked the lands of Xin, Tisa worked on a project. Using her family’s sledge, the 13 year old girl began hauling lumber into the forest toward the base of the mountains. In some ways, Tisa was still very childish, but the girl was already a skilled builder. She did not like foraging or hunting or gardening, but construction was a part of village life that she had loved ever since she was a young child.

Tisa was 4 the first time she helped her parents coat the outside of their home in pitch for the winter. She was 6 when she assisted installing new doors and windows. At only 9 years old, Tisa decided that the shed beside their house needed to be replaced, and under the supervision of her parents, she built a new one from scratch. Tisa did repairs to the family home as needed, and she was so enthusiastic about building, that no one in her family batted an eye when one day she started dragging wood and tools out into the forest.

By midsummer, Tisa had constructed a small hut beside the muddy hollow where the witch lived, but she continued her woodworking into the beginning of autumn. Tisa filled the new sturdy little shack with a bedframe, two chairs, and a small table. The days grew shorter as the season slipped closer to winter, but every time Tisa checked on the witch, she was still beneath her tree.

Even in the coldest winters, the temperature in northern Xin rarely approached freezing, and the snows remained high on the mountains. However, the witch’s mud pit seemed inhospitable to Tisa, but Liovia refused to set foot into the hut she build for her.

“That’s your house,” the witch told Tisa one morning, and those three little words seemed to spark something in the girl’s mind.

That night, when she arrived back at her family’s home, she told her parents, “On my next birthday, I’m moving out.”

Her mother and father dismissed the notion as a passing fancy, but as midwinter and her birthday grew nearer, Tisa reminded her parents of her intention.

This time, they paid attention.

“What do you mean you’re leaving?” her mother asked in an incredulous tone.

Tisa’s father initially seemed to be supportive. “Where will you go? Are you leaving alone? What are your plans after you leave Kestapoli? How will you feed yourself?” Then it became clear that he was not interested in her answers but just intended to dissuade her. “You don’t have a source of income. You have no skills in the garden to grow food. You’ve let all your friendships fall by the wayside, and that boy who liked you still turns up from time to time, looking for you. You’ll be 14 in a little over a week, it’s almost time for you to start thinking about a family.”

Tisa was appalled. It was true that some of the villagers coupled as early as the age of 15, but Tisa knew she was not meant for that life. She desperately wanted to tell her parents everything, and even more desperately wanted them to tell her that everything was going to be alright and nothing was changed. Tisa already knew she was so different that everything was going to change and nothing would be alright.

“I don’t belong here,” she told them. “I’m not like you.”

Her mother scoffed. “You’re our daughter,” she huffed. “Of course, you belong here. Oh, wait a second,” she sneered in a sarcastic tone. “I see! You’ve found some boy, haven’t you? You found someone who you consider to be not one of our village idiots. Well, I refuse to let you go off and live like a tramp.”

“What?!” Tisa squawked. “That’s not it!”

The dichotomous suggestions of her father telling her to settle, and her mother telling her that she would do no such thing, were making Tisa’s head spin with confusion. She needed to explain to them what her plans were, but her father spoke over her.

“No, I know what it is,” he said with a scowl, “and I’m ashamed of myself for not stopping you. I know you’ve been taking wood to that witch. I should have forbidden you from visiting the old hag, once I realized what you were up to, but I…”

His voice vanished, as Tisa closed her eyes, and a multitude of little pockets of shadow opened in the air all around her. From the darkness within them rose little chubby figures.

They waved at her parents, and her parents each took a fearful step back.

“I’m different,” Tisa stated in a timid but determined voice, “and I’m going to live at the base of the mountains.”

“You can’t be a…” her mother started, but she refused to use the word Shift and settled on, “one of them. Neither of us are,” she added, looking at her husband. “Those things are not normal, they’re… they’re freaks! It’s just not possible you were born that way.”

Tisa’s father pointed an accusatory finger at his daughter. “The witch has turned you into one of those abominations!” he yelled. “You are going to stay here and we will get that evil right out of you!”

This was not the way Tisa expected the conversation to go. Her parents were aware that unique individuals were sometimes born with incredible abilities; they were familiar with the witch. However, Tisa also knew that in Xin, the topic simply was not discussed. Her mother and father were always supportive of her, encouraging and loving, but they now showed a side that their daughter had never experienced before.

“You are a great disappointment,” her father went on, “and you’ve shamed our family name. How dare you act like it’s okay for you to spend your time around that monster? You are forbidden from ever seeing the witch of the whitewater again!”

“She’s not a monster,” Tisa pleaded. “Her name is Liovia. Please, just look at what I can do.” She lowered her eyes adoringly to the little figures of darkness that surrounded her.

Things were already bad for Tisa, but they were about to get catastrophically worse.

Her mother grabbed the handle of a pot of boiling water from the stovetop, and she threw it at her daughter, as she shrieked, “We’ll purify you!”

Tisa screamed as the water scalded her chest and upper arm. The metal pot collided with the front of her thigh, and it was so hot that even though it only touched her for a split second, Tisa’s leg was also burned. The pain in her body was excruciating, like nothing she had ever felt in her entire young life, and she cowered away.

The hooded shadow characters from her void discs launched forward and swept across the room. Even through her pain, Tisa looked on in horror as they smothered her mother in chomping teeth of darkness. Tisa’s mother screamed and flailed at the vaporous entities, as they removed chunk after gruesome chunk of her flesh. Tisa’s father tried to brush the little biting monsters off of his wife, but his hands passed through them as if they were nothing more than shadow. Blood began to pool on the floor around Tisa’s mother and her wailing was terrible.

Her parents were powerless to stop the creatures, as they devoured all ten of the woman’s fingers and her toes. She shrieked in agony as they ate her ears and nose and lips, even her eyelids were chewed away, giving her a grisly and gristly expression. Her cries began to grow weak, and Tisa’s father rose in shock from his wife’s twitching body.

He grabbed a cleaver from the countertop and raised it above his head. His eyes were filled with madness as he turned on his daughter with the huge blade.

Tisa was shocked, as the shadow creatures leapt from Tisa’s mother and swarmed her father. Instead of biting him, they morphed into little spikes that stabbed into the man’s limbs and torso. He was punctured many times where he stood, and blood squirted from his body in every direction like a gruesome fountain. He did not scream, but he made little gurgling noises and fell to a clump on the floor. The cleaver landed beside him.

Tisa’s shadows vanished.

She was bawling.

Her tears were already flowing at the pain of her burned flesh, but seeing her parents lying dead made her sob in misery. Long minutes she cried, then fear began to overshadow her sorrow, and Tisa fled her home and the village of Kestapoli.

She ran. With her head spinning and her blistered skin screaming at her, she ran. Under the shadow of the mountains, Tisa entered the trees where the edge of the forest began, and she did not stop running. She did not stop running until she collided with Liovia who was standing in the middle of the pathway.

Both of them fell to the ground, and Tisa exploded with sobs that wracked her frame.

The witch leaned over her and placed her palm on Tisa’s back. “You don’t feel the pain anymore,” she told the child.

Liovia’s words did not help Tisa’s brutal agony, both outside and in. The pain of her scalded flesh was nothing compared to the crushing feelings in her soul. She did not know what happened, but she knew that her parents were dead.

Tisa entered the hut that she built for Liovia, and the witch began to nurse the girl back to health.

In Kestapoli, several people talked about sending out a search party to look for Tisa. However, with the condition of the child’s massacred parents, the villagers decided a search would be pointless. They assumed the girl could only be in a worse state than her parents. No one ever went looking for her.

Tisa stayed with the witch of the whitewater, and puberty progressed quickly for her. She soon grew tall and thin. There were rare instances when a villager from Kestapoli would bolster their courage and trek upriver to see the witch and her young acolyte, but none of them ever considered that the acolyte was Tisa. Most of the two women’s time was spent without the company of anyone else.

As the years slipped by, Tisa got to know the northern forests of Xin better than anyone except maybe the witch. Not many people ventured into those dark woods.

On an unremarkable day that was very much like any other, Liovia informed Tisa, “I must become one.”✪