The village witch was leaving us. Without an apprentice, even; it defied logic and tradition both.
I had to know what she was thinking, so I paid her a visit before she left. The outside of her cottage was fresh and clean in a way it had never been; the overgrowth all cut away, the lawn trimmed from waist-high to barely ankle height, the rock path actually visible now beneath it – all over, the slow progression of nature halted and reversed, every log and stone gleaming with unnerving newness. It seemed so inexpressibly wrong; but who was I to question the ways of a witch?
She opened the door before I even knocked, as if – well, of course she knew. The village witch always knew; that was why we depended on her so much. “Come in,” she said softly, and I did, following her.
The witch wore a long black witchy dress, which I had no other words to adequately describe, having seen her in it so often that it had become inseparable from her. Yet now it was covered in silvery stitches, as if it had been rent asunder and into scraps, and then painstakingly reassembled; and she had not her traditional hat, but merely a pair of long, silvery needles to fix her hair into a bun.
I hadn’t seen the inside of her house before; yet it too spoke of unnatural stillness and cleanliness. Here was not a place where someone lived – or planned to. It finally struck me that she was preparing it for a new owner, and the revelation filled me with a quiet ache of loss. Here was a woman the village had leaned upon for years; yet how much did I know of her? How well did anyone know her, come to think of it?
The kitchen was still a mess, though; foodstuffs and jars and bottles lying all over, some filled, others lying open. Perhaps it was the last place she intended to tidy up. “Drink,” she said in that same soft voice, turning to me with a teacup in each hand and offering one. It would have been rude to refuse her after all this time, so I took it and did as she asked.
I’ve never had tea so exquisite. Never before, and surely never again.
My cheeks were wet with tears before I’d even finished the first swallow. “How…?” I choked out, in utter disbelief. “How did you make this… masterpiece?“
“By giving up everything else in exchange,” she returned, as unflappable as she’d ever been. “I cannot stay here; it would be the end of me. Not in a way you would recognize, and not at first; but as a plant withers when it can no longer grow in its confinement, when there is nothing to sustain it.”
I tried to make sense of her words, still overcome by the tea’s effects. “You… need to grow?”
“Everything that lives needs to grow, my dear Mayor. To grow or to decay; we are not offered a third choice.”
Something about her words told me she had changed in some way. I knew not how, yet it was clear that though this was the same witch who had lived with us for so many years, she was no longer our witch.
“What happened?” I wondered, half to myself.
She answered, regardless. “If you were offered proof of the things you doubt, if you grasped certainty about the nature of things with a firm hand – no matter how distasteful that certainty might be – would it not alter your course in life as well?”
I paused. What sort of thing could a witch doubt, that confirming it would prompt her to abandon her home? Some hidden truth of the world, perhaps, or even the cosmos? Or was I overthinking it?
“But what?” I persisted.
She fixed me with a gaze, and I shrank back before the intensity of it. “My story is not meant for your ears. Perhaps it might have been, once; but no longer. This place is not mine, and just as I find my own way from now on, you must do the same.” Her expression softened, and I relaxed with it, unconsciously. “In time another witch will appear, just as I once did. If you wish for one.”
“You have done so much for this town,” I protested. “It seems hardly appropriate – hardly fair – for you to leave so abruptly. There is not a life you have not touched, from the old gravekeeper to the newbown twins.”
“Knowing you think these thoughts is all the reward I desire, my dear Mayor.”
I left soon after, with no more words coming to mind.
The very next day, the morning came; and her house – no, the house where she once lived – was bare and empty. Waiting, in a way.
I hoped we didn’t have to wait long. But I couldn’t help thinking of what she said – and what it was that she discovered.
diamonds from ash 
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