Witch of the Lake

Chapter 4-1

CHAPTER 4

This year, it was Brygida’s turn.

She clutched the spindle of linen yarn close, weaving her way among the mossy rocks to the bank of the Skawa river in the sunset hour. Ancient oaks lined its banks, and their broad trunks cloaked the swift-moving river in shadows.

The fields of Czarnobrzeg had always been bountiful, and it was no mistake that at every harvest, a Mrok witch made an offering to the Great Mother. Every witch of Mroczne Lake served Iga Mrok, the lady of the rusałki herself who had always served Mokosza, the Great Mother, goddess of fertility, goddess of death; protector of women, wanderer, spinner, weaver; the life-giving force to whom both lord of the above, Perun, and lord of the under, Weles, were consorts.

Mama and Mamusia had slowly been teaching her all she would need to know to serve Iga Mrok and Mokosza faithfully, and she’d learn it all, learn to perform her duties perfectly and serve the dreaming wood and all its inhabitants, and the village besides.

A procession of fairies fluttered in her wake, setting the rustling, swaying canopy aglow, and on the other side of the river, the leaf crown of the wood’s vigilant leszy towered high above the waters, his tree-bark skin barely distinguishable from the oaks of his domain. With little effort, he could tear a man limb from limb, or turn the very forest against him, but the line of Iga Mrok had always shared a precarious understanding with him. And today, she stood in his presence without fear.

She approached the twin-hill stones of Mokosza at the riverbank, bent to their presence, then lowered to a knee and presented the spindle of linen yarn. Wisps of its earthy white wavered in the wind, set aquiver by Perun’s softest breath, seduced by his gentlest of whispers.

“O Great Mother, Lady of the Earth, we give You thanks. For the fields, for the sheep, for the grain; for the thread, the linen, and the wool; for death and for life as You take and You give. This offering we make in Your name, Mokosza.”

Not a sound dared ring, and even Perun’s voice blowing among the trees quieted.

Brygida rose, extending her arms over the twin-hill stones, and let the spindle ease from her hands to slip into the river.

The Skawa accepted the offering and bore it along in the soft ripples of its living current. It bobbed and tumbled against the submerged rocks before being swept around the bend. Only once the spindle had vanished from sight did Perun’s voice whisper once more.

Across the river, the leszy inclined his great head of bark and leaves to Brygida, and she replied in kind before he turned back to his wood and disappeared among the trees.

The fairies, too, dispersed, only a few fluttering in the air about her. Two landed on her shoulder, on the Mrok violet side of her dress. They tugged on the fabric, chattering and giggling.

She smiled to herself. “You know, don’t you?” she asked the two fairies softly. Perhaps the ramsthorn-brown lining wasn’t so secret after all.

The dress was a little tight in the bust, but with a breast band, it served. With the matching headscarf in her belt pouch, she had but to wait until the cover of nightfall would shroud her violet eyes, and then she would make for the village.

For now, let it be that she’d lost track of time and dozed off on a bed of ferns somewhere daydreaming. Her family had always stood sentinel here for Mokosza in Her aspect as goddess of death, too, but no woman in Czarnobrzeg had died at the hands of a man for the seventeen years Brygida had lived, and she wouldn’t be the first. Once she—a Mrok witch, who even in disguise would stand out in the village like a leg from a pocket—would return home safely, Mama and Mamusia would have to agree that Mamusia’s nightmare had been wrong.

Yes, she’d learn all her duties and serve faithfully, but living alone in the cottage to wizen into old age wasn’t how she imagined her future. A life should have laughter and love, shared joys and hardships, a connection that made the journey worthwhile—just like Mama and Mamusia had. And one way or another, she’d try to bridge the valley between the wood and the village. That would start with a first step. That would start with tonight.

She’d meet that painter and talk to him. Perhaps become his friend, and meet others, become part of a grove rather than a lone sapling in the starkness.

Nodding encouragingly to herself, she made her way toward the border where forest faced field, clutching at her vial of lake water from time to time. From a distance, she’d heard the people singing and laughing at work in the rows of rye and flax, learned their songs. She’d seen merchants and carts entering and leaving, full of ornaments and baubles, and the good cookware that always entered but never left, hungrily bought up by the village women. She’d smelled the savory scent of meats from the smokehouses, which despite carrying so far, was so strong she could almost taste it.

And tonight, she’d be in the middle of it all.

Before her lay the pots of honey and aged loaves, laid in offering before the Perun-struck oak, and just ahead was the whitewash-dotted house before the faraway radiance of a bonfire. The harvest bonfire in the village square—it had to be.

In the concealment of the tree’s trunk, Brygida took off her dress, turned it inside out to expose the ramsthorn-brown linen, and donned it once more. From her belt pouch, she added the matching headscarf, careful to tuck in the hair framing her face just as the village women did, leaving the bulk of its waves to tumble down her back. She’d look the part now—if no one looked too closely.

Peering down at the Perun-struck oak’s exposed roots, she took a deep breath and set foot over it.

A shiver snaked up her spine, and for a moment, she lingered between worlds, trembling, pulled and drawn, but she held her vial of lake water and pushed past, out of the wood’s dream.

With both feet outside her witchlands, she stood beneath the tree’s canopy, the harvested field lying bare before her. It was all so open, and exposed, with only the occasional fence drawing lines between one property and another. A few dairy cows grazed lazily in the fields to her right. There would be nowhere to hide. The cawing of a crow drew her gaze upward, where it flapped its wings before taking flight toward the bonfire.

From above, a silvery thread descended, and at its end, an oak spider suspended just before her face, a watchful eye witness to her first step into the unknown.

“Thank you,” she whispered. With Mokosza’s own reassurance, she nodded her good-bye to the spider, and like a moth to a flame, drifted toward the village square.

The fast, twanging notes of the stringed gęśla accompanied singing and rhythmic clapping as Brygida approached the village square. Stone and oak lent structure to the buildings, not unlike her own small cottage. Bright sunflowers adorned the eaves and wreaths of rue decorated doors. Men carrying barrels of beer tumbled out of a nearby hovel, followed by laughter and music that spilled out onto the street.

In the village square, dancers sped past one another, surrounded by the clapping people, who took turns drinking, laughing, and eating. All centered around a massive bonfire, the embers of flame rising upward to the darkening sky.

Ruddy-faced men recounted tales over shots of clear gorzałka, amber beer, or this past summer’s cherry-infused wiśniówka. Mamusia made her own nalewka liqueur from wild honey—miodówka—and would sometimes drink some with Mama after dinner. Mokosza’s great loom, how the cottage would shake with giggles on those evenings. Just the two of them could give even all these gathered villagers a challenge.

“And who are you, girl?” a large man shouted from a small group of chuckling men nearby, amid the blooming chaos of noise branching about the square. Firelight reflected from an eclectic line of rings encrusting both his hands, the flesh of his fingers plump around their metallic edges. He’d be able to take them off when the sun would rise in the west. “You’re not from these parts.” He spat upon the ground.

Her hand was over the vial tucked beneath the linen of her dress, but she forced it to her side. She would introduce herself, and no harm would come to her. “I—”

A willowy arm wrapped about her shoulder, and a young woman with a friendly smile appeared next to her, with blond hair braided into a crown atop her head and threaded with flowers. “Oh, Tata! You’re too old to be accosting young women, and ‘twould be a pity if Mama were to find out.” She raised a daring eyebrow.

The man, this young woman’s father apparently, pointed at her. “Don’t you go telling tales, Nina. And keep away from strangers—”

“She’s not a stranger, Tata! Don’t you let Mokosza overhear you being unwelcoming.” Without waiting for a reply, Nina took her hand. “Come, we’re dancing,” she said with bright eyes and a wild grin, before flouncing off into the swarm of speeding dancers, her necklace of big red rowanwood beads bouncing.

Brygida struggled to take a breath. “But I don’t—”

Shrugging cavalierly, Nina c****d her head and winked. “You’re with me. Besides, just listen to the clapping, and you’ll know what to do!”

With that, Nina hooked her arm into Brygida’s and swung her about, and another dancer took over, and another, and another. Brygida’s feet, normally rooted to the earth, had a mind of their own tonight, springing to the beat of the clapping, lost in the furied strings of the gęśla and the vocals that awakened the blood.

Firelit dark amber flashed by her in the periphery, and although she looked back, it was all a blur as the next dancer caught her arm. The music faded to a slow cheery tune as the crowd turned expectantly.

At the far end of the square, a donkey cart rattled toward the whistling, cheering crowd. In the front seat, a blushing young woman wore a wreath of rue, her flaxen locks bouncing about her as she waved to the crowd. All eyes watched her, men’s and women’s alike, including the handsome green-eyed young man next to her, wearing a ceremonial coat decorated with rye and holding a sickle like a scepter.

The cart rumbled to a stop before the bonfire, and then on nimble feet the young man leaped from the cart and helped the blonde from her seat.

A jaunty tune started. The comely man in the ceremonial coat of rye held out his hand to the young woman wearing the flower crown, golden rue played to the blue oleander tucked behind his ear. With the body of war-like Perun, eyes green as Mokosza’s springtime bounty, and Weles’s raven-black hair, he could have been a demigod. Matched with the flaxen-haired beauty, her tresses adorned with the plaited flower crown, they looked a vision of the Maiden and her consort as they stood opposite one another. Holy Mokosza spent half the year with Perun, and the other half with Weles, before climbing from the world below to that above.

The people flowed into place, women on one side and men on the other, their clothes a rainbow of colors, with vests of bright poppy red, overcoats of a rich forest green, and collars of finely embroidered flowers and pure-white skirts flaring out as women spun.

All these people, all these tangled roots… With a brown-lined dress and a headscarf, she’d come into Czarnobrzeg believing she’d fit right in, but it took more than common garb to belong. Everyone here was part of an old grove, and she was a transplant, with shallow roots.

“My Nina not good enough for you, lordling?” the ruddy-faced man slurred to another dancer—the blond painter from yesterday?—and everyone gasped as the man charged among them, grabbing the painter by the shirt before throwing a punch with his many-ringed fist.