Rescued

When Eileen opened her eyes, the bitter taste of herbs clung to her throat, and the ghost of smoke still seemed to linger in her lungs. The air was thick with the scent of medicine. Across the dimly lit stone room, a fire crackled in the hearth, its flickering glow casting restless shadows along the walls. Steam rose from a copper cauldron, carrying the sharp, acrid scent of boiling herbs.

By the fire, a hunched figure moved about, thin and wiry, as if bent by the weight of the years. A voice, hoarse and worn like sandpaper scraping against dry wood, cut through the silence.

"Your wounds have been tended."

The old woman didn't turn as she spoke.

"Had you been found any later, those witch hunters would have burned you to ash."

Eileen pushed herself upright. Her fingers brushed against the bandages wrapped tightly around her shoulder, the dull ache beneath them a stark reminder—this was real.

She remembered collapsing in the forest. She remembered the warmth of the hands that had caught her.

Her throat was parched.

"Where am I?"

"An old huntsman's cabin." The crone tossed another log into the fire. In the glow, her deeply lined face was carved with stories of hardship. "Thirty years ago, I cured the village chief's rheumatism. They called it 'the devil's whisper' and cast me out. I fled here, or else I would have met the same fate as the others."

Her gaze was distant, as if peering through the flames into the past.

"Last spring, they burned Margaret's cottage. A month ago, Anna was hanged for keeping a black cat."

A knot tightened in Eileen's throat. Her fingers clenched.

She thought of the woman who had shoved her into the meat barrel. She thought of her screams. She thought of the moment she had raised her wand amid the firestorm—

She had not spoken. She had not even thought.

Yet the wand had ignited. Power had surged forth, wild and unbidden, consuming everything in its path.

Her lips parted, her voice barely a whisper.

"Am I...?"

The old woman's eyes flicked to the wand in Eileen's grip. Her lips curled into something between a smirk and a sneer.

"Is it not obvious?" Her voice was quiet, deliberate. "Of course you are. You may not know the words, but you wield the wand nonetheless. That alone is proof enough."

Eileen's heart pounded. Her grip on the wand tightened.

She drew a slow, steady breath, forcing down the rising storm inside her.

"Do they kill all witches?"

The crone laughed.

A dry, brittle sound, like the cry of some nocturnal bird—sharp, cold, and unearthly.

"Witches?" she scoffed. "They need a scapegoat. Someone to blame for the plague, the failed harvests, every misfortune that befalls them."

Eileen said nothing.

She was an educated woman. She had learned of witch trials, of superstition, of the terror that once consumed civilizations.

But to witness it—to see innocent women hunted, accused, and burned for nothing more than their knowledge, their defiance, their mere existence—

It was monstrous.

Her voice was low, measured.

"Then what can I do?"

The old woman studied her for a long moment.

Then, without another word, she draped a coarse woolen cloak over Eileen's shoulders.

"Tonight," she murmured, "a midwife will burn at the stake. They say she poisoned a noblewoman in childbirth—with herbs."