Vignette: Hermetta the Swamp Witch
Hermetta let the hoarse chant die away and twitched her fingers. She rose from the trance to find a dense cloud of fireflies prickling the dim light of her home.
Half an arm’s worth of blood and two hours of incantation—well worth the effort. Ritual magic had never failed her.
She held out a thin finger and allowed several of the insects to alight there in a line. Hermetta drew them up to her mouth and whispered her message, then gently blew on her finger. The tiny lights sped off, colliding with the cloud and pulling a streak of flickering greens and yellows out the door and into the swamp.
Her swamp. Her home. Her sanctuary. As it had been for centuries—as it would remain.
Unwinding her crossed legs, Hermetta grimaced at the creak in her knees. The firelight caught on flakes of blood dotting her dress. Cursing softly, she picked them off the thick, green crocodile leather with care.
The jittery deer-people—in deerskin trappings and stoat-fur moccasins—they assumed her a conqueror of the godling swamp dragon. Not so. She had made the dress herself, true, but the skin had come to her as a parting gift from an old friend. The memory brought another small smile to her lips.
A breeze snuck in through her door, tickling her untamed hair. The witch dragged herself back to the present with a shake of the head. She moved about her small home, setting a strong tea to steep while she prepared for what promised to be a rather exciting day.
She first found her amulet, a smoothed knot of strangler fig roots—power stored there each night for half a century would protect her from slings and arrows. She hung the leather cord around her neck and tucked the root-knot into her dress before picking up a wood vial with a black waxen cap. Poison derived from the venom of the banded snake. She considered this while the flames danced on her walls, then set it down and chose instead a bottle with a green cap. Her own concoction, a milky substance used to clean wounds. She slid this into a secret fold on the side of her dress.
Finally, she went to the wall above her cot and retrieved the comforting weight of her woven marsh-grass sword. Her hand hummed with the power of it and magic crackled up and down her spine. Winds and tides would rise to its call; every creature that stirred in the swamp would turn to the way of her will. Beads of swamp water slipped through the reeds and trickled down to her hand. Each disappeared into her skin with a cool, bright tingle. Thin green vines made a quick strap for the sword and she slung this over her shoulder.
Then she returned to her tea and sipped it thoughtfully. All was in place. Powers, rituals, and relationships, cultivated through many, many long turns of the sun and stars—all now ready to defend their home.
The northern tribes had grown and in their growing lost some of their docility. Deerskins playing at wolve, they raided one another’s families and made war out on the plains. No bother to the witches, who healed the needy and sheltered the unwanted, not until the tribes began to test the boundaries of the swamps. Cutting, hacking, burning, they brought terror to the sacred grasses of the marsh. This, the witches would not abide.
The fireflies would carry their missives, unerringly, and these marauders would learn the brutality of war and loss.
Or, should the foolish wolves show, instead, the sense and good grace of the deer, then the witches would parley with them. Violence may not prove necessary. Quietly, fiercely she hoped it would not, but if it did…
Hermetta finished her tea strode toward her door. Outside, dawn filtered through the cypress branches, tickling the cattails with the first thin shards of daylight. The time had come. She snatched her bone crown from a root nub growing from the live cypress wall, placing it on her head with care.
The witch stepped out of the cypress and into a wide canoe. The shaved trunks of cedar, bound and sealed with her own magic, felt smooth and cool beneath her bare feet.
She turned back and patted the massive tree twice, enjoying the prickly fabric of his bark. The opening shut slowly behind her. Far above, branches rustled a farewell. She smiled, then stooped down to place a hand in the black water of the swamp.
Hermetta hummed a sad, old song, and let the gentle vibrations stir the water. Two dark shapes slank forward in the dimness, twin arcs of dark water rippled of their snouts at each powerful sweep of their tails. The only crocodiles alive in these glades—this she knew for certain—and, aside from her dress, the only legacy left in these waters by her old friend.
She called them by their old names, guttural sounds that had taken her many years to learn. Her good fortune to enjoy a long life and the tree-like patience of reptiles. They raised their heads from the water as they approached, snapping their jaws quietly in greeting. She scratched their heads and rasped out her gratitude in their native tongue. They disappeared beneath the canoe and she leaned forward for the gentle tug.
In the swamp, a witch must live boldly or die quietly.
Limbs alight with the power of her magic, Hermetta adjusted and secured her bone crown, her potion, her reed sword—then she cracked her neck and grinned into the dawn light as the crocodiles drew her canoe north.
