Dreams from the Witching Hours

Samantha woke with a start, as if struck by lightning. She screamed out and began to sob, bottomless, soul-emptying sobs. Lili ran to her sister and attempted to reach her arms around her. Samantha threw her off. Lili had the best intentions, of course, but there was nothing she could do to console her sister now. Lili stood back and watched as Samantha began to tear at her hair. Jason’s eyes shone from across the room. They couldn’t help either. No one could. Rue was dead and Samantha couldn’t begin to explain her agony. Lili stretched out her hand over her grief-stricken sister and began to murmur. Samantha collapsed upon her cot, apparently fast asleep as quickly as she’d awoken. This was their routine. Every night, Samantha woke, howling for her lover, and Lili put her sister back to sleep. Samantha’s dreams were once beautiful gifts. She wove tapestries to reflect the prophecies that blessed her sleeping mind. Samantha had danced, sung, and braided Lili’s dark, always tangled hair. Now, she was a ghost, haunted by recurring nightmares, promising that her other half, Rue, was soon to meet her end.

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Lili had had no idea who this woman was, why she had such a strong command over her sister. Lili could never gather the name Samantha choked between cries. She didn’t know what Samantha’s dreams held; she wouldn’t speak of them anymore. Samantha rolled over and stared at Lili with glassy, half-open eyes. Her curls stuck to her forehead as sweat beaded across her dark skin. Lili could only wonder what unspeakable horrors flashed across them as she slept.

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Samantha wasn’t asleep. Lili’s spells only sedated her to the point where her howling and kicking ceased. Her dreams overpowered Lili’s magic. She wouldn’t let her know that, of course. It wasn’t Lili’s fault. She simply didn’t understand. Lili, as young as she was, showed promise in her craft. She couldn’t see into the stories untold the way Samantha could. She had a knack for transformative work. During the waking hours, Samantha watched her twist blades of grass into flowers. Only she knew how, soon, she would be morphing those flowers to birds, trees, and, one fateful day, a baby goat. That little creature would run from Lili’s arms, into the brush. Lili would chase it across the stream and into a farmer’s yard, a cruel man just waiting for an innocent girl to stumble upon his acres. Samantha screamed when she saw what would come next, that first night she woke shrieking.

Her dreams exposed Lili’s frail body struggling in his grasp, fighting his grip. Any witch but Lili might not have walked away from such an assault. Lili’s power would blossom in a way never expected. She would whisper it forth before he could do the unthinkable to her. Her words would twist the farmer into the body of a swine, words of a spell passed down to her from centuries ago.

The girl had no idea all this was to come. She hadn’t the slightest idea how she would be found in that bastard’s house. They would see her crying softly in the corner, among the man’s tarnished belongings, the glass he himself broke in his animalistic form. Of course, the police could only assume she’d killed him. They would lock her in a prison, promising to burn her at the stake. It was bad enough they thought her a murderer; they knew her to be a witch. They found the tattoo on her wrist, a heart-shaped locket. Only witches had such markings. It was something passed between mother and daughter, a family crest Samantha’s wrist bore as well.

Before Lili could be killed, she would meet Rue. Samantha’s heart leapt when she first saw the woman. She was tall with cerulean eyes and perfect, high cheekbones. She glimmered, even in the dark basement where she met her sister, vowed to help her, and taught her how to escape. The two would flee in an emphatic fashion from the stakes to which they were bound. Rue and Lili laughter echoed through Samantha’s dreaming mind as they transformed to ash. The fire empowered their flight before could consume them. Such is the indisputable power of a resourceful witch. Samantha would watch the clouds of dust swirl into their little yard. She saw herself run forward to hold her little sister and turn to meet her new companion.

Rue and Samantha would fall in love in those moments. Two faces, four eyes, one heartbeat. Samantha held the moon in her body, soft, intuitive, dark. Rue was the sun. The light bounced off her flaxen hair and her skin seemed to radiate, resplendent. To be near her was to be warm, to be captivated. She enchanted everyone who looked upon her. Her will could not be denied. Samantha was awestruck that Rue even looked her way. She never doubted that Rue loved her in return, but she could hardly fathom how something, someone, so breathtaking could have happened upon her in these dark and uncertain times. Samantha knew they would be happy for a spell. That’s why the ending to the dreams hurt so unbelievably badly.

She would wake one morning to find both Lili and Rue gone. As much as both sister and lover adored Samantha, the spirit that had bonded them was restless. Neither would be free while other witches, other sisters and lovers, remained tied to stakes and bound by fear. They wanted to spark a change. Jason would be sitting, disquieted. They had been old enough to remember the day their parents were taken and executed. Their wrist had been hidden behind long sleeves ever since. Jason watched Samantha writhe in the night and Lili disappear. They would never be able to see wield or accept their gift.

Samantha would know Lili and Rue’s plans and destination. She would have seen it a thousand times, the grisly end. It was the very scene that haunted her already, long before it came to pass. She would wait for Lili to stumble home, covered in ashes. She would speak, slowly, rasping, in complete shock. She wouldn’t have to. Samatha would already know.

She would know how Lili and Rue had managed to set every witch at the stakes free. Having transformed themselves into birds, they stood watch over the condemned women. They sang out their words of power, sending them ablaze in a conflagration of freedom, their ritual turning witches to dust and ash before the flames could. The executioners would never know that their captives had escaped. Samantha would sob and bawl and scream as she came to know how Rue, in the final moments, had been caught. An executioner would notice the oceanic glint in her eyes, the way the feathers of her avian form shown gold in the dawn. The man would strike her down from behind, slamming her fragile, winged body into the burning straw and smoldering ash below.

Samantha hated Lili and herself and even Rue. She hated everyone who had ever lived or loved because for this story to be real was the truth she could not survive.

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Samantha wondered if she could stop it, any of it. If she could just keep Lili in the house, stop her from being taken. If she could prevent herself from falling for Rue. Perhaps she could talk her and Lili out of their radical ideas. She couldn’t. She saw that, too. All she could do was scream. And that’s all she would do for some time, until the day Lili wandered off and set the story in motion. Lili would see how her sister came back to life when Rue stepped forward to greet her. Samantha would have to accept her fate before that day. Rue would hold her while she screamed at night and teach her how to dance again during the day. Samantha would never tell her the cruel and tragic ending to their love. She couldn’t change it, but she would be damned if she missed the beauty that came before the burn.

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Samantha couldn’t see beyond that day, so she wasn’t sure what would become of her in the aftermath. She would not die, that much she knew. Perhaps she would follow Jason’s path, attempting to live with her power in the shadows. She might try to continue Rue’s work, setting her sisters in spirit free from oppression. She could turn them all to moonbeams and sun rays, streaking across the sky. She could do so from the sky herself. But she would never dance again. No. If she were to make such a change, she would never stand in her body again. Samantha couldn’t hold this grief in her vessel once it came to pass.

At last, she fell asleep once more. Her dreams began once more. As Samantha slept, she saw a simple beam of light, stretching from the sun, reflecting from the moon, and catching particles of dust on the earth below as they danced in thin air.