She Belongs To Us

She Belongs to Us

The townsfolk called me a witch long before I had even learned a single spell.

They whispered amongst one another when I gathered rainwater in black jars and planted herbs by the light of a waxing moon. Children dared one another to touch my gate. Men crossed the street when they saw my shadow stretch across the road as the sun descended.

I let them talk and whisper.

The truth about me was stranger than their stories.

My cottage sat beyond the last bend of a dirt road, where the pines grew so close together that daylight struggled to reach the ground. Kudzu swallowed the fence posts, and Spanish moss hung from the branches like the uncombed hair of forgotten women.

My grandmother had lived there before me. Her grandmother before her. Each woman had been accused of something. Witchcraft, poisoning wells, and speaking to the dead.

None had ever been convicted of anything except for being different.

When my Grandmother died, she left me the cottage, seven black jars, and a warning written inside her Bible.

What the earth gives, it will one day ask to have returned.

I was nineteen when I found those words. I thought she meant our bodies would eventually return to the soil.

I understand differently now.

Every midnight, I climbed the hill behind my cottage and listened to the land breathe. The roots beneath the soil spoke to me in soft whimpers. Rivers hummed secrets through the stones. Even the stars had voices, though they sounded more like memories than words.

I never told anyone.

People already feared what they imagined I could do. There was no sense in telling them what I could hear.

One autumn evening, the forest called my name.

Not with the rustling of leaves or the cry of an owl. It spoke clearly, using the name my grandmother whispered when she would tuck me into bed.

I followed the voice beyond the creek, past a graveyard whose markers had long since surrendered their names over to the moss.

There stood an ancient oak, split from crown to root by lightning.

Inside its wound glowed a tiny heart of silver fire.

"The village will fear what they do not understand," the oak whispered. "But fear is not your burden to carry."

The flame flickered toward me.

"What am I supposed to do with it?" I asked.

"Remember."

I reached into the hollow.

The fire was cold against my fingers. When I drew it close, it slipped beneath my skin and settled between my ribs.

For one terrible moment, I heard everything.

The beetles tunneling beneath the bark. The worms turning through the soil. The bones of animals dissolving inside of the earth. Beneath it all, a slow heartbeat older than the village itself.

Then came silence.

I stumbled home before sunrise.

By morning, a silver mark had appeared above my heart, shaped like the branching roots of a tree.

After that, things began to change.

A sparrow with a broken wing healed beneath my hands. A lost child emerged from the fog after I asked the pines to guide him home. Flowers bloomed in fields that had not tasted rain in months.

The villagers called these things miracles.

They thanked God on Sunday mornings and cursed my name before supper.

I never once corrected them.

Then came the winter when the creek stopped running.

At first, nobody noticed. The water simply slowed, leaving dark rings along the banks. Soon the fish floated belly-up. The cattle refused to drink. The wells began producing water that smelled of old pennies and spoiled meat.

One by one, the children fell ill.

Their mothers carried them to the church, where the preacher prayed until his voice gave out. The doctor arrived from the next county, but his medicines did nothing.

By the seventh night, three children had died.

I heard the land crying beneath my floorboards.

Something was moving under the village.

I followed the sound into the woods, where the ancient oak stood black against the winter sky.

"What is happening?" I asked.

Its branches creaked without wind.

"The roots are dying."

"Then save them."

"We have given what we can."

The silver fire inside my chest began to burn.

I remembered Grandmother's warning.

What the earth gives, it will one day ask to have returned.

"What will it take?"

The oak remained silent so long that dew gathered onto my sleeves.

Then the ground beneath my feet began to shake.

"What was borrowed must be returned."

I understood then.

The flame had never belonged to me.

I walked back to the cottage and gathered Grandmother's seven black jars. I filled each with rainwater collected during the last autumn storm and carried them to the hill.

One by one, I poured their contents into the earth.

The soil drank it up greedily.

When the final jar emptied, I pressed my palm against the silver mark above my heart.

"Take it," I whispered.

The pain brought me to my knees.

Something moved beneath my skin, twisting like roots searching for water. Silver light spilled between my fingers. I felt the flame pulling free, carrying pieces of me with it.

I heard my grandmother's voice.

I could smell the bread cooling on her windowsill.

I heard the sound of my own laughter as a child.

For a moment, I feared the earth would take every memory I possessed.

Then the hill opened beneath my hands.

Silver fire poured into the roots, racing underground toward the village.

Far away, church bells began to ring out.

By morning, the creek was running again.

The wells cleared. The cattle drank. The fever broke, and the surviving children woke up hungry.

The villagers called it a blessing.

Nobody climbed the hill to thank me.

I returned to my cottage with empty jars and a pale scar where the silver flame had once lived.

The forest no longer spoke to me in words. Its heartbeat had grown faint, and sometimes I wondered whether I had imagined the entire thing.

But spring arrived early that year.

Wildflowers pushed through the cemetery soil. Birds nested beneath my eaves. The ancient oak produced new leaves along the edges of its lightning wound.

One afternoon, I found a little girl standing outside my gate.

Her mother had been among those who warned their children never to approach my cottage.

"Are you the witch?" she asked.

"That's what they say."

She studied me for a moment.

"My mama says witches take things."

"Sometimes they do," I answered.

"What did you take?"

I looked toward the hill.

"Nothing that wasn't given back."

She placed a handful of blue flowers beside my gate and hurried away.

I watched until she disappeared around the bend.

Let them call me witch. For I do not mind.

The moon knows my name.

The forest knows my kindness.

And sometimes, when the wind passes through the trees, I hear the land itself speak softly:

She belongs to us.