A Victim of Fate
                ...a young woman sets out in search
                of the town witch...


    I hurried quickly along the cobblestone streets of my town. The full
moon was high overhead and glowed an eerie yellow in the inky
black sky. I half expected to spy the silhouette of a witch on her
broomstick against that moon.
	A witch. The town witch. The woman I was going to see.
	 It has been years, decades, centuries, and I still remember
that moon. The moon that would forever haunt my dreams. 
	I pulled the hood of my red cloak tighter around myself and
wished desperately that no one would spot me. Walking as quickly
as I could, my footfalls resounding hollowly against the
cobblestones, I quickly turned from the main road and winded my
way down the narrow back streets and alleyways of my town. 
	Would I be able to find her again? What if she wouldn’t help
me? What if she couldn’t help me? 
	I squeezed my eyes shut as tightly as I could, squelching my
nagging doubts. I wouldn’t allow myself to think those horrid
thoughts. Of course she could help me, and with the payment I was
willing to offer her she most certainly would help me. I was also
positive that I’d be able to find her again, she was not more than a
mile away, three alleys down to the right, straight forward about
sixty or so paces and then... then... Where then?
	I stopped dead in my tracks. Where then? Where did I go
then? For another matter, where did I go now? Where was I now? 
	I turned my head franticly from side to side, searching all
around me. My eyes darted quickly from side to side. Where was I
now? 
	Wrapping my cloak even more tightly around myself I
realized that I was lost. Lost. 
	I was lost in the middle of the filthiest, most dissolute part of
town. Here dirt alleys rounded the cracked and broken corners or
older than old buildings of brick. Where thieves, beggars, tramps
and vandals resided. The stench of rotting garbage, rat droppings,
and Lord knows what other putrid things hung in the air like a thick
and inpeneterble fog. I was lost in a place where no respectable
person, no respectable young lady would be caught dead in. A jolt
of fear coursed down my spinal. 
	I wouldn’t be caught dead here, I’d be caught alive, and after
that a fate far worse than death would await me. 
	My breath quickened as my frail elderly grandmother’s words
flitted back to on a breeze that reeked of vile things, “Olivia, you
jus’ stay fa’ aways from tha’ place. Ain’ nothin’ in tha’ par’ o town
fer ye, ain’ nuthin’ lef’ thare fer nobody. Nuthin’ ‘cept filth and
vile thangs, Olivia. Nuthin’ ‘cept filth, vile thangs an’ murder.”
	 I saw my grandmother’s fair and wrinkled old face, her
white hair with highlights of gray pulled back in a loose bun. Wisps
of her grayed and whitened hair fell across her worn face and into
her eyes, but they crackled and sparked like small flames in the
depths of inky blackness, those eyes of my grandmother. The truth
of her words resounded with in me like a bell, and a felt fear. I felt
more than fear, I felt panic.
	While I shook my head rapidly from side to side in an attempt
to clear it, a something hard struck me. A shriek spilled from my
mouth as I fell to the hard cobblestones. 
	“Though’ ye’d get away wit it, didin’ ye ya filthy scoundrel?”
A husky voice growled at me, “Runin’ round, masqueradin’ tha
streets like a young girl?”
	I pulled myself to my knees, the only thought in my panicked
mind to escape this madman. 
	“Oh no ye don’t, ye’re comin’ wit me ye mongruel.” I was
yanked painfully to my feet by my hair which had cascaded from
my hood. 
	“Let me go! Let me go!” I screamed desperately, as I
struggled, realing and thrashing, wrenching and kicking with all
my might.
	“Are ye sure it is her?” a different voice, a younger kindlier
one asked anxiously. I turned my head quickly and saw a young
man, obviously the one who struck me, standing behind me holding
g a club. 
	“Tis her right enough, I know a witch when I catch one, ye
ninny! She knew we was comin’ fer ‘er.” My captor answered in
his thick voice.
	My captor pressed his face close to mine as he held me
higher in the air by my hair, and for the first time I got a good look
at my attacker. He was a stout strong man with long, greasy brown
hair and viscous eyes the color of pond scum set in a pitted face.
His breath stank of cheap gin and his right front tooth was missing
while the rest were crooked and rotting. 
	He snarled at me, “Thought ye’d get away with it, did’n ye
witch? Thought ye’d get away with poising all our children with
the black plague? Thought ye’d have ye’re fun ‘an get innocent life
to give ta yer dark master, didn’ ye? An’ then ye thought ye’d
scurry off like tha rat ya are? Well ye din’n, did ye?” 
	Good Lord, they thought I was a witch! The very witch I had
set out this very night to find!
	“No, no!” I screamed desperately, “I’m not a witch! I’m not!”
	“Ye dare lie before two experienced devil hunters like us?
Well we’ll jus’ see wha’ the judge has ta say to that. We’ll drag a
confession out a ye yet, witch! Here.” He shoved me into the arms
of the young man who was  behind me.
	“No!” I cried, “Tell him I’m not a witch!” I franticly
implored the young man who now held me prisoner, “I’m seeking
the witch! I was going to ask her for a cure for my younger brother!
He himself has the plague! Why would I poison my own kin?” I
was beyond desperation now, “I’m not a witch!” 
	“Gag her.” The stout man ordered his partner. “Bind ‘er
hands an feet  , we’ll see what ta’ judge has to say about a lying
devil like her.” 
	“No, I’m not a witch! No!” 
	The young man ignored my cries completely, as he gagged
my mouth and set to work binding my hands, “She’s so fair, and
her actions are so believable...”
	“Dinna’ let her deceive ye, boy. That thare thing is pure evil.”
and with that the two witch hunters drug me away.
~***~
	
	It has been centuries since my fate was sealed that dark night,
I  was just sixteen then. I was entering the prime of my life, I was
madly in love with the baker’s apprentice, and I had whole life
ahead of me. Then the children of our town, one by one, caught the
plague and died. My small brother Joseph was one of the last to
chopped down by the scythe of death. I never got him his cure for
the witch, an elderly woman who knew the magick healing
remedies of herbs well and lived in the slums of our town. 
	My parents tried in vain to convince the judge that I was
myself and not one of Satan’s workers, but it was ruled that most
likely the witch’s spirit had possessed me and that was why I had
been running franticly through the back alleyways, I was a witch in
disguise fleeing her hunters. My testament of wanting to get a cure
for my dear sweet Joseph was ignored completely, but they decided
to test me anyway.
	I was bound and thrown into the river, if I sank the water
accepted me and I was innocent of witchcraft, if I floated the water
would not accept my demon-self and I was truly a witch. How can
one not float when thrown into water?
	When I was burnt at the stake it wasn’t as bad as I thought it
would be. The smoke got me before the flames did, my only regret
is that I could not save my dear brother.
	So now I haunt these desolate streets, suffering in the irony of
my fate and gazing at the moon. 
	Oh eerie moon that torments my existence! Oh cruel fate that
tossed me a double sided coin! I’ve become naught but another
victim of fate, tossed and drowned in the roaring seas of time, with
no future, no present, only the past to reflect upon in the light of
the yellow full moon.