The Heart of the Woods

Somewhere in Europe, 1500s.

The Woman in the Woods did not have a name.

At least, not one that anyone knew. There were names for what she was, of course, though all were mere conjecture.

Witch, they whispered, too afraid to say it too loudly, lest she heard and emerged from the shadows to curse them.

Changeling, some said, held their own babes closer at night, hoping she would not steal them away for the fairies that surely lurked with her in the dense wood.

They said on full moons, she bathed in the blood of virgins; she danced naked amongst the trees, calling to the devil; she ran with the wolves, howling like she was one. Each villager gave a different description: she was a golden-haired maiden, alabaster skin glowing with youth; she was a mother, her belly swollen with what was sure to be a demonic child; she was a withered, ugly crone, her beady eyes endless in their depth and wisdom.

Maeve. Lilith. Hecate. She had been called many things, none of them accurate. But they did not need to know her name to understand what she was, what she could do.

If you had a problem, you went to the Woman in the Woods. There was no path, but a series of instructions to find her. Enter from the west edge of the wood, where the trees are thinnest and marked with carved lines, made by the ones who have ventured before. Walk seven paces, then turn left at the hollowed-out hawthorn tree. Walk until you encounter the creek, and follow it until you see the dark stone cottage with the bloodred door. Make the sign of the cross (not her stipulation, but suggested by the villagers themselves, who believed such a gesture would protect them from whatever evil she may be). Knock thrice.

The Woman in the Woods dealt in all kinds of problems. She had love potions, protection charms, and fertility spells. She had a charm to repel your nosy neighbor, a spell for a bountiful crop, a draught for your sick horse. She had hexes for your enemies and elixirs for your illnesses. She had talismans for luck, enchantments for better hair, rituals for summoning rain. 

Whatever the problem, she had a solution – for a price.

But she did not deal in the coins of men. She required an offering. A prized pig, a brown hare, the orange family cat. Any animal, any part – blood, bones, fur. A loaf of bread, a block of goat’s cheese, a bushel of wheat. Home-brewed mead, though she much preferred wine, expensive as it was. She accepted all manner of food and drink, jewelry, fabrics, houseware, and once, the deed to a ship docked in a faraway harbor.

And, if you came to her with nothing, if you had no sacrifice to offer, she would not turn you away, but ask you for the most precious thing of all: a secret.

She held secrets closest to her heart. Amongst all the offerings, those were what she treasured most. She had so many of her own that she could never tell, like how she was only the latest in a long, long line of women in these woods. Her mother had raised her here, just as her mother had, and her mother’s mother before that, stretching back centuries. She was taught by candlelight, her mother’s gentle hand over hers, drawing lines in blood and dirt, stirring the boiling potions, flaying the rabbit to preserve the blood and bones. Her mother’s soft voice in her ear, reciting the incantations, telling her of duty and tradition, of how to survive in a world that hated powerful women.

Never show them our ways. You may bed them, to continue the lineage, but you must never fall in love. You must never tell them your name.

The last was the most important rule, repeated constantly throughout her childhood. “You must never tell them your name,” her mother had said. “Names have power, my darling, and you must never give them power over you.”

She had been the only living person to know her mother’s name. Seren. Star. It had been a perfect name. She knew nobody with her mother’s radiance, her intelligence, her tenacity. When Seren passed, the world had darkened in her absence, and she left her young daughter completely, utterly alone in the woods.

But she loved her stone cottage with its thatched roof, her collected offerings from the villages, her chests filled with trinkets. The owls who gave her company at night, the aforementioned orange cat, the quiet peace and the knowledge that though they may fear her, the people respected her. Needed her, even. She loved solving their problems, being a small part of their lives, their legends. But she was alone, and she yearned for more.

A handful of years after her mother died, more knocked thrice at her door, in the form of the local farmer’s son. He had warm brown eyes and hair to match, his fingers twisting nervously behind his back as he gave her a quick bow. He said his name was Rhain. He spoke softly, called her “my lady,” and asked for a tonic for his ailing father’s back. She forgot to be fearsome and reserved; she smiled shyly, she blushed, she shivered when their fingers brushed as she handed him the tonic. When the time for payment came, he had no offering.

“A secret, then,” she said, her voice its own spell that drew him in. “A small truth from your heart.”

He drank her in for a moment. Eyes the palest blue, the sky on a sunny day, inherited from her mother. Thick hair that brushed her waist, the color of the wheat fields he tended to beside his father.

“I am jealous of the light,” he said softly, “for it holds your face just so.” She blushed, breathless.

“And I am envious still of the pink that kisses your cheeks.” He bowed again, hand over his heart, and left. She was enamored.

He returned the next day, the day after that, and the day after that. He asked for luck charms, more elixirs for his father, a protection spell for their crops. Every day, he paid her in secrets.

You are more beautiful than the stars in the sky.

Your voice is the most melodious song.

Your eyes are bluer than any sea.

On his seventh visit, he asked for a love potion.

“Who will you use it on?” she demanded, her stomach sinking.

He smiled. “You, of course.”

She told him he did not need to use it on her at all.

After that, he did not need any pretense for visiting her. He watched her brew the potions, recite the incantations, cast the spells. She broke all of her mother’s rules. She showed him the traditions only meant for daughters. She fell in love with him almost immediately.

She was so in love she did not heed the warnings in the letters sent by others of her kind from across the continent. Warnings of hunters, of religious zealots, of trials and pyres and hangings. She ignored the horrified whispers, the disapproval of the villagers who were affronted at her blatant affair. Her forebears had conducted theirs in secret, and only with the intention of continuing the bloodline. Everyone in town knew of the farmer’s son who was seduced by the Woman in the Woods, and their hatred began to outweigh their fear.

They came at night. They entered from the west edge of the wood, and they chopped down the trees with the carvings of those who came before. They marched seven paces, and burned down the hollowed-out hawthorn tree. They continued along the creek, until they arrived at the cottage with the bloodred door, candlelight flickering in the window. Each of them made the sign of the cross, but they did not knock thrice. Instead, they took their axes to the bloodred door until it lay in pieces.

They pulled her from her bed, from the embrace of the farmer’s son. They dragged them both outside, their naked bodies shocked by the chill. They made her watch as they set fire to her beloved cottage, her precious trinkets, her ancestor’s grimoires, the orange cat still yowling inside. 

She spat on the earth and used her foot to write runes in the dirt, murmuring incantations. She intended to put out the fire with her magic, attempting to summon more water using her spit. Her skin began to glow alarmingly with her power, and for the first time, her lover was afraid.

His father was part of the angry mob. His father had always been fairly religious, and had taken to spewing poison in his son’s ear about the Woman in the Woods. As he watched her spit and rage and speak in strange tongues, he began to believe that poison.

She was too powerful, he thought. She was dangerous. She was ungodly. She was evil, and she was going to kill them all. He had to stop her.

He made eye contact with the burly villager holding him and indicated for him to lean down. In the man’s ear, he whispered a secret. The man straightened and released him.

Rhain reached for her. Held her face in his hands. He spoke only one word.

“Asgre.”

Asgre. Heart. Her mother had taken one look at her newborn’s wide, trusting eyes, and known that the very thing she was named for would get her in trouble.

She stilled her motions, shock and betrayal spearing through her.

“Asgre, you will stop. You will do no more witchcraft.”

She felt the effects of his words, felt the command take root. Her mother’s warnings had been literal. Names have power. With one utterance of her name, her lover had full control.

Internally, she railed against the order. She tried to force her fingers, her mouth, anything, to move. To chant, to draw, to summon any magic. It was all to no avail. She was powerless against his command.

The villagers began to surround her, their faces made more menacing by the flames devouring her home.

“Asgre, by the power of God, we command you to stop,” they chanted in unison.

God had no hand in her demise. She could only look upon her lover with the most profound sense of grief. As they built a pyre out of that bloodred door, she only had eyes for Rhain. Even as they placed her on that pyre, she only could look at him.

There were no formal accusations. There was no inquisition. There was no trial.

They had the damning evidence burning in her cottage; they had the condemning words of her lover.

Witch, they hissed, and they did not need any other reason.

When the flames hit her feet, she hardly felt it, for she had already been speared through the heart. She should have known. Should have heeded her mother’s warning, for it was Seren’s gentle voice she heard as she burned.

Men will always fear women with power. They will not be satisfied until we are all ash in the wind.

The Woman in the Woods had a name.

Asgre.

She was the last of her kind.

The 55 to Oxford Circus

The door slams behind her, rattling the glass and disturbing the peace of the morning around her. She inhales that typical London air: damp, cool, bracing. Before she can move, she has to put her headphones in and hit shuffle on the playlist she made especially for this occasion. The music starts, and so does she.

She ticks the familiar things off in a list in her head: blue-grey sky, fog, crunching leaves and the squeak of her rubber-soled boots beneath her. She looks both ways, still unsure of where the traffic comes from, even after all this time. She still jogs across the street to the bus stop, doubting her own mind and anticipating a car speeding towards her. It is a small, quiet magic, when the bus rounds the corner seconds after her arrival, as if she had summoned it. There’s the usual shuffle for both her mask and her Oyster card, the whoosh of the bus stopping in front of her still catching her off guard, even when she watched it approach and flagged it down. She likes the small beep announcing her entrance after she presses the card to the pad and exhales as she finds an empty seat against the window.

The bus starts with a jolt, and London begins to pass by in a blur. She has a million things on her mind; so many things she doesn’t remember and a few dozen she does, in stark, vivid clarity. She always takes this time by herself to think, reflect, and maybe even wallow a bit. Memories pass like the city outside – snapshots of a life she’s worried she’s not living. The music continues to play in her ears, familiar and reassuring.

She thinks of things like how her sweater is itchy, and she might not be wearing the right jacket, and also the weird postmodern world she lives in and how she doesn’t really know what “postmodern” even means, just that it’s not good. She thinks about how tired she is and worries she forgot to do her homework for this class, even though she checked and there was no assignment, because this is what she does. She thinks and she doubts all day long until she sleeps, and then she wakes up and does it again.

Someone sits down next to her and she shifts. She’s only occupying the one seat, but is she taking up too much room? She showered just this morning, her hair still damp, but does she smell weird? Is she sweating? Is her music too loud? She turns her head away from the stranger, but the questions run along the bottom of her brain like a news chyron. She learned that’s what they’re called recently, and she likes this mental image.

Her stomach rumbles and turns, hunger becoming nausea becoming hunger becoming nausea again. She wonders when she ate last – a small meal last night. Pasta and sauce. Nothing very stimulating. She didn’t eat much yesterday, or the day before, or the week before that. She forgets, sometimes. Mostly by accident, maybe a little bit on purpose, she’s not sure. She wonders if everyone forgets to eat or if that’s just her. She vows to make herself something after class, but she’ll forget that, too. Accidentally or on purpose.

She’s sort of rambling, rolling from thought to thought. Is it rambling if it’s not spoken? Can she ramble if it’s just in her head? It’s probably still rambling if it’s written, words splattered across a page, running into each other like water, like blood. She lets herself ramble in her head, where she bothers nobody but herself.

The next song comes on like a blow to the kidneys, her breath expelling from her lips with a quiet hush as the world around her slows. Ouch. She put this song on the playlist, but it shocks her with how much it hurts every time. She thinks of the videos of the artist online, smiling and strumming on stage. How could she sing this song and smile? I’m listening and I’m not smiling. I’m not smiling at all.

She thinks of people half a world away. Across an ocean. She remembers, the edges fuzzy but the center of it bright with pain. This memory, too, is magic. Dark, black magic. A curse. Over a year ago now, a frigid February morning. Bundled up, brisk walk around campus, terse words. Pounding in her ears, a secret she knew but was still devastated to hear admitted aloud. Betrayal, tears, an ending. The words that died in her throat, stuck and still unsaid, all these months later.

These words are poison, made by a witch standing over a cauldron. The witch poured them down her throat and now they’re trapped. She will probably never say them.

Above all, she remembers the humiliation, the desperation. She always remembers the humiliation the most.

The song changes and she lets go of the memory. So many things she remembers, even more she does not. So many things she knows, even more she doesn’t – like how her phone works or how people make themselves invulnerable. How her brain skips around like a stone over water, never quite landing until it sinks.

She thinks it might just be anxiety. She thinks it might be depression. She tries not to think about how this is where she lives but it’s not technically her home, how she doesn’t really know what home is supposed to be. Living here but not belonging, an outsider inside. She tries not to think about how her family lives in another country. She tries not to think about her twenty-first birthday, which already passed without that special birthday feeling. She tries not to think about how or when that feeling faded; the same one that used to make Christmas magical.

London hasn’t lost its magic, at least not like New York has. Maybe it’s because nobody here has hurt her yet – because she doesn’t know anyone here to hurt her. Maybe magic is painless. Maybe magic is finding things beautiful even with the pain.

She knows the feeling she gets when she walks along the South Bank, across the Millennium Bridge towards St. Paul’s, is magic. That kind of magic feels like freedom; like a strange, happy kind of tightness in her chest; like the sense of belonging she’s been chasing her whole life. When she goes there later, with the same music playing, it won’t feel like holding on. It will feel like letting go.

Maybe magic is just the art of letting go.

For now, she has three more stops until her destination, three more stops of holding on to the music and the memories and the thoughts she can never escape. She thinks and thinks and thinks, an endless loop to the tune of her carefully curated and very specifically hurtful playlist of songs.

A playlist for masochists. Music to overthink to. Music to remember to. Music to forget to.

Inside the bus: turmoil. Outside: the simple magic of London in the fall.