Seducing the Wind

Prologue...



The sky was black and angry. Thunderheads rolled with fury and cracked with lightning. The sea rose and fell like a deep breath, crashing down with certain heaviness.

She stood at the edge of the cliff, her heavy black coat whipping around her in the strong wind. Her head was thrown back, eyes closed, her pale face raised to the moonless night, rain thrashing through her long, heavy hair and streaking salty tracks down her face. She parted her lips and breathed in the cool, salty air. She raised her arms over her head and stretched her fingers wide, letting the cool winds slide through their grasp.

"Witch!" she heard.

She spun around. A mob of villagers had collected quietly behind her while she dreamily prepared for her ceremony. They raised their pitchforks and burning torches. She tried to calm her mind as she realised their obvious intent for tonight. A long time brewing and not wholly unexpected, but horrible nonetheless. A lynching.



A rock struck her at the knee, and she fell to a half crouch. To her dismay, she saw they had brought a stake with them, and three men were now hurriedly securing it to the ground. Faggots were strewn beneath it. Her eyes darted about, searching for a safe exit, a kind face among the hateful crowd.

Two burly men with pitchforks and one with a length of rope warily approached her. She raised her hands in front of her and cried out,

"Stay away! Come no further!"

And the men stopped, looking at each other.

"You're trapped, Witch," said a hateful, unseen voice in the mob. The cowardly soul of the village below found courage in the anonymity of numbers.

Cries of "Burn her!" and "You shall rot in Hell!" were barely discernible over the roar of the sea.

"Leave me be!" she cried."I am no witch. I have committed no crimes nor hurt any of you. Why do you harass me?"

Her only answer was another rock thrown, this time at her face. It caught her bottom lip and a jagged edge tore the skin. She cried out and cradled her face.

A small child darted up to her and spat at her feet. His friend pulled her hair and wrenched her bag of earth from her hands. She stared in horror as the delicate velvet bag was crushed underfoot and the sacred soil from her mother's homeplace was tossed by the wind into the sea. Her face burned white-hot, blood pounding maddeningly in her temples.

"How dare you?" she screamed. Then a strange smile curled up her pretty mouth.

She again raised her hands to the winds, this time with no love in her heart. They swirled around her, as her hands weaved around them and molded a spell.

A low sound started, like the deep notes of a wood flute, melting along the beaches and sliding along the cliff.

The sea rose up behind her, a deadly protector. It whirled and writhed until it twisted itself into a funnel, and as the villagers watched, frozen, she pointed a pale finger at them and the whirlpool joined with the wind. Their resolve fled and they scattered, fathers trampling sons in their selfish

The weapons that had been abandoned by the villagers were caught and thrown about. A large metal pike drove itself through a man's shoulder, and he fell to his knees as his arm was torn away. He drew a small sword from a nearby fallen villager and with a mighty curse, threw it at her as he died. It spun through the air. As it drew nearer, she swore she could hear it whirring. She raised her arms to block it, but was too late. She screamed as it pierced her shoulder, the cold iron parting her warm soft flesh, and raised her hand to the sky as she was thrown off the cliff into the churning waters below.





Days later, John Forsythe, the leader of the village, went up to the cliff with two other men to revisit the night the Tierra Witch let loose her rage. He was a tall man whose muscle was running to fat but whose honest face often bore a smile. He surveyed the scene with a heavy heart.

The land was ugly and scarred, all flora dead or dying or whisked away by the winds. There were splintered lengths of wood everywhere, as well as weapons from the villagers who had been too afraid of the witch to reclaim them.

"They're cursed now," they cried. "We don't wants them any more!"

John went to stand on the cliff where the witch had disappeared from. He looked down to the churning seas with a fathomless expression.

"She couldn't have survived," he said to the two accompanying men, "The wound from the sword would have nearly killed her itself, and then add to that the fall to the waters and the rocks. She's long gone." You poor misunderstood creature, he added silently. John turned and started back down the hill towards the village. "I'll have the doctor write up a death certificate."

"But John!" cried the younger of the two helpers, "The villagers will be needing the body for a proper burning! We won't be able to get the curse off this hill before we see her burned and buried, good and proper."

"Tuck, how are they going to burn a body we don't have? Can you answer me that? I say, let it be and hope that wherever her poor soul lies, she'll have a chance at forgiveness and heaven. Let's leave it at that."

Tuck had no answer. He merely mumbled and shuffled, as often he did.

They headed back to the village. Two hours later, John declared to the village that the Witch of Tierra was dead.



* * * * * * * * * * *



The ocean slowly crept forward again and tried to take her back into the sea; it caressed her legs and waist and trailed through her tattered gown. Let me embrace you, it sighed. Come back to my shells and sand and sea creatures. Come back to your ocean-sisters. Come home.

Overhead, the seabirds sang plaintively to one another.



There was sand, a lot of sand- in her eyes, mouth, nose, ears, everywhere. She ground her eyes shut and felt the grittiness. She spat out the sand and rubbed it from her eyes, nose and ears. Her ribs hurt terribly, and felt as though they were on fire. There was a harsh, raw pain in her shoulder.

She opened her eyes slowly.

As she had suspected, she was lying on a beach. The sky overhead was clearer and bluer than any she had everseen before. She felt a sneaking suspicion that she wasn't anywhere near the Tierra Village.

The sand was white, scattered with pretty seashells. There were palm trees everywhere, and then as she looked further inland they got increasingly dense until they became a jungle. Although she had never been away from the Tierra Village, she knew she was on an island. Reading her father's travel journals had told her that much.

She looked around with a start, remembering what had happened to her.

She had fallen off the cliff after the sword hit her. That was where she'd gotten the wound. She glanced at it, checking for infection. It was healing cleanly.

Suddenly she realized that if her wound was healing, some time must have passed since that night. She had been missing for days! How could she have survived?

Her things! Frantically, she scuffled around in the sand, hoping to find her blessed stones and ritual knife. She cried bitterly when they were not found. Then she lay back in the sand and closed her eyes.

She dozed.





"Lady?" a soft voice called.