The Ladies of Horror
Picture-Prompt Writing Challenge!

No Witch
by Kim Richards

     Lily, George, and Tom bounded through the newly fallen snow, leaving boot prints in their wake. Their laughter echoed across the dense trees at the far end of the metro park. None of them minded the frigid air. This was a time to tilt their heads back and capture wet snowflakes with their tongues.

     They anticipated a day of building snowforts and hurling snowballs at one another. Of course snowmen sentries would guard the ‘gates’. Afterward, they would fall backwards with their arms outstretched and make snow angels. Then they’d run to Lily’s house for mugs of steaming hot chocolate.

     Rounding a corner, Tom skidded to a halt, nearly bowling over a woman dressed in white with a black hooded cloak and ornate mask. The eyes of the mask were rimmed in a blood red and its lips as black as coal. Within those eyeholes an inky void lived.

     “Sorry,” Tom muttered. His breath puffed like a little cloud from his mouth as he breathed.

     Lily’s voice said softly over his shoulder, “Whoa!”

     Ever the brave one, George came up from behind. Seeing the woman, he called out, “Hey! Are you a witch?”

     The woman stood unmoving. Her pale hands cupped together as if cradling something small and black in the palms of her hands.

     George’s eyes widened when he realized the woman’s hands were…not deformed but odd. Her right hand had six and a half fingers and her left only four. He was uncertain but decided the thing she held might be a bird carved of obsidian. It’s shiny black feather surfaces resembled the stones of her necklace.

     “Of course she’s a witch,” Tom said with a smirk.

     Lily piped up. “I don’t think so. Witches don’t wear masks.”

     “Well,” Tom said, “Look at those markings on her mask. Those must be sigils or signs of magic power.”

     “Pfff. Those are decorations like birds and flowers only ornate. If you go look up close, you’ll see them,” Lily said.

     “I’m not going up close.”

     George nodded. “Me either.”

     Laughing at her friends, Lily stepped around Tom and approached the women.

     “Hello,” she said as she brushed new snowflakes from her eyelashes with a gloved hand.

     The woman gave no reply, instead remaining unmoving in place. For a moment the girl thought the lady might actually be frozen or perhaps some kind of giant doll. But then she noticed the barest of movement from the woman’s chest.

     “I am…” said a muffled sad voice from within the mask. “…no witch.”

     Lily smiled and leaned closer. “I’m Lily. Who are you?”

     The woman reached up with her four fingered hand and removed the mask. Her visage, blackened on one side and made of ice on the other remained without emotion.

     All three children turned to flee and barely took a step when they were frozen in place. The woman approached each and touched their foreheads with her four fingered hand. Each morphed into a little obsidian feather.

     The not-a-witch replaced her mask and then scooped up the former children. She added them to the others cupped in her six fingered hand.

     Raising the hand, she let her frosty breath flow over them like a thick fog.

     “No, not a witch…a winter demon.”

Fiction © Copyright Kim Richards
Image courtesy of Pixabay.com