Title of the story

Written April 18 2025

This is part of a longer story I wanted to write in the summer of 2024 but never really got around to it. I thought this was the best part, so I finally cut it down and edited it.

This story contains descriptions of physical injury. If you feel like this might upset you, please do not read further.

When I was a young girl, I went out with some tailor’s boy. I realized, rather quickly, I must admit, that boys were just not to my liking. So, when we were walking together, hand in clammy hand, and he confessed to me that, really, he fancied another girl, I pushed him off the sidewalk and into a little stream. I screamed that all boys were the same and stormed off, secretly relieved. He moved to another town just a few weeks later, so I never found out what happened to him and his love.

* * *

It was the third winter after my brother’s birth. He was a sickly child and so, even though the hills around the town were blanketed with snow and the lake was frozen over and most children his age were playing outside, he had to stay at home with his mother. At that point, father was getting older and I helped him out around the workshop. My parents had stopped pestering me about marriage after I managed to scare off all the suitors they had sent after me. Just that summer, I had sent the wagonmaker’s son away crying and had been unbothered by the men in town since then. That fall, I overheard some women gossip about me in the marketplace, calling me a witch behind my back.

A week after Midwinter, my father told me to take the next day off and spend some time with my little sister. “She’s getting antsy. I almost tripped over her yesterday,” he said. “Take her up the hills with her new sled, will you?”

I assented because there was not much to do for me in winter. I helped out in the workshop and waited for spring and, anyway, I wanted to spend more time with her myself. With her mother caught up in caring for her little brother and my father instructing me in the workshop and much too tired for anything else, I felt the need to be a parent for her.

So, the day after, we grabbed her sled, which father had made for her for Midwinter, and took off into the hills. I dragged her while she sat on the sled. The work those past few years had made me stronger, and we barely had to stop. She was wrapped in a thick coat and had a knit cap drawn so deep into her face that only her bright eyes distinguished her from a pile of clothes.

By noon, we had made our way to the top of a hill overlooking a small creek. The air was frigid and hurt wherever it touched the skin, so I had wrapped my scarf tightly around my face. The low winter midday sun was making the hills sparkle. The small creek at the bottom of the hill looked like a rushing stream of gemstones. You could see the town’s Midwinter fair in the distance. All else was swallowed up by soft blankets of snow.

I stood on a spot overlooking the hillside and watched her ride down the hill and trod back up and then ride down again. Her eyes were beaming. She went up to me, struggling against the masses of snow. I caught a glimpse of her bright red cheeks through her scarf and cap. “…de wi’ me?” she asked.

“You want me to ride with you?” I said. She nodded. “But it’s too small. Father made it the right size for you.” She took my hand, glove in glove. I had to agree.

The sled was painted bright red and sized to fit her, but if I held her close enough to me, both of us could fit on it. As we slowed down at the bottom of the hill and the wind wasn’t blowing needles into our faces anymore, I could hear her giggling under her scarf and suddenly I didn’t mind the piercing cold at all.

After the sled had come to a halt, I stood up and looked around. I wanted to take a closer look at the small stream and look for pretty stones, the way I always did when I was up in the hills, when I heard some soft crunching sounds on the other side. Two ears propped up out of the snow bedecked brush beside the water, maybe ten meters from us. I turned around slowly and gestured to my sister to be quiet. Slowly, I picked her up and held her at chest height. “Look,” I said, “a snow hare.” We watched it as it quietly moved around the brush, always looking around carefully before taking another few steps. “The hare’s have become so rare around here,” I whispered to her.

“Why’s it white?” my sister said.

“That’s its winter coat, so it doesn’t look out of place with all the snow around.”

“So, it gets brown again when the snow melts.”

“That’ right.”

“What if the snow melts early like last year?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t know.” We continued watching it as it made its way along the creek’s bank. Another rabbit came out of the reeds and approached the first one. “Look, there’s a second one,” I said. They came as close as a few meters when suddenly the first one took off into the field again, the second quickly pursuing it.

“Do you think they are friends?” my sister asked.

“I don’t know if hares have friends, Annie,” I replied and put her down.

After another ride, I was starting to feel much too hot and my head began to pound. I told my little sister to take her sled for a couple more rides and sat down on a stone I had cleared of snow. I put my head into my hands and began to think. I had not gone to the Midwinter fair that year or the year before. This was the first time I had gone out in a while.

This quiet moment was ripped apart by a scream from downhill. I saw that my sister was rolling down the hill, the sled cartwheeling beside her. I jumped up and ran down the hill as fast as I could without falling. She came to a standstill, still wailing, crying “Rose,” a dozen meters above the sled. I grabbed her and held her tight against my chest. Blood hammered around my head so loudly, I could hardly form an idea of what to do.

“Shh, it’s alright,” I told her in what I hoped sounded like a motherly and soothing tone, rather than a command.

“The sled jumped,” she said between sobs.

“You must’ve hit a rock. It’s alright. Where does it hurt?”

“My leg hurts.”

I patted down her legs through her thick pants to see if I could feel anything wrong. She winced when I touched her right ankle. “I think you might have sprained it,” I said. “I will get the sled. Can you sit here for a second?” She nodded, still crying and shivering.

The sled was further down the hill. It looked like a mass of red roots growing from the snow. I had to only take one look at it to see that one of the runners was broken, torn from the support in the front. It would be useless for sledding, but I could still fix it when we got back. I slung it over my shoulder, picked up my little sister with the other arm and slowly, step by step, set off toward the top of the hill.

It was early afternoon by this point. With the extra weight and half a day’s worth of walking already done, it felt like I was walking in place. The dirt road that led up this hill and away to one of the outlying villages was bumpy and treacherous enough without a foot of snow covering it and so, before long, I stepped into a small ditch. I let out a small yelp as my foot twisted and I tried not to fall onto my sister. I still fell to my knees and lost the sled, but the thick pants and gloves kept me from injury other than my foot, which was already pulsating with hurt.

Fighting against the stabbing pain, I got up, but after a few steps I saw that it was useless. I sat down in the snow and put my sister on my lap, so she didn’t have to sit on the cold ground. “We will have to wait until people leave the Midwinter fair and find us here,” I told her to keep up her spirits. “I’m sure someone will have a cart and can give us a ride back home.” She was quiet, still hurting and increasingly tired and cold. “I’m sorry,” I said.

We waited for maybe a quarter of an hour, though I could not tell without a clock. The sun was already approaching the horizon and the snow was beginning to glow a warm orange-red, though it was colder than ever. I picked up my sister again and started walking slowly, very slowly, down towards town again. With every second step, pain was shooting up through my spine, but I somehow had to get her home before we both froze to death. I even left the sled behind. I could pick it up tomorrow. The sky was beginning to darken in the East and the first pale stars were beginning to come out. I wished for nothing more than to get us both home and in front of a fire.

At that moment, I saw a small dark shape moving across the sky. It was unusual to see birds at this time of year – my father told me they always burrowed into the ground in autumn – and this one was moving much too steadily to be a bird. As it was coming closer, I realized what it might be: a witch, a real witch on a broom. I started waving with my free hand and shouted, anything to get her attention. Some fire began to flare up in my chest and I felt a great sense of relief when I saw the small figure make a turn in our direction.

She swooped down from the sky and I almost jumped out of the way, because for a second, I believed she might crash into us. She stopped a few meters down the road, her broomstick wavering slightly before she put her feet on the ground. “Please,” I said as she approached us, “My sister, Annie, she’s injured and I hurt my foot. We need to get back to town before it gets dark. We’re cold.”

“How badly is she hurt?” the witch asked.

“She only sprained her ankle, I believe. But we’ve been out all day and we’re freezing.”

“I can take you back on my broom, if that is alright for you. It might make you dizzy, though.” I agreed. I would do anything at this point.

She held her broomstick out horizontally and sat on it, the way men sit on horses. It looked quite silly, like she was playing a game, but I poked at the broom with my fingers and it felt like it was truly stuck in the air, not just held up by her. “I can fly hands-free, so I can take your sister. You might want to hold onto the broomstick,” she said.

I handed her my sister, whom she held tightly against her chest, and sat down behind her on the broom. It felt surreal to sit on a long stick suspended in the air. “Are you ready?” the witch asked. I nodded. Slowly she began to walk forward and the broomstick moved with her. I tried to keep up my walk, but it felt like walking underwater, just a slow skipping. Finally, the broom took off and my feet lost contact with the ground altogether.

She angled the broomstick slightly upwards and took us high up above the countryside. The sun moved back up into the sky, as if it left something important behind in the day and just had to quickly get it. The hills below us became small bumps and I couldn’t even see where I had left the sled. The winds picked up, though, and the cold burned even worse up here.

“Where to?” the witch asked me. Her voice was barely audible over the wind.

"The carpenter’s workshop. It’s a big building at the north edge of town. It’s got a courtyard.” I did not know if she understood me. “Can I hold onto you? My gloves keep slipping on the broomstick, I’m afraid.” She consented and I put my arms around her waist. The fear I felt when looking down at the tiny world below vanished. I could not fall.

“What’s your name?” she asked.

“I’m Rosemary.” I could feel every word she said, despite the wind. “What’s yours?”

“I’m Helene,” she said.

Suddenly, I had so many questions I wanted to ask her, but I was too afraid. I watched the sky darken, pressed against her back, as strands of her long black hair fluttered in front of my face. I could feel a tiny glimmer of warmth from her make it through my layers of clothing. “How come you were out all alone?” she asked.

“My father’s too old for sledding. And my mother is looking after my brother. He would just get sick. My sister has nobody else to take her sledding. And I’m afraid, I’m also quite alone.” She did not respond. “Are you lonely?” I asked.

“Witches are always alone.” I could hear her words but not her tone.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“It’s alright. All witches are loners. We meet up in covens and for sabbats and that is it. Every village has its witch, but never more than one.”

“But don’t you marry?”

“Have you ever heard of a male witch?” Helene asked.

“Not, but I you don’t–“ I could not bring myself to finish that sentence. “You said that you were alone, but I asked you if you were lonely.”

A long pause. “Sometimes. The feeling usually goes away on its own though, like a tummy ache.”

“There must be things you could do, though, against tummy aches. You must know herbs for that. Or spells.”

She was quiet for a long time. “We’re here,” she said and indeed, we were slowly descending into the courtyard of our house. It looked strange from above, though this is the way that birds would usually see the world; once they have sprouted from the ground again in spring, that is. Helene would know the world from both perspectives, and now I did too, at least a small part of it.

We touched down on the salted cobbles of the courtyard. I let go of Helene and took a couple of probing steps. My foot still hurt, though not as much, but now my legs were numb from the cold. I took my sister from Helene. She was already asleep. “Thank you. If I can ever help you in any way, please, you know where to find us. Thank you.”

“I might take you up on that,” she said flatly.

There was a moment of quiet. She put her broom in the flying position again and sat down on it. Something in me moved. It was that fire again, that little spark, which compelled me to do something. I went up to her and hugged her with my free arm, my face alongside hers. “Goodbye,” I whispered in her ear. I could feel her arm on my back.

We let go and I took a step back. Her face was as inscrutable as I had ever seen it. “I’m sure we will meet again, Rosemary,” she said and kicked off from the ground. I watched her rise into the dark night sky, a black-clad figure sinking into blackness. I waved and shouted “Goodbye, Helene” into the void.

After that, my parents came out into the courtyard. They heard my cry and were already quite worried about our whereabouts. My sister’s foot was indeed sprained, but the doctor looked at it the next day and ordered her to rest for a few weeks. I had already forgotten all about my foot by the time I went to bed that night, my thoughts drifting in all kinds of other directions.

The next day, after the doctor left, I went into our courtyard. I wanted to gather icicles to wrap in cloth and put on my stepsister’s ankle, to help it heal. I was picking some from the low eaves of our storehouse and putting them in a little basket, like see-through carrots, when I noticed a red smudge out of the corner of my eye. Next to the well lay the wreck of my little sister’s sled. The runner was still broken, yet somehow it had made its way back home. I looked up into the sky, but there was not a bird in sight. I could not stop a smile forcing its way onto my face as I went inside.

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