She calls herself Ms. Wormwood and
people think of religious parables and look no deeper. Too many have
lost the ability to see symbols, else they would be blinded in a
world teeming with them. She names herself for all the world to see,
as witch and witch-kind, and almost none see past the young face she
wears over her own or think her more than harmless.
When feeling cruel, she tells people
she is a witch and watches them thing of nakedness and crystals and
herbs. What she thinks of wicca is best left unsaid, for there is no
word in any language to compass the depth of her contempt. Politics
comes close, in election seasons.
She is ancient and aweful, as old as
the woods she once claimed. She has destroyed lives with words and
created tales to terrify children for generations and has walked from
death back into life and mastered power even the bravest of magicians
would never dare to bind. To her, the world yet holds one crime that
sickens her: she is afraid.
Her fear slew her mentor and walks the
world, a boy ever and always, with a knife and will that no witch can
face down. His name is Jack, and her fear of him is so big that God
herself would weep to see it . And as she is afraid, so Ms. Wormwood
knows others are. She sets her plans in motion so that she need never
fear again. She has whispered, long and hard, in the right ears, just
like her namesake.
Can it be a namesake if it was named
after you? No matter.
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