Humans are listless without guidance. The Great Trossachs guides the kind-hearted and tricks the foul-hearted much like any creature of the forest, but most of all mortals for this reason. To humans, the fae seem too quiet and too bizarre amongst the black locust branches unsettles the citizens. The forest bars them entrance but, on rare occasion, they can slip through. This is the tale of one of those times. This story starts as many do, in a forest lives a witch. Medusa the dryadic of the Great Trossachs and her apothecary shop, Medusa’s Revenge—so named for her contempt of men, though lesser for women. The shop lies across the mushroom line deep in the dark of the forest.

                                                            *

My small cobblestone cottage proudly stands in the middle of the Trossachs fairy ring. I built it two-hundred and forty-three years ago, during the first spring of man. When humans still bumbled through their early lives, now they create swaths of destruction with a snap of their malice-laden fingers. Through a stroke of fate, the humans keep to their village of Aberfoyle—it looms at the edge of the forest. Such a threat bears no effect on my business. Like Zeke, a young selkie, who looks human enough—if not a little pale blue—to fool anyone.

But I turn humans away, even those who fate guides to me. Humans tend to be too caught up in their own affairs to offer kindness. “Give me a love potion you hag,” or, “I demand an elixir for my rash,” but never manners. I’m a polite four-hundred-year-old witch, and I’ve seen a lot of arrogance. I attempt civility. I observe human cruelty through the forest’s veil, but humans disbelieve when I refuse them. My familiars, Baunila my raven and Heimdall my great Dane.  sense my hatred and send a wave of love and comfort my way. Thank the forest for them.

Baunila climbs up my arm to perch on my shoulder as Heimdall wiggles at the door waiting for Zeke to walk through. They always bring my morning supplies on dies Martis—the second day of the week—and mollycoddle my familiars with treats. As if they are not spoiled enough. Zeke also keeps me appraised of Aberfoyle and the villagers. A few years ago, witch hunters tried to burn my shop down, only to find they could not pass the first line of trees without getting turned back to Aberfoyle. Though it is not Zeke who enters my shop but rather the mayor’s daughter Pricilla.

            “Please, Witch, you have to help me!” She pleads when she nearly rips the door off its hinges. Her chest moves rapidly as though she cannot get enough air in. The blue corset cinches too tight against her waist. The fae have a way of making any human look spooked, must be the bark-like skin or the half-animal bodies.

            “Yes, yes, do close the door before you let the chill in,” I say, pulling my brewing apron on. Pricilla restores her breathing to a steady shallowness and closes the door.

            “My father, he wants me to marry, to “enrichen my body with a child”! I can’t do that.”

            “Good for you, but I do not interfere in human affairs anymore. Too dangerous.”

            “Witc—Medusa, I cannot do this alone. I don’t oppose marriage, I yearn for it but not to him.”

Damn my big soft heart, she is just a girl. A young foolish girl. I’m not going to help every unfortunate human that stumbles in. She can learn to love a man who is forced on her…Blast! I stare at her and notice small cuts littering her face and arms. I wave her over. Even if I don’t help her situation I can heal her wounds, it’s the least I can do.

“Take a seat on the stool.”

Without looking over to see if she follows my order, I grab four calendula petals and eight elderberries. The petals will help Pricilla fight infection and the elderberries will protect her against the cold she risks getting after running in this rain.

“The wedding is in three days, I have told my fiancé no but he insisted. As did my father,” Pricilla adds quietly as I dab her wounds with a remedy rich cloth.

 “Listen to me, Pricilla, I don’t want to get involved in this mess. It will mean that you will come to me every time you have a problem and I just don’t have time for it.” I toy with the large jar of dried hops and hope Pricilla will just leave.

“I have money, or if I could take some of my mother’s jewelry?”

“Payment isn’t the problem, Pricilla. If I give you something, the town’s people will know that I am back in business. And I don’t want more humans in my forest or, gods forbid, in my shop.”

“No one knows I’m here, they think I’m writing my vows. There has to be something you can do?”

“What makes you think you deserve my help, getting married isn’t a death sentence.”

I call vines to my aid and wrap them around Pricilla’s legs and force them towards the door, “Just go.”

“I would owe you a favour!” Pricilla says as she crawls at the door frame to keep herself inside. The vines keep her at the door but stop pushing, Pricilla senses my contemplation and continues, “I can keep people out of the forest, I can tell them that there’s a powerful witch who will kill anyone who enters.”

That would help, her opinion might not carry weight but her families certainly would. I sigh and walk over to a cabinet marked Curses, and grab a bottle of wild lettuce or the Knock-out Curse, before thinking better of it. No, better the hops; that way, it will fade in his mead. “Against my better judgement, I will give you these, what you chose to do with them is up to you and does not come back to me, understand?”

“No—I promise to never come to you again, thank you so much!” She nearly topples Zeke in her haste to leave.

I put away spare jars and herbs littering the surface of my redwood counter. Zeke places the basket of wild flowers and mushrooms beside the counter and leans on it. “Busy this morning, Dusa?”

“Don’t ‘Dusa’ me, you are late, I thought selkies kept their promises?”

They snicker, give a smirk and say, “I had to take my Gran to her lake and she insisted on feeding me. Who was that?”

I straighten a wrinkle in my apron and turn my nose up at Zeke. “None of your business, she will never come back.”

But Pricilla does come back.

The next morning, I pick ginseng roots from the narrow garden alongside the shop wall. Streaks of tears cut through the mud caked on her cheeks. I sigh and hold open the door for her, she passes without a word.

“Did the hops not work?”

“My fiancé said,” she wipes her eyes harshly, “he said he knew where I went...” She glances at me under her lashes. “Knew what I came here for.”

“He knew nothing, that boy has never thought for himself. His mother must have followed you as far as she could.” Stupid girl. The selkies never give me this much trouble. I shuffle past Pricilla and place the ginseng on a string to dry out. 

“I’m sorry! I didn’t know what to do and…I just led them straight to you, I truly am an imbecile,” Pricilla says as she flops down onto the stool next to my table. It seems Trossachs kept anyone else from making it here otherwise my shop would be a pile of ashes.

“Honestly, child! Do stop your incessant crying, it won’t fix anything—all it will do is give me pain, so hush.” Pricilla holds her fist against her mouth to stifle the sounds. How do mortals get anything done with all this emotion?

 “If the hops didn’t work then another potion is out of the question.” An enchantment it is, or perhaps a real curse is needed this time. I nod to my familiars Baunila and Heimdall, the gold ring should do and fetch the silver branch from the findargat tree outside.

Pricilla whimpers and takes a deep breath, “You are still going to help me?”

“Your independence inspires me. A noble quest to live for yourself. Freedom is a seldom thing when you have so little time.” I touch her hand and in that moment, I can feel myself make the same mistake from the past. I walk a thin line when trusting any vulnerable human with a sob story. Aberfoyle housed witch-hunters, at any moment Pricilla could turn against me. Turn me in and burn me alive on a pyre. I fight the urge to rip my hand from hers.

“Tell me, Pricilla. Why do you want to stop this marriage? Is it truly because you do not love him or is there another?” I ask her. Baunila and Heimdall drop the items at my feet and I am hesitant to pick them up and begin the incantation.

If I do this, the consequences will be worse than last time. Florence was a blacksmith’s daughter, it was easy enough for her to slip away. But Pricilla was rejecting someone below her rank. It would not be a clean break.

She remains silent for a while, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth, but she finds herself and says, “There-there is no one else and there will not be anyone…I—hmm, I cannot experience love as I should. I do not feel desire. I have tried, mind you, I thought it was an aversion to men so I focused on women. But both do not cause my heart to beat faster with the passion in their eyes. Rather it makes me wary, and my heart does not flutter in anticipation but fear. Most people only touch to get something, to feel pleasure. I—I do not think myself capable to feel that for anyone. So, when my mother arranged a marriage to him, a known harlot, and my father pushed it, I ran. And I found you.” Ah, if only humans could marry for romance and not for copulation.

“Y’know…if this enchantment doesn’t work, you could stay here or make a home in the forest. It would protect you from that nashgab of the village, from that life.”

Again, Pricilla goes silent. She twists a velvet ribbon that once belonged in her hair between her fingers, a gift by the looks of it. “The village has warnings about you. Beware the ‘Lady of the Wood,’ or, as the mayor calls you, ‘Vengeful Spirit.’” She chuckles, “It’s odd, I was terrified to meet you because of them. I had pictured a grotesque demon set to eat my heart. Yet, when I opened that door, it felt as though I had been seen. I wasn’t my mother’s expectations, my father’s dowry, the mayor’s pawn, I was Pricilla. A woman in need. A woman who was heard. I was scared you would turn me away, call me childish, but you helped me. I will keep your offer in mind, but I have faith.”

            Pricilla leaves. I remain, whether if she comes back or not, the dryadic witch in the forest.

Final thoughts:

This is not how I wanted my final draft of this story to look like, but as I mentioned my professor was an adamant disbeliever in the genre fiction so I had to trim some of the story to appease him for a decent grade.