The squall twists around her head, a flurry of life and power. Blind though she may be, Arabella can feel life in the flowing water, guided by her magic. 

“They’ll see,” she mutters through lips gnarled and scarred. “They’ll feel what they’ve done to me a thousand fold.”

The world is a flurry of life and sound, all drawn out by the tempest. In Arabella’s  tendrils of the water, a blue fire ignites. In her mind, she can see the faces of her tormentors, white as sheets. 

  Arabella Thomas had been a young girl born into slavery. As she grew up, she was tormented by her slavers and their children– they would throw rocks and sticks at her face, all the while knowing she could do nothing in retribution. For years she worked constantly  berated with the insults of white people, who lived  in luxury while she toiled from an age at which no child should be forced to. She longed for knowledge: to understand the world around her, always curious, discovering something new. One eventful day in her eleventh or twelfth year, she had no way to know which, something fell out of a window. It was a glass jar, the clarity of which she had not seen before. She marveled at the way she could see through the bottle as she saw this new  world, her  world, in a new light. She stowed the transparent work of art under her worn clothes, knowing well she could be punished harshly. 

Summer turned to autumn, to winter, to spring, and many years passed. Once a young naive youth, she had come to understand who she was and what she did every day. She comprehended that  the treatment she had recieved  every day was the result of her skin color. Arabella had become outwardly complacent, but she harbored feelings of resentment and rebellion under her skin. The glass that had once held wonder for her, now held the envy and hate she bore towards  people born higher. The simple cup had become a symbol of quiet revolution , secreted away and never used for fear of it being too fragile. 

Several more years had passed, and the glass had become scratched and cracked, but never  broken. Arabella’s  feelings of hate grew and the curiosity of her  youth had dwindled, although it  never disappeared. Arabella had seen horrible things as a curse of her curiosity, things which only fueled her hate; she saw a Black woman of her age beaten and killed out of  fear of witchcraft. The sight of somebody just like her, beaten and drowned, broke something inside Arabella  that the years had never damaged.

 She had to escape. 

In the middle of the darkest night, she made her attempt. She stole out of the communal quarters, so packed that the hot breath of others fell on her cheek like the moist warmth of a summer storm. She crept  into the night, away from the wretched and decrepit plantation that had given her so much pain. 

Suddenly, she heard a bark asloud as a gunshot that  shattered the night air. 

“The dogs!” Arabella thought, stomach wrenching its way into where her throat usually was. , “I forgot about the dogs!” 

She swiftly crouched behind a gnarled oak, feeling the bark that she had seen from afar hit rough against her face. Her hopes began to sink.

“Where are they?” barked the man.

The sounds of dogs sniffing close to the trunk.

“Get  ‘er!” the man yelled again.

Arabella knew she had been discovered. She made a mad dash for the freedom of the forest. She had toiled tapping trees for years upon years, and she knew the forest paths even in the dark. She ran as fast as her calloused feet could take her, but the dogs were faster. The dogs heard her footsteps through the heavy misted air. Fast though she was, from labor and toil through her whole life, the dogs were faster and more savage. 

The last thing she heard was the coarse barks of the hunting pack, and then there was only pain. 

When she woke, she cried out through bloody lips, a guttural yell that echoed through the souls of all who heard it. She opened her eyes, though she could not see. Blind, she fell back to tormented oblivion. She awoke on the ground. 

“What do we do with her?” came a bass voice.

“Nobody needs a blind slave,” echoed another.

She again dropped into the dark.

She awoke on the bouncy, damp, peat. The pain came from all across her body. She knew of her face, but Arabella felt new bruises form, and new cuts ooze. Her clothes were tattered and stained. She crawled up from the dirt, and dragged herself beneath the oak that she once hid under, providing some shelter from the unforgiving elements.

She awoke, fading in and out of oblivion. She heard voices, gruff, but caring.

“What happened to her?” chimed a youthful voice.

“Hell.” Called another.

“What will we do?” The youthful chime retolled.

“We will take her to our hut, and pray she survives the tumult.”

Arabella awoke in a heavily perfumed room, the heat of the crackling fire making her head swim.

“Where… Where am I?” She exclaimed groggily.

“You’re safe, sugar.” The croaky voice soothed.

Arabella tried to open her eyes, but no light came through.

“The pain is gone!” she blurted, “What did you do?”

“We helped you wounds as much as we could, but there was nothing we could do for the scars,” the small voice said.

Arabella reached for her face, plain though it was, she felt scars like spider webs crawling across her face. Blind and confused, she had no idea why they were there. She reached for her blind eyes, but felt only sockets. Her eyes weren’t there.

“What happened to my eyes!?” she yelled.

“What happened to them? We found you bleeding on the ground.”

“The last thing I remember was the dogs, and then blackness. The blackness hasn’t stopped. I doubt it will ever stop again.”

“I don’t think it will,” came the croaking voice.

“What can I do?”

“If you stay, we can teach you. They’ll never hurt you again.”

So Arabella stayed. She couldn’t see, but she learned to feel. The hut became as familiar to her as the back of her hand. After many weeks, eating the Women's strange foods, the spices and flavors were unexpected, but she enjoyed them more than anything she had eaten before. The women would occasionally leave for hours at a time, and come back smelling like fire and ash. 

One day she asked the women, “where do you go when you leave?”

“Are you sure you want to know?” they would ask in unison.

“Yes.”

Then the women would laugh. One day they finally told her. They said that they save people from fires. She thought that was shockingly heroic, for the women who were so glib. She supposed that they did save her, and heal her. It wasn’t too out of character. 

She drifted to fitful sleep that night, plagued with dreams about rabid wolves, chasing her, getting bigger and bigger. She drifts in and out of sleep, and through the veil of sleep, she heard this conversation:

“When do we tell her?” the chirpy voice asks.

“Soon she’ll be ready,” replies the croak.

“Do you think she’ll be able to?” 

“I hope. She could be the greatest among us. The greatest of witches.”

The seasons change, and change again. Autumn falls, the smell of crisp leaves, and damp earth. The smell of candle smoke gets stronger as the season gets colder. The food the women make gets warmer, changing flavor with the seasons.

Arabella was left alone one day, knocking around the cottage. She hit a table with her hip, and the table, shaking a candle off of it. The house smells of smoke, and Arabella smells it. Suddenly, she knows that the house is aflame. She can see the fire in her mind, the color and the dance of the flame. It was like a living thing, consuming all, but making life, and growing. She could feel life, and the magic in it. She reached out, unconsciously. Her hand grasping at the first thing she’s seen in what seems like eons. She reaches into the fire, into its life. She feels the yearning to burn, and the drive to consume. Into its heart, she pours her will, showing it her pain, and her frustration. Suddenly she could feel it, like an extension of her arm. She saw the candle in a bright orange lens, and simply put the fire back into the candle. The connection wanes; it felt like she had lost a limb.

A voice echoes through the chamber.

“What have you done?” the hoarse voice inquired.

“Magic,” came the chirp.

“She did it.”

So the woman told her. They were witches, those who came from the kingdom of Tegbesu, the last of the warriors. They escaped slavery, and found magic in their suffering. So they took the traditions of their magic, and they passed their power to her. 

So the women, the witches, spoke. She listened.