They called her a witch.
Children whispered it behind cupped hands. The villagers spoke it with spit in their mouths and fear in their eyes. And yet, no one dared say it to her face—not even the elders, who remembered the year the crops grew overnight after a quiet visit to her door.
Her name was Mara, and she lived alone in a crooked wooden cottage at the edge of the Black Forest.
No one knew her true age. Some said she had seen three generations rise and fall. Others claimed she'd been there before the village even existed. The truth was simpler: Mara had outlived too many winters, and she had stopped counting.
By day, she wandered the woods, gathering roots, talking to birds, and drawing strange marks into the dirt. By night, smoke rose from her chimney in thick spirals, and lights flickered through her windows—green, blue, and sometimes blood-red.
It was said she could curse a man with a look and heal a dying animal with a whisper. It was also said that anyone who entered her home came back... changed.
So when Ana disappeared on the third night of the harvest moon, no one dared follow her into the forest.
But Ana wasn't taken.
She went willingly.