Liar's Blooms

Once there was a wicked girl, with a most wicked mouth.

“Goodbye. I’ll miss you, mother,” the girl said, a statement that echoed resoundingly empty in her ears as she walked the lonely road, basket tucked under her arm. Her cloak billowed out around her in the wind. Another fiction, another untruth. 

She didn’t get far along her travels before someone stepped into her path, blocking the way. 

“Well now, where could someone like you possibly be headed at this unfine hour?” He grinned, his wide smile a glinting knife in the rising moon. His collar was turned up against the late night chill, but the front of his coat hung open, revealing a bare chest covered in tiny, crescent-shaped white scars. The young traveler didn’t let her focus linger, taking to his face instead. Wondering where one gets wounds like those was an invitation for trouble, and she certainly didn’t need any more of that.

She really shouldn’t stay long, the roads nearest the endless woods were fraught with shadows and mysterious creatures, many even without names. It wouldn’t be ridiculous to assume this man was one of them.

But then again, so was she. And all it would take to rid herself of an unpleasant evening being eaten, was to plant a lie.

“Why, I live here,” she offered easily, watching as the seed took root on his face and he accepted her words without consequence. There’s a sharp pinch at the base of her spine as the small fib settles around them both. Two in one day. If she weren’t already headed out, she’d chastise herself on the lack of restraint. 

Without another word, the wolfish stranger turned on his way back down the road. The traveler waited until his figure was completely swallowed in the fog before resuming her midnight journey. 

After a few hours, she veered off the main road, leaving behind visible paths and trails altogether. There, the trees grew taller, closer together, their tops scraping the clouds. The canopy of their leaves caught all light, transforming the forest floor into a chasm of darkness and peculiar sounds. A biting coldness seeped through fabric and skin, burrowing deep into the bone. 

There was a reason no one came to this place. Not unless they were chasing madness. Or death. 

I’ll miss you, mother. The words rang back at her, emitting hollow-like from somewhere through the trees, trying to lure her away from her destination, pull her off the path. Taunting. She ducked her head in shame, despite having no audience, but pressed ever on. 

Finally, when she believed she could go no further, her feet frozen and sore — the trees began to part. 

I’ll miss you, mother.

Inside a small clearing sat a rickety, decaying treehouse. From the looks of it, the porch caved in on itself long ago, and a host of nests and burrows had laid claim to the shack’s outside exterior. Two chimneys jutted up from the mossy thatching, dispelling heavy white smoke that smelled of warm, fresh bread and spiced apples and roasted pig.

The traveler stopped at the edge of the clearing and carefully lifted her hood from her face, the cloth colored so deep a red it appeared to have been dyed in blood — much like the tiny blooms that protruded from her spine. They crawled up the small of her back, pushing through the skin with every little lie that fell off her tongue. 

She breathed in deeply, sighing.

“Please, great Witch, I come to you in need. A terrible spell was placed upon me as a child, and now I can barely speak without fear of hurting myself and others. Surely you can help me?” She implored the towering treehouse. At first, there was only the eerie silence that filled the forestland, her question hanging loud in the empty spaces.

And then: “I know of all who enter these woods and you reek of falsehoods and deceptions. You dare trespass in my home?” Candle lights flickered in the windows of the house as a voice, low and impenetrable, swept through the air.

“No, if it's payment you require, I do not come empty handed.” She set the wicker basket on the ground and withdrew two bits of wrapped cloth. “I beg you. This curse isn’t even my own! It is my mother’s punishment by a jealous sorceress. Why should I suffer her consequences?”

The girl placed both objects onto a fallen tree, pulling the handkerchiefs away to reveal two bloodied tongues. One was black and swollen, the other in near perfect shape — tongues of the sinner and a saint. A fair trade.

“I cannot remove another’s curse. It is impossible,” snow began to sift through the leaves above. The air turned icy. “Leave.”

The traveler clawed desperately for another answer. An exception. A loophole. Something. But alas, witch magic was binding and thorough, everyone knew that.

I could always make you, she itched to say. She didn’t come this far to be turned down, and by another witch, no less. “But...you can do anything.” 

Three.

No witch could truly do anything she wanted, even magic had boundaries. It was one of the many reasons she hadn’t been able to shed the curse yet. Too many rules, and far too many restrictions.

But sometimes all it took was a certain sort of phrasing…

“Yes...I can help you,” the Witch said thoughtfully.

The traveler jumped to her feet, heart racing, expecting to see the door to the house creek open in an invitation. She waited. 

And waited. As the lights in the windows dimmed and crows came to seize the tongues. The smoke in the chimneys first turned black, and then red. The sweet scents were replaced by something choking and sour. The taste of iron stung the air.

She felt a tugging deep within her chest, an intense prickling that spread throughout her limbs like the downing of a hot drink. It unfurled and reached outwards, burning, scorching. It was as if someone had set her on fire. 

She remained unburnt though, dropping to her knees amidst the forest’s blanket of dead leaves. Her body heaved until the heat dissipated and the emptiness of her stomach echoed back. When she arose, the treehouse and the clearing were gone. She peered around to find herself standing in an entirely different wood. 

Soft pine. Snow-capped mountains.

The girl knew this place. Somehow, she’d found herself back inside the familiar tree line that belonged to home. The Witch’s magic had sent her over a day’s journey away in the blink of an eye. 

The moon dipped low over the mountaintops, the first signs of day oncoming.

She was unchained, that much she knew. She’d felt the curse loosen and dispel inside her, unclenching her fate and freedom. Already she could feel the flowers falling away, getting lost in the tangle of her clothes. Their removal left her back tender and raw. But for the first time, it was a good pain.

From nearby, the sound of a cart’s wheels staggered over packed dirt. She raced towards it, eager to arrive home — changed. She wondered what her mother will think. 

The road turned into view and she threw herself upon it, waving the driver down so that he could not pass her.

“Kind sir! I’m so tired, I’ve been wandering for days and I’m just trying to get home...” she said sweetly — or at least she tried too but trailed off, confused, when nothing came out of her mouth.

“Perhaps I could obtain a ride?” No sound. Not a single syllable. What had that Witch done?

What had she done?

Fear burrowed within her. The driver leaned away from her reach, but gestured to the back of the cart anyways. She numbly accepted, mind whirling. 

She held her arms over herself. How she had despaired that everything she said ultimately ended up a tangled mess of lies, how others’ trust and control were unknowingly ripped from them every time she spoke. And the constant pain. It’d been too much. She’d just wanted it to end. 

Now she was free of it all, her words forever silenced so that no scarlet blooms ever sprouted again. She’d underestimated a true witch’s power — she had underestimated magic itself. And everyone knew magic turned everything it touched irreversibly wicked.