The Witch's Apprentice

TW: child death

The digging never got any easier. Whoever decided that graves needed to be six feet deep deserved a good, long slapping in Raelyn’s opinion. Spitefully, she tossed the last bit of dirt away and then allowed the shovel to drop. She reached up with a blistered hand and wiped at her sweaty brow with the wide brim of her sunhat. It shrouded her face against the ivory light pouring from the full moon above. The stout woman allowed herself a moment to catch her breath before shifting her grey eyes downward, at the hole she had made.

The coffin was little bigger than three feet long and one foot wide. The dirt had yet to do any lasting damage to the wood. The sigil of a cross peeked through moist soil. Raelyn hunkered low and grabbed at the coffin’s lid with both hands. The clasp binding the coffin shut struggled against her. With a grunt of effort, she managed to snap it off and force the lid open.

“Pretty,” Raelyn sighed. That always tested her conviction, but also motivated her to get the job done quicker.

The child wasn’t even three days dead. Moonlight illuminated her tiny body, transforming her into a porcelain doll. Her parents had chosen to bury her in a frilly pink dress, with matching ribbons in her hair. The morticians had placed her chubby hands over her chest and wired her mouth so that her thin lips formed into the slightest of smiles. The girl’s favorite toys and flowers had been placed around her, along with a framed photograph by her feet. Giving into her curiosity, Raelyn picked up the photo and wiped away the thin layer of dust that had begun forming across its surface.

A round-faced boy sat in a chair, smiling nervously while trying his best to hold his new baby sister upright. The photo had caught her mid-laugh, reaching out a small hand towards whoever was taking the photo. Raelyn assumed the photographer had been either the mother or father. Wordlessly, Raelyn placed the photo back into the coffin and turned to pull herself out of the hole.

Only to suddenly find herself in someone’s shadow.

She immediately reached into her dark coat. Her fingers danced between the small, black book and the curved knife nestled in its sheath, unsure. Her eyes narrowed with recognition. “What are you doing out so late?” she called up.

“Couldn’t sleep,” the girl’s brother called down. He sounded more confused than upset. He wore a denim jacket over Prisma Trooper pajamas and sneakers. He hunkered down by the grave’s edge.

If he tries to run, Raelyn thought, hating herself for it while also firmly taking ahold of the knife, I should be able to reach him-

“Are you taking Pita to Heaven?” the boy asked.

Raelyn considered her words carefully before answering slowly, “Not right away. Think of me like…a recruiter.”

The boy tilted his head. “Recruiter?”

Instead of answering, Raelyn asked him, “What’s your name?”

“Ignacio,” he said. “But my friends call me ‘Iggy.’ I’ll let you call me Iggy if you promise to take Pita to heaven.” He hesitated and then added, looking down at his shoes, “You can also take me to Hell if you want.”

Raelyn’s hold on her knife slackened before she finally withdrew her hand completely from inside her coat. “Why would I do that?”

“Because I killed Pita,” Iggy said. In the dead of night, the boy’s sobs carried. He wiped with his jacket sleeve at the tears. “I…I…Mom told me t-to put away my L-Legos, and…and I forget one. And th-then I really had to pee, and…a-and Pita found the Lego and…and…”

Choked to death, Raelyn finished in her mind. A truly mundane death.

The boy didn’t notice as she pulled herself out of the grave and dusted herself off. It wasn’t until she gently placed a hand on his shoulder that he looked up, his face and body drenched in her shadow. Raelyn gave him a tired smile before glancing around anxiously. She had already knocked out and tied up the grounds keeper. Yet the boy had slipped past her guards. How had he managed that…?

Perhaps, Raelyn thought.

“Iggy?”

“Yes, ma’am?” he said, standing up. He didn’t look at her. He stared down at his sister’s corpse, his young face racked with guilt and misery. The night wasn’t particularly chilly. Even so, he trembled.

“Don’t scream,” Raelyn said firmly.

“Huh?”

“Look up.”

Iggy did. Raelyn’s hunch was immediately proven correct. The boy’s eyes went wide. A sharp squeak burst from his lips as he stumbled back onto his butt. But he didn’t scream. Not even as he scrambled over to Raelyn and wrapped his body around one of her legs. He squeezed his eyes tight and buried his face in the hem of her coat. Without thinking, Raelyn reached down and patted his head reassuringly.

“Good boy,” she chuckled. She waved her other hand through the air and then said, “You can open your eyes now.”

“Are they gone?” Iggy whimpered.

“Yes,” Raelyn lied.

Still trembling, he looked up at her. Iggy shoved himself away and got to his feet. He turned in a circle, searching. While he did that, Raelyn took the opportunity to pull out her book. As she did so, the shadows cast by the moon’s light seemed to darken, as if coming together and bowing their dark heads in worship.

Iggy noticed her flipping through its pages and asked, voice cracking, “What’s that?”

Raelyn frowned. Thankfully, most of her children loved watching TV. It had the side effect of keeping her up to date with children’s programming and popular trends. “How much do you know about Pokémon?”

“How do you know about Pokémon?” Iggy asked without thinking. “You’re old.”

Raelyn immediately regretted not killing the kid on sight.

“My point,” she said through gritted teeth, “is that,” she held up her book, “this is my…poke ball.” She then gestured with it at Pita’s body. “And with it, I’m going to turn your sister into a Pikachu.”

Iggy stared up at her, then down at Pita, and back at Raelyn.

“….The fuck?”

Raelyn slapped him upside the head using the book.

“Didn’t your parents teach you not to cuss?!” she chided him. Annoyed, she glanced up at the moon. It had reached its apex. It was now or never. "Iggy, I need you to step back. Way back.”

“Why?” he asked. He pointed at her book. “Aren’t you just gonna throw it at her?”

Raelyn immediately regretted the Pokémon comparison.

“No,” she said. This time she did draw her knife. Holding the book open in one hand, she ran the knife along that same arm. A shallow cut. Then, using the blade like a paintbrush, she quickly drew a circular sigil across the book’s pages. “To affect the living requires blood forcibly taken. The greater the betrayal, the greater the gain. Meanwhile, for the dead,” the blood changed color, releasing a blazing blue aura into the air, “I must shed my own blood willingly. And while the living have no choice, the dead always do. Your sister may ignore my call completely.”

Please don’t, Raelyn added in her head, suddenly aware of just how much her hands ached from the digging. The blue aura splintered and shot in opposite directions. The beams curved around the grave and then joined together into a perfect, ghostly circle. Almost like a backwards magnifying glass, the circle began to absorb the moonlight, causing the rest of the graveyard to darken completely. The moonlight flowed into the tiny corpse, turning her skin a white-blue color. Pita’s eyes opened slowly, as if she were simply waking from a long nap. Her pupils trickled blue fire, like the wicks of two lit candles…

And then, just as slowly, her head turned slightly to the side, fixing those eyes upon Raelyn. As if to say, “I’m listening.”

“Pita,” Raelyn said. She kept her voice even. More like that of a stern but loving mother. Thankfully, by this point, she’d had plenty of practice. “Baby girl, you died stupidly. I can’t undo that. Unlike many of my sisters, I don’t pretend to be god. Just…” She swallowed hard before continuing. “I guess you can say I am pretending. Pretending to be the mother this life told me I couldn’t be. Thinking that I can just step in and be your new mother is beyond selfish and foolish…But if you join me, I’ll show you the world. We’ll make a difference. Defeating monsters and bettering the odds of other children getting the chance to live their lives. You died stupidly, Pita, but you’ll live through me.”

Like a baton, Raelyn held her bloody knife out.

“So now I plea: Arise!”

The blue circle shrunk considerably around the dead girl.

“Arise!”

The circle focused itself upon the left side of her chest, where her heart had once been.

“ARISE!”

The circle twitched once…

Twice…

Raelyn’s book went dark. The circle dissipated, releasing its hold on the moonlight. The graveyard’s lighting returned to normal. Raelyn stood frozen for a moment, still holding out the knife. “Very well,” she finally sighed, closing her book. She rubbed the knife off on her coat before returning it to its sheath. “Goodnight, Pi-”

“PITA!”

Raelyn whirled around.

Iggy was crying and smiling while hugging a tiny, baby girl fiercely. She looked identical to the corpse lying in the grave except for the fact that her skin and hair had a blue tinge to it and her entire form was semi-transparent in the moonlight. She giggled and hugged Iggy back, covering his face with slobbery baby kisses.

Raelyn watched them, smiling.

A thought struck her. She near immediately scowled at herself.

Yes, because it worked out so well the last two times, she chided herself. True, her first apprentice had become a force for good. A monstrously terrifying force for good. She had near singlehandedly culled the entire coven of Red Witches over in Spain…

Yet Raelyn’s second apprentice had gone Red. She had returned to Chicago and killed a poor boy, using him to open a Gate. Raelyn could not follow after her without turning Red herself.

Two monsters.

One Blue.

One Red…

“Iggy,” Raelyn called out to him. “What’s your favorite color?”

“Polka dots,” he answered, though he was too busy being a horse to really pay attention. Pita’s giggles echoed through the graveyard as she rode on her big brother’s shoulders. Neither of them seemed to notice their new audience. Nearly a hundred semi-transparent babies or toddlers watched on, giggling and smiling. Some of them inched closer, eagerly awaiting their turn to play horse. 

Raelyn gazed around at her adopted children. Her smile returned.

It was wrong. Unnatural. She knew it.

But a hundred dead babies had to make a right eventually, right?

She glanced over her shoulder. She spotted the shovel still lying in the grave. Hands still aching and arm smeared with blood, she pushed back her left sleeve and checked her wristwatch. Five hours left until sunrise. 

Hope the kid likes digging.