Witch Hunters

Maeve wanted to stay away from Liam. Should he find out about her being a witch, he could easily and swiftly end her life with one expert swing of his axe. She also tried not practicing. She wasn’t sure if they could tell when magic was being practiced or not but she didn’t want to take the chance. But, it seemed that no matter how hard she tried not to do either, Fate had different ideas. Within two days of last seeing Liam, they were face to face again and she breathed the biggest sigh of relief over the fact that she wasn’t doing any magic when it happened.

He found her in the woods but in a different spot than before, even though he told her not to just to be safe. He told himself it was simply because she might have a better idea than the townspeople about the witch, possibly witches, because she lived so far into the wilderness. Of course, a small part of him knew better. She had intrigued him from the moment he saw her at the town meeting. He had met many girls in his travels but there was something about Maeve that lured him in completely – a sense of familiarity he couldn’t put his finger on but also a spark he had never experienced before with any girl.

“Liam.” She breathed, in response to seeing him, and quickly shut her mother’s book and slipped it into her bag. “I thought you would have gone further in by now.”

He nodded and stepped further into the clearing to sit on the fallen tree trunk next to her. He had conversed with all kinds of girls from royalty to hand maidens but Maeve had something different about her. Something told him she wasn’t a simple farm girl, though she dressed like one in a plain blue linen dress and white apron. Her brown hair was down in bouncy curls that fell to the middle of her back and her bright hazel eyes were the color of the foliage around him and they held an intensity that left him speechless when he looked directly into them so the words didn’t come out as smoothly as they sounded in his head. “We come back to camp in the town after searching. For safety.”

Maeve nodded and fussed with her apron. She suddenly wished she owned something nicer than maid and country girl dresses. Liam always looked great in his clothing that wasn’t dirty or ripped and she wondered how that could be possible in his line of work but not hers. His clothes were also much nicer than hers – bought from large cities that you could wear in front of the rich. “Is this the smallest town you’ve traveled to?”

“Not by far. I have seen all kinds of small villages in my travels. I actually quite like this town, despite the overbearing sheriff. There’s something about it … familiar, almost.” He mused. He had been feeling like that since he entered the town – like he had been there before but he checked with the others and they had never hunted anywhere even remotely close to this village before.

“I am sure our town is like most.” She said, sensing his trouble at trying to remember why her village seemed to be recognizable to him. She knew it wasn’t possible that he had been there before because she was certain she would have remembered him.

“Perhaps. Why is it that you do not reside in the town?” The question had been nagging him since he walked her home. She would have been a suitable age for marriage by now and she was quite beautiful so he really wondered what she was doing out with her grandmother in a cottage in the woods.

Maeve looked down. She wasn’t sure how to answer. She didn’t want to say that they had been asked to leave the town when she was younger because then it would beg the question of why and that was just one question she knew she couldn’t answer. She reasoned it was probably only a matter of time before he figured that out on his own, though. “My grandmother and I harvest herbs and the best soil lies out in the wood.” It was truthful, in part, because their harvests were always bountiful and good but it wasn’t the complete truth.

Liam seemed to buy it regardless. He didn’t know much about farming, in fact he didn’t know a single thing about it. What he did know was that every now and then they had used certain herbs in helping to trap witches because those were things they tended to use frequently. He wondered if sweet, unassuming Maeve knew that witches liked herbs and then he began to worry that the sinister powers in the woods would attack her and her grandmother just to get their herbs for whatever they were planning. He now knew he had to protect her.

“Are you all right?”

Her voice snapped him out of his daze. “What?”

“Your fists …”

He looked down and sure enough he had clenched his hands into fists so hard his knuckles had begun to turn white. “Oh, it’s nothing. I should find the others … we’re witch hunting tonight.”

“Oh, all right.”

“Please allow me to walk you home safely?”

She should have declined due to her grandmother, but she really wanted to spend more time with him. It was dangerous that any moment she could give herself away. He didn’t seem to notice anything about her though so she guessed that he couldn’t sense a witch, or at least not a good witch. Plus, he was looking at her so pleadingly and intensely that she could only nod and agree. “Of course.”

He stood and grabbed her hand gently pulling her to her feet. “After you, malady.”

“I am no lady of the court.” She said softly, flushing red.

“I was raised to treat all ladies as though they were royal.”

If it was possible, she turned even darker red. “All the same, I’d rather hear you say my name.”

“As you wish, Maeve.” He smiled at her warmly, making her stomach flutter as they began to head back to her cottage.

“What do your parents think of you chasing danger?” She asked, falling in step easily next to Liam. She would have thought him a mindless brute but she could sense a deep, thoughtful soul in him during their short conversations. She wanted to know more about him – anything he’d deem worthy of sharing with her.

Liam cleared his throat awkwardly. “I would assume nothing – I don’t recall my parents. They died when I was very young.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. In a sense, I suppose they would be proud. They died in a witch attack on our town and I’ve been searching for the evil responsible for their deaths from the time I could hold an axe.”

“That is terrible. I am so sorry. A witch attack took my parents, as well.”

“They are a plague upon the earth. I can only hope to slow the spread of their evil.” He said it with such an intense hatred of witches that Maeve felt her chest tighten.

True, he seemed to have no knowledge of good witches and he was speaking of the evil he has come to know but it still made her heart race. He hated magic –it was almost as obvious as his beauty. She knew she could never, ever show her true self to Liam. He would kill her before she could ever explain that she was a good witch. The best she could hope for was a friend during his time in her village because she knew that anything more was impossible with what she was.

And, for the first time in her entire life, she hated being a witch.