They say if you kiss a witch, you gain the ability to win the heart of anyone. I have been searching for a witch for seven years, but they hide where few people frequent, where abandoned love and aged tears leave stains that take floods to wash away. The most reliable way to track witches is to identify their trail: towns whose buildings have begun to spontaneously decay, citizens who flinch at the sound of the faucet or drizzle of rain, and most notably, a lingering scent of magic—salty and briny like the ocean, yet fresh and vibrant as though kissed by the sun.
There’s a lesser-known effect of kissing a witch: healing of a broken heart. I have no hearts to win—only one broken heart to mend. So broken, I doubt even a witch’s kiss will push together the pieces, some of which I can no longer find, lost in my bloodstream as ions suspended in plasma or dropped on the wayside during my journey. I have carried this brokenness with me since birth, a nearly healthy baby who outgrew its already frail heart, a muscle frozen in time, arteries ripped apart as my muscles thickened and bones lengthened.
The moment I learned about a witch’s kiss, I left home to track one down. The problem with witches is that they live a long time, longer than any human can fathom, which means they know where to hide if they don’t want to be found: the edge of the earth, where no human has travelled and returned to tell the tale. That is where I am heading, a decision not without years of brooding and failed attempts to lure a witch out with their favourite wines and grimoires they’ve never read before.
I plan to head to the edge of the earth at daybreak, leaving my wine bottles and books behind. I wear a flat-brimmed straw hat to block out the sun and keep a scarf buried in my drawstring bag. Temperatures fluctuate instantaneously the closer you approach the edge of the earth—this much we know from adventurers who lost their nerve and turned back with melted eyeballs and mostly severed, frostbitten toes. As I lock my home and deposit a year’s worth of payments to the gardener to maintain my yard of succulents and flowers, I find the county lord, a cousin of the country’s royalty, waiting at my gate. He waits for me to approach.
“Are you really going?” He asks as I open the gate.
“Yes,” I confirm. He begins to follow me after I’ve locked the gate and walk toward the town exit.
“You’ll likely die, you know.”
“I know,” I reply.
“We can’t protect you if you’re there. Even if we assign guards, they have no contractual obligation to stay with you to the edge.”
“I don’t need guards.” I’ve travelled so long without them. More people only means more food, tents, and living needs to account for, no matter how sturdy the lord’s men are.
“Is there something you’re not satisfied with here? Do you need more wine, more books to lure your witch? Do you need a larger house?” He continues.
“You’ve done more than enough.” I’ve lived more healthily and bountifully here than anywhere else in my travels. The fruit-picking boy visits on Sunday mornings to drop off a fresh basket of apples and pears, which grow all year round thanks to the controlled climate system I established in the region several years ago. Each autumn, a tailor stops by with new fabrics and designs a new dress that I wear once to the annual Dragon Head-Raising festival in worship of a good harvest, and then never again. The county lord visits once a week for tea, always bringing a new offering of fruit to add to my pantry—too much for one person to finish. I’ve insisted that he not bother with my presence, as I’d leave eventually.
“The kids will be sad to see you go, and everyone else, but especially the kids. You’ve been our first and likely only mage to reside here.”
The only reason I’ve stayed so long is because of the string of projects that embroiled me: the construction of a new hospital on rocky, mountainous lands too dangerous to raze and flatten through manpower alone, the poisonous snake bite of a child whose venom only I could purify, the development of autonomous silk weaving factories fueled by one garnet crystal which should last a generation. During Dragon Head-Raising festivals, I conjure clouds in the shapes of dragons to dance across the sky, weaving between the bright displays of fireworks. The kids look forward to this show the most and demand new, flashier dragon forms from me each year.
I arrived at this town four years ago while tailing the scent of a witch. I found the scent concentrated in the city and old buildings. For each day I stayed, another building would collapse in a heap of rubble, sending a cloud of dust into the salty air. I’d never encountered such a strong witch’s presence; the entire atmosphere heavy with a sharp saltiness even though it was nowhere near the ocean. When I asked about any patterns behind the deterioration, the citizens complained to me about unstable infrastructure like I was a long-lost friend. In return, I reconstructed their buildings in an evening, weaving peppermint and black tea essence to render the walls witch-proof. With each building I erected, I followed the witch’s scent further into the city until eventually, I’d demolished and erected the entire town, new and strong, the witch’s scent vanished completely.
“Mages come and go all the time,” I say. “The way night falls or seasons change.”
“Did your time here with us—me—mean nothing to you?” He cries. “Surely you’ve become an irrefutable part of town. Your magic pulses through our very foundation.”
“You shouldn’t rely on magic,” I say. The difference between mages and witches is that mages must build their skills. We are chemists who study how to manipulate elements to produce a desired outcome. Witches, however, are born with magic. My accomplishments in the town will deteriorate until eventually, the buildings and infrastructure revert to their original forms, bound by laws of reality. Mages can transform entities and modify properties, but they can’t pull off true magic as witches do—no stopping time, creating matter, and certainly no fixing a broken heart.
“What about my proposal? You never gave me an answer,” the lord says.
“An answer is impossible right now with this heart. I can reply after I’ve found a witch.”
“I won’t be able to wait for you forever. Time moves more slowly the closer you get to the edge, right? Wouldn’t it be better if you stayed here, where time is consistent? We’d get old together, have kids together, watch this town grow together,” the lord insists.
I shake my head. “You’d never get what you’re looking for. Not from me. Not how I am now.”
I begin my trek away from the house, the town, the rows and rows of magic-enforced buildings. I hear the lord’s footsteps as he turns, standing by the gateway to my house, facing the direction of my front door as though I’d come running at any moment, wearing an apron and loafers, declaring myself his wife. People who live in once witch-contaminated areas tend to act with addled brains, occasionally lost in a spell that blurs their reality. If I were to stay any longer, I might be affected too. I might even marry the lord despite my deficient heart. But ties in matrimony cannot mend an organ that has disintegrated beyond the reach of vows.
*****
The journey to the edge of the world is treacherous, but nothing I haven’t experienced already: winds that send mountains quaking, rains so heavy you inhale more water than air, fumes of hydrogen sulfide and carbon dioxide swirling in valleys and catapulting birds into the ground like bullets. The town I’ve lived in the past few years lacks the same breathlessness you get from approaching the edge, where the earth increasingly swallows your presence until it snatches up even your shadow. So long as I close my eyes, the warping of light cannot lead me astray, and I head forth, following in one direction until I reach my destination.
It’s not something any regular human can survive. Somehow, the lord who’d followed me out of town hadn’t experienced a fatal casualty up to this point, though he also had my protection to thank. I’m not so heartless as to leave him to die. At best, he provides conversation—living in a town of so many citizens has left me unaccustomed to the silence of my thoughts. At worst, he is an extra mouth to feed. He spares no opportunity to ask me to return, even as we wade through the flames of eternally burning pits, or climb walls of stone sharp enough to cut paper. I reply with the same answer: “I’ll consider it after we find a witch.”
I recognise the edge of the earth the moment I arrive. The warping of light abruptly transitions to a uniform dark. My feet stop at the edge of cliffs plummeting beyond what I can see, even as I cup a crystal in my hands, illuminating as far as the ground goes. Following along the edge, I try to find someplace a witch could be hiding—somewhere large enough to fit a cabin, fireplace, alcohol rack, and bookshelf for a witch’s thousands of grimoires. But even as the cliff extends onward in one direction, bordering a fall of impenetrable heights, I only see rocky terrain and, further out, salt marshes surrounded by rainbow rings.
I walk until my shirt chafes against my nipples, dry and bleeding, and the existing calluses on my feet have turned raw and tender. It hurts less when your heart isn’t complete. Unless I lose my feet and legs, I can continue. The same can’t be said of the young lord, who trails further and further behind me, his once heavy pants now inaudible at this range.
Bending over and stretching my waist, I wait for him to catch up. There’s no point in losing each other in a place where landmarks themselves shift like tides, where we’re heading and where we came from are indistinguishable in this eternal dusk.
“Water?” I ask, refilling a bladder with a spell. Not unlimited water. My supply of crystals will last us another month—a year if it were only me, but the lord’s body screams with inefficiencies, losing sweat and salt as a squeezed sponge would. Bodies with broken hearts require less maintenance, a fact convenient for solo travelling.
He takes the bladder from my hands and gulps it empty within seconds. After wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he asks, “Any signs of your witch?”
I shake my head.
The lord stares ahead into the black, beyond where my light crystal touches, “How will you know when to give up?” He continues.
“Give up?” I repeat.
“As you said, if a witch doesn’t want to be found, there’s nothing you can do. Eventually, you’ll have to move on, right? I’m sure we’d be able to find another solution for your heart, more than anything a witch’s kiss can accomplish.”
“There’s nothing else that exists,” I reply. I’d tried every urban legend for years before beginning my quest to find a witch: drinking only aged fungus soup to warm the blood, barricading myself indoors so the sun couldn’t touch me and risk dissolving stray heart fragments, and sacrificing rabbits to a village’s god purported to heal all wounds. A broken heart evolves like a lake evaporating over time as the sun beats down on it, stains of minerals and salt left behind, water an increasingly distant memory until you die. If I could give up on mending my heart, I’d have done so long ago and found a quiet home with a flower garden, a clean drinking well, and a street market an hour’s walk away to visit when I get lonely.
We eventually find a witch standing motionless in the middle of a barren plain and splotches of flat, murky lakes.
The lord leans on my shoulder as we near, my body and a force field I’ve erected propping him up so he can continue walking. As the witch grows clearer, I rest him on the ground before approaching. He reaches his arm out and whispers something inaudible, his throat too dry and tongue too limp for words. His arm falls to his side, and his mouth hovers open as though, forsaking his body, he can will his words to me.
Witches are not human, though they often take on human forms. Similarly, they don’t need to speak or listen or eat or drink, though they can and often will to blend in with society. I bare what’s left of my heart to the witch—all its pieces spread throughout my body, lost in my bloodstream, absorbed into my skin. Memories of pieces eaten by storms or drowned by the ocean. In turn, she kisses me, her touch cold and sharp, a glacier colliding with cracked, split lips. It is my first kiss. Uneventful at first, and then passionate and filling, the way your eyes round and glisten when the moon reflects from your irises.
I turn toward the lord, gesturing at my chest, my heart whole and healed. He flinches backwards, eyebrows pinched, and cheeks sucked inward.
“How could you kiss something like that?” he gapes.
“What do you mean? That was the point of this journey. A witch’s kiss.”
“Only loved ones should share kisses.”
“Witches aren’t human,” I remind him. He scrambles as I bend down to support his weight. “Now you can teach me how to love. I should be able to learn quickly with this heart.”
He slaps my hand away. I look back at the witch, wondering if this response is expected. If the heart she healed can be so easily rejected by another.
