Excerpted: The Witch of Willow Sound

The Old Woman had never seen a human being on fire before. It was mesmerizing, and messier than she’d expected.

The body did strange and wonderful things as it burned before her eyes. Twelve things, to be precise. She counted them as they happened. Collected them. Rearranged them in her mind.

Number three: The whole body screams.

At first, the fire struggled. As if it didn’t want to burn this person. Or didn’t like the taste. Flames crackled low in the sticks and spit puny embers into the brittle grass, igniting wildflowers into fireflies. The veil-thin flames singed the feet, but they refused to burn any further up the legs.

The Old Woman looked at the sky. The half moon overhead meant the night was half-gone. She needed more time. Or more fire.

She knew ways to get more fire.

Number nine: The black smoke that rises from inside human flesh smells like pain.

She considered the tiny box in her hand. The muffled tock-tock of the last match inside it. But it had already taken her too many matches to get the fire this far. It wasn’t time to use the last match. Not yet.

She considered the object in her other hand. A tenpenny nail. Rusted and rough against her skin. Sharp.

The Old Woman blew on the nail. One quick breath. Hah.

With a single fluid motion, the Old Woman drew a hammer from her bootleg, spun it on her finger, and caught it. She tapped the nail into the trunk of the dead tree she had lashed the body to. Tap-tap-tap. As high as she could reach.

Number five: The eyes stay open.

She spun her old hammer with a gunslinger’s grace and holstered it back down her bootleg. She waited. The wind rose from a shivery breath across the hairs on the Old Woman’s skin up to a bitter gust. The fire climbed. Knee high. Fingertip high. The black sky rolled. Her braids whipped like thick rattlesnakes in the wind. A gust of salt air heaved off the water and blasted the Old Woman and her fire.

FOOM.

The fire exploded into a blinding ball that swallowed the body whole. Flames ripped through skin and bone, cracking the air like a sail. The heavy chain holding the body upright against the dead tree was so strong, it didn’t let the body fall apart while it burned. It looked as if someone was standing inside the fire as they burned alive, as the body shrivelled into the horror of its final form: a ghastly silhouette of a human being.

Good, the Old Woman thought.

Her squinched eyes peered at the shadows of the forest behind her as she listened. No voices. No sirens. No one coming.

Good.

Number six: The body vomits fireballs as it burns. Not big ones, like a dragon. Small ones. Like bunches of yellow dandelion heads.

She’d chosen this place for right good reason. It was her own idea, this back-breaking haul through the woods, across the field, to the very edge of this cliff by the sea. She could’ve done this somewhere easier. Somewhere closer to the house. Somewhere more hidden and less deafening. She’d nearly snapped herself in half, lashing the body against the lonely tree. It had to be done. It had to be there, with the body facing west, overlooking the bay. So the eyes could see the ocean until the very end.

And they did.

Satisfied with the brutal fire, the Old Woman picked a place to sit in the tall grass. With every step she took, she jingled. Her apron was smothered with pockets, from top to bottom. Every last inch. Pockets of all sizes, made from mismatched scraps of cloth and sewn with jagged stitches. Every pocket strained, packed to the brim with strange and wonderful things. Teaspoons and keys. Bones and dead flowers. Knives and nails and vials and sticks of willow and witch hazel. Fog-grey wool and ivy-green yarn. Animal skins and bird skulls. Things to make people sleep. Things to make people dream. A collection of oddities that jingled with her wherever she went.

The Old Woman sat down in the dead grass. Skeletons of dead lupines rattled around her. Heat prickled her skin with needles and pins. Her wild eyes glittered and let off orange light. She looked a little wicked.

She had thought the fire would burn the body into a pile of ash she could sweep off the cliff with a broom. She thought she’d sit with the fire under the stars, have a hot cup of tea and a bite of bread, and then, with a few flicks of the wrist, be done with all this for good. Instead, she was left with a nightmare mass of charred meat and bone, still in the shape of a person. Still sizzling.

She wondered briefly if she should just leave it. Let the scavengers and the maggots and the hurricanes have it.

No.

Too risky. The meat could be anything, any animal on earth, but the bones spelled murder. When she unlocked the chain, the body stayed standing. It had seared to the surface of the dead tree. The Old Woman rolled up her sleeves. She drew one of her knives from one of the pockets in her strange apron, and she began the bloody work of prying the corpse from the tree, inch by inch.

Shuck-shuck-shuck.

With every cut, she reminded herself, It’s just meat now. Just bones. No one is here. You are alone.

But she wasn’t alone for long. Wild animals were coming. Lurking at the edge of the field. Watching her butcher prey on the brink of the cliff. She heard their lathers of slobber. Inhaled the sharp musk of familiar furs. She had no fear of them. She had spent her childhood making friends with wild things, after all. Spiders, mice, rats. Born in her pockets. Died in her bare hands.

She was a little bitter, and a little proud, that she had more in common with starving coyotes and weasels than with other human beings.

Except this one.

Shuck-shuck-shuck.

The coal-black shadow of a lone beast lifted itself from the tall grass. It lurched forward and stopped just shy of the Old Woman. Must be more desperate than the rest. She felt the hot breath in her hair. Drool dripped from its quivering jaw.

The Old Woman knew not to move too suddenly. She thought about the knife in her hand. How deep could she get her blade into a wild animal’s throat? How deep into its brain through its eye?

The shadow and the Old Woman stared into each other: two hungry hunters with nothing to lose.

Fine then.

With the toe of her boot, the Old Woman nudged a bony slab from the pile of hacked-apart corpse. She twisted her fist deep into the broken ribs, pried out a steaming clump that had been—just hours ago—a human heart, and tossed it to the shadow. Before the heart hit the ground, it was snatched by fangs and carried into the distant trees.

Good.

After that, whenever the Old Woman pulled off a good-sized fistful of meat, she flung it to the drooling shadows and listened to the wild things gnash.

In return, they left her alone to work.

Shuck-shuck-shuck.

Slathered in soot and sweat, the Old Woman heaped the bony remains onto the wooden toboggan at her feet. Done, she leaned against the old tree. Hardwood of some kind. Limbless. Lifeless. Blackened by soot and curved by ages of ocean wind. Didn’t burn, though. Didn’t crack. She patted the still-smoking tree. Steam unfurled from her touch.

One last thing.

She used the claw of her hammer to pry the tenpenny nail from the tree and put the nail in a pocket of her apron. A strong tree, to withstand so much fire. Even in death. She lifted her broom and her teacup from the patch of dead thistles where she’d left them. Wrapped the links of the toboggan’s chain brake around her wrist.

Seagulls wheeled in the sky. Seven crows watched from the trees. With a nod to the birds, the Old Woman escaped deep into the murmuring hemlocks and creaking black willows, pulling the toboggan and the bones behind her.

Excerpted in part from The Witch of Willow Sound by Vanessa F. Penney. Copyright © by Vanessa F. Penney, 2025. Published by ECW Press Ltd. www.ecwpress.com

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