A Tree of Witches

(this is an excerpt from my published paperback novel)

Parsifal set off alone and when he came to the town, all was quiet. Not even a dog snooped about the street. “Hello! Hello?”

When he came to the square, he saw the town’s women hanging from the branches of an immense oak tree, all ages, young and old. A notice on the trunk, a parchment proclamation, said they’d all been hanged for witchcraft. “Catapults!” He crossed himself. He looked up to a house roof and spotted Opie, the raven watching them, but keeping far away. “Opie! Come to me.”

The bird was silent. Parsifal was ignored.

He went from shop to shop to find them all closed up and soulless, but he when he returned to the hanging women he saw many fresh footprints circling around and around the tree underneath the dead bodies. He swept the footprints away and then went back to Merlin to tell him what he’d seen.

“Why did you sweep the footprints away?” Merlin asked. “That was an odd thing to do.”

Parsifal said, “They were the footprints of women. Could it be the footprints of the women who were hanging?”

Arthur suggested, “Maybe they were paraded around before they were hanged.”

“But it seemed as if the footprints were fresher than the corpses, which were all shriveled and leathered.”

Merlin asked, “The ravens hadn’t picked their bones?”

“That’s odd, but nay,” Parsifal realized. “Not a scrap of rotting meat had been stolen from any of them. They just hung withering. Opie was even there but stayed far removed from the tree.”

Merlin pulled his hat over his eyes. “So the hungry hawks and ravens won’t dine. Well, that’s their empty belly, not ours.”

That night they ate nuts and roots and then as they slept by a small fire, Arthur dreamt of the town square and the hanging tree. At the strike of the hour of midnight, all the hanged women reached up and pulled their heads out of their rope nooses. They fell to the ground, and then danced in a circle about the giant tree. It was such an alarming sight that he woke up screaming.