The Witch on the Wheel

They tied the witch to the wheel, and then, for the first time, the devil begged the angel for mercy. I stood five metres away and heard them both. One spoke from under the earth, the other - from under the very roof. And between them screamed a woman to whom the village had, only yesterday, been bringing eggs in payment for cures. The strange thing was that it was the one below begging for mercy. I kept silent. I decided: to keep silent is not to strike.

I was wrong, and now I want to ease my soul by telling the truth.

Vida lived at the edge of the village, past the common pasture. She stopped blood with a word, knew who would not live to see the Advent fast, and talked with something in her well - I heard it myself, standing behind her fence: two voices, and only one shadow on the well-head. Half the village went to her after dark. Men for love charms, women with lustful wishes, the headman asked about stolen money. By day they walked around her.

By night the path to her house never grew over. Before the harvest a child died. A fever, three days, like a candle snuffed out.

The mother screamed that the witch had marked the little one - stepped over him while he was crawling on the floor, and never stepped back. Whether anyone had actually seen that stepping-over, nobody asked. The crowd needed a guilty one, and a guilty one was found before vespers. The first stone was thrown by a man who used to come to her after dark for a love charm. The witch wiped the blood from her lip and asked quietly: "Does your wife know why you used to come?"

He struck a second time. Vida tore free and ran into the rye. Dusk was falling.

They rang the bell, people grabbed pitchforks and flails - the same ones that in the morning had beaten their rhythm on the threshing floor, thump-tha-thump, and now were carried as weapons. I ran with everyone, because I was afraid to stay behind: they'd say - soft. In the rye, off to the side of the chase, something else was moving. Faster than a man. Nobody saw it whole, only the ears of grain lying down in a long, even swath. Then the first of our men vanished.

His torch floated above the rye by itself a moment longer. And fell. We thought - it's hunting her. Vida thought so herself. She screamed into the darkness: "Don't touch them!"

From the rye came an answer - not human; it's the way a cellar answers when you shout into it: "They are touching you." The blacksmith's son-in-law climbed onto the granary to see where she was running - the ladder snapped in two beneath him, and along the ridge of the roof something long and black went by on all fours. It could have thrown him off. It didn't. It was delaying us, but for some reason not killing. But there were many of us, and she was alone!

They finally knocked the witch off her feet by the old chapel, wound her braids around a fist and dragged her along the ground. Someone spat. Someone demanded they search her for the devil's mark.

And I saw a thing that stands before my eyes to this day: not all of them hated her. Some, surely, were enjoying it. People had been handed permission to do what they themselves would have been chased through the village for only yesterday. I could have said a word. One. I didn't - they were watching. That was my stone. They tied her to the wheel inside the chapel - an old wooden one that had lain there since God knows when. The priest began the rite.

Even before the first word I felt a steady trembling in the floor. I told myself: a draught moving under the boards.

Then the candles began to burn with their flames pointing downward, our shadows stayed standing when we ourselves stepped back. The painted angel on the ceiling turned its head. God, I saw it myself. Vida screamed: "Don't cast them out! They are hiding me from you!" We decided the devilish thing was speaking through her lips. And the rite went on, and with each one cast out, something small in her went dark. The crooked shadow vanished from under her arm.

The steam stopped rising from her mouth. Her voice turned ordinary. She was becoming less and less a witch and more and more a beaten woman, and nobody stopped.

After the closing words, silence fell. On a beam under the roof sat a man. Nobody had seen him come in. Bare feet, white clothes, and the face I cannot recall to this day - not that I forgot it, I simply cannot. From under the floor came: "They will kill her." He answered calmly: "I know." "Then do something." "I have no right." From below came almost a growl: "You can." He looked down, at us, at the people with torches. And said: "Not from them." One remained.

The one that had gone through the rye.

Now it could be seen: it stood outside, too tall, its head reaching the very thatch, and it could not step across the consecrated threshold. Only its shadow trembled on the wall inside. It said to the angel: "Take her." Silence. "Save her." Silence. "They will burn her." And then she, barely alive on the wheel, laughed blood - all her life she had been taught: when an angel pleads for you, there is hope. And for her, the devil was pleading. The angel only closed his eyes.

Lightning, a crash, all the chapel doors burst open. Thunder. They came in. The church warden saw the chapel empty and called for us while standing in our midst. The cooper's wife began rubbing herself between her legs, someone heard his daughter from under the floor. The miller crossed himself, because he saw no faces on us. The priest read on, and the words came out of his mouth backwards. I heard my own pulse in my ears like someone else's footsteps.

She crawled toward the doors, leaving a rust-brown trail; the tall one lifted her and hid her, pressing her to himself. We chased them - even then, after everything we had seen - we chased them. To the old forest. At the edge of the trees they stood. Dozens.

Crooked ones, small ones, tall ones, some not like anything at all. And all of them looked at us. And above the road, on a dry bough, sat the one from the beam. One of ours shouted: "She's a witch!" But the tall one simply raised his head toward the dry bough and asked wearily: "Vida stopped the blood of dozens. She never sent a soul out of this world. She even made the love charms empty, so a fool wouldn't take sin upon himself.

Then why is her salvation down below, with us - why not the heavens?"

The angel was silent, and spoke only when a single tear rolled down a cheek: "A soul is carried up to me on human tears. In all her life, no one ever wept for her - they only came to her after dark and went away. I have nothing to carry her on. With you she will rest." And they bore her down carefully, like their own child, and the earth closed over them without a trace. And I will swear on anything you like: the angel wept. The only one, for her.