The Will o' the Wisp

She whispered to the heather, knowing it would hear her, not knowing what it would demand in return. Purple lips fashioned themselves out of scaly leaves and were pushed about by contradicting winds, mouthing incantations to the gods and the knoll in the distance.

Soft lights floated about the grassy summit, as if the moor stared too long into the setting sun. They zipped about in blues and reds, chiming with each zig and bellowing with each chaotic zag—though, Kasha couldn’t hear them until the hill was half-ascended. 

The air was filled with the sting of a dying fire, wafting toward her with every pulsating light. She whispered her wishes, and the Whisps whispered back, though their voice was the songs of the skylark flying above, and the rhythm of the rain trickling on the peat.

“A cure for a curse,” said the Wills o’ the Whisp, willing their words between the aetherial chorus. Though Kasha knew not what the curse would be—which somehow made her sacrifice both more bearable and more terrifying—she nodded to the cold, damp air and watched as a hearty, orange leaf danced into her hand. Its veins were entwined and plentiful, as if woven with the fabric of life, and its blade was tender and brimming with the energy of something waiting to be born.

When she returned to her house, the hearth was quiet, and Ginny’s cough was loud. Such a giant sound for an otherwise peaceful girl, she thought. But then again, that’s what the sickness is—something other than yourself. This relentless whooping wasn’t her baby sister. And that sleepless face wasn’t her mother. And these sad walls weren’t her home.

Kasha would have waited for her family to fall asleep before she began to muddle the fantastic foliage in her misshapen wooden bowl, but in their state, being awake made them no more vigilant. So, she prodded and smashed, and watched as a glowing paste burst through the thin leaf, producing more feed than could feasibly fit within. The more she whipped and stirred, the more the bowl grew full, the more its base grew warm, the more it fanned her hope.

When the rooster told the world to wake, she had enough to feed them all.

“It doesn’t look like nettles,” her mother said as she dragged the spoon through the plate that was passing for porridge.

“Autumnal greens,” Kasha lied, “Farmer Giles speaks rather highly of them.” Kasha swallowed a hefty spoonful herself. It tasted exactly how she wanted it to: sweet, with hints of lemon; Ginny found it reminiscent of shortbread, and Mother called it savory. 

Not a bite went uneaten.

By the afternoon, her mother and sister were asleep, and Kasha found herself yawning into a hand that was no longer riddled with the bumps of the recently infected. As she lay her head on her cot, in open defiance of the sunshine piercing her modest blinds, she heard the forgotten lullaby of silence.

When the rooster roared again, her family finally emerged from unprecedented slumber—Ginny before her, for it was the whallops of her galloping around the cabin that unfastened Kasha’s eyelids. Her mother rose soon after with a color under her eyes that matched her lively cheeks.

Maternal palms grazed Ginny’s forehead and chest, and she praised the household gods for keeping their promise. But when she looked upon the dirty bowls still resting on the table, her face again grew pale, though illness had nothing to do with it.

“Or is it you I should be praying to, girl?” Her mother’s voice collapsed as her failing knees led her to a chair. “What have you done?”

“I don’t know,” Kasha said with a maturity beyond her thirteen years. “But doing nothing was taking everything.”

“And what do you think the Whisps will take from you?” Her mother slammed her fist on the table. “It won’t be everything; it will leave enough to fuel regret, child. But it will take. It will take.”

Tears swelled in all six eyes; two from fear, two from loss, two from confusion.

When all that needed to be said had been said, and all who needed to be reprimanded had been reprimanded, life started to resemble something normal. Ginny chased the squirrels, trying to find where they hid their woodland spoils; Mother sang as she cared for the hens; and Kasha collected firewood.

The solstice came and went, and the harsh winter was powerless against the women who had their health. Ginny sang songs of dwarves bearing gifts, and Mother recited familiar tales of woodland creatures, though she refrained from those involving the Wills o’ the Whisp.

Laughter returned to Kasha’s life.

Yet, when the dandelions took bloom, and all their coronas greeted the sun, she began to change. A faint outline of a glowing finger hovered where her pinkies once were. Though she could sense them, they could grasp at nothing—only pass through objects like candlelight. Soon the rest of her fingers and toes followed suit, and she could no longer fetch water or braid Ginny’s hair or comfort her mother with a hug.

As the days grew longer, Kasha became more translucent, and, one summer day, she awoke without a tongue. The world was no longer hers. She bid goodbye to her family as best as she could with the illuminated shapes she once called limbs, and headed to the place that was calling her: the moors.

Purple lips once again greeted her, reciting soundless ritual with a mouth the size of a mountain. And what little outline of her body that remained, deflated until she was the size of a fist, the glow condensing into a powerful ball of energy and will—though the will was not her own.

She ascended the knoll in clumsy zigs and chaotic zags and joined her new family: a collection of souls missing their mothers. Frightened children masquerading as something divine. Mournful cries mistaken for whispers in the night.