“The witch was seen beyond the Sami river,” Ananya gasped as she shared the most distressing news of the day with her best friend Tanvi.“Sami river?” Tanvi's heart started beating fast. Her mother had accompanied a group of women to that very same river to wash clothes.“Yes,” Ananya finally collapsed on the ground and lay there taking deep breaths.“I will check on Ma,” Tanvi's panic was clear in her voice.“No, wait,” Ananya grabbed Tanvi's ankle and pulled at it so that Tanvi had to sit on her haunches next to the supine figure of her friend.“Don't worry,” Ananya let go of Tanvi's ankle. “The hunters have gone there.”Tanvi sat heavily on the ground and a sigh escaped her.“The hunters? What good they would do? The last time they had chased the witch, they had lost one of them. What was his name?”“Darpan!” Ananya said.“Right. Darpan was killed. Stabbed right in the heart. The witch mutilated his face. We don't stand a chance against her. She is too powerful.”“But she can be killed,” Ananya didn't share the pessimistic outlook of her friend. “My grandpa tells us that the last time the witch haunted us, they had shot arrows at her and managed to hurt her. She went away and left us in peace for the past forty odd years. That's all we need to do this time too. Find her, trap her, and hurt her badly. Maybe, this time we will take an eye or two from her. Then she will have to leave us in peace for eternity.”“Ha! As if she would sit there and let us hurt her!”Ananya and Tanvi were 16 year old kids, living in a village that had been forgotten by their king. They were part of some kingdom or other but no one was sure of which kingdom they belonged to. The elders used to tell them about a bitter internecine war to settle the borders of two kingdoms. Two brothers fought a bloody war and their armies killed and slaughtered each other, all for the sake of determining which king had the bigger kingdom. During the war, some young men from their village had gone to take part in the war. They joined some army but then some days later, the army was disbanded and all the soldiers were branded as traitors. Only one of the young soldiers was able to make his way back home but he was in a very bad condition and he died soon after his return. The stories that he told them were about the brutalities that he had seen in the war. Some of the stories were so chilling that a majority of the villagers gave up non-vegetarian food and became full-time devotees of their god. The hunting parties were disbanded and the only school teaching martial arts and sword fighting was shut down. When the young soldier died, he was cremated far away from the village and his family had to undergo a penance of one month for the elders believed that the young soldier brought with him contaminated thoughts of mindless violence and horrible butchering of men. After one month of the young man's death, the witch was sighted for the first time. No one was sure if the witch got attracted to their village because of the impious thoughts of the dead soldier.The stories that the children learned from their grandparents were horrifying, but most of them were simply fictional accounts of what the old people imagined. In some of the stories, the witch was a beautiful young maiden whose looks were beguiling. She would only target young men and then kill them to steal their hearts literally. Two men were found to be dead in mysterious circumstances and the hearts of the victims had been pulled out from their bodies. In other stories, the witch was a middle-aged lady who would only target young wives. She would approach them slyly and give them bad advice. In one of the stories, the witch was able to convince the youngest daughter-in-law of the Yakshi family to poison the entire family. Three of the family members died but seven others survived the murder attempt. The young woman who had poisoned the food was found in the woods one week or ten days later, emaciated and half-crazy. She kept asking the villagers to let her meet the witch for she was promised magical powers if she killed her family. She was tied to a post and the villagers threw stones at her. Later, she was burned alive. Her parents were the first ones to throw stones at her, doing their best to disown her. They didn't want to get ostracized. Many young women sympathized with the deceased woman for they were overworked too and were under duress the entire day, running from one chore to another. The village elders had to call for a meeting where they asked the matriarchs of the families to go easy on the young women. Some of the old women heeded the advice but most of the hags rejected it and kept reiterating that if they were able to do all the chores in their halcyon days, then the young women of the current age could do it too.Ananya and Tanvi rested for a while.“What do you think of yesterday's speech by old man Bagan?”Bagan had made a passionate speech the previous night after he had heard enough of the witch and the shadow of terror that she was casting. He had thundered on and on about how mighty the gods were and how the witch's power was nothing compared to the divine power. Then he had claimed that there was no witch, that it was just a ploy of some idiots to create mischief. His speech made some people very uncomfortable for they had claimed to have spotted the witch who got angry for being called liars. Then, Bagan claimed that the witch was just a manifestation of someone's evil desires. The villagers shouted at him and shut him up.“Manifestation of evil desires?” Ananya chuckled.Tanvi pointed out a strangely shaped cloud to her friend.“That's the witch,” she kept her finger pointed at the cloud. “There she hides.”Ananya slapped Tanvi's hand playfully and warned her to not take the witch lightly.“I met Harman today,” Ananya confessed to her friend suddenly.
Tanvi froze. She had told Ananya that she liked Harman and to know that her friend met her crush didn't sit too well with her.“What did he say?”
“Well,” Ananya poked at her friend but got no response from her. “He is quite handsy, isn't he? The moment we sat together, his arms snaked around me.”“And you let him do so?” Tanvi sat up, her face thunder-struck.“Excuse me!” Ananya...