At the edge of the forest, just past the chamomile field,
a seven-year-old witch with golden hair is learning to brew potions.
No rat tails from her mother, no dragon scales,
not even the spider from the Blackgrove —
who’s been waiting in his jar for the right moment for two weeks now.
“Too young,” her mother says.
Well, fine then.
Franka will make a potion anyway — with nettles and mint if she must.
The secret is the magic.
And Franka has plenty of it:
it drips from her fingers like honeyed light,
threads of gold tangling in her hair.
When she cups a brew in her palms, it glows amber.
Then the glow fades, the brew cools,
and the fever leaves the child from the next village.
The mother will weep and thank her —
and a week later, she’ll look away in the market,
call her cursed under her breath.
Until the next sickness. Until the next plea.
Franka is nearly used to human strangeness by now.
The village kids don’t play with her — so what?
She has a friend. He purrs, presses his head into her knees,
his eyes as green as May grass.
She crushes mint leaves, rubs chamomile and oak moss between her fingers —
and the wind howls louder.
It will bring rainclouds, dark as her cat’s fur,
and the dry earth will stretch up to them with every blade of grass,
every trembling petal.
Lightning will draw rivers in the sky.
And she, Franka, the golden-haired witch,
will dance in the rain.
The Smell of Weather Turning Lush
Summer herbs carry a desperate scent in the moments before a storm.