The Witch of Thornvale Chapter 4: Into the Whispering Woods
The Witch of Thornvale is an allegory of Ludwig von Mises’ lesson on capitalism, one of the Six Lessons. Dive into Chapter 4.
In case you missed them, make sure you check out Chapters 1, 2 and 3 of The Witch of Thornvale. Catch them below, and then dive into Chapter 4.
Chapter 4: Into the Whispering Woods
The tunnel curved upward, slow and steady. Each step took them farther from the breathless dark of the cavern and closer to something lighter.
Drake followed. Every crystal along the wall faded as Eirwyn passed, like stars blinking out at dawn. The pulse of magic dulled behind them, swallowed by stone and distance.
The air stirred, carrying something sharp and green-smelling. Pine, or maybe moss? Wet bark? A current of earth and leaf rot cut through the stale cave air, and hit the back of Drake’s throat.
Ahead, daylight seeped through a split in the rock. Not full sun. Bluer. Cooler. The kind of light that doesn’t warm but reveals.
Eirwyn’s pace grew so brisk, she looked like she was gliding. Like her legs were built to escape gravity.
The exit narrowed into a jagged mouth of stone and root. Tree limbs twisted through the gap from the outside. Drake had to duck, shoulder brushing the wall as they slipped through.
Trees with massive trunks thick as city pillars stretched up into a foggy sky. Their branches dripped with moss and thin leaves that curled at the edges. A low mist drifted around their feet, soft and silver, swirling in patterns he couldn’t explain. Every breath of wind sent ripples through it.
The forest hummed with a trill of insects. A single, low guttural birdcall cut across the canopy. Something responded in the distance.
Drake squinted upward. Shafts of blue light stabbed through breaks in the leaves, spotlighting patches of green-black moss, bent ferns, and soft ground.
His sneakers sank half an inch into the loam.
Eirwyn stepped to the edge of the clearing, cloak sweeping around her bare legs, eyes scanning the trees.
She scurried ahead, silent over the moss, and stopped beside an ancient, twisted tree with bark dark as ash and veins of pale green light webbed through its base. She pressed her palm against the trunk, shifting her fingertips across the grooves.
Wind creaked through the limbs high above, pulling strands of mist into swirling ribbons. The branches gave a low rustle. Eirwyn moved to the ground, crouched low, and laid her other hand flat across the earth.
The glow in her palm reignited, dull but steady, sinking into the moss.
As she closed her eyes, Drake stayed back, one sneaker still half-buried in the soft ground. His breath misted in the air. A knot twisted below his ribs as he watched her.
She stood. “No nearby Huntsmen. Or conscripts. Another group we need to watch out for.”
Her voice came low, almost bored. Like she hadn’t just scanned the entire damn forest with her bare hands.
Drake cocked his head, squinting. “Conscripts?”
She looked over her shoulder, barely turning. “Press-ganged witches. Owned by the Crown.”
He stepped forward, shoes sinking again into the damp loam. “Owned?”
She turned on her heel and strode away.
Drake caught up, sneakers squelching through the moss. “Conscripts? You mean like… a draft?”
Eirwyn snorted and gave him a sideways look, one brow raised. “You really don’t know anything.”
“I already told you I’m not from here.” He brushed a branch away from his face. “And in my world, a conscript is some poor bastard who gets a letter and a uniform.”
“No letter here. Just torches. Sometimes a blade to the throat if you argue.”
The path narrowed and roots coiled across it. Eirwyn stepped around them without looking while Drake stumbled, caught himself, and pushed forward.
“They come mostly at night. When the families are too tired to run. Huntsmen or conscripts first. Then the casters.”
“Casters?”
“War mages marked by the Crown. They don’t speak unless ordered. Don’t think unless they’re told to. Once you’re taken, they carve the runes into you. Once it’s done, you’re part of Malcor’s army forever.”
“Wait, you’re saying he brands people?”
She paused near a crooked stump, hand on her hip, fingers twitching like she was reliving the memory in muscle alone. “People, witches, elementals—anyone who can conjure without incantations.”
Her voice was flat, like she’d told the story too many times and stopped caring who believed it.
“Children are easiest. They don’t fight back as hard. A lot don’t know what they are until it’s too late. Some of them glow by accident during harvest season and vanish before sundown.
“Families that resist are marked too. If not for conscription, then for obstruction. And if they hide someone… the hunters just burn the house.”
Drake pushed past a low branch and caught up beside her. His voice rasped. “So what—people just let this happen?”
“They didn’t at first. But Malcor knows how to twist fear. If you want to keep your land, food, and rations, you look the other way.”
Her cloak brushed his arm as she scurried ahead of him again. The forest swallowed her steps.
Drake fell back in line, heartbeat drumming against his ribs.
The light bleeding through the trees dimmed as the woods thickened, and the sound of birds gave way to wind whispering through a thousand crooked limbs.
Drake stepped over a root thick as his thigh and ducked beneath a canopy of twisted branches. Pine needles brushed his shoulders and mist curled at his ankles. Thin but restless, like it didn’t want to let go.
“So, you’ve got magic, but you need to sell your soul to use it unless you escape?”
Eirwyn shot him a glance. Her brow twitched. “That surprises you?”
“It’s insane.”
“You come from a place where your rulers don’t ration power?”
Drake barked a laugh. “Oh, they ration alright. But not like this. We don’t have a Ministry of Spell Permits or whatever the hell you’re talking about.”
Eirwyn stopped at a clearing. A pocket of bare ground between the trees where the moss thinned and a few broken stumps poked through. Her hand slid beneath her cloak.
She pulled out a stone the size of a coin, flat and smooth, etched with runes that shimmered in the shadowed light.
Drake took a step closer.
Faded symbols crisscrossed its surface with circular patterns and sharp angles almost fractal in design. The stone pulsed, then dulled.
“Once upon a time, witches could freely summon fire with this.”
The way she held it between two fingers, out and steady, it felt more like a warning than a display.
“Now?” She turned it in her hand. “Illegal unless you’re part of Malcor’s forces.”
Drake let out a low whistle. “You’ve got bureaucrats for bonfires.”
“You joke, but that laughter can get you killed.”
Drake’s smile faded.
She tucked the stone away. “They claim it’s about safety and protecting the fragile. But it’s not. It’s about control.” She stepped past him, mist parting in coils around her legs.
“Everything is taxed. Food grown with rune-imbued soil. Healing spells from licensed witches serving under Malcor. Even the rain clouds. If you want one of Malcor’s elementals to summon them and water your crops, you better have your records in order.”
Drake looked around, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. The fog, the runes, the silence. Every leaf in this place whispered surveillance. “And if you don’t?”
“Then the harvest rots, the sick die, and the earth stays dry.”
Drake stared at the ground, fists clenching. “This place makes my world look amateur.”
Branches drooped overhead, draped in hanging moss that swayed with each breath of wind. Drake pushed one aside, its damp leaves brushing his temple.
He stepped over a cluster of fungus, ducked beneath a crooked limb, then glanced at Eirwyn. Her bare feet barely shifted the moss.
A raven cried in the canopy above. Its call was broken, like it choked on the last word of a warning.
Eirwyn stepped over a fallen log, cloak catching on a broken twig before she tugged it loose.
“It’s always the same story,” he said. “Different world, same tyrants. Worse tyrants.”
Eirwyn pushed a thick curtain of vines aside and stepped onto a narrow deer trail, this one barely wide enough for her cloak. The light through the trees shifted. It was duller, more silver than blue. Above them, the forest pressed inward.
Drake hurried to catch up, sidestepping roots that twisted through the path. “You talk like you’re one of the last.”
Eirwyn slowed, her shoulders rising with a quiet breath. “Witches used to live in full villages. Whole provinces kept warm in winter because of them. They healed, taught, and kept the storms away.”
Her hand grazed a branch overhead. The bark peeled at her touch, releasing a faint crackle of residual energy. Its glow shimmered along her fingertips before fading. “Then Malcor rose, and the provinces emptied.”
Drake glanced up at a cluster of black birds shifting restlessly on a branch.
“Now?” Eirwyn stepped over a sunken tree root, her feet landing without a sound. “Half-bloods vanish from villages before their parents even learn the truth. Doesn’t matter if their magic is strong or if they’ve never conjured a single spell.”
She paused at the base of a hill where the trail cut between two massive stone outcroppings. “They’re guilty by blood and breath. One rumor’s enough.”
Drake’s hands clasped around the dead phone in his pocket. The only anchor to his world.
Eirwyn crouched and passed through a thicket of thorny shrubs, arms close to her sides. Her hand reached for the ground again, touching the base of a stone flecked with moss. The faint hum of magic tingled the air. “That’s why I don’t sleep in the same place twice.” She stood and continued up the incline.
Drake watched her move, one careful step after another. He couldn’t tell where her caution ended and her instinct began. Whatever life she had before this, it burned out long ago.
He picked up his pace. The trees thinned slightly ahead. Then a twig snapped. One too close for comfort.
Eirwyn froze mid-step, arm shooting out to bar his path.
