The Witch of Thornvale Chapter 8: The Village With Light
The Witch of Thornvale is a literary portal fantasy featuring two distinct characters. It allegorizes Ludwig von Mises’ Six Lessons.
If this is your first rodeo reading The Witch of Thornvale, fear not. Catch the first act plus Chapter 7 at the links below. And if you’re all caught up, keep reading.
Chapter 8: A Village With Light
Drake and Eirwyn continued their trek as night fell around them, with the slope turning savage fast.
Loose shale crumbled under Drake’s sneakers. One wrong shift, and gravity would grab him by the ankles and drag him into the ravine below. Eirwyn moved ahead, light on her bare feet, cloak snagging against brambles that clung to her.
The descent wrapped them in layers of damp and silence. Vines curled like snakes over every rock—some coiled around trees, others stretched across the path like wires waiting to trip a fool.
“Step where I step.” Eirwyn brushed a twisted root with the side of her foot. “Nothing else.”
Drake nodded, voice buried behind clenched teeth. One foot forward, then the next.
The forest darkened. Shadows deepened to oil. Fungi bloomed in clumps along the base of warped trees—bulging, slick, throbbing with a soft green light that shimmered between leaves. The glow pulsed when the wind touched them, fading as Eirwyn passed.
She stopped beside a thick-barked tree shaped like a gnarled fist. Reaching up, she dragged her fingernail across the surface. A glowing rune sparked to life—rough spiral, broken loop. A crossmark slashed through the center. The light flared, then vanished.
Drake stared. “What’s it do?”
“Reminds the forest I passed through. And which way I left. It will help cover our tracks.”
A gust cut down the ravine, carrying the scent of rot and stone. Somewhere below, something bubbled. Stagnant water festered in shallow craters—slick, rainbow-surfaced, breathing the stink of sulfur and wet copper. One pool hissed as a leaf fell in. Drake turned his face from the smell and pressed forward.
The descent kept pulling, the terrain angling harder, punishing every slip. Thorns tore a line across Drake’s forearm. He caught himself against a trunk and blood beaded.
Eirwyn’s pace quickened as she wove through the unforgiving landscape.
By the time they hit the bottom, Drake’s legs shook with every step. Sweat soaked through his back and gathered in the bend of his elbows. His shirt, as it had done so often, clung like a second skin.
The ground flattened. Still brutal—but mercifully level.
A split boulder jutted from the forest floor, cracked down the center as if some giant struck it long ago. One side bore carvings—jagged lines chipped deep, weathered to near extinction. A circle broken in two. A tree without roots, and a flame-smothered stone.
Eirwyn dropped beside the boulder. She set her back against the stone and crossed her legs, her cloak curled around her. Within minutes, her breathing slowed to something rhythmic, and she shut her eyes.
Drake stayed upright longer. He sat down slow, sneakers dragging moss loose. His back found the stone, cold and familiar in its roughness. He stretched his legs until the cramps in his thighs gave way to numbness.
Above them, the stars bled sharp and brutal through the canopy. The constellations bore no names he knew.
He sat there, arms folded, tracing patterns with his eyes. The night pressed in close, cooler now and full of sounds that carried no warmth—wind through dead branches, the slow chirr of insects that refused to sleep, and the crackle of something large slipping through wet underbrush far off in the trees.
***
The underbrush thinned fast the next day. No more vines grabbed at Drake’s legs, and no claws of bramble bit at his sleeves. The air grew cleaner and crisper. Each breath edged with something sharp. The smell shifted too—lavender crushed underfoot, with cedar smoke curling through the branches. A strange sweetness like lightning caught in flower petals.
Eirwyn’s movements grew more pronounced, her bare feet pressing into a path Drake hadn’t seen until she walked it. She weaved between the trees like they were sentries on patrol.
He slowed as the grove opened. Trees arched inward, their trunks bent as each curve swept clockwise into a spiral. The canopy twisted above, branches overlapping with a symmetry that felt too perfect to be natural. Sunlight bled through the leaves in thin columns, gold and green, flickering across the path.
A low hum rolled through the space.
Eirwyn stepped into the spiral’s heart. The wind around her died, and her cloak dropped silent. She vanished between the trees without a ripple.
Drake paused and his palm prickled.
Heat drained from the air, and sweat chilled against his skin. The light bent wrong. It was too pale, and too still. He reached forward, fingers grazing the invisible edge. His skin buzzed. It was like brushing too close to live wire. Then he pushed through.
His breath fogged. The early-afternoon sun still touched the upper leaves, but the grove inside felt like late autumn. Wind ceased completely, and the air held its breath. Drake held his with it.
He turned to look behind him and found only trees. No sign of the trail, no sneaker or footprints, and no broken branches. Just the spiral holding its secrets.
A hawk screamed above, wings spread wide in a single pass before folding into the canopy. A bell rang in a single long tone. Metallic and faint.
Then something moved. The forest thinned again—but this time, the stillness broke with the breath of life.
Drake followed Eirwyn down a narrow incline, where the trees opened into a deep-cut ravine carved smooth by a stream that trickled loud enough that he heard it over his shoes. Moss blanketed the stone, softening each step. Ahead, rooftops peeked through the fog.
A village emerged. One that couldn’t have been more different than the village they passed through yesterday. Homes built from bark-covered planks and weather-worn timber. Ivy threaded along chimney stone, as smoke curled into the canopy in thin, spiraling columns that faded before reaching the sky.
A goat grazed near a mill, its stone arch half-swallowed by bramble. A loom sat inside the old grain room, threads stretched between beams where grain sacks hung. A bell above the door rocked in the breeze—no clapper, just wind chimes ringing high and soft, its notes cut from crystal.
They stepped between the first two homes. Covered stalls lined the edge of the path, each manned by someone hunched over a trade. Herbs dried in woven bundles, and clay pots rested on old linen. No signs bore guild crests. Just hand-carved symbols of a fox, a flame, and a fishhook.
The stream twisted behind the village. It was no wider than a car’s axle, running clear but shallow. Wooden planks bridged it.
Drake caught them in the shadows. Faces, half-lit behind door frames. Movement behind half-shuttered glass. One figure ducked back inside, leaving the curtains fluttering.
Footsteps scuffed gravel behind a shed. A thin boy—maybe fifteen—bolted down a side path, his head low, arms pumping. The bell’s echo answered him from the other side of the ravine.
Eirwyn raised her hands with her palms open and fingers relaxed. “I’m marked,” she said, her voice strong and even, “but not claimed.” Her words traveled clean. Like reciting an oath that could save or damn them both.
Somewhere deeper in the village, a few doors creaked open.
The sound of shuffling boots broke the stillness, and four figures stepped into view from opposite ends of the village, their cloaks trailing.
Drake shifted his weight, one sneaker on packed earth, the other sinking slightly into a patch of moss. He counted them without thinking—three men, one woman. None younger than sixty. Their robes hung in faded layers, homespun wool the color of smoke and sand, with an unfamiliar symbol: a sunburst torn clean through the middle.
Their eyes moved over Eirwyn, as though judging her posture, the way she stood with her arms loose but ready, the mark hidden under her cloak.
The shortest of the four stepped forward. His beard looked woven from ash, eyes pale and glassy, like ice left under moonlight too long. “Starweaver. We caught word you were on the run.”
Eirwyn nodded. “I don’t ask for sanctuary. Only silence.”
The elder tilted his head. “Your father traded here once.”
Another stepped forward. This one leaned heavier on his left boot, a limp barely masked by the sweep of his robe. His eyes skipped over Eirwyn and landed on Drake.
Then a slow scan—head to toe. From the distressed Penguins logo, his still dirt-smeared and torn shorts, to the athletic shoes caked in shale and blood-mud. The elder’s gaze hovered on the corner of the cracked iPhone peeking from his pocket. His lip curled.
Drake took a step forward, hands loose at his sides. “I’m not from here. I’m not part of the regime.” It was a stupid thing to say, but he couldn’t think of anything else.
The woman stepped in. She was taller, with bones sharp beneath sunbeaten skin stretched with age. “Every spy we’ve ever caught came smiling first.”
Drake stopped mid-breath.
The limping man grunted. “And speaking of freedom like it’s something to be gifted. Carried on the tongue like a coin for bartering.”
Drake’s mouth went dry and he was at a loss for words.
👉 Catch Chapter 9 and see what the village’s elders make of Drake
This piece initially appeared on The Rogue Scribe.
