H c turk, p.1
H C Turk, page 1
BOOK ONE: MAN'S ISLE
One
When I slid in my baby slime between my supine mother's legs, I did not comprehend the expressions of her accompanying friends, did not understand that one was a crone, and two were hags.
I am now aware. As a matter of living I came to learn that Mother's ancient friends were surprised by the abnormal birth, for they saw not a child with the expected crooked limbs and jagged features, but a pale daughter unlike any Known witch sister, one considered perfect even by the folk of societies and cities, those persons whom the witch calls sinners. Of any living category, the rarest member is the albino, the invert; and I am called white witch not because my magic is beneficial - for all born of Earth are evil-but because my skin is as soft as delicate petals, the hags and crones about me at my birth aware that I would not grow to resemble the average ugly witch, but pass as the loveliest of women.
None of Mother's friends had seen a white birth before, and only one could recall a witch born besides herself, Mother alone of these sisters in their centuries of living to have conceived, a rarity because witches are repelled by intercourse; for all men are sinners, whom witches shun. Impregnation occurs only through rape, the man to force himself on a witch the most extreme of sinners, the law of heritage alleging that the more despicable the man, the finer the daughter (in the sinning sense). My mother's friends presumed my father to be utterly incorrigible, so fine is my appearance. But although my character is adequate and I am beauteous to sinners, I am, in fact, the freak.
Although 1 could see at birth, I had scant capacity to understand, but those about me were able to predict more than my final appearance. They also saw too much sinner in this sister, a fact manifested as my love for the sinners' seductive ways, a love condemning me to prison and this treatise.
No more the fragrant wilds. After an early life of pure living in God's wilderness, I find about me man stench and metal bars, for my home is the sinners' greatest prison. Seduced too often by the city, I came to love its populace, came to love individuals and form with them a family. But my love Med and led to death, my family lost, and the white daughter in prison revealed as a witch and thus due to die. But I spare myself with words. Under Queen Anne's auspices I have vowed to expose every detail of my life and my sisters' ways, Her Majesty's good man and magistrate requiring my knowledge to end the mediocre evil of witches. With impunity I convey all my crimes, for my sentence of being quartered and burned as though meat for a sinner's mouth has been commuted, though my imprisonment continues until death. My love remains as long. I will save myself, for God saves only sinners, His folk with dying bodies and immortal souls. His witches have forms that if unburned may last as long as Earth, but no witch will see Heaven; for our souls are no more than personalities, our only eternity an endless death. But by exposing the truth of my sisters, do I promote the evil of treason or the virtue in salvation? And the moral revelation I offer here is not that witches are dangerous, but that we are as human as any persons with lives and loves.
Despite a witch's superior perceptions, my best recollections are of times after my birth, after the sisters' surprise and their celebration wherein they shared my mother's joy by sharing me, by licking me clean and consuming the materials of birth that arrived with the latest witch. Descriptions of that initial instance and many others in this dissertation are enhanced by details gleaned from sources other than myself, as well as the retroactive clarity of contemplation. As well, I understand sinners and the soulless not only from having lived both lives, but from having loved perhaps one too many.
I was born on Man's Isle in the Irish Sea, sinners' names used by witches, who are too naive to invent languages or coffeehouses. We celebrate neither anniversaries nor holidays, and since our calendar is comprised of the seasons about us, I know not my date of birth, my numerical age. Suffice to say I was born near two decades before this testament, toward the end of King William IIFs sinning reign. I am told that the current date is the Lord's year of 1703, though at times the era seems Satan's.
I was reared near the hills, but within a hearty smell of the sea. The background for my early life was the verdant green of spring and winter's muddy slush, scampering does and rotting fish, the scent of fresh blossoms and all the wild feces; for whereas sinners love the beauty of nature, witches love nature, all of which is beautiful.
Our home was a trapper's cabin of timber whose floor was the soil below, the walls log beneath a thatched roof requiring seasonal maintenance. Within were furnishings to satisfy only the poorest sinner: a coarse wooden table used only to support our folded Sunday dresses, sheep sorrel snacks, and poultice of fly agaric for that rare crop of tainted lasot consumed by a careless witch-the white baby, of course-whose thick, uncomfortable tongue was soothed by Mother's medicine. Beside each dress were our shoes, items worn only in winter and when attending church in the nearest sinning village of Jonsway. Witches have scant use for furniture since they rarely sit except to appease sinners beside them in a pew. Our beds were uncovered straw kept tidy by daily raking with our fingers, occasionally scented with a naturally deceased newt placed deeply within to provide a fragrant character to the straw, which otherwise would smell like a sinner's barn, and barns are for livestock.
Seldom during daylight did we remain in our house. Our activities were gathering food, visiting friends, enjoying the forest, sitting on the cliffs and smelling the sea. After heavy rains we would re-mark our home with perimeter defecation so that bothersome, tasteless vermin would avoid us. (Although affected by the subtle smells of nature, sinners perceive poorly with their noses, missing current information of weather and animal behavior.) The personnel in these adventures could not have been finer, for Mother and I were always together. Here I shall bear no protests of prejudice on my part, for no superior crone was ever owned by the devil than my mother, Evlynne.
Winter somewhat curtailed our activities, for although no exposure to cold will kill a witch, we find pounding sleet unpleasant, and surely no witch would produce a fire for the warming. No witch would produce a fire except to court death. Most winters on Man's Isle, however, were made mild by the wanning currents of the encompassing sea. We lived on the island's side facing England, whose coast could be seen on mornings of exceptional clarity. Jonsway was built near an inlet called Fairy's Bane by the sinners, their reason for this appellation surely sensible to them alone amongst thinking creatures. Our friends attending my birth lived nearby: hags Chloe and Esmeralda north, toward Maughold Head, and crone Miranda south near The Chasms. All these witches professed to be widows of seamen or generals (Mother was known as Mrs. Landham to the populace of Jonsway).
Mother and I attended church each Sabbath. Our friends were not so bold, preferring to avoid the sinners rather than mingle. Many years before my birth, Mother had found it necessary to move from her western home on the isle when sinners noticed that she had lived long enough to be dead. The settlement near which she moved grew to a fishing village, then a town with regular streets, combinations of buildings, and a population so large that only a sinner could be aware of every resident. Only recenfly had Mother allowed herself to be known, determining that her best response toward the ever-increasing sinners was to live amongst them to preclude their surprise at discovering her. Better they come to accept her as one of their own, though perhaps not one of their finest.
Living near sinners is both deadly to witches and necessary for our survival, for without the occasional rape, the race of human witch would disappear. That intercourse is unacceptable to the average witch is one of God's mysterious laws. All witches confirm perfect God as most righteous, as Creator of Earth and its inhabitants, including sinners, those folk with souls due eternal rest if only the truth of fine intention be fulfilled, God the Creator of good that sinners must promote in order to find Him in the Heaven they will share. Only those accepting evil need fear death, for Hell will be their eternal home. Soulless witches, along with animals on Earth for a temporary purpose, are not evil in themselves, but transfer evil through Satan's work of sexuality. Foolish, brilliant sinners, however, fail to comprehend that the difficulty witches inspire is strictly sexual. We steal no livestock nor cause disease, but witches are so ugly that sex seems repulsive to sinners who pass them. (Surely our odor, so different from sinners', must aid in this repulsion.) As for the white daughter, at my birth friend Chloe asked whether this was the type that must be kept from men, and wise Miranda replied: Nay, this is the type who cannot be kept from men; a fact proven while yet in my youth.
We sisters are God's proof that sex can tempt sinners toward evil. To the sinner is left resistance, for those strong of spirit can reject evil's temptation in any form, sex or gold or political position. But even the finest sinner or witch is imperfect, and the former is sore pressed for sexual morality when a hag has been seen. The wife refusing her husband has that day viewed a witch. The seducer has brushed against a sister or heard her breathing. God tempers the sexual joys available to sinners by providing witches, repulsive women who are repulsive sex incarnate. But I, the invert daughter, was expected from birth to be the evil in sex that is excess enjoyment, my extraordinary sinners' beauty eliciting not love, but lust. This horror I carry with me, for even as Mother when walking through Jonsway would make wives frigid without intent, I, when mature, would pass a pious husband and draw his lust. Accepted by sinners is that intercourse shared between husband and wife to promote love and add to God's dominion is a joy they are due. Witches are from God for strengthening sinners, so that
I was no surprise to Jonsway, for after being raped, Mother staggered through the alderman's doorway with a horrid tale of a harmless woman demeaned and damaged. Although amazed at her allegation-such a revolting wench raped?-the authorities' astonishment grew vastly upon later proof-a real child?-nearly exploding when the perfect daughter was seen. Mother had a tale for me as well, facts she felt I might later need. No rape, she mentioned, would have the barren invert bear offspring. Fine with me considering the process of inception. First came a heinous man, Mother's beau so disappreciative and perceptive of his lover that he promised to leave for London if he could find nothing better in Jonsway to couple with than a dry witch. So enamored was he with the crime that his loins had been burned with a rod in punishment for a previous rape. His manhood had not been molested, however, Mother's final details being about men and their flesh sticks that they cram within women in order to squirt baby makings. Rather like shitting in reverse, is it not, Mother? I offered. After some deliberation, Mother could not disagree.
Mother was delighted to take me into Jonsway and prove her humanity with my presence, for one of the countless sinning misconceptions is that witches cannot conceive, that we are constructed by Satan from natural elements-perhaps pinecones and toad droppings. Such is the comprehension of sinners, their ignorance understandable in that they are more concerned with inventing new rules for city living than learning ancient truths of Earth, new rules about merchandising and taxation. The sinners' religions teach all of God's moral bases, but witches remain a mystery, known to be real yet unknown. In truth, great God has created all, Satan but a manipulator of the evil God supplies so that His people may choose themselves or His righteousness.
Seemingly I recall my first visit to Jonsway, but in truth my thoughts are a compilation of years of journeys; for although Mother necessarily carried me at first, clearly I recall the sensation of stepping upon a path made solid with flat stones. The failure of my memory and my experience to correspond is due not only to my youth during those early visits, but also to the very strangeness of a town never fully accepted. And though Mother offered forewarning of the site, I was too young to understand prior to experience.
Although we lived near enough Jonsway to ever smell the township, Mother and I distinguished individual odors as we approached in our Sunday attire. Soon I comprehended that this increasing intensity signified countless sinners and a vast source of their odd products. Evident at once were the artificial aspects of the upcoming land, for nothing done by the sinners seemed natural. The regular trail that turned to a packed dirt road was surprising enough, but a pasture where cattle were held in check by wooden fences was stunning, my first sight and hearing of a horse-drawn cart a horror. Initially I could not believe that the lumbering construction was from our Earth, but then I was struck by this usage of animals as tools, as though sinners considered themselves the creators of these beasts, thus having a special privilege to control them. This notion departed after I discovered that sinners intended to control every part of the natural world for their own unnatural benefit. God created people, but only sinners could make a privy.
Mother at my side remained calm. Though apprehensive, I had little common fear, for the whole of my mind and senses was filled with a barrage of accosting surprises. At first I had no idea of my own position in this new land, whether the sinners or controlled animals cared about me or would respond to my presence. I only held my mother's hand most firmly, allowing the sinners and their products to engulf me.
As the buildings increased in number and size, the trail changed to a street made of stones laid with careful symmetry. Then came sinning women walking toward us. Burdened with sacks, they scarcely noticed the approaching pair, for evidently Mother and I were their peers. The notion that I was the same as these sinners struck me painfully, for the women's odor seemed spoiled-human, but rancid. And though Mother had said not to fear exposure in that we would not tarry in Jonsway, nevertheless, any perceptive person childish or mature can sense many terrible things in a brief duration. My next moment of terror came with an approaching wagon that brought the abnormality of men.
The first was baseborn, unusual because he wore breeches instead of skirts, though the man was virtually comforting because his smell and sight seemed more animal than sinner. He seemed a small bear, with even more hair on his face than Mother! Later I saw more social men able to afford ale who therefore stank additionally, men consuming tobacco who therefore stank incredibly, landowning males dressed with tall, useless hats and glossy shoes, and a surfeit of vests and buttons. Their wives were even more extreme, their bodies' normal shapes modified by hooped petticoats as though their hips should imitate a bush draped with laundry, the true odors of these "ladies" hidden by ghastly lotions and powders, some of these females so social as to cover their heads with wigs like jumbled moss, hats or scarves applied above this. Then my experience worsened.
I smelled metal, a material witches find especially obnoxious, believing it should have remained in the ground, unaltered, where great God via Satan placed it. Metal in the form of silver bowls and cutlery and wheel hoops led us past a blacksmith's shop, then to fire. Here was one horror that disappointed. Even at this young age I had been taught that only burning or quartering would send a sister to her devil, that purveyor of unfulfilled death. From our distance, however, the heat felt no worse than a summer's day, hot stones beneath the feet, that new smell of coals nearly interesting. The flames themselves were revealed as having no solid form, as though the sun had produced a spray as do sea waves. The first significance of fire came after the smith's. I smelled metal and paint and glues and mortar and dyes and finally burning animals. I smelled burning animals, and since witches are a type of animal, I smelled my friends of Earth burning, smelled myself burning.
Beyond any anxiety I had brought into Jonsway, my perception of cooking meat was a horror beyond imagining. At once I understood the stench to signify one of Mother's primary warnings: Sinners burned animal flesh to eat it. Sinners burned living creatures for perverse consumption, and I smelled it, sensed it, experienced the evil, the terror, and could not move. I halted and prayed God to remove me from that revolting smell, which was surely direct from Hell. I ceased walking and thinking, unable to comprehend how a mere witch could experience such horror and continue living; and the world about me became oppressive and unclear as though dissolving from the malice of that smell. Nothing, nothing in my young life could have been more revolting, and for a long moment on the street as my sinner's skin turned more colorless than usual, Mother had to convince me and my chattering teeth that neither sinner nor witch was ever eaten by these folk, that no one would leap out and set me ablaze.
After I calmed incompletely and we proceeded, I found Mother to be a liar. Ahead were two sinners smashing their mouths together, and I knew they were eating one another and that I would be next. But, no, this was a type of kissing, Mother informed me, the sinning type in which teeth and tongues are involved, and most rude for even baseborn sinners to display on the streets. And, yes, certain other sinning folk shouted toward this young pair to find some decency within themselves or be stricken by Jesus. Stricken by the loud voice they were, the pair taking their tongues and departing.
My next fear as we continued was that sinners would find me a stranger and attempt to smell my bottom. Of course, this was normal practice for witches: Mother nosing my hindquarters to determine my health, I examining her droppings to ascertain her mood. Noting no such activity in Jonsway, however, I lost my fear, understanding that sinners had no truck with sensitive smelling else they would not stuff their noses with snuff.
The geometries frightened me: square buildings and windows and angled carts and fences and signs. I presumed the marketplace to be the meal of a giant; but, no, sinners came in droves to purchase their foodstuffs instead of entering the forest to eat orache like any decent human. The buzzing of the sinners' speaking and their closing doors and creaking wagons and metal cracks were accumulated sounds to nearly madden me. Jonsway's unlimited nature was an engulfing intimidation: The buildings' endless heights and the quantity of sinners and the coundess unfathomable smells all conspired to overwhelm my senses.
