4 Witch

The first symptom is the dreams, not nightmares, but not exactly pleasant either.

At first, she shrugged them off, having weird dreams was normal for her, but they were usually about things she had been thinking about or knew about. These dreams were of metal humanoid creatures and animals she didn't know existed, places she had never been to, people she had never seen.

She kept it to herself - really it was that she didn't have anyone to tell and even if she was going to tell someone, what would she say? People would just shove her concerns away and put her dreams down to her weird diet - which wasn't that weird, she just made the most of what was available to her.

But then the dreams became something she couldn't ignore soon enough, because they shifted from far away worlds and places - to the streets she walked every day, the people whose faces she knew as well as she knew her own and she started seeing their deaths.

The lady next door to her, who had just replaced her rusty wooden front door with a freshly made one from the local carpenter, would die in a storm, would fall off the bridge that crossed over the river that separated their village from the mainland. But it was summer, the sky was cloudless and the heat was bone-dry.

But then autumn rolled around, and along with it came the occasional storms that followed the heat. One Saturday, she woke up to the sound of a knock on her door, the lady's son, dressed in black, here to invite her to the funeral.

She had died quickly, they said, hit her head and broke her neck before she could even suffocate but Mikage knew that wasn't true, she had seen it.

The dreams continued, and soon she became afraid to sleep, what if she saw her mother's death? Or her brothers?

She had tried to prevent them - of course, she had warned the lady not to step outside in the rain, told that homeless man to keep away from large groups of women, cautioned that young prostitute against standing in that particular alley. But it never made a difference, somehow, they always ended up in that spot, at that time and died as she had seen they would.

So she stopped sleeping, took quick naps during the day, would snap awake every 90 minutes, a self-imposed time limit on how long she could sleep at any one time. It kept her from collapsing and she could pretend she was fine.

But her mother noticed the bags under eyes and the haunted look she would wear, the way she started looking down when she walked, so she could meet fewer people, see fewer deaths, you couldn't dream about someone you had never seen before - that's what all the books had told her.

Her brother started accompanying her every time she went outside, worried that something might happen, with the way she seemed so dazed all the time. The dirt paths of their little village were as familiar to them as the walls of their own home, but he still worried, and she was still scared.

The worst part was - that was only the first symptom.

The next was the visions.

It began with headaches - at first, she put them down to her lack of sleep, she was prone to them ever since the dreams started, had gotten used to ignoring the dull throbbing at the back of her head. But they got worse and worse and soon, she couldn't bear it.

The searing pain would make her vision waver and her knees buckle, she would dig her nails into the back of her head and scream into her pillows, the slightest sliver of sunlight had her writhing in agony.

They started whispering soon - she lived in a small village of traditional value, women were meant to be pretty and work in the kitchen and raise children, men were supposed to be handsome, strong and make money, children were meant to be cute and quiet and illness of the mind was hidden away, hushed up, a taboo.

Her mother's patience soon gave out to resentment as women scorned her when she walked, her brother became irritated with the entire world, who blamed his sister for her illness. They didn't know what it was, no doctor could identify it - and it wasn't like they could afford anyone more skilled than the village quack anyway - so they simply referred to it as 'her illness'.

And it was only then, that she started seeing things. In a way it was a relief, the headaches faded and she wasn't in constant pain, but now, every time she touched someone, her field of vision flared with colour.

In the beginning, it was disorientating, she would stumble back and lean against the closest thing she could reach, gasping for breath, trying to blink past the myriad of fluorescent rainbows. It made her jumpy, always on guard, careful not to touch anyone. It started to distance her from even her brother, who had been at her side even through her mother's anger.

So she forced herself, in the dead of the night, when both members of her family were asleep, to reach out from her bedding, across the cold floor and to where her brother lay, inches away, and gently brush her fingers against his hand. He didn't move, as always a deep sleeper, but she had to hold back a gasp as colours flooded her vision.

Her eyes watered at the intensity of the colours and she felt nauseous, looking at them all but forced herself to breathe, to watch them and so she did, the entire night, forced herself to watch the colours until she could discern them from the shapes around the room.

She could once again make out the light fixture, the dining table, the shelves, the kitchen - their house was small - made up of one large room - made into two by using a sheet to separate it like curtains. The alcove that made up their kitchen, with a small window right above the sink, was the only natural light that flooded in.

She continued her secret endeavours, using her brother's touch so she could acquaint herself with the colours, until she could see them without feeling weak and soon, she found that she could distinguish them, what she had first seen as a rainbow, she now saw as a spectrum that surrounded each person and it was only people that this spectrum seems to surround.

Like an extra coating of clothes, the colours would cling to a person, moving and merging and colliding smoothly, like water would ripple and move through gentle provocation. The closest colour to the body would be warm, reds and oranges and yellows, the younger and healthier they were, the brighter the colour. Elders would have the fading yellow cling to them like a thin blanket while for children, it would be a shocking red and that would surround them like clouds.

And from there, the colours would spread outwards, the layers becoming thinner and thicker and Mikage tried her hardest to read them. When her brother tried to lie, the green would seep into the blue and would swirl together and become murky. Mikage wondered if it was the same for everyone else - but a part of her didn't want to know.

Being able to see these things, know people's deaths, read their actions and emotions through the clouds of colours that appear when she touches them, it wasn't good - this what they called the devil's work. She would be hunted and burned and accused of being a witch, a devil worshipper, sentenced to death by the village council. Perhaps they would send for the army, make her death official within the kingdom, use her as a warning to all those who practised the devil's deeds.

So she kept to herself, didn't even tell her brother what was wrong, simply receded into herself, slept even less, started working in the garden for longer, away from people.

Her brother grew up, left home to study in the mainland as boys were expected to do - he joined the army, became her mother's pride and joy, while Mikage remained home and worked in their family market stall where they sold home-grown cabbages and peppers.

When she turned 18, her mother began looking for suitors, it was thought to be lucky for a woman to be married during her 20th year and her mother was nothing if not superstitious. Her brother, though only a few years older, had become mature, he was already engaged to be married, to a girl of their mother's choosing.

Though Mikage knew the truth - no matter how doting an elder brother he was, by no means was he as good and honest a person their mother thought him to be. She knew about his preferences, the men he bedded during his time as a soldier, he had always told her everything.

But a man to have such relations with another man was taboo - though they encourage it in the army, he had said in his letters, you would fight harder for a lover than for a friend, he had explained and Mikage understood the logic though she knew that he would still do as their mother wished.

Her brother was too concerned with being accepted, being normal, he wanted to climb the ranks, become a rich army officer and live in a house that had actual rooms and beds, Mikage couldn't really blame him.

So he married the youngest daughter of a war hero and moved to the mainland permanently and lived out his very normal picturesque life.

Mikage, on the other hand, was becoming a source of stress for her mother - no man wanted the girl with calloused hands and drab clothes, her black hair was choppily cut and made her look like a scruffy child, her green eyes were lifeless and framed with dark circles and she rarely smiled like the bright happy girls that gossipped and giggled around her.

She was a little bit glad, she had never given much thought to marriage, it was just another task she had to complete in life, another box to check in the list of things that humans do. It was only after her brother got married that she realized what a horrible thing it was to be married to someone you don't get along with.

So her 20th year passed and marriage offers and suitors dwindled in number, the people of her age were getting married left and right, at one point, she had to attend four marriages in 2 days - her mother was in her element.

But Mikage was happy with her life, the routine of it was pleasant, it meant she didn't have to think, she slept so rarely that she no longer saw the deaths of those around her (though she had seen that her brother's father in law would die from falling from his roof while trying to fix a leak) she also no longer got headaches as bad the ones from her youth and the colours had stopped bothering her.

Life had settled down and her mother had become an aged woman, the orange that Mikage had watched fade to the pale yellow it was now was lined with grey and she knew that her mother was dying. She didn't feel as devastated as one would feel, but she was sad, the night that the last of the yellow faded and all the colours began to turn grey, Mikage knew she would die in her sleep and so she held her mother's hand and apologised, and thanked her, said everything she ever wanted to say and found that there wasn't much and her mother had smiled and apologized and Mikage had cried and held her hand until she took her last breath.

The funeral was held a few days after and her brother came and held her, she saw his wife, standing there with tears in her eyes and felt grateful that she would mourn her mother. There was a hand on her stomach and the slight bump had grown bigger and Mikage smiled a little and kissed her brother's cheek.

"Be a good father. Someone your child can look up to." She had said, and her brother had understood, no more late-night adventures with the men he often paid for the company. Her brother had smiled and nodded, ruffled her hair.

"Come to the mainland," he had begged and pleaded, but Mikage refused, she would continue to live in her one-room house and raise vegetables in her garden and sell them in the market and she would live off that money in the modest way she knew.

She was only 25, but she had passed the window for marriage and was already looking towards her life as a spinster, quite happily too, she was a selfish woman, who didn't enjoy sharing a life with a person she didn't love. She had no patience nor talent for developing relationships like her brother had done with his wife, who was his friend, his companion though not his love, never his love - he explained this to her in hushed whispers at night and she had nodded, stroked his hair and simply listened and understood.

But her life wasn't going to settle just yet, it seemed too easy, to become used to her strange powers, to be able to live with them, but Mikage was a resilient woman, that's exactly what she had done. But the powers in her were stirring once again, restless, it wasn't something that could standstill after all.

The next symptom was influencing. It was a much more subtle change, she didn't notice it at first, but as she showed people who gathered at her stall her wares, their hands would often touch and she would smile and make eye-contact like the businesswoman she was, and ask them to buy it, taste it, come again and their eyes would glaze and they would nod, smile and do as she asked.

It was strange but it happened again and again. People started taking her seriously, one touch, one command and they would do as she said and once again, she became scared. She was a spinster now, almost to her 30s - an unmarried woman without children. It would be even easier to assume she was a witch. So she reverted to the time in her life that she refused to touch people, avoided contact, only went to the market when she was in dire need of something.

But the rumours still started, people who would talk about the girl who lived in the dilapidated hut at the edge of the village, the girl people only saw once a month, who rarely left her house, who had gone mad after her mother died and her brother left.

At first, they were simple rumours - but as always, rumours only grow and so did these. Soon, she became a ghost, a spirit, she was a woman who had been possessed. And her world started falling apart. Rocks would be thrown whenever she walked the streets, her gardens were upturned in the dead of the night, people would jeer and spit or turn their gazes. But Mikage continued to live, as she had always done.

And then the soldiers came, new barracks were being built at the edge of the village, her brother would be the Base Commander and would move here with his wife and child. However, before they could, the younger of the soldiers did and they quickly mixed in with the civilians, caught onto the rumours and in their youthful exuberance, decided to hold their first execution.

Mikage had been tending to her cabbage patch when they came for her and grabbed her, they tied her hands behind her back and dragged her, using a rope leash, to the village square where they had prepared what looked like a funeral pyre.

A bed of logs and leaves where they forced her down, tied her arms and legs and read to her, the charges against her - all of which were rumours spread by the village-folk. All the while, the people Mikage had grown up around, the elders and the adults who had been with her as a child, threw rocks and insults, some spit, some cheered.

There were children, riding their father's shoulders, pointing and laughing and asking questions and Mikage felt her chest burn with shame and anger. She yelled though she didn't know what, curses and insults, pleas and prayers. Yelled everything and nothing until the crowd became aggravated, started throwing lit matches and candles, trying to set they pyre to flame themselves and it eventually worked.

Mikage's death was not an easy one, she had screamed in agony, even before the flames had reached her, had coughed and spluttered from the smoke that rose from the burning of her own flesh and eventually, she bit of her own tongue to end her suffering a little quicker, a little less painfully.

Her death rang through the village at first like a celebration - and then a curse.

The Base Commander came to find the pile of ash where his sister had burnt and sentenced those young soldiers to death, had them hung in the same spot his sister had died and it became a firm warning to all those around him.

The news of her curse spread wide and far, crops stopped growing, the rain stopped falling, drought and famine took over the land, but only in places that Mikage had stepped - only in the houses of those villagers who had mocked her.

Years passed, centuries and soon rumours became myths and myths became legend but Mikage was never forgotten, no matter how many years passed, that village never grew crops, an area of land that was barren for the rest of time.

A thousand years later, it was known as Mikage's Curse.

The curse from a witch's dying breath.