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Review This Story || Author: Kirsten Smart

The Witch

Part 12 Justice

Twelve - Justice

The naked woman's bare feet slid in muddy snow, the breath from her nostrils made huge clouds in the icy winter air. With hands bound behind her back, she was dragged between two guards, two more in front, two more behind, towards the tall stake in the Town Square. She was gagged. H er dark hair hung ragged and lank about her bare shoulders. H er face was swollen, discoloured from a recent beating. She wa s w eak from having hung in chains for several day s w ithout relief; and yet, she struggled, fighting with diminished strength to pull free of the guards' icy gauntlets.

There would have been little point breaking free, though. The Town Square was full of people, perhaps four hundred in all, come to watch the spectacle. Though they parted for the prisoner, their shouts of abuse were promise of what would happen if she fell into their hands.

“Suffer, witch!”

“Back to the Devil with you!”

She tried to catch the eyes of her tormentors, shaking her head wildly, her gagged protests lost beneath the cacophony. H er struggles all for nothing, they arrived: wooden boxes formed steps to a three-foot platform against the stake, and it was up onto this that the woman was dragged.

H er hand s w ere untied, her arms held. A heavy iron bracket was placed about her waist, pinning her to the stake. The Executioner made it fast with heavy nails, hammering each through eyelets in the hasp. Next, her arm s w ere lifted high over her head so that she was all but hanging, her wrists enclosed in blackened shackles that dangled from a bolted iron ring. At once she was struggling to break free, tugging repeatedly on the chains.

Below, other guard s w ere hurriedly organising spectator s w ith armfuls of wood and straw into a line, so they could stack their fuel about the stake's base. Without her tongue, the woman could only cry wordlessly in rage and dismay, as the guard clambered down from the platform, the place where he had stood quickly piled with wood for the fire.

Nearby, on a short step-ladder, the Bailiff briefly read aloud a list of charges, followed by confirmation that each had been confessed. “The sentence upon Esmerelda Lopez, carried out here today, is to be death by fire, that her soul may be purified.”

The woman shook her head wildly. I am not Esmerelda! I am Luisa Consuela! But her crie s w ere mere bellows, and lost in the jeering of the crowd. H er frightened face framed by her own lifted arms, her nude body presented for open appraisal. The men looked on with lust, the women with smug pleasure that this beauty would soon die.

The Executioner stepped forward, a burning torch in his hand, and he gently touched the flame to straw at the pyre's base. Luisa reared back against the stake, her eye s w ide in terror, shaking her head madly, barking out her fear.

The flames spread quickly, licking up through tinder-dry wood, sap crackling, sticks catching alight in moments. Luisa again struggled in her chains, wailing aloud above the excited clamour of voices, as the first cloudy swirls of smoke clambered past her face. She could already feel the savage, horrible heat on her legs, and her dread drew tears from her eyes. The crowd was devouring her fear, jeering and calling, standing well back from the growing radiance of the fire.

Luisa Consuela threw her head back and wept. Slow minutes passed. Terror ate into her, her body trembling, her heart pounding, the humiliation of being reduced to tears and begging in front of so many people more than she could bear. H er naked breasts heaved as she sobbed, her hands curled around the chains holding her arms aloft. For one desperate moment, she looked across the crowd, her eyes settled on a dark face, framed by a coruscating mane of hair. There was no triumph in Solana Degas' eyes, nor vindication: just sorrow that it had ever come to this.

Embers rode the climbing smoke, and stung her naked body. Luisa squeezed her streaming eyes shut against the pain, knowing that it was just a hint of the agony to come. In cruel irony, a breeze from the snow-covered rooftops briefly cleared the smoke. Gooseflesh peppered Luisa's bare skin, drew her nipples erect.

Then, the wind died, and flames suddenly lapped up through the wood, fluttering around Luisa's bare feet. She jolted, arched her back, her eyes flung wide. It felt as if she had been slashed with razor-sharp knives, and she jerked at her fetters. “Ohhhh!”

H er first cry drew a roar of delight from the crowd. The wind made a brief return, blowing the flames back. She sagged, hanging fully in the shackles. H er feet steamed. Trails of sweat ran down her ribcage from her armpits, her nipples hardening again in the winter air. H er mouth was a shapeless expression of ongoing pain, her feet hurting beyond belief. She wailed aloud.

The wind ebbed, and the flames leaped again, enveloping her naked feet, licking up her gleaming calves, curling black smoke. As her skin shrank at the fire's touch, Luisa roared in pain, arched her back, screaming at the sky. The flames rallied and climbed, licking at her knees. Luisa bellowed, flinging her head side-to-side. Steam rose from her bare thighs. Sweat glued her hair to her face and neck.

The crowd had grown quiet. Luisa's agonised yells echoed about the town square, above the roar of the fire. As the stack of wood and straw filled with fire, waves of savage heat drifted up. The helples s w oman's skin was polished with sweat. Tiny blue flames skittered through the fine hairs on her thighs. H ot air funneled up between her legs, blistering her sex, steam wisping through her thick pubic hair. H er screams became frantic, her struggles truly insane. But she was held firm, and the fire grew. H er feet were now alight, flesh turning to tallow. Flames briefly devoured her pubic bush, sputtering the spider-trail to her belly-button, kissing her buttocks and the muscled landscape of her belly.

For an endless time, Luisa screamed as her legs burned. Steam curled from the wet curves of her proud breasts. The wind returned, but this time merely served to guide the flames. They whipped and lapped at her like scourges, flaying her back with their touch. The fire loved her, enclosing her lower body, slowly licking at her. The hair of her armpits steamed and turned to charred nubble. She hung helplessly in the fire by her wrists, the bones of her feet snapping and popping loudly, audible above her screams.

A moment later, the hair on her head caught alight. It was a brilliant fireball, engulfing her whole face, and her scream s w ere truly horrible. The tiny hairs on her lifted arms flashed away, as the flames, roaring high on savage updraughts, completely engulfed her. The crowd roared. H er leg s w ere burning, skin turning to oil and igniting fiercely, while she continued to twist her torso amidst the inferno, screaming, unable to escape the agony that assailed every inch of her body.

She burned for perhaps five minutes, screaming, engulfed.

There were two loud thuds! as her pert breasts burst. H ot fat scattered the crowd, and Luisa's screams trailed into a long, agonised rattle, her face sheathed by fire. Still the agony continued, but the only sound was now the roar of flames, the hiss of a burning woman. H er struggle s w eakened, and, as minutes passed, ceased altogether: from her fettered arms, she hung limp, feeling herself burn. H er face was burning away. H er eyes exploded in bursts of hot liquid, her melting features graciously veiled by smoke and flame from the crowd.

H er shallow breaths drew heated air, destroying her lungs. H er nerves deadened by the fire, Luisa found herself almost without pain. Blind, mute, she was aware only of the thunder in her ears, the frantic beating of her heart as she hung by her wrists in the heart of a roaring bonfire. In a final moment of lucidity, she knew that she had succumbed without a shred of dignity, a screaming human torch.

Perhaps Justice had truly been served.

Solana Degas drew her cloak tighter about her shoulders. It had been twenty minutes since the fire was lit, and report s w ere drifting back that the Witch upon the stake had finally stopped moving. Even so, she would be allowed to burn until her bones exploded and fell from the blackened restraints, her ashes cast into the river.

In truth, Solana could not think of a more fitting end for the cruel torturer. And for Solana, a new beginning. It was a long ride to France, but Spring was close.

 

Kirsten Smart

Finished 13 August 2003

comments to kirstensmart@yahoo.co.nz


Review This Story || Author: Kirsten Smart
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