The Assassin of Bewitched Lands

By Arun J

“Why do you always wear white?” I remember asking my father, the Reverend of our little village. “Black looks so much cooler,”

“Because, white is the colour of purity, the colour of honesty, and the colour of god,” he would reply without a falter. I never understood why it was so. My skin wasn’t white at all.

Our village, the haven of Lagra, was situated far away from any others. But for us to call our own, we had the river of Pirus. They say our land is blessed to have it, for no other is gifted such fine water to drink. My father said that it was God's will to give us such a beautiful home, for there were no unhappy souls in Lagra.

Every day at supper and every morning to break our fast, I see his face shine like the moonlit horizon. Always smiling, always spreading what he had in surplus. And my mother never complained about it. Our home was a hut of straw, clay, and brick, where the three of us were blessed by god. Our home of brown complexion, our floor of glazing remembrance, our smiles of heartful togetherness. It was one home of the dozens in Lagra. A land built by happy families joining together as one.

I do not remember when they first stepped foot into our haven, but ever since, Lagra has never been the same. Those who came dressed in pitch black coats and had dark-rimmed eyes. They did not speak until they needed to, they refused to smile even when they wanted to. Just by their sight, we knew they weren’t one of us. They were different, they were ancient. They were magical in their ways as when they spoke, the skies opened up to bring forth its fury as a whole. They were magical in their ways as when they walked, the grounds withered so nothing would be reborn. They were merely five when they came, and then they started to knock on our doors. Now they are more, and we call them, the Witches of Lagra’s ruins. For whichever home they knocked upon was left with nothing but a ruin of its former self.

I noticed as the days went by my father’s joy faded slowly. I saw as the days went by my mother’s smile felt a little more subtle. Each day we wondered if the next knock would be on our doors, for our neighbour was the last one to go. Bewitching the women of the houses, the magical beings took no joy or sorrow upon the ones leftover. As the days passed one by one, the sight of silent black coats became frequent to our eyes. And one day I heard my mother ask in curiosity, “What is it that they offer that the women of our town find so comforting? What is it that makes taking the black so satisfying? What is the magic they teach us so gracefully?”

I still remember the look of horror on my father’s face as the woman of his dreams began to wonder about a life of her own. Could you blame him? I certainly could not… For I remember the day when they came to knock on our doors.

“Joyce, don’t open the door,” my father moaned in soft disbelief. Almost as if he knew the future before it was to happen.

Yet my mother disobeyed. Outside the wooden handle of our home stood two women dressed in black, their hair disheveled from their roots, and their eyes, a bottomless pit of black. They spoke words in a language not known to man, but as the woman she is, my mother understood every word of it.

“Joyce, think about Henry!” my father cried in despair, still unmoved from the table, still holding his head in disbelief.

“Mom,” I called, but both requests fell upon deaf ears. “Mom, don’t leave us!” I cried so loud that the witches in black took notice. And they whispered something else into my mother’s ears, for she looked back at me for one last time. Her eyes were black, and nothing more. It was the day my mother took the black, for our family was also ruined by the Witches of Lagra.

For a hundred sleepless nights the homes of Lagra waited in despair. For a hundred more they prayed in the white comfort of our church. On the next day, we stopped for a savior who had come to cleanse the lands that were once happy and our own.

“They say our lands are cursed by the demon god, Beira,” said our village elder. “They say it was Bewitched in the past by his very own entities too,” he said. “They say the magical beings will return again when we are long gone, for the curse of Lagra is meant to last a thousand years from its dawn,”

“Will God not save us?” I asked. “No,” the gasps of broken homes cried all together, “But one will come to save us from this curse,” he said.

“Who is it?” “The Assassin clothed in black himself,” the village elder hushed, “When he comes wandering in his black-maned horse, we must stay in our homes waiting for him to cleanse our town. When he comes riding the night in his dark-cloaked bodice, we must pray for his soul for it will take all the corrupt lives we lived as one. When he comes to hunt the Witches one by one, we must pray that our women be not the ones that suffer from his undying rage. For the Assassin knows no soul as he has sacrificed his very own,”

“It is nothing but another false lore like God himself,” my father said when I asked him about it. “Like God who made us believe in his lies, the Assassin makes us believe in his power,” he added. “Those who preach upon the weak are no better than the Witches themselves. But I will agree one thing, if there is an Assassin or a God, he must have sacrificed his soul without a doubt, as the weak believe their acts of blasphemy to be a source of comfort,”

Those were the words he spoke to me as my father, the Reverend put forth an orange blaze to the church he once called his own. “There is no God in this world son,” he told with brown tears running through his cheeks. “No God would allow families to be torn apart like this. Nor would he allow us to suffer from the hand of these Witches,” he added. “To have faith is one’s duty, and to keep it is God’s duty. He has failed me, like he had all the others in Lagra,” my father, no more the Reverend, told as he tossed the white coats he owned into the burning embers of our once joyous church.

As much as my father despised the lores of the village elder, the leftovers of our clan always found solace in them. That there was someone handing out justice, that there was some being avenging for our losses, that there was some ungodly thing that is the living embodiment of our unholy wrath. It was no longer a lore for us, as we saw the black women laying on their chests one day after the other. As if they were struck by some inhuman retribution. And they piled up… One by one, the Assassin was ridding our town of its morbid curse. One by one, he was taking revenge for our broken homes. In the night, we could hear the crushing neighs of his wild horse, and the roaring gallops of his darkened fury. In the nights when all our doors are shut into a solemn prayer, the Assassin wakes up to fulfill the duty God so blasphemously rejected. With each neigh of his horse, we knew one more witch had been struck down. With a prayer that the fallen ones are not ours but the witches that travelled from afar, we closed our eyes. With desperate hope that once they were cleansed, our families will be whole again, we held back our tears, for dark blood will take its place. With abhorrent smiles, we rejoiced that the witches would never return again, for the Assassin was our saviour, our God.

“There is no god in this world, son,” my father repeated again this night. “Gods are meant to protect this world,”

“But the Assassin is protecting us, father,” I replied.

“That is not protection, my son. It is but a sad and selfish act of revenge. To take one’s life in holy wrath is not God’s duty. It is the devil that the Assassin has made a deal with,” my father told as he completed the porridge which tasted blander every night.

“But…”

“Do not go outside as usual,” he commanded and showed himself out. I stood by the doors to watch his once straight back walk away in regret. “Do not open the door, unless it’s me,” he said, to which I nodded. “I must go now,”

I watched him stroke the royal mane of his jet-black horse as he clothed himself in the warrior’s cloak. He looked back at me one last time, without the smile he once so preciously wore. The man cloaked in black, the man riding into the night, the man who carried our wrath. Slinging his unholy weapons into the black saddle of the mare, he whipped the string to unleash a deafening neigh. And he rode out into the eclipsed night, my father, The Assassin of Bewitched Lands.

By Arun J