Chapter 2

It was then that Gruber overreacted, as he often did. His anger was burning like dragons fire and he needed relieve.

So he ordered all citizen to refuse providing food for the witch.

Esmeralda was rake thin and had no stores of food. She knew that she was indispensable for the town people, she had formed kind of a arrogant attitude due to this. But now she was in deep trouble, she knew.

She asked many villagers, especially the ones she personally knew and considered friends, but they were terrified to help her. Many of them worked in the factories of Gruber and he had made it totally clear in a company memo, that anybody aiding her would get fired on the spot (along with anybody from his family working there too).

It was not known why Gruber was so upset with the witch, but nobody dared to ask.

Winter was coming fast and the only thing she could try was go hunt in the large forests around her house. The trees were dense and forest formed dark areas where it looked like a black hole, where nothing could escape. It was rumored that unnatural things happened in the forest and that people came back changed, afflicted from an illness or condition that made them unrecognizable and made them stay home, till they were never heard of again, except by the local grave digger.

It was also rumored that Esmeralda had a special “arrangement” with the forest, that she could roam it, but only at day and only when it was warm.

So she went out nevertheless, wielding her old shot gun, trying to catch game.

But to her dismay, she soon found her efforts futile:

It stank of bear pretty much everywhere. She did not know how, but it looked like Gruber had shot special arrows with the glands of bears, probably caught elsewhere and spread bear scent everywhere so that all animals fled in terror.

The forest was deserted and nothing to eat was to be found.

She hadn’t eaten for a day and as the frail old woman she was, she knew that this would not go well.

Yes, she was old, but she was also powerful. As her body had deteriorated, she had honed and sharpened her mind.

She was furious how Gruber could do this to her, after she had helped his daughter get well. The man just needed a lesson.

She first thought that she should conjure up a ailing sickness that should strike him down and make him suffer and dwindle into an old weak man.

But then she thought of something else. Instead of destroying the man, better shatter his life, like a precious vase smashing into a thousand pieces and let him watch, unable to mend it.

And one thing that Esmeralda had always had was an imagination of the most devious kind.

She did have one thing in common: Nobody loved her. All the power and respect she got was from people fearing her.