The Witch's Trinity by Erika Mailman Page A

There was certainly more than enough fuel to keep it going into the small hours of the morning. But I did not want Künne’s fire to go on so long, couldn’t bear the thought of her ashes drifting in the wind unheeded, after people lost interest and went home. I would tend this fire until every ember gave up.
     

     
    She did not stand upright for long. The rope burned, releasing from the stake, and her body slumped onto the pile of wood. This brought more jeers. As she landed, her arm stretched out toward me, and I watched the flesh and muscle jerk in the flames, but by the time I saw the whiteness of the bone appear, no one stood with me. Künne was no longer distinguishable in this burning mass; except for the smell, this spectacle was now the same as any hunter’s fire. Since there was no woman to hate within the flames, everyone had made their way home. Even the friar had considered the duty rendered and was probably back studying his book to prepare for his next journey. I hoped he would soon leave our village. It was a desperate and terrible thing to kill Künne, but perhaps everyone felt it had cleared our curse. I knew, though, that my sweet friend had had nothing to do with the fields lying barren.
    I waited through all the sounds of the evening coming on while the fire yet burned. The owls took their turns over the light that surprised them, and the wolves howled far away. Darkness fell and I crept closer to the fire for warmth. I would not abandon her bones here, where the wolves could find them and drag them into the forest. Snow fell, a light, flaky snow that I brushed from my shoulders without leaving any true wetness. It wasn’t until the blaze was the size of a small kitchen fire that I felt Jost’s arms around me. “You must come home, Mutter,” he said. “You can be of no help to her now.”
    “I won’t leave her bones,” I protested.
    “You must,” he said. “How will it seem for you to bring them with you? The friar is a hard man, and he already wonders about you and me.”
    “I will wrap them in my cloak and tend them in the night. In the morning, you will help me bury her as she should be buried, next to her husband.”
    “You know as I do, Mutter, she can never be buried in holy ground.”
    “Then I shall bury her in her cottage yard,” I said. “With a cross above.”
    “The villagers would think that blasphemy, to be burned for a witch and then buried under a cross,” said Jost.
    “What do you think they mean to do with her bones, then?” I cried.
    He was silent a long time. “A hole,” he said finally. “A simple pit in the ground.”
    “With no spot marked for God to find her? Jost, we will bury her ourselves, deep in the woods where they won’t see the cross.”
    “We can’t, Mutter. It is too dangerous. Künne would not want us to do that. We must leave her bones here, for them to do with as they wish.”
    “But if the wolves drag them off?”
    “Then the wolves drag them off.”
    He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me, and my nose was filled with the warm, sweaty scent of his body, a relief from the ash-clogged smell of Künne. I inhaled deeply, burying my nose in his woolen cloak.
    “Mutter, remember what Künne told the friar, that you had tried to sway her from the witchcraft ways? She wanted you to be safe. She would not want you to risk your life for the sake of bones she cannot now use.”
    “Will you say a prayer for me?” I asked.
    He let me go and we together stood facing the small fire and its pile of cluttered bones. “Father, we pray that you allow Künne into your kingdom. You have the truth in heaven and we hope that you accept your falsely accused daughter into your merciful, all-knowing hands.”
    “Amen,” I said.
    I walked to the fire to look one last time at what remained of my dearest friend on earth. The fine rigging of her fingers still clenched at the coals, and the longer shards connected them with the rods that I thought were