Celeste froze in place and shook her head. A dull whisper had been tickling her ear all morning, but it was getting louder. Putting her pinky in each ear, she first tried to block the sound and then clean her ear as if she could claw the whispers out of her head.

“Are you okay?” A voice called out. It sounded louder than the whispers, but distant, as if someone were screaming at her from far away. “You look pale…”

Looking up, Celeste met the gaze of a pair of yellow eyes she knew well. “I don’t know, Belladonna, something is wrong,” Celeste admitted.

“Are you ill? I think I have a potion for that…” Belladonna took a leather messenger bag off her broad shoulder and began to rummage through it as the daylight dwindled in the ancient forest. “Invisibility won’t help… oh! This is poison, should put that in a separate pouch…”

“Thanks, Bell, but I don’t think I’m sick… do you hear that?” Gesturing towards her ear, Celeste closed her eyes and the whispers grew louder. She could even make out a few words that were repeated louder than the typical humming.

“Not safe”

“Protect the grove!”

“Listen, help, listen!”

“Hear what?” Belladonna asked, tilting her head to listen, causing her black hair to sway in the breeze. “There is no one out here but us… and the trees, I guess. Are you sure you don’t want a potion? I found one for headaches and parasites.”

“I’m fine… just have a ringing in my ears,” Celeste lied. “Besides, I remember what happened when Helena tried your remedy for allergies.”

“How was I supposed to know she was allergic to walnuts?” Belladonna scoffed. “Walnuts are the only thing that can cure allergies, it doesn’t make sense that a witch would be allergic to them.”

Celeste grinned nodded, happy to have Belladonnas familiar complains to drown out the ringing in her ears. The pair of novice witches pushed their way through the undergrowth and low hanging branches. However, Celeste noticed that beaches that snagged Belladonnas hair and black dress seemed to bend out of her way on their own.

“Stop!” A voice cried in Celeste’s head louder than the others. Then, the humming merged into a louder unified voice. “Stop—turn back—death approaches.”

“Bell, we need to stop,” Celeste hissed as she put a hand to her forehead.

“You really should try this potion for headaches,” belladonna said, but it sounded like a scream to Celeste.

“Get down,” Celeste whispered, pulling belladonna behind a large oak tree. The tree seemed to bend and contort, dropping its beaches low to help hide the wishes from view.

“What’s gotten into you?” Belladonna whimpered, shaking and staring wide-eyed at the tree that was reaching out to her. “How are you doing this?”

“It’s not me,” Celeste whispered. “I can’t do magic yet, remember?”

“Seems magical to me… why are we hiding?”

As soon as the words escaped Belladonna’s mouth, a shadow passed over them. Chills ran down Celeste’s spine as the air grew cold and the stench of rotting flesh filled the air. Both witches held each other and trembled as the warmth of the summer evening was sapped from around them. The voices in Celeste’s head moaned with agony, and she felt death spread across a patch of the forest.

Moments later, it was gone, but the pair huddled under the unnaturally bent tree didn’t move for several minutes. Finally, Celeste stood up and crept around the tree: all of the leaves had fallen from the branches on the opposite side of the tree and a trail of barren land line with dying trees led back the way the witches had come. The voices in the area were muted, as were the physical sounds of the forest, as if nothing could exist in the wake of whatever passed by.

“What was that?” Belladonna squeaked from her place on the ground.

“I don’t know… but it’s headed towards our hut,” Celeste said. She jumped back, realizing the implications of her realization only after she vocalized it. “We need to get back to the hut!”

“No!” Both Belladonna and the voices in Celeste’s head wailed in unison, but Celeste was already running towards her home.

“Stop,” the voices in Celeste’s head begged. “Too late. Death. Gone. Dead.”

The warning only made Celeste pump her legs faster, trying desperately to get back to the only family she had ever known. Minutes later, Celeste collapsed to her knees at the edge of a familiar clearing in the forest. Everything in the clearing was scorched, black and smoking. Nothing was green, moving or alive, and an erie silence filled the clearing. Celeste was too stunned to move.

She wanted to sob, but her body wouldn’t move. Not until the crunching of leaves alerted her to someone behind her, and Celeste whirled around with the hair on the back of her neck standing straight up.

“How… why…” Belladonna muttered as she stumbled into view with tears streaming down her cheeks.

“They… could be alive…” Celeste stammered, dropping her eyes to the ground to avoid Belladonnas face.

“Tabitha!” Belladonna yelled, talking a tentative step into the clearing. “Tabitha, where are you?”

Forcing herself to her feet, Celeste followed somberly. She was thankful for the silence in her head but too worried to think what might have become of her sisters. Belladonna led the pair to the ashes that used to be a sturdy hut with a thatched straw roof. It smelled rancid, like death.

“Helena, Deirdre… Tabitha?” Belladonna called out.

Suddenly, a form rose amid the smoke. Celeste sprung in front of Belladonna and put a her arms out, as if to hold whatever was rising from the ashes back with her bare hands. Her heart pounded as the form dusted itself off and turned to face them, using both hands to straighten its head on its crooked-broken neck.

“Calm yourself, child,” a familiar voice cooed. “I am not going to hurt you.”

“Tabitha?” Celeste replied in disbelief. “Your alive?”

“No, child, I’m not.” A slender older woman who was pretty despite her body being bruised and broken stepped out of the smoke. Her face was clean, but her white hair was covered in dirt and blood. “Cheating death is impossible, but it is possible to send a message from the grave…”

“What happened?” Celeste asked the closest thing she had to a mother.

“Do you remember what I told you about death?”

“You said that it is unavoidable.”

“Not every witch takes heed of those words of wisdom…” Tabitha sighed. “An ancient evil has been loosed into the world.”

“What kind of evil?” Celeste asked, taking a step forward and noticing for the first time that Tabitha was missing an arm.

“A shade: a witch that thought they could use magic to avoid death.”

“That thing was a witch?” Belladonna muttered.

“A powerful one,” Tabitha assured them. “One that tried to make themself immortal, but only managed to keep their body and magic alive. Her soul and anything else that made her human is long dead.”

“How do we kill it?” Celeste asked, clenching her fists as tears welled up in her eyes. She felt hot, as if the smoke and ash were boiling her blood.

“That depends on the magic keeping it alive… some shades are bodies that can’t die of old age but are otherwise susceptible to death… others simply cannot die.”

“So we can do nothing?” Celeste screamed.

“You must find a whispering witch,” Tabitha said in a matter of fact tone.

“A what?”

“A witch who can hear and speak the language of the trees. They are powerful witches who can unlock the secrets of ancient magic—natural magic.”

“But magic is not natural,” Belladonna squeaked.

Turning to face the plump witch, Tabitha corrected her, “Most witches learn to do unnatural magic through careful study of nature and years of practice. Natural magic is whispered to those worthy of using it by the trees themselves.”

“Once we find one, what do they need to do?” Celeste asked.

Tabitha turned back to her, then collapsed. Her body fell into a pile of contorted, broken limbs. The head shriveled and spun back to its twisted resting place. Her eyes remained open, staring lifelessly at the sky. Celeste fell to her knees and wept.

“What happened?” Belladonna shrieked. “Come back!”

“She’s not coming back,” Celeste blabbered between sobs.

Falling to her knees, Belladonna cried next to Celeste in the center of the ring of death and unnatural silence. They stayed there for several minutes. It grew quieter when they ran out of tears to cry.

“We need to go,” Celeste eventually said. She stood up and spun around slowly, unsure of where to head next.

“Where will we go?” Belladonna asked, scrambling to her feet.

Walking, towards the tree line, Celeste heard the whispers return, “The grove. Protect the grove. Come! The grove.”

“We are going to the grove,” Celeste informed Belladonna.

“Where?” The scared witch asked. “Is that where we will find a whispering witch?”

Celeste stopped just past the tree line and put a hand on a nearby tree that was beckoning to her. Immediately, her vision blurred, head snapped backwards and she rose five feet off the ground as if lifted by her nose. Belladonna screamed and backed away.

Meanwhile, Celeste saw a series of pictures: a river roughly a half mile away with a wooden bridge she recognized, a trail carved by the deer in the spring, several large birch trees that stood above the rest of the trees, and a ring of old oak trees at the center of the forest came to her mind. It was like the trees drew a map on the inside of her head.

“The grove is at the center of the forest,” Celeste said to a trembling Belladonna as her body returned to normal. “The trees are leading us there.”

“The trees?” Belladonna repeated.

Celeste stopped and locked eyes with her frightened friend. With conviction, she said, “I am the whispering witch.”