Samir is perusing the tomatoes at the bustling market, as he usually does on Sunday mornings, when a grip on his arm yanks him around.

A guard is what he expects to see, accosting him with false accusations of theft. But the man, with his unrelenting grasp, is not a guard. Dressed similarly to a vagrant, nothing of this man speaks of status or power.

A robbery is his next thought. But the man doesn’t pat him down for his valuables nor does he hold Samir at knifepoint and make audacious demands.

Instead, the vagrant is frenzied as he insists, “You-you’re the witch, you saw my wife a fortnight ago, it was you!”

The man does seem vaguely familiar, although Samir does not remember him looking so dishevelled. However, to be fair, most of Samir’s attention that night had been directed toward the man’s wife, Claretta he remembers now.

The man in front of him must be-

“Nile?”

“Yes! Have you already forgotten?” Nile snarls, “Is this what you do? Offer your help to unsuspecting folk, just to make their lives worse?”

Claretta, from his memory, had gotten ill with a cold that had settled into her lungs, making each breath more laborious than the last. Nile had gone to many a healers, only for the cough to persist, then gradually worsen. Samir had heard of their need and offered his aide in the form of multiple tonics, to be taken for the course of half a fortnight.

He hasn’t heard from them since, until now.

“What happened, Nile? How is Claretta?”

“How is Claretta? How is Claretta?!” Nile’s grip feels as though it could crush Samir’s bones as he shakes his fist, and Samir with it. His attempts to free himself are helpless. “You dare to ask me how she is? When you’re the one who did this to her?”

His eyes are bulging, face ruddy and the vein in his neck pulsing. Spittle flies from his mouth with every word but Samir still struggles to understand. “What do you mean? Did the tonics not work?”

Incandescent in his rage, Nile doesn’t hear him, “Claretta is dead! You killed her, you killed her! She was better, after the first tonic but by the fourth, she was frail and weak! She couldn’t eat or drink and all the healers said it was the tonic you gave us! You told us to come find you but nobody knew where you were, you disappeared!”

Nile’s yells break into keens of mourning, sobs weakening his knees as he falls into the dirt, “How could you? How could you?“

His grip slackens until he is left holding on to Samir’s pant leg, his trembling form hunched into himself.

Samir’s knees buckle, crumbling down next to Nile, his arms automatically wrapping around the physical form of grief and misery itself.

With Nile lost in his anguish, Samir hopes he doesn’t notice how Samir’s body wracks with a cold sweat, sickening dread sinking his heart below his navel. He hides the trembling of his hands in the fisted grip of Nile’s shirt, unseeing eyes staring over Nile’s shivering shoulder.

Where has he been, in the interim between meeting Nile and Claretta, offering them tonics and bidding his goodbyes to now, standing at the market, inspecting the tomatoes?

Where has he been?

The blanks in his memory sends a shiver down his spine. He tries to create a narrative that seems probable, from the couple’s house, he walked back home and then, and then, and then…

Where has he been, for a fortnight?

Unbidden, a misty memory draws forth. His grandmother’s knee warm and bony from where young Samir had pressed his cheek against it. Her wrinkled and knobby hand smoothing down his curls, her storytelling slow and hypnotizing as he gazed at the flickering embers of the fire in front of them.

“A witch is often confused for many things, Samir. Some good, some bad. What people don’t understand is that magic is a frivolous creature. We don’t control it nor do we create it. We have a relationship with it but even then, this does not grant us an ounce of power. How magic is used is dependent on not only the witch but the inherent intentions behind it. No magic is good or bad, you hear me Samir? Don’t let these people tell you otherwise, or else you’ll get caught up in something much more dangerous than witchcraft.”

Mouth dry and with numb lips, Samir attempts to call forth the healing warmth of his magic but all that responds is a flicker, dark and vicious.

Samir looks skyward for something, anything, beseeching as he wonders,

What have I done?

What have I done?