Work Text:
“There’s a witch in the woods.” Alderman What’s-it curled his fingers protectively around his chain of office, as if worried that the dread beast in question would spring from behind the drapes and snatch it. “We’d all rather there weren’t."
Geralt, leaning casually against a bookcase, considered the sorceresses in his acquaintance. Theirs was an indoor species, with a special fondness for baths and impractical slippers.
“She’ll leave once she gets tired. Or when her shoes get dirty,” he said mildly.
“You’re mocking me, master witcher.” The alderman sounded wounded.
A better man—one without a secret weakness for stupid contracts—would turn on his heel, prowl out of this office, and hop onto his horse. Geralt, currently horseless and in need of funds, prepared himself for a wild goose chase. The wind promised a spring day unfurling mildly into a pleasant evening. Why not spend it humouring the gullible for money?
“Fine,” he said. “What problems is your witch causing?”
The alderman’s expression brightened.
“She steals livestock. And husbands. Well. The baker’s husband, anyway. Ivan, maybe?”
Geralt tried to hide his smile by biting his tongue very hard. With any luck, he’d find Ivan in the next village, shacked up with a pretty herbalist.
“Your insights are appreciated,” he said. “I’ll return soon.”
It was time to chat with witnesses. He could always use a few tall tales for Kaer Morhen’s informal and well-loved Worst Monster Descriptions Heard on the Path contest.
The alderman saw him off with a slightly sweaty wave.
“The witch taught me a bad word.”
Geralt looked at the little girl beside him. She met his gaze imperiously, clearly untroubled by this tall interloper in her town. Someone had bundled her up for all possible weather before letting her out to play; she was more knobbly scarf than child.
“Did she now?”
“Mmhm. She said I should—” she scrunched her brow, reminding Geralt of a much-younger Eskel about to recite some hand-me-down wisdom “—apply it liberally to the nuisances in my life.”
“Sounds useful,” he agreed.
“Wanna hear it?” She moved her little hand in a cupping motion until he ducked down, his ear by her mouth. “Motherfucker,” she whisper-yelled, her eyes bright.
Geralt straightened, the corner of his mouth curving up. “The witch doesn’t sound so bad.”
“I like her,” she agreed. Then, her face fell. “Are you going to hurt her?”
Geralt could guess exactly what the girl would call him if he answered in the affirmative.
“No,” he promised and found himself meaning it. “We’ll talk. Nothing more.”
Satisfied with his answer, she gave him a nod, then scurried down the packed-earth road to greet some ducklings.
The baker’s name was Carina and she addressed Geralt through a cloud of flour. The air had gone liquid with heat from the clay oven behind her. Her square-palmed hands worked the dough in front of her relentlessly.
Tide and time and the afternoon orders waited for no witcher, apparently. He’d keep it quick.
“My condolences about your husband,” Geralt said carefully. You never could tell how much love, or how little, was buried with a spouse. Metaphorically, in this case.
“None of that. He was no great catch,” she said firmly.
Ah. All right, then. He could be direct.
“Is there any truth to what the alderman said? That someone led him away?”
“The witch in the woods, you mean?” Carina smiled, but it lent her face no softness. “Witcher, my husband wandered off in the dead of night. I thought he went out for a piss and I’d gone to bed angry enough not to care that he forgot his boots. The next morning, his footprints led to the treeline and no further.”
She finally met his eyes and didn’t flinch. “You can blame the witch, if you’d like. If she has him, I hope she doesn’t have to keep him.”
Any witcher worth his swords stopped to chat with grandmothers at the market. They knew everyone’s business, for starters.
Geralt’s conversation-partner was making him reconsider this principle.
“You think there’s a witch in the woods? Agnieszka, come here. This nice young man thinks we have a witch in the woods,” the woman said. She wore a rose-patterned kerchief and a disappointed look she probably reserved for undeserving suitors courting her favourite granddaughters.
“And how did you decide on that?” her friend—Agnieszka, no doubt—chimed in.
“Your alderman claims that she takes livestock?” Geralt offered weakly.
“Mhm. That wouldn’t be hawks or foxes or wolves. No, no. Here—” the first woman gestured at the meagre town square, the ramshackle houses, the grey-brown fields beyond “—of all places, we have witches.”
“You don’t believe in her, then?”
The ladies looked at one another, silently condemning the follies of youth.
“If you must run around in that forest, young man, take care to bring sensible shoes with you.”
“Pack some food,” Agnieszka added. “And come back once you’re bored.”
The forest closed over Geralt like a wave.
At the treeline, the sunlight had shimmered gold and blue. Beneath the pines, it cooled and dimmed into a breathing darkness. Here and there, fragile paths cut through moss and curling ferns and detritus, stomped into being by people who feared getting lost.
He went straight in. If anyone resided in these woods, she probably wouldn’t choose to live in a meadow frequented by mushroom-pickers.
An hour of walking, then two, and the loneliness hit him like a closed fist to the skull. Oh, he wasn’t truly abandoned here—the silvery trill of birdsong and the racing thrum of animal hearts followed him—but a darkness opened up in his thoughts nonetheless. A surety that his life would continue like this and end no differently. It was as familiar as it was engulfing.
Times like this, he’d speak to Roach.
Without a Roach around, he found himself imagining a conversation during the coming winter. Eskel’d sit at the dining table across from him, an invited guest. Lambert—loud, three seconds on the Path and already smart-mouthing his elders—would appear too, as he inevitably did.
“I took the weirdest contract,” he’d tell them. “Town menaced by a witch in the woods. I thought it was bullshit. But the things people said—”
He’d swallow down some White Gull to loosen his tongue and excuse exaggeration, and then he’d get into it.
“First, I met a girl who said the witch taught her how to swear.”
Lambert’s pointed face would contort with laughter. Geralt could see it perfectly. “Oh, I’m borrowing that, next time some brat’s parents give me shit for cussing in the vicinity of their precious darling. It wasn’t me, ladies and gentlemen. Your kid’s using “fuck” as punctuation because of some magic strumpet who lives in a tree.”
He’d do it too. No reprimands could stop Lambert.
“Then I met a woman whose husband went missing. Thing is, she didn’t sound like she cared for him much. And, who knows, there probably wasn’t much to care for.”
“Do we think she did away with him?” Eskel would say. He’d always had a good eye for people and a tendency to pin down motives correctly.
“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Geralt liked Carina well enough. Didn’t fault her, even. But, between regular murder and storybook monsters, the former was always the better explanation.
“And then some grandmothers made fun of me for believing in witches,” he’d add.
“As you so richly deserve.” The Lambert his imagination summoned was no less irritating than the original. “I mean, not the witches part. Those exist. But the mockery? I endorse it.”
Geralt smiled to himself, feeling a little better.
As he’d entertained himself with fantasies, true silence had fallen. The birdsong hushed. The animal noises drew back to a shivering whisper in the far distance. A conversation—real and coming from somewhere outside his own thoughts, Geralt was sure of it—twined its way through the stillness. Clear enough, but distant, as if encouraging him to chase after it.
“Wolf’s taking his time this year,” Eskel’s voice said. He’d recognize the cadence and tone anywhere, woven as it was into the fabric of his childhood. “The pass is getting worse every day.”
“‘s what happens when you wear stupid tight pants. Hard to make it up a mountain in those.” And that was Lambert’s amused, slightly nasal drawl, replicated perfectly.
“You don’t know. Could’ve been a bad year. Tight pants budget all depleted.”
Geralt paused.
He expected to feel a bolt of fear, a hint of something icy crawling down his spine on spider-legs, but all he could muster was curiousity. A little amusement too. Whoever lived in these woods, she wanted to play with him a bit.
Given that the usual subject of his contracts tried to take a bite out of him and then steal his kidneys, he couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed.
“Miss?” he said softly, unsure what honorifics applied in this situation. “Are you trying to lead me off my chosen path with the voices of people I know?”
A pause. That true silence again. Then, a woman spoke.
“Maybe.”
“But my brothers are mocking me. I probably wouldn’t want to find them and give them more material.”
“I work with what I’m given,” she replied crisply. “Not my fault your brothers are like that.”
“I’ll keep on heading where I’m heading, then.”
“If you must,” the woman said, sounding a little resentful.
Geralt, feeling like he’d passed a test, took a proud step forward. Perhaps his expression had turned a bit smug, because a branch flew sharply into his face. He’d snapped it incautiously as he moved. Maybe.
The woman laughed. He’d expected a sound like the wind in the aspen, ambiguous and sighing, but it was bright and bold and undeniable.
He liked it, Geralt decided.
As much as anyone could like disembodied laughter in the woods.
Geralt fell asleep in a perfectly ordinary meadow. Bordered by trees. Wildflowers just beginning to open, their budding sweetness lingering in the air. Roots and rocks where he least expected them, so he couldn’t quite get comfortable in his bedroll.
When he woke up, he found the clearing overgrown with berries, gleaming like drops of blood where the rising sun hit them.
He slouched over to the nearest bush and sat down in front of it.
“These’ll kill you if you’re not careful,” he announced to thin air, gently squeezing a berry between his fingers. Witchers learned about ordinary herblore before moving on to true potions making. No knowledge is wasted, his instructors liked to say, and that was fair enough. Here he lounged, no doubt impressing a lady with his berry recognition skills.
“No. How very silly of me to plant them,” she said, right on cue. Her voice came from somewhere over his left shoulder. He whipped his head around and saw nothing at all.
“Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture.” He plucked a handful of them and popped the whole thing directly into his mouth. They burst, tart and harmless, against his teeth. “They have a little kick. Might make them into a tea or something. Would you like some?”
“I already ate.”
“Shame.”
Geralt found that he meant it. Having a companion for breakfast wouldn’t be the worst thing.
It struck him, as he put away his bedroll and chased down a stray dagger in the grass, that the woman in the woods wielded significant power. If she wanted him gone, she could have ended him in a thousand ways already, or at least led him out of the forest. Instead, she chose methods out of children’s stories and teased him as he evaded them.
Perhaps she’d gotten tired of solitude too.
“My name’s Geralt,” he said tentatively.
He didn’t get an answer, but he hadn’t really been expecting one.
The weather soured as Geralt walked on.
First, angry clouds choked the sunlight, creating the illusion of dusk at high noon. A miserable drizzle ran its chilly fingers down his neck and weighed down his cloak. Fog rolled in, clinging to the lowest branches of the trees and transforming them into ghastly blurs.
If this was a deterrent the woman had conjured, it was her best one yet. Geralt’s sense of smell couldn’t do much against the rising damp. He’d long since forgotten what turns he’d taken. This far into the woods, no trodden paths remained for him to follow.
He shoes squelched. His socks squelched.
Resigned, he sat down on a jutting root.
“I know you want me out of here,” he said.
The rain let up a little, as if someone cared to hear more from him.
“But I can’t do that if I’m lost.”
An open-ended, curious silence greeted him.
Right. She liked games more than actually scaring him or harming him. “Would you like me to drop breadcrumbs on the trail?” Geralt tried.
“That wouldn’t work,” the now-familiar voice said firmly. “The birds would just eat them.”
“Would you have some enchanted string I could borrow?”
“You’re thinking of a labyrinth,” she said. “And you’ll note that we aren’t in one.”
Geralt considered all the stories he knew. A childhood memory floated up obediently: Vesemir reading tales by the fire in the youngest adepts’ drafty dormitory. In one of the good ones, the brave hero had gotten ensnared in a wicked spell which cursed him to wander alone. He’d reversed it by putting on his shirt inside out.
“And why should you never do that in practice?” Vesemir had said, glaring sternly at them over the top of the tome.
“Hypothermia,” Eskel had said dutifully.
“It’s a distraction,” Jurek had added.
“A bear’ll eat you while your shirt’s tangled up around your ears,” Geralt had offered under his breath, earning himself a reproachful glance
He brought himself back to the present and sighed deeply. It wasn't as though he had other ideas to try.
“I could turn my shirt inside out? Reverse your spell?” he said into the gloom.
“Hm,” the woman said, considering. “I wouldn’t hate that.”
Geralt grinned at the little flare of warmth in her voice. If this was her flirting, it wasn’t the worst approach he’d ever seen. He started stripping off his armour.
Once he’d turned his shirt inside out and bundled himself back into his cloak, anemic light began peeking through the clouds.
Before he could feel terribly clever, or even begin to dry off, his foot plunged through an abandoned burrow, the ground made treacherous by the sudden rain. As he lost his balance and dignity, his right ankle gave way. He fell hard, his head colliding with something unyielding.
Gods damn it, ow. That’d be his last coherent thought for a while, Geralt decided.
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, witcher,” the woman said tiredly, just as the darkness closed in.
Geralt opened his eyes. Beneath his fingers, a quilt bloomed lilac. He shifted his hand and the colours moved with it, fading to the silvery-lavender underbelly of clouds and then deepening to the shade of a day-old bruise.
His medallion remained still on his chest. His right ankle throbbed hard. Someone had rubbed a bitter, medicinal salve onto the place where he’d hit his head. When he raised his hand to touch it, it came away glossed with a sticky film.
Geralt sat up with stunning clumsiness. If he’d moved like that as an adept, someone would have dropped him off at a neighbouring village to apprentice with a shepherd.
Thankfully, he had no audience.
“Look at that.” He could recognize that voice in his sleep, at this point. “You’re awake after all.”
So much for the lack of audience, then.
A woman stood near the fireplace, her skin painted gold by the burning cedar behind her. Geralt let his eyes linger on the riotous dark of her curls, spiralling free from her messy braid. Her feet were bare, her shift made of linen and hemmed by intricate black embroidery.
“Thanks to you,” he said, surprised by how chapped his voice sounded.
“It’s my forest.” She shrugged. “Nobody dies here without my permission.”
“Don’t think I’d have died.”
“Nobody sprawls on the leaves with blood oozing dramatically from his wound, then.”He grinned at the stubborn curve of her lips. Whatever she was—and she certainly wasn’t a lovely but ordinary woman, alone in her adorable cottage, or a witch of the woods— she liked being right.
She stepped closer to him. He tracked her fine-boned hands as she lifted a cup of water from the bedside table. They curved becomingly around it, the palms graceful and vulnerable.
“Drink. Or your head will hurt worse than a hangover tomorrow.”
“Really hard for us to get those.”
“Spilling those witcher secrets, I see.”
She sat down at the edge of his bed, with the air of someone who wouldn’t move away until he obeyed her.
Geralt accepted the cup, then hesitated. “Will I have to stay with you? If I drink this?” In this room, with the heavy sweetness of her perfume in his nose, a binding enchantment didn’t seem so bad.
She laughed, that gold-bright sound again. “Absolutely not. I’m not running a sanctuary for men with poor navigational skills out of my kitchen.”
He gulped the water down. It was colder and sharper than it had any right to be.
“Can I help with dinner?” he said when he finished. Something simmered in the other room. He could smell herbs and the lingering impression of blood on a cutting board.
The woman looked him up and down skeptically. “How about this? You try to stand and, if you manage, we’ll negotiate.”
He could not stand well, as it turned out. By the time he’d stumbled over to the fireplace, which he’d only chosen to do because he could grab the mantle for balance, she’d returned, bowls in her arms.
When they’d both settled by the hearth, Geralt accepted his dinner with a wary sniff. The animal smell of rabbit hit his nose, and thyme and flour and salt. Over that, he swore the summer-lightning fizz of magic lingered.
“Is it enchanted?”
She nodded shamelessly.
“You best hope so, witcher. I’m a shitty cook.”
Geralt found himself smiling again. It was becoming a habit around her.
Once true night had fallen, she gestured back at her purple-draped bed.
“Climb in,” she said, with a tone that invited no questions.
“What about you?”
“I’m not in the habit of giving up my bed for houseguests. I will also be getting in.”
Sure enough, she joined him. Her nightdress revealed the tops of her bony knees and the skinny jut of her shoulders. Geralt watched with a twelve-year-old’s hungry fascination, caught himself staring, and rolled over fast to face the wall.
Perhaps she laughed at that, but he didn’t catch it amidst the commotion she caused while settling in beside him.
She pressed close, the point of her chin digging into his shoulder, and he couldn’t bring himself to mind even a little. The warm topography of her body against his back soothed him utterly.
It took Geralt several long minutes to catch the only real sound in the room, besides the crackle of the dying fire: his pulse, and his alone.
Vesemir would encourage him to jump out of bed immediately. Geralt, who had never been a star pupil or particularly good with authority, considered that piece of advice and discarded it.
“What should I call you?” he said instead, finding her hand in the dark and rubbing his thumb over the sharp ridge of her knuckles. She did not pull away.
“Yennefer.”
“Goodnight, Yennefer.”
Geralt awoke to an empty bed and daylight dripping through the windows to pool sluggishly on the sheets beside him. Somewhere outside, a woman hummed tunelessly.
He rose and found a change of clothing among his gear. It’d been left in a courteous heap by the far wall of the bedroom, alongside his swords. He let himself wonder how Yennefer had managed to move all of that—and him—before tucking the thought away. If a lady wanted to lift heavy objects and the occasional witcher in a forest that belonged to her, that was her business.
When he stepped out into the garden, he found Yennefer squatting ungracefully beside a bed of herbs. Dark chickens pecked around her ankles. A truly menacing, night-black goat eyed him like an archer sighting an enemy.
“The women in the marketplace were wrong. You do take livestock,” he said lightly.
Yennefer looked up. The rising sun made her squint those eerie, violet eyes.
“Mhm. But only sometimes.”
“When they suit your spooky tastes?” Geralt sat down beside her and tried to lure the chickens closer with soft clucking sounds. Three bobbed away; he was beneath their dignity. A fourth hen came closer and he gently petted her iridescent feathers.
“Perhaps,” she said. “You asked the townspeople about me?”
“Those who believe in you like you.”
Yennefer snorted. “Truly, I’ve climbed to the pinnacle of society. Popular amongst—what, snot-nosed children?”
“And women with terrible husbands.”
Yennefer met his gaze directly. Utterly unabashed. “Ah, dear Ivan. He deserved his fate.”
Geralt spread his hands. “I don’t doubt it.”
She softened and patted the soil beneath her hands. “Don’t just sit there like a lump. Come and help me.”
He shuffled closer on his knees and imitated her movements, plucking the frilly leaves of an unfamiliar herb
“How are you feeling?” The question sounded disused. Perhaps her life was as lonesome as he’d imagined. Maybe her friends were all like her—something a little less and more than human—and she’d never had reason to inquire. Asking felt too much like prying.
“Better. I’m grateful,” he said.
“Good. What will you say when you return to town?”
“I found nothing at all in these woods. I wandered for days. My blisters have blisters. And not a single witch was encountered.” He dumped a handful of leaves into her basket and gave her his best woebegone expression.
Yennefer giggled.
“True enough.” Then, a wary line appeared between her brows. “Will they accept your answer, do you think?”
“Here’s hoping. They may underpay me.”
“Unfortunate.”
Ringed by flowers a bit too bright to be in season, with the full weight of Yennefer’s attention on him, Geralt found it a fair bargain to strike. He happily helped her to lay out the herbs they’d picked on a towel in the sun and brought them indoors once they’d curled and dried.
He had to leave.
So Geralt told himself as he slid into bed beside Yennefer on that second night, and she pressed her chilly little toes against his shins, brazenly stealing warmth. Her curls went everywhere, tickling his ears and creeping into his nose. He didn’t consider moving away from her for even a moment.
“You’re thinking very loudly, witcher,” she grumped and left the candle burning. When morning came, it hadn’t flickered out.
The Path waited for him, he reminded himself as Yennefer showed him the river that ran clear just a quick walk from her home. If they followed it down far enough, the water slowed from a white thrash to a lazy glide. He put the idea of departure from his mind when she disturbed the placid surface with her toes and then leapt in, linen dress clinging to the clean lines of her body.
This is where she drowns me, he thought, half-serious, as he stepped in after her and felt cold little fingers splay on his arms. But she only tugged him in a little deeper and splashed him hard.
“You needed the bath,” she said, unrepentant, as he blinked wet hair out of his eyes.
I’ll leave tomorrow.
It started as a weak promise and became emptier with every facet of Yennefer he observed. Her cheeks flushed with berry wine. Her arguing solemnly with a chicken. The way she could vanish like mist into the trees, and the stone on his heart until she returned.
He didn’t leave tomorrow.
Geralt had been putting on more and more of his gear these days, reacquainting himself with its weight.
“Does time move differently here, by any chance?” he hazarded.
Yennefer sat beside him on the riverbank. If the question was truly a stupid one, she could ignore it and he could pretend that it’d been swallowed by the rush of water.
She snorted. “Do you think I’ve trapped you here while a hundred human years have passed by without you?”
“I wouldn’t hate it if you had,” he said mildly.
“No.” Then, blunt as ever, she added, “You’ve been here a week and a bit. Might be wise to make your way back and collect on that contract.”
She wasn’t wrong. And she probably didn’t want a permanent guest. The next best thing Geralt could do, after being her shadow, was memorize as much of her as he could before he left.
He turned his imprudent questions over on his tongue.
What are you? He discarded that immediately. Yennefer was a person, if not entirely human.
Who are you? seemed terribly forward. Most likely, she’d just wrinkle her nose at him and tell him that she had no interest in becoming a bestiary description, slotted somewhere between alghouls and nekkers.
“How did you come to live here?” he said at last.
Yennefer met his gaze unflinchingly.
“How do you think?”
This was how he’d ruin everything, Geralt decided. He’d answer incorrectly, offend a forest spirit who was rapidly climbing the list of his favourite people, and she’d turn him into a mushroom for his trouble.
“Your face,” Yennefer giggled. She stretched sinuously, casually, then said, “I suppose I’m not very different from you. I was a girl. Human as you please. And then I went to the forest in winter.”
She paused, letting him sit with the weight of the statement.
And Geralt could see it clearly, as if he were looking into her memories: a hard year, a cold year. Too many mouths to feed. The eldest sister, braving the snows to find something for the little ones. Or an unwanted daughter, deciding that she would no longer be a burden. Or—his chest burned at the thought.
Beside him, Yennefer eyed the water impassively.
“This is not such a terrible thing to become,” she said.
He looked at her. The sharp, stubborn triangle of her face. Those capable hands and the delicate symmetry of her wrists. The play of the forest’s shadows on her brown skin and the way it made her eyes glow. The path behind them, leading to the little house in its garland of wildflowers.
Yes. She hadn’t become a terrible thing in the least.
“Would you like to see something, witcher?”
Yennefer’s voice turned gentle. Here was that rustle of aspen leaves, the fragility of her palms, a secret revealed. He could only nod.
She stood. A dart of light pierced the pines and the young woman in her linen shift changed. Now she was bare and beautiful and deathless. When he looked at her, he sensed the dark watchfulness of old trees, the pitiless bite of snow, the mad rush of the hunt. There were violets knotted in her hair.
He couldn’t breathe. He wanted to take her hand in his.
The moment passed. The light changed. Yennefer turned in a slow circle and he could see the cow’s tail now.
“This is one form of many,” she said casually. “Maybe my most pleasing.”
Geralt almost asked to see the ones she didn’t like so much. He wanted to know every part of her. He wished he could cup the memories he had of himself as a child—red-haired, brown-eyed—into her hands like water.
Perhaps she’d heard his thoughts. He suspected she could do that. When she stepped closer, raised herself on tiptoe, and kissed him, her mouth tart as gooseberries, he saw a girl in a threadbare dress with uneven shoulders, and a shadow, and an impossible beauty, her back hollow as an old tree trunk.
“Could I come and visit you?” he said when she stepped back, her fingers resting on his cheek. Her lips on his had made him reckless. He didn’t mean to sound as though he’d been running hard.
“Would you like that?”
“Very much.”
“I might have new tests for you.”
Geralt shrugged. “Wouldn’t mind those.”
“Then you’re welcome to try.”
“Before winter, maybe?”
“Maybe,” she said. And that was Yennefer for yes.
She sat back down by the water in her favourite form and he joined her. Soon enough, she edged closer and dug her chin into its proper place on his shoulder.