Veronika! The Kanker of Kalkar

 To be unloved by your progeny is to dampen life’s full glow, as she, a performing husk, plied her everyday with the ennui of the misbegotten.

Her two children had simply left her, whole and nothing.

Vanished both.

Her herbs, pastries, pies and salves no longer ushered welfare to her consumers. The flint of her baked concoctions had grown blunt and her heart wasn’t in it, this new dim existence without her kin.

She was broken and obsolete.

Complaints were new to her, harsh unjust  admonishments for the failing of fields crops and distempered stock far and wide. 

 Things went wrong, so many dreadful things and they wanted their money back and more, blaming her for all their ills, past and present, the baying folk of Kalkar that yelled her name in anger as she hid behind her door.

Veronika!

You've hexed us! You will regret it! 

But it is true. A loveless mother may as well remain cursed in bed, a cancer of faith and allow the sinews of anatomy to wain and wither and waste.

In time the baying stilled and in the sad bankruptcy of her inertia a truce of sorts is born. As long as she herself vanishes too, the mob will forget. Forget her and her erroneous magik. Forget she ever was and let her leave this world.

Forget she ever was,

As her beloved children had!

She prays. Beseeches that she wilts and joins her fading shadow in the oblivion of darkness that sits atop her house like a crow. A house of tears, her grief her new religion, weeping without end now that she is simply dead of spirit, eking out her hours towards an abyss of numbness.

And thus she subsisted like an insect for twelve long months, barely human, eating weeds and drinking rain, a wraith in her own days, haunting herself within the graveyard of her regrets.

Without her offspring she was but a worm nosing dead earth.

It was September when the knock on the door rang through the rooms like a foreign tongue. What could that sound incur? What was its purpose?

It came again, two knocks.

Could it be my lost beloveds? Could it?

The old crone's heart sprang back to life.

Two pies.

What's this? A charity from the folk at last? Some mercy for old Veronika?

She bit into them and grimaced. A gritty taste of soot, of cinders.

Two burnt hearts and black boiled eggs inside. 

Ech!

Ravenous pigs and scrawny hens no doubt.

Veronika returned to bed, sick to her stomach, mouthing.

They still blame me for their famine, after all this time!

It was true. Downward spiralled the settlement of Kalkar, it's denizens destitute and starving. The bleakest times had ensued twelve months prior and in their emaciated state, but one name held all blame for their calamity.

Veronika and whomever she had loved.

Veronika! 

It became a byword for their hate.

 Any kindness they once proffered had long dissipated with the ill winds of hunger and thirst ravaging the homes and the countryside. 

The beets and salsifies turned black. The water ran yellow. The maggots got fat and flies became the twitching curtains of despair in those desolate days.

And so not only was Veronika bereft with the teeming void left by her loveless spawn, but also her profound and crushing isolation from her fellows. 

How had it come to this?

Once a beloved mother and respected white witch.

Now a pariah, a stain, an outcast.

And then came the messages tied to dead lambs, crashing through her windows.

Be gone Witch!

Leave us Bitch!

Take Your Leave Sorceress or we will take your Life!

Out! Out! Accursed Vixen!

These missifs of loathing weighed heavily on Veronika, now the merest thin shadow of the once proud women she was.

Gone were the days of holding her children's hands.

Gone were the nods, the greetings and the gratitude of the burgh. 

Gone. Forever.

It was Walpurgis Night when the townsfolk delivered her one last message.

An enormous rotting, stinking pile of putrid turnips and rancid tats  barrowed by each resident still able and heaped in front of Veronika's front door until it reached the very top.

As a final act each of them pissed upon the pile and left.

When Veronkia opened her door the entire mound of putrefaction spilled into her kitchen like a King's tide of utter decay. It plunged over her and she was knocked cold and buried.

Some time later she awoke and with immense effort pushed aside the detritus and stood, her ragged clothes drenched with ooze and matter.

It was then she noticed an unusual form.

Unblemished like the rest, she picked it up and stared.

Yes.

It was a mandrake root.

The basis of being.

She could entice it to grow and together they could .....

Veronika felt the first pinches of excitement in years. They scratched at her stilled heart and relit it's furnace of old. 

She would care for the Mandrake as if it were her child.

And so she did and the man root increased.

With tender care and Witch's milk from her awakened breast, the tuber was invigorated and grew into a figure just as tall as her, a gnarled being of flesh and peel as black as charcoal as if it was cast from the spitting pits of Hell itself.

My Mandrake!

Veronika spoke softly to the effigy. She embraced and caressed and loved it like a Mother and a Wife, corm and woman intertwined until they countenanced as one dreadful tattered soul.

Prying eyes could see them too. Sickened citizens. The rumours spread among them of this new sacrilege.

A further scribble from Kalkar's folk came aflame through the window.

Go now Foul Harlot! Take thy Cunt-Root! Or you will both Burn! As your two children did for those pies! 

Veronika screamed! Shrieked! Wailed till her throat bled dry.

My bairns! My babies! My little ones! Afire! Aflame! Vanquished by the mob in my name! Baked in a pie! 

They shall pay, all of them! We shall suck the very life from their veins my love root and gather their begging faces in a brace!

This was the fulcrum of all her hatred, the pivot of the malignance, as it shifted towards her rise and the kanker of Kalkar spreading.

No more threats, no more dead lambs, no more names or flames. The atrocity was enough. They had murdered her innocent children.

We shall endure no more!

Come, take my hand and walk with me through this place, for it shall be no more.

Veronika and the Mandrake entered the village, where the folk were waiting with waving fork and fire, slowly encircling them.

As the crescendo of loathing tipped into killing, the sorceress and the root leapt upon the mob, whirling creatures of teeth and talon, rending, splitting, tearing and shredding every last denizen of the village that was once Kalkar.

When the maelstrom of death had abated and the spray of blood mist settled, the victorious Veronika and her Mandrake sat amid the innards of their foes and feasted on sweetmeats and thick hot crimson, its ferrous tang hanging heavy in the air, blistering like red dew on her hair.

The Mandrake lay down and bathed in the nourishing gore, whilst the triumphant crone collected the loosened face-skins of all those that had secretly murdered her son and daughter.

Hanging them from her waist-string she beckoned to her friend to stand.

Here shall you take root my love and become a vast sprawling tree, casting deep shadow upon all that was once Kalkar, here in the slicks of its smitten.

I curse it all in the name of my children and me!

Veronika!

And so the Mandrake fixed itself to the congealing spot and from it's livid bark begot limbs and churned ever upwards until at last it was gargantuan and upon each branch Veronika hung a villager's flaccid face, so that they might forever glimpse the place of their agonized slaughter. 

The witch looked up at them and smiled at her spoils. She gathered their hearts for the oven.

With her dripping sack, she turned and whispered gently.

I will make a victory pie for you my loves, just for me and you, my beautiful son and daughter!