-Magdalene-
It took forever to find one. A witch, I mean. It took years of traveling and false claims and multiple breakdowns before I had found her. She wasn't one of a person to strike me as a witch. She was young, or she appeared to be. She couldn't have been any great deal older than I was at the time, maybe in her late twenties. She had smiled very toothily, and offered me tour around her home. She had given me a cup of tea at her wood-crafted kitchen table. I had greeted her with a handshake.
It felt as normal and as systematic as the signing of a legal document, and we both parted with kind words and waves of our hands. She watched me as I drove, until I was out of her sight. I couldn't help but feel wary, though sound in my decision. One healthy, cancer free mother, with 25 more years to her, and good luck cast upon the family, in exchange for the small fee of my first born child. It was a bargain deal, no doubt in my mind or hers. As witches go, she was extremely generous.
You see, my mother was very ill, and my father had passed years ago. I had four younger siblings, ages 14-22, with myself being 24 and the main breadwinner of the family. We were going under; where we had once treaded water had become a whirlpool that we could not swim from.
I considered myself too busy for a relationship, for a new family, as I practically had children of my own to care for. I was never attracted or attached to anyone, I figured I wouldn't need my womb for anything. I had sold some of my eggs from my ovaries for a bit of food money, but my mother had made me promise to keep a few.
"Just in case, Madge, just in case," she'd drawl, hands wrung into mine, "you may change your mind, it really is different when they're your own."
I had done it for her, I didn't want any children, I never had. I had kept them to make her feel better, as the more cynical and pessimistic side of me had known she wouldn't be around much longer. I didn't want to, because selling all of them would mean that I would have that little extra bit of cash, but it turned out to be a good thing. The deal required me to have at least one child, no matter how, and that I must give it to the witch before I turned 35. Simple, honestly.
I wasn't looking forward to pregnancy, but it was a problem that I could put off for a few more years. It was a problem that I was willing to accept, so that I could live my life without having to care for all of my brothers and sisters. It wasn't purely selfish, but much of it was in thought of my own future. I wanted to do something, be someone, help people. I wanted to make life count, and the deal was an easy way to do so.
I was young. I wasn't thinking of anything but my mother's life and my future. I wasn't thinking of anything but the look on my youngest brother's face when Ma walked again.
I should have thought more about it
ns 15.158.61.7da2
