More of My AFTRS application from last year.

The witch of butt acre lane.

The wall was tall, ancient, and unkempt. Made of worked stone, Small bushes and spiky tuffs of grass had found desperate purchase in the cracks between the limy slabs, their determined roots slowly working the old blocks apart. The hard rounded faces were marked and reshaped by countless rainstorms. The wall stretched so far across the landscape, that few had made the effort to see where it began, or whether it ended. So old that the stacked line of stones had become as much a natural feature of the scenery as the cloud piercing mountains, or wilfully meandering rivers.

A young man walked through the summer heat. He had been following the wall for three weeks as it cut through the countryside. The only verity to the landscape had been to his left.
Stopping only to sleep, diverting only to find food. He had forded occasional persistent rivers that refused to be dammed, and bubbled out from underneath the stacked stones. Sometimes he had found relief in shady forests that had sprung up, and spread out from this road, the walls most faithful companion. The track was pressed into the pale dirt in which the wall was rooted. This road connected solitary cottages to patchwork farmlands, and cut through small villages that hunched up against the solid protection of the wall. All these landmarks disappeared behind his shoulder on the left. The wall on his right was his guide and only constant.

One day the lone traveller passed a paddock, one of many he had seen that day. a woman working this patch of dirt, waved at him. She was directing a plough drawn by a massive female ox, whose swollen udder swung gently from side to side, as she dragged the wooden blade through the dry crust, turning up and out the moist, darker soil beneath.
The woman reigned in the beast, wiped the sweat from her cheeks with the hem of her apron, and greeted the stranger.
‘Good afternoon, you look like you have been a long time walking that road. I have water, if you are thirsty?’
‘Where did your journey begin?’ She enquired of the young man, as He accepted a draught of water from her ox skin canteen.
‘I used to fish the lakes up in the high country,’ he told her. ‘But the waters have grown warm and the fishing is getting scarce. I’m off to the ocean,’ he waved an arm down the road, ‘to work on the big boats that fish the sea.’
She shared with him, a few wrinkled crab apples, and wished him a fair journey. As he walked away she called from between cupped hands, ‘be careful of the witch on butt acre lane.’

The sun filled the air with heat. it beat down from the sky, to be reflected up into his face from the pale chalky road, and from the creamy stones in the wall. The Freshly ploughed fields on his left were eventually hidden behind a a tall rambling hedge row, and the young man was forced to walk the confined corridor between walls of stone and leaf.
All around him was the buzz of the insects, flicking through the hot, motionless air. His mind became preoccupied with that long past gulp of water from the woman tending her field. So preoccupied, that he didn’t hear the tune, slowly coalescing out from amongst the insect clamour. the hedge had become tall and solid, boxing him in, forcing him forward.
Had he noticed the tune, he wouldn’t have been quite so surprised when He came across the old woman. She was sitting outside a small door in the wall. It must have once been a guard post or road tax collection point.
She was churning butter, the churn gripped between her legs. Mottled skin swung from her bare arms as she dragged the paddle through the slowly gathering resistance in the milk. Strings of onions and garlic hung down in garlands around the door, and small pots bearing herbs stood in the narrow space of the arrow slots that had been cut either side of the door. Bunches of flowers hung from pegs driven into the cracks between the stones, one wooden stub bore the weight of a strangled rabbit and couple of hedgehogs.
His steps slowly drifted across the road until he almost brushed the leaves in the hedge with his swing arm. As he passed by she smiled up at him and bid him ‘good day.’ He was so distracted with avoiding her, that while returning the greeting he almost stepped on her old dog, who lazed in the shade of the hedge. She smiled and offered him a swig from her water bag. He shook his head, refusing her offer, while his lips craved the sloshing contents of the bulging skin. He increased his pace and was soon clear of the woman.

He was angry now, annoyed that he had refused the offered water bag, and he found himself once again preoccupied with his thirst. So diverted he failed to heed his surroundings and missed a greeting, called down to him in a clear voice, calling out to the striding young man. A cherry dropped out of the sky and fell at his feet.
He stopped and looked at the shining red berry. Bending down, he picked it out of the dust. Lifting it to his lips, and pressing it against his teeth till the skin split, and dribbled juice. He spun slowly on a heel, searching up and around to find the source of the gift and spied a beautiful girl. She was lounging on the top of the wall, her skirt pulled up so that her bare knees rolled in the waning afternoon sun, her smooth white legs dangling down against the stones glowing russet by the sinking sun.
‘Hello’ she called again and waved at him, ‘where are you going? ‘
He called back with a breast full of eager joy, ‘to the sea!’ And he smiled up at her pretty face, shaded by long curls of red hair.
‘You look thirsty’ she said and she drew forth from behind her, a water bag. she dangled it out, high above him.
‘I never come down off the wall so you’ll have to climb up here.’
He approached the wall and studied the old stones for a route up its face. The ancient construction had developed plenty of ledges that offered purchase and he leapt up to the task. The gritty material was unreliable and soon he was sliding back down to the road. He heard her laugh peeling out. She sung out encouragement for his further effort. As he tried again, she munched on a handful of cherries and spat the pits down at him with a mischievous eye. Stone crumbled and flaked under his fingers, and again he found himself standing at the base, his knees stripped of skin and dripping blood.
He spent the remainder of the day climbing and falling. And as the sun lay its shimmering head down on the horizon his will faltered. He shrugged up at her in resignation, and he bent to retrieve his swag.
‘No wait’ she cried and leaned out from the wall, tipping forward she leaned over, almost loosing her balance, and she urged him to one last effort.
He looked up and noticed a flash of light as an object tumbled out of her bodice from between her breasts. It caught the rays of the setting sun as it curved out and fell into the deep dust of the road.
He walked up to the object and saw a small gold locket lying there. Scooping it up and prying it open, he found a lock of grey hair.
The woman screamed, ‘please return it to me,’ she wailed, ‘it was cut from my fathers head just before he was buried.’
He pocketed the ornament and with a vigour driven by his sacred mission, in the fading light he scrambled up the wall.

As he climbed the light bled out of the air and soon he was climbing by touch, with fingers and toes raw from the afternoon’s efforts.
He almost made it to the top, almost within reach of the girl sitting there bent over, watched him intently. But he again lost his grip and because of his determination, fell down much further then he had in previous attempts, and smashed into the unyielding road, it’s surface beaten hard and flat by the years of travel.
He lay in the dirt his neck parted, arms bent, feet twisted, pelvis split.

The old woman walking her dog in the cool of the evening found his body and dragged him back to her house.
She hauled him up onto her bed, and built a fire beneath the chimney hole carved into the roof.
She dressed the places where his skin was pierced, and bound his body tight with strips of cotton so that the bones were redirected to their true positions. Each night she stripped and kissed each wound, and lay with him through the darkness. She did this until the passing nights had shaved the fat yellow full moon, down to a silver sliver, hanging in the purple night sky.
Eventually the young man awoke and saw that slice of moon through the window slot. He climbed out of her bed and started back home, walking back along the road that he had previously travelled.

Passing a farmhouse He knocked seeking food. The door was dragged open by the woman who had been driving the ox. She invited him in and they talked, while he helped himself from the stew pot. He mentioned that the witch had found him broken and faint on the road. He told of waking in her house, and that she had healed him.
‘There is no witch’ smiled the woman. ‘That’s just what I call my sister,’ she tells him.
‘Soon after we were wed, she stole my husband’s affections. He has no love to give me anymore. and now he and I just work the farm and share a bed. He wastes his affections in pursuit of my sister, who won’t come down off the wall. She sits up there and toys with the men that walk past. Offering them water and comfort, on the condition that they climb up to her. No one has ever succeeded in claiming the prize.’