9. Pyre

Catia was wide awake now, precisely when she didn’t want to be anymore. The flames almost licked her shaking paws. Over the din, she could clearly pick out her parent’s voices.

Aria did nothing. Drained of all hope, her skin seemingly drained of all color.

Felicia was in the same state.

“Do something!” Catia yelled. “All the Companions! I am in the presence of the two best chemists on the continent, and you do nothing?”

“What do you want us to do?” yelled Felicia. She finally moved, but only to evade the fire coming for her.

“Extinguish the fire! Protect us!”

“Are you stupid?” Felicia said bitterly. “If we survive, they’ll kill us anyway, for we have proven to be witches!”

“We’ll see then,” Catia said softly. “All that matters is today and the next thing we’ll try. Right?”

Felicia fell silent.

The fire was high enough now to take away their view of the spectators. The crackling drowned out the screaming audience. Still Catia thought she heard her parents, as if they stood on the pyre with her.

“It’s still hopeless for you,” Felicia mumbled, tears in her eyes. “Catia … you are incurable. There is no known medicine for it!”

Not true. That was Catia’s first thought. No, not true, nonsense, a joke, she refused, nature was lying.

But no, she would just be lying to herself. An illusion that would yield nothing. The only proper response was a simple question.

“So?”

Their bodies seemed close to boiling. Filthy fog filled their sore throats, creating endless chains of coughs.

Felicia shook her body until her pouch wasn’t on her back anymore, but around her middle.

“The Firebraid. The thing I made on my way to free Aria! If it touches fire, and maybe if I combine it with that other plant, it should …”

Catia reached forwards, bending the pole as much as it allowed, but couldn’t touch it.

“Ai!” The flames licked part of her tail. She shrunk, flat against the pole, to get a bit more distance.

Felicia couldn’t grab the ingredients herself.

They both looked at Aria.

“It will exist, dear owl,” Catia said. “And if you do this, you might be able to help still.”

She sighed and put her beak into the pouch. The Firebraid was in a bowl, shut tight by a wooden lid. As the trio hugged the pole even closer, Aria slowly and carefully undid the lid.

Catia twisted her tail around herself to prevent burning. Felicia shut her dry eyes against the smoke.

Aria lifted the bowl with her beak, still painfully slow and methodical. The steady hands of a chemist.

Then she threw a large splash of the substance over Felicia. The next one showered Catia, and the last one herself. The bowl was thrown to the flames and consumed immediately.

The sea of fire reached them. Red-orange flames aimed for all parts of their body, nipping at them, looking for parts to burn, as it brought the heat of a thousand suns.

All three closed their eyes. All three shrank and cleared their minds. And all three waited.

Until all the straw had burned, the fire ceased, and they lived.

Catia opened her eyes to see a silenced crowd, mouths open wide in astonishment.

“Well that is a first,” Fonza mumbled.

Catia’s parents screamed in relief and fought through the crowds, even fiercer than before. They’d almost reached the stake.

“Thus they are witches!” the Crows yelled. “It is proven! The evidence is there!”

The three witches were mostly wounded around their paws. The ropes that had bound them to the pile, had burned away in the fire, and so also scorched their skin.

They could try to flee—but they were surrounded on all sides.

“Witches always get the death penalty!” Fonza yelled. “Grab them!”

Half the crowd followed this command eagerly. The other half didn’t do anything, whispering to each other and pointing to Aria.

Catia’s parents jumped on top of the pyre with them. They kicked aside the black straw and slid over the thick layer of ash.

“Stop!” her mother yelled. “We are the family Cartin, nobles of the highest rank. Yes, you know us. We control your land and we give you food. Whoever touches a hair on our daughter’s head will regret it.”

Her father protectively took her and Falicia into his paws. Aria still didn’t move and didn’t care. Multiple Crows landed on the pole but didn’t attack yet.

Felicia looked betrayed. “Catia. You couldn’t have told me you are almost royalty?”

The crowd was undecided. Some walked away. Some repeated it was Aria, the Wise Owl, who had done so much for them and helped so many patients. Felicia and Catia had grown somewhat popular in the River District, with their funny jokes and helpful attitude.

Others repeated they were proven witches and crept closer, Fonza as their leader.

“Ah yes, that is exactly what witches would do! Become powerful and then abuse it!”

“Oh you believe witches do everything,” said Felicia.

To the left, in the distance, a large column of guards appeared. to check out the disturbance and to accompany the landlord in his golden wagon.

A different wagon appeared on the other side. But this one seemed to travel of its own accord, and was more like a home on wheels.

Fonza’s fur changed color to red in anger. She copied the shouts of the Crows.

“Grab them! Kill them!”

Half the crowd moved to attack. The other half didn’t just stay out of it, they actively blocked Fonza’s path. Exactly the animals that were all under the employment or protection of the family Cartin.

“Fine,” Fonza said. “We won’t touch your daughter, oh dear Cartin family, but the other two are still—”

“What did they do?” asked several animals in the crowd. “Try and make medicine for another animal? Enough to kill The Wise Owl, of all creatures?”

“Out of my way!” Fonza bit some of the crowd members blocking her and created a path for herself to grab Felicia.

The landlord arrived. The wolf stepped from his wagon and found chaos. Having heard none of what preceded, and the Crows and Cartin family both giving different accounts of what had happened, he didn’t dare decide anything.

“The rules around Trials of Witches are clear,” he spoke slowly. “So—”

“If you don’t forbid it, then the execution continues!” the Crows decided for him.

Screams of “No!” and “Let them go!” erupted from the crowd. The landlord stepped back, safe behind a circle of guards, his eyes wild and anxious.

In the end, still confused, he quickly choose the safe side. “I mean, I stand by the family Cartin! They are right. All these assumed witches are under their protection.”

More and more animals walked away. You would never win a fight against the elite. They had freedoms and protections that the poor inhabitants could only dream of.

Only the fiercest of them remained. And they accepted none of this.

Fonza opened her mouth and lurched forward. Felicia would fit inside it entirely; Aria reacted to nothing anymore. A trio of wolves jumped with her to grab Felicia from the back.

Their shadows fell over the terrified puss. A wolf claw scratched a deep wound into her face.

And then they were all blown away by a wooden home on wheels that drove straight into them.

The wolves landed against a tree. Fonza landed in the river and swam for her life. The wagon acted like a wall between the pyre and the others.

A small chimpanzee, with stubs instead of fully grown limbs, rolled from the wagon.

“Oh, how clumsy of me,” she said.

The landlord was furious and the Crows awaited his commands. This was clearly an attempt at murder from the chimpanzee! Things were getting worse and worse!

But the crowd, which outnumbered them easily and represented the actual wishes of the city, loved The Good Chef and wanted complete freedom for these witches.

And so we see, dear reader, that peer pressure can be terrible and mean, but also the only way to achieve good against all odds. To sway injustice to justice, to force others to behave in a way that is less selfish.

The landlord went back into his golden coach and left. “I saw nothing and none of this happened. Take care of them, Chef.”

Felicia, Catia and Aria all fainted from relief at the same time.