~1000 Words
The scent of mint and ginger filled her nose as she crushed the herbs together in the kitchen. The mixture was missing one ingredient. She poured a vial of blood into the mortar and started mashing it with the green pulp. This would do the fisherman’s anemic wife well.
The front door opened. Footsteps echoed across the floor.
She undid her apron in haste and covered the workbench with it. Five men crowded into the kitchen, grim and tense. They ringed her at a distance as if confining a leper. She smiled and bowed her head, falsely demure.
This wasn’t usual business.
The silence grew. At last one man, a scar etched into the side of his face, stepped up to her. She backed up into her workbench, tried to slide away–but he gripped her wrists with his sandpaper hands and jerked her towards him.
“Come along, witch,” he said. “Village Patriarch sent us for yer head.”