Wishes Being Stronger than Witches...

In a place not so different from this one, but where magic was real, a woman was once a village healer.  She relied on her magic to create healing balms for the wounds of her neighbors, and lived a most contented life.  That was, until the day the evil witch came.
            Desiring power above her own, the witch stole that of others, siphoning off what magic remained within them, and growing fat with their stolen strength.  Overtime the witch had developed a method that worked well, namely to capture those from whom she wished to steal and place them in a tower that had no doors and only a single window.  And this is what the witch did to the healer.
            Now, the healer had a small daughter, and she, too, was taken by the witch—for the witch thought this gave her a stronger hold over the woman.  Convinced of the strength of the witch, the healer did little to try and escape, for fear it would put her daughter’s life at risk.  And so, drenched in fear and sorrow, the woman and the girl lived in the tower and waited.
            What it was they waited for, the healer was not entirely sure.  A rescuer, perhaps—a white knight on a gilded steed played in her mind.  But, of course, the knight never came.  And as the days passed into a year and a year passed into two, the woman came to believe that the witch had a right to her magic.  In fact, the healer thought she had very little right to anything at all.  Save the innermost thoughts of her mind.  A most important thing, however, for inside her mind was something more powerful than magic: a wish.  As it happened, her daughter shared the very same wish—that one day they would both be free.
            Wishes, it turns out, are stronger than witches.  And in the sharing of a single wish, the healer passed some of her magic into her daughter’s mind, something the witch did not notice.  Indeed, it took some time for the healer to notice.  But when she did, she waited until her daughter was full of magic, and then she told the little girl her plan.
            The day came when they stood on the stone lip of the tower window, and turned the one to the other.
            ‘I’m scared,’ the little girl whispered, her hand tightening around her mother’s.
            ‘Me too,’ her mother whispered back.
            They smiled quickly at each other.
            They jumped.
            And then they flew.

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