Salem Village, Late Winter of 1692
The river had always been the village's quiet companion—its waters slow and brown, winding through the birch and willow like a thread of glass. But now it whispered differently. It murmured in tones of smoke and sorrow, carrying with it the faint scent of burnt wood.
Children said it glowed at night.
Elders said it sang her name.
The constable, Thomas Hargreaves, did not believe in songs. Yet when his wife fell ill—her skin gray as frost, her breath shallow as a drowned thing—he heard it too. The low rhythm, like a pulse beneath the current.
"Prudence Ashcroft," he muttered, gripping his lantern. "If you linger in the hollow, I'll have your peace one way or another."
The snow cracked beneath his boots as he followed the riverbank. The night was glass-clear; the moon hung like an eye above the trees. Every shadow seemed to move.
When he reached the bend near the Ashcroft field, the current turned black—so dark it reflected nothing. He crouched and dipped his lantern toward it.
Beneath the surface drifted cinders. Dozens of them, glowing faintly like dying stars.
He drew back sharply. The air smelled of rue and iron, of something old awakening.
And then a voice, not his own, whispered from the river's edge:
> "You buried me in water that remembers fire."
He spun, lantern raised—but there was no one. Only a ripple moving against the current, as though something unseen had just passed upstream.
---
By dawn, the constable's wife awoke without fever. Her skin was cool, her breath steady.
But her first words chilled him.
"Thomas," she said softly. "I dreamed of her. She walked upon the water, and the river turned to glass beneath her feet."
He went pale. "What did she say?"
His wife's eyes drifted toward the window, where frost had traced delicate spirals across the glass. "She said the fire is not finished. That she forgives you, though you never asked."
---
That day, the villagers found the riverbanks littered with strange ash-white petals, soft as silk though no tree bloomed in winter. The magistrates ordered them burned. But the ashes would not catch. They only shimmered, refusing the flame.
Reverend Hale watched the attempt from afar. He saw, as others did not, that the ashes formed patterns when scattered—spirals like the ones behind Prudence's ear, sigils that pulsed faintly when touched by light.
He said nothing. Only turned toward the woods, where the ash trees swayed though there was no wind.
---
That night, Thomas Hargreaves returned to the river, lantern in hand, and laid a single sprig of rosemary on the water.
"I did not mean to hurt you," he whispered. "Only to do my duty."
The river stilled. The cinders beneath the surface brightened once, like the last breath of a dying fire.
From the dark beyond the bank, a figure rose—shaped of mist and ember, her eyes gray and endless. Prudence Ashcroft did not speak. She only lifted her hand, palm outward, in quiet benediction.
The lantern went out. The moon dimmed.
And when morning came, they found the constable's hat on the bank—his lantern beside it, still warm to the touch.
The river, for the first time in weeks, ran clear.