There was a woman who survived the plague when all her family died. She lived alone in a hut in a forest near the village that had been her home. People avoided her. How could she have survived what killed everyone else? She must have a secret. Women warned their children to stay away from the hut in the forest.
It was hard to keep chickens in the forest. Even when she brought then into the hut at night, wild animals would kill them during the day. Her garden was poor because the deer ate anything that grew above ground. The woman had to gather wild food. She became wise in her knowledge of plants. The only medicines the people had came from the forest, and the woman built on that common knowledge. Willow bark, foxglove, feverfew, valerian and pennyroyal hung in dry bundles from the roof beams of her hut.
One winter the villagers went mad...They pulled off their clothes and raved and gibbered and rolled about on the frozen ground. A beggar had crawled into a midden to sleep out the coldest month in the warmth of rotting garbage. He knew he might die before he woke, but he didn't die. He crawled out of the midden to find the world crazy. He too went mad out of pure amazement and he staggered into the forest and found himself in the woman's hut. She knew what had happened. Mould on the rye they had used for their bread. The villagers blamed the woman in the wood.
When the beggar left she felt so lonely. She had a lamb, one of twins that a farmer had given her when she assisted his wife in childbirth. The lamb became a magnificent ram and he lived meekly at the woman's side.
When all the sheep of the village died, the ram stayed strong and healthy. The people came in a mob to the hut in the woods.
``Witch!'' they cried.
They tied the woman's hands and feet and they flung her in the pond.
``Innocent you sink. Guilty you float!'' They wanted her to float so they could kill her.
She was able to hold on to weeds and rocks at the bottom of the pond. She made her way under water to the bank and was able to edge her head out of the water in a clump of bull rushes. No one saw. Night fell. She worked her hands free and crept out of the pond. She saw that the people had killed and eaten her beloved ram.
``I was not a witch,'' she said, ``But now I am one!''
And she took certain toadstools from her hut and she dropped them in the well. She gave them all a burial. Every one. She moved into their little grey church and lived there quietly many a year.