The Witch of Waterschei

The miller X was a man of fixed habits. Every evening, after he had cleaned his millstone, he would walk along the dark paths to Waterschei to visit his friend. There they would sit for hours, talking of the weather, the grain harvest, and the small gossip of the village. His friend’s wife knew him well: an old witch with sharp eyes and an even sharper tongue. She always wore the same grey dress, and her hands were constantly moving, ostensibly to prepare her herbs. That particular evening, the miller stayed longer than usual. Hour after hour passed. The night grew deeper. At last, the woman’s voice cut through the warm kitchen: "X, it grows late. You must go home now. I can feel it – you will not come home easily this evening." The miller laughed heartily. "Why would I not get home? It is only two kilometers on familiar paths." Yet the woman’s face remained dark. She leaned toward him and tapped him gently on the leg. The miller felt it – merely a tap, but filled with meaning.

Scarcely two hundred meters from his friend’s house, the miller felt it. A terrible, trembling pain shot through his knee as if a thousand needles were being driven into his flesh at once. He cried out and fell to his hands and knees. Not a single step could he take further. The pain was unbearable. He tried to understand what had happened – a fall? Some animal? But no, he had walked carefully. This was something else. This was witchcraft. In desperation, he crawled back to his friend’s house, his hands bloody from sharp stones, his knee burning as if it lay in fire. Pounding on the door, he shouted: "Tell your wife she must heal me! Now! Or I will set this house ablaze!" His friend, terrified, called his wife downstairs. She appeared in the doorway, her eyes dark and unfathomable. "X," she said calmly, "what is wrong with your knee?"

The miller roared with pain and rage. "You did this, you wretch! You are a witch! If you do not heal me immediately, I will kill you!" The woman looked at him with a gaze far older than her body, and said nothing. She bent down and placed her hands upon his knee. Twice she stroked it. And then – as if by magic – the pain disappeared. Completely. The miller could move. The pain was gone. Silence filled the kitchen. "The truth," whispered the witch softly, "is that you may leave when darkness falls. But you must remember: some in this village possess powers you do not understand." The miller shrank back. He thanked her, limping and ashamed, and walked out into the night. Behind him, in the Waterschei house, the witch ground her herbs fine and smiled. Some stories speak of an old power that grew deep in the earth, where the mine had cut downward, and of women who were part of something far older than Christianity itself.