New fiction: When Holly Came to Visit by Alexandra Grunberg

Meet Holly, a thoroughly modern witch you really don't want to cross. The author is Alexandra Grunberg, a South Florida-based author, actress, and screenwriter. Her work has appeared in Daily Science Fiction, Fantastic Stories of the Imagination, Flash Fiction Online, and more. This is her third story to be published in Grievous Angel. In the fall of 2017, Alexandra will be pursuing her masters degree in Creative Writing at the University of Glasgow. You can find Alexandra online at http://alexandragrunberg.weebly.com and at Twitter @alexgrunberg


​​When Holly Came to Visit
by
Alexandra Grunberg

Holly came from far away, across the ocean on a plane that dropped her into their backyard, adding a touch of fiery red cheeks and dandelion yellow hair to a land blanketed in blinding white snow. She came with a voice that grated their ears and a stature too tall for their stone archways and wooden pubs.
    
“I’m not here to make friends, and I’m not here to make enemies,” brayed Holly. “I’m here to keep to myself.”
    
And she did keep to herself, but the people wondered about her. How did she get by, all alone, taking no visitors? How did she get money by honest means if she had no job to go to, nothing to sell, no talent to offer the community?
    
“I do my business online,” explained Holly. “I write articles, I dabble in graphic design. It’s the perfect job for a loner. And I like to be alone.”
    
Yes, she did like to be alone. She did not look at the boys in town, and during the day, they did not look at her either. She was too much, too bright, too loud. But there were rumors about the nighttime, rumors that she changed in the darkness, that the stars and moon smoothed out the harshness of her colors, blending her in with the woods and the wintertime. She was too beautiful in the night, it made grown men cry to look on her. Beholding her naked form as she dressed by her window was akin to beholding the sun during a solar eclipse: You did not realize how much she burned into your brain until she was gone, and her image remained on the back of your eyelids, turning your dreams to dark lusts. 
    
“It sounds like this town has a Peeping Tom problem,” Holly complained. “I’d be more concerned about boys peering into women’s windows than how pretty I look in my pajamas.”
    
The women said they saw green sprouts popping out of the frozen ground in her garden. They said the wind blew warm across her doorway. They said when she waved her hand, the ice would melt on her driveway, and when she glared at the snow on the windowpane, it fell away in shame.
    
“You really see the effects of climate change this far north,” sighed Holly. “It’s really terrible how we treat the environment.”
    
A young boy said he saw her turn into a swan by the river, bathing in the running water, surrounded by floating lights that chittered like birds, before shedding her feathers and returning to the shore. An old woman said she saw her snap her fingers at a dog that bit at her ankle, and the animal turned to ice and broke into a million pieces. The priest said he saw her talking to a man as black as deepest midnight, with a cloak made of green leaves and red feathers, and a smile full of sharp teeth, and they whispered of the death of mankind and secrets beyond the grave.
    
“You guys really like to gossip, don’t you?” Holly laughed.
    
It was decided that she was a witch, and a witch had to burn.
    
“You do realize this isn’t the sixteen hundreds, right?” Holly scoffed.
    
Some people say a great storm came down that night, burying the buildings in a snow that froze all the townspeople before they could light the pyre. Some people say giants came down from the mountains and crushed the townspeople before they could even scream. Some people say Holly whispered a word that made the men go insane and the women wail, and the word called a man made of shadow who stole the townspeople away, body and soul. But people can only talk, because the only person who walked away from the attempted witch-burning was Holly, and she does not like to talk about the incident.
    
“You would think that superstitious people would prefer to be safe, rather than sorry,” Holly shrugs, when pressed for details. “But those folks ended up very sorry, indeed.”