Yara and the Witch Queen

I knew the dangers of witchcraft. My parents had told me about the time before I was born, when magic plagued our desert kingdom of Bahati. Untrained witch doctors trying to cure warts ended up paralyzing their patients or turning them into crocodiles. Amateur potion brewers tainted their villages’ water supplies. Warring witch clans cursed each other back and forth, and their poorly aimed spells destroyed houses, burned crops, and scared away the hogs and gazelles that we all needed for food.

Magic was capable of nothing but wickedness. That’s why my parents, the king and queen, had outlawed it twelve years ago, banishing all practitioners who were caught. A witch had not been seen in our kingdom for over a decade. Magic had faded into myth, into legend, into whispers and bedtime stories.

Naturally, then, I was surprised to find a witch living in the palace.

I first saw her after the gathering of the tribes. My parents had a disagreement with the neighboring King Kurundi, who was convinced our land had huge tracts of gold that we were unwilling to share. The truth was we had no gold, but he didn’t believe this. He insisted my parents hand some of it over to him—to aid his people, who had suffered a flood last fall—or risk war.

What followed was a week of tense discussions, closed doors, and a palace on edge. My parents didn’t tell me what was going on, so I eavesdropped as much as I could. One night, I saw my desperate parents