[Kilkis, Greece]


Condemned to a life of solitude, disdain and resentment, Pagona lives alone, in a shack of stone and wood, a good and certain distance from the village of her peers. Marginalised since her early adulthood, cast aside by her community due to her family's lineage and reputation for practicing witchcraft, she was sentenced to a life of solitary toil and endless hardships. Unloved, unwed, desolate and rejected, she spent her days immersed in the brooding bleakness of absolute seclusion.

She eventually turned to the arcane, as a last refuge for her troubled soul, practicing intricate earth spells taught to her by her late grandmother when she was still a child. With the passing of time and her aging, those spells grew more complex, more potent and more virile, gradually becoming a force that could not be ignored. She was bound to avenge the hatred and contempt. She swore an oath to return some of the pains she only knew as feelings.

During a period of two harvests, the village crops were ravaged by locusts, crows and insects and all new seedings were eradicated by unprecedented long droughts. Strange, eerie sounds were heard from storagerooms and stables during nightime and the following morning, beasts of burden and cattle were found gutted and half-devoured. Strong, harsh drafts of wind would rush unexpectedly into people's homes, through every possible crack and opening, bringing chills and sounds that made their blood freeze in their veins.

The village folk, god-fearing and superstitious as they were, turned to the priests of the local parish for answers and resolutions to their misery. After months of ritualistic purifications of the land, constant praying and offerings to the church, those of the cloth realised that their pious gimmicks could not turn the tide of this predicament, nor could they keep their flock complacent for much longer. There was only one solution and the rumours have already set the scene: the ostracised hag was the source of the evil that plagued their livelihoods. An end to her would be an end to this horrid quagmire.

Eventhough the decision was unanimous, the act itself was no simple task. The village folk despised the hag and longed for her demise, but they were also horrified to approach, let alone confront her directly. The clergy, cowardly and cunning as they are, found the way by which their dirty hands would not be tainted with blood and the esteemed members of the community would not stain their god-fearing souls.

The village's simpleton, a wretched being named Krassos, whose pitiful existence was soaked in foul wine and pigshit, was to be the tool of the deed. He was convinced, through lies and intimidation that by killing Pagona he would be given the hand of the girl he loved and worshiped. Krassos the fool waited until the next waning of the Moon and stalked his victim down the Potis creek, where she used to gather herbs for her concoctions. Pagona heard the villain, but she had no fear for him. He closed in on her stealthily and managed to grab her by the throat with his deformed and oversided hands, squeezing it like a sick dying lamb.

Pagona's final breaths whispered the curse that would seal the fate of all responsible:
“ This death of mine is but a sigh
An endless echo that this plea will fortify
And for aeons long my bitter might
Will banish into shadows each flicker of the light

My tomb is now your barren land
And pray you not for god's protective hand
Each seed will carry the poison of my pain
Each hope will bear a sweeping bane “

______________________________
produced by Apokrymna
during the Great Quarantine of MMXX

cover Art by
Cesare Vecellio (1521–1601 Venice)