"The People tell the story of a mountain witch who lives deep within a dragoned ridge that is crowned with a sea-blue mist.  The witch’s teeth are rotting.  Her breath is rancid, and with every devouring step, she soils the earth with the sickening stench of acrid bile and curdled blood as she wanders the emerald forest of an Ancient Land glimpsed only by the light of the Noonday Sun. The mountain witch stands as tall as a cypress tree and wears a hardened dress woven with bone, stone, and sediment. She rises and towers, an impenetrable fortress. No arrow can pierce her. No blade can cut her. Her right hand is continually clenched in an angry, quivering, cordate fist. Only its forefinger extends, gnarled and tense, with a nail obtrusively long that narrows to a whetted, blackened, bone-dagger tip, a crude but exacting instrument which the ogress wields to harvest the livers of tender children. Inside her fist, the witch’s heart sits. It is vulnerable. It is out of place. With primal fierceness, the mountain witch guards her heart by keeping it locked inside a fisted cage.

Heartless, the mountain witch deceives. She shapeshifts. She cloaks with fur. She covers with feathers. She prefers the familiar form of a hobbling, harmless granny carrying a basket brimming with roots and berries. Hiding her gnarled fist, she croons a wicked song to lure lost children into her lap where she combs their hair with her crooked hand then lulls them to sleep and slices their tender, supple skin. Her victims turn yellow with fever while the thin lips of the mountain witch drip gall and her fisted right hand quivers.

Liver, I eat, she cackles, she laughs.
Liver, I eat, she murmurs, she sings. 
 

The People call her Spearfinger. She is Utlun’ta. Utlun’ta is frightening. Spearfinger is ugly. Utlun’ta is wicked. Spearfinger is hungry. The People fear the forest and suspect the stranger. They miss children playing innocently, untouched by deception or danger. The People determine to defeat the mountain witch.  They devise a plan. They set a trap.  They dig a pit.

 

When the leaves turn and the chestnuts drop, the fires are lit. Spearfinger sees the smoke. Her belly rumbles. Utlun’ta shifts and stoops.

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Liver I eat, she mumbles.

The People wait. The men draw their bows. Granny Spearfinger emerges from the forest and begins her practiced, guiled approach. She hides her hand. She sings to enchant. She prepares to rend, but the People’s trap is set. Spearfinger trips. She falls. The ground opens its mouth. The men release their readied arrows. Too angry to stoop and hobble, Spearfinger discards her disguise and screams, then howls, spewing bile as she repels and breaks the People’s impotent arrows.

Spearfinger has been tricked, but she is not defeated. The People’s arrows surrender to her impenetrable skin. The People lose heart. How will they destroy her? What recourse do they have? Their hearts sink. Their knees tremble.

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A child sees a chickadee. The chickadee is unafraid of Spearfinger’s squall of rage. He alights with peaceful courage on the tip of the witch’s finger-spear of bone.

Dee, Dee, the chickadee sings.

Dee, Dee. Here, here. 

The chickadee knows.

 

The child runs to tell the men about the chickadee 's courageous song. The men listen. They take aim. They let their fated arrows fly. An arrow hits Spearfinger’s wrist. Her grasp is tripped. Her hand springs open and reveals her shriveled, vulnerable heart. A fated arrow embeds its tip in the misplaced heart of the mountain witch. Spearfinger’s heart pulses once. It quivers. It stops. The witch lies silent as the earth closes its mouth and swallows.

The witch is gone. The chickadee sings. The People offer prayers of thanks to the Four Directions.

The child spies the chickadee.
Child, chirps the chickadee, Child, ask me how I knew! 

How?, the child asks.
Chickadee smiles.
Tulip Poplar told me true."