The bitterness in her breast bore no resemblance to the love that was once as sweet as summer honey. Her heart twisted like blackthorn branches. As savage as the thorns that lay waiting inside her well stocked larder. Waiting to do her biding, like the foolish men who fell for her cat like eyes and long dark hair. Oh, how they loved to caress her inky black curls with their dirty fingers.

I shall not lie, there was never really much goodness inside this witch, but love has the power to make even the devil vulnerable. For a fleeting moment, she was as vulnerable as her spirit familiar, a little leveret. Above the ground, dependant. Not a state of being this wild woman was accustomed too.

Love had hit her like lightning bolt. Except there was no rumble of thunder to warn of its coming. It lasted but a fleeting moment, until her lover found another woman. But its strike had scorched her soul forever. She had been the one that used and discarded. Now a woman scorned. She was deadlier than the nightshade plant, she was named after. This female Belladonna had poison for blood and was not afraid to use it.

Despite her best efforts, she could never forget the taste of love in all its forms. Its heady spell more addictive than the plants she consumed to ease the pain of heartbreak. An outsider from beyond the hedgerows, the witch had lived life as she pleased. Now, she lived for the day she would have her vengeance on the man who turned her inside out.

This desire swelled deep inside her, like a storm in the belly of the sea. Until it emerged as a curse she called after her favourite flower. Forget Me Not. A poetic curse named after a little blue flower may not sound particularly bad but believe me, it was. Remember the insanity of first love and intense heartbreak that followed. Of deeply loving someone you could never caress or possess? Well, this curse was all those things and more.

Like many of her kind, her dark powers were particularly potent during the full moon. Perhaps because magic is enhanced with strong human emotions. The kind that threaten to expose all your dark secrets for the world to see. Emotions so nauseating that you cannot hide behind a mask of normality. A time of animal howling.

On such a night, Belladonna would harness the lunacy of mortals until she had enough to extract the revenge on the man who had lied his way into her bed and cruelly tossed her aside. It took her three months to fill her apothecary with the kind of enhanced emotions that could cause a terrible seasickness on dry land. Come the spring, her garden would be full of forget me nots and the price for breaking a witch’s heart would be paid. A mental prison of pain awaited the recipient. After all, she could not forget him, so why should he be able to forget her?

It seemed fitting, that she should harvest the little blue flowers on the first day in April. Picking them when the sun reached the highest point in the sky. Carefully putting them into a clear glass bowl, etched with strange symbols. Then filling the bowl that once belonged to her grandmother with cooled boiled sea water. Before she emptied every drop of lunacy she had collected into the potion. Adding some of her lover’s hair that the witch had saved from her feather pillow. A pinch of her namesake – Belladonna - to finish the potion. A pretty name for a pretty poison.

In case you did not know, there are all kinds of curses. The forget me not curse was an intended and tended type. Created deliberately to cause harm and maintained by continual power. These kinds of curses are rare but deadly due to the amount of arcane knowledge and elemental energy it takes to fuel them. Nothing good has ever been born out of such darkness.

The witch laid an alter in the darkest corner of her cottage. Like her now empty soul, a place where no light shone. A place of animal bones and entrails, of Mugwort and madness. Being careful not to inhale as she placed the bowl amongst the dead things that adorned this alter, for she knew what it could do to the mind.

Using a piece of charcoal from her hearth, Belladonna drew the image of her lover upon the dried skin of a mountain hare. She spoke a charm in a strange tounge, that was so powerful it parted the veils between the worlds. Her spirit took flight, and she gazed upon the man whose sleeping image now invoked a fury inside her that could not be contained. It was then she whispered these words into his sleeping body.…….

“When the silence of a life without my words is unbearable – forget me not.

When autumn leaves fall like poetry from the trees as the earth decays – forget me not.

When the sky is as blue as the look of love once was in my eyes – forget me not.

When the moon kisses the sea, just as you once kissed me – forget me not.

When your cold body, craves my warm womanly flesh – forget me not.

When your bones are nought but dust in a grave – forget me not.

Oh, my love, ye are cursed to forget me not.”

The curse was complete. Her lover died shortly after of a tormented soul. But the thing about curses fuelled by malice, is that, by their very nature, they condemn both parties to a life sentence. You see, Belladonna could never forget either. Each full moon until she died at the age of one hundred and three, she tended her alter. Gazing upon her lover’s burnt image while she wept dry tears, until the devil himself come to claim her soul.