Alice Newitt lives in Leicestershire and works for a university careers service. A Physics graduate, she finds great inspiration in the natural world and is currently working on a novel inspired by her love of the Earth sciences. She tries to enter a writing competition every month.

It was on St Swithin’s day that I first came to visit the witch. Outside the weather was fine, and so it followed that the next forty days would be fine too, but still the fire in the hearth roared. There was nothing in the pot besides water.

‘You brought it?’ asked a voice.

‘Yes,’ I said, turning to see the owner of the voice appear beside me. It was a woman, worn and weathered, but I could sense a force burning within her. She was the witch, of course.

‘Well,’ she said. ‘Add it to the pot then.’

I threw the laurel branches that I had been holding into the bubbling water.

‘How does it work?’ I asked, looking down at the