The Hanging Tree

They hanged her at dusk. The villagers came with torches and rope, their faces shadowed by fear and frost. The orchard watched in silence, its blackthorn branches bare and brittle, reaching like fingers toward the sky. Morwenna Blackthorn did not scream. She stood beneath the oldest tree, her shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders, her eyes fixed on the horizon where the sun bled into the hills. The child was already gone. She had tried — herbs, prayers, blood — but the fever had taken him before the moon could rise. Her brother stood among the crowd, his face pale, his eyes hollow.

“She killed him,” he said.

Morwenna looked at him once, and never again. The rope was rough. The knot was clumsy. The tree groaned as it took her weight. And the orchard changed. The branches twisted. The roots deepened. The soil darkened. The wind stopped. And the whispers began. They say the orchard remembers. They say it listens. They say it waits. For the child. For the truth. For someone who can hear.

Some roots go deeper

than the living dare to follow.

Danielle Wynter Batts

Danielle Wynter Batts writes atmospheric Gothic and ghostly fiction set along the windswept coasts of England, blending mystery, romance, and the supernatural. Inspired by the rugged beauty of the south coast — where she lives — her stories explore history, myth, legend, and the thin veil between the living and the dead.