The Tiles

Among the plants drawn in the Witch's Mahjong sketches, Belladonna appears more frequently than any other poisonous herb. The earliest reference I found was a physician's herbal dated to the 16th century, where the plant was recorded under its Latin name, "Atropa Belladonna". The author noted both its beauty and its danger, writing that its effects depended entirely upon the hand that prepared it.

Some manuscripts speak of women who used its infusion to widen their pupils, creating the captivating gaze known in Renaissance Italy as "Bella Donna" — "a beautiful woman," a charm meant to enchant and deceive innocent men. Other records speak of Belladonna ointments, used by witches to enter vivid trances and visions. According to some ancient scrolls, the witches would coat broomsticks with a Belladonna-based ointment before riding them, giving them the illusion of flying, or even meeting the devil.

While comparing the earliest sketches of the Witch's Mahjong set, I noticed Belladonna appeared before any other flower in the collection. The artist had chosen it first, before the herbs and garden blooms that followed. In the margin of that earliest folio, a single warning had been written: "Guard against the player who values the winning tile above all others, for they may soon forget what game they were playing."

One ancient manuscript claims that witches welcomed the company of toads, believing the creatures could sense ill intentions long before any human heart could. For this reason, they were seldom chased away. A toad that chose to linger near the door was considered a faithful guardian, while one that entered the house of its own accord was thought to arrive with a warning.

Not every account speaks kindly of the toads. One monastery chronicler dismissed such beliefs as superstition, though he noted with some irritation that no village healer would ever allow harm to come to a toad. Even those who denied their magic seemed strangely reluctant to test the matter for themselves.

I have spent years comparing the surviving sketches of the Witch's Mahjong set, searching for the details that endured while others faded. One weathered folio contains only a brief instruction, written in a different hand from the rest: "Do not move the toad." No explanation was ever added, but every copyist who followed preserved it exactly where it belonged.

While cataloguing English records from the early eighteenth century, I noticed something peculiar. The witch's hat appears almost without warning. In the older illustrations she is old, wild-haired, barefoot, sometimes riding a goat — but never wearing the pointed hat now considered inseparable from her image. Then, within a single generation, the hat begins appearing so consistently that later artists seem unable to imagine a witch without it.

The answer was not found among witches but among ordinary women. Portraits from the previous century show respectable women wearing the same broad-brimmed, pointed hats as everyday fashion. Decades later, the style survives almost exclusively among Quaker women, whose refusal to abandon old fashions, and whose habit of preaching in public, made them an easy target for ridicule. By the time publishers needed a recognizable witch, the silhouette was already familiar to every reader.

The earliest illustration I have found showing a woman unmistakably identified as a witch in this style was published in England in 1720. It is a surprisingly ordinary drawing: the broom is familiar, the devil is present, yet my attention always returns to the hat — because it transformed an ordinary piece of clothing into a symbol that has survived for more than three centuries. I have often wondered whether the artist understood what he had done.

There is a reason old stories rarely describe the raven as an ordinary bird. For centuries, it was seen above battlefields, near graveyards, and in places where death had recently passed. Its dark feathers and silent presence made many believe it belonged to the world beyond our own. Yet the same bird feared as an omen of death was also believed to carry knowledge humans could not reach. The Norse spoke of Odin's ravens, who travelled the world and returned with thoughts and memories. Celtic legends connected the raven with fate and battle. Perhaps the raven became mysterious because it always seemed to appear where the boundary between worlds grew thin.

Among the many accounts of the raven, one belief appears with unusual consistency: the raven does not forget. Several old country records describe ravens returning to those who had disturbed their nests, harmed their kind, or treated them cruelly. The raven was believed to keep a record of every offense. Perhaps this is why it became connected with witches and old magic. A creature that watched silently, remembered every face, and appeared again long after an event had passed was depicted as a creature that carries a grudge.

The raven appears throughout the later pages of the collection, always close to the Witch. The old stories describe ravens as creatures that remember faces, recognize enemies, and do not easily forget a wrong that was done to them. I cannot say whether the artist intended a warning, but it is curious that the pages where the raven appears are also the pages where the Witch begins recording the names of those who wronged her.

Who first looked upon a twisted root and decided it resembled a little person? I cannot say. What I can say is that once the resemblance had been noticed, generations of herbalists found themselves unable to ignore it. Some claimed the earth itself had fashioned the plant in man's image, granting it virtues, and dangers, not found in any ordinary herb.

The oldest herbals devote surprisingly little attention to the Mandrake's medicinal uses. Instead, they linger over the rituals required to harvest it. One manuscript insists the collector must never pull the root by hand. Another advises tying it to a black dog, believing the creature would free the plant while sparing its master from whatever fate awaited the one who disturbed it. Whether these instructions were born of superstition or simple fear, they appear with remarkable consistency across the centuries.

Among the loose pages accompanying the Witch's Mahjong records, I found only a single sketch of a Mandrake. The root itself had been drawn in careful detail. The hand holding it had been scratched away. Someone, at some point, had decided the plant was worth preserving. The person who carried it was not.

It is curious that the bat became one of the most enduring companions of the witch. Its only crime appears to have been entirely coincidental. Bats emerged only after sunset, vanished before dawn, and gathered wherever strange fires lit the night. During ancient festivals, great bonfires drew clouds of insects, and the insects drew bats. Before long, people mistook coincidence for allegiance, deciding that any creature so comfortable in darkness must surely belong to darker things.

By the Middle Ages, artists had given demons the wings of bats rather than birds, making the creature itself a symbol of the infernal. Village tales soon followed, describing bats as witches' messengers, spies that slipped unnoticed through the night while respectable folk slept. The bat never stood trial, it was condemned simply for flying at an inconvenient hour.

Among the Witch's own sketches appears a single exception. Unlike the fearsome creatures imagined by storytellers, her little bat seems terrified of nearly everything. Every illustration places him at the edge of the room, clinging to a beam or hiding behind a shelf, as though forever searching for the quickest escape. I no longer believe he followed the Witch. I suspect he simply had the misfortune of being wherever she happened to be.

During my studies of the Witch's remaining manuscripts, I found several references to a creature that appeared during the darkest days of the village. The villagers called it the Red Dragon. The accounts describe a dragon unlike any other: its scales carried the color of burning embers, its presence brought unbearable heat, and wherever it appeared, the land was left scarred by flames. For many years, I believed these stories were nothing more than the fearful memories of those who witnessed the destruction. Until I discovered the transformation ritual hidden among the Witch's writings.

The Witch had studied ancient forms of magic that allowed the caster to shape their own spirit into another form. It was not a simple illusion, nor was it a spell that created a separate being — the magic revealed what already existed within the Witch. According to her notes, each transformation was connected to a powerful emotion. The stronger the feeling, the stronger the creature that emerged. The Red Dragon appeared when her anger overcame her. The fire that followed was an extension of her own rage. The villagers saw a dragon attacking their home; they did not understand that they were witnessing the Witch herself.

The truth of the Red Dragon remained hidden for centuries. The creature that descended upon the village filled the skies with fire, leaving behind only ashes and ruin. Homes were consumed, fields were scorched, and nothing in its path was left untouched. In the end, the greatest danger was not the power the Witch possessed, but her inability to control the emotions that gave that power form. Yet the Red Dragon was only one part of the spell. The Witch had discovered another transformation, one born not from anger, but from an emotion no less dangerous — jealousy. The Green Dragon.

The village records speak of a second dragon whose arrival bore little resemblance to that of the Red. It crossed the sky in silence, its green scales shimmering beneath the afternoon sun until they seemed almost to glow. The people gathered in the streets to watch it pass. Children pointed toward the sky in delight, painters hurried to preserve its likeness, and many later claimed they had never beheld a creature of such extraordinary beauty. Most remarkable of all were its eyes, described as brilliant emeralds, so luminous that few could resist meeting their gaze. Unlike the Red Dragon, it left behind neither smoke nor ruin.

In the weeks that followed, the village records began to describe a series of strange incidents. One woman, who had often praised her neighbor's roses, returned under the cover of darkness and cut every blossom from its stem. By morning, she stood among the severed flowers, unable to explain what made her do it. A young carpenter who had once admired his elder brother's work became convinced that every commission should have been his. One autumn evening, he waited until darkness fell and set fire to the workshop they had built together as boys.

The mayor's wife, content for many years with her quiet life, became consumed by thoughts of the merchant's grand estate. Before winter arrived, she abandoned her husband, believing she had been denied the life she truly deserved. Two sisters, known throughout the village for their devotion to one another, quarreled over a necklace that had rested untouched in their late mother's chest for years. What began as a disagreement ended with the younger sister striking the elder with a fireplace poker. Neither sister spoke another word for the remainder of their lives.

Only within the Witch's own writings does the truth reveal itself. Hidden between two weathered pages was a single warning, written in a steadier hand than the rest, as though she wished it never to be overlooked —

"Never meet the Green Dragon's gaze"

The villagers believed the dragon had merely passed overhead, leaving them with nothing more than the memory of a beautiful creature. They never realized that the true enchantment lay in its shiny emerald eyes. Every soul who gazed into them carried away a fragment of the Witch's jealousy. Before long, the once peaceful village descended into utter chaos.