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I sat at across from her at the table in the coffee shop where I'd agreed to meet her. She was slender and well-dressed, with pale skin and long dark hair, and to my surprise she was quite young, probably not much older than me.

That made sense of course: obviously, not *all* wicked witches are old crones. They have to start somewhere.

She'd said nothing when she'd arrived; she just sat down and looked me over skeptically, her arms folded. That wasn't surprising. To the best of her knowledge, I should have died a week ago, just as my father had when he'd turned 18.

"So...your father was Mihai Starovic?" she asked, with a faint Eastern European accent.

I nodded. "That's right." She didn't bother asking *my* name, nor I hers. Neither of us would be so foolish as to give our name to an enemy from our own lips.

I'd never really known my father, as I was only a baby when he died. I was raised by my mother and grandmother, my grandfather having likewise died when he was 18, like my great-grandfather before him, and so on for many generations. I had inherited my forefathers' curse, along with their legacy -- just as the young woman across from me had inherited the legacy of the woman who cursed them.

Some of the details are lost, but it had something to do with the changing world at the time. Centuries ago, the old gods in Eastern Europe were fading away, replaced by the God of the Orthodox faith. My ancestors were *Vedmak,* wise men that might have been called wizards or warlocks elsewhere, but who practiced a benevolent craft, and chose to syncretize it with this new religion. They had always served the common people, so if the people's faith changed, they decided that they must change as well.

*Her* ancestors didn't see it that way. They wanted to preserve the old ways -- at *any* cost, no matter how mad or monstrous. So, one particular ancestress of hers, a powerful *Vedma,* planned a dark and bloody rite to summon *Chernobog,* the darkest of all the old Slavic deities, into our world.

My ancestors stopped her, and sealed Chernobog away in oblivion, but in the process of doing so they made themselves vulnerable, and the evil Vedma had just enough time to use the small spark of Chernobog's power she'd been able to summon to place a curse on my family:

*Every male child of your blood shall die upon his eighteenth birthday!*

It probably sounded cooler in Old Czech. Maybe it even rhymed. Either way, it wasn't meant to make my family die out -- people got married young, in those days. It was meant to cripple us, and make us suffer. Our powers are hereditary in the male line, but they only fully develop *after* the Vedmak in question turns 18, and the curse ensured that would never happen again.

Except, *I'd* been alive just over 18 years now, and I still wasn't dead. We'd known the Vedma's descendants were still around and as malicious as ever, and weren't surprised that once they found out I hadn't died, their most recent scion got curious. It had been easy to arrange a meeting.

"Then you're *not* 18." she concluded, at last, as the barista approached with a pair of frappachinos, and set them on the table.

"One for the gentleman," the barista said, cheerfully, placing one in front of me, "...and one for the lady," she finished, placing the second in front of the Vedma's descendant.

"No, I'm definitely eighteen." I assured her. "For about four days now - - got documentation to prove it, if you want. Oh, and please, the coffee's on me: it is a gift freely given, incurring no obligation."

She glanced at the coffee, and raised an eyebrow. I smirked, and crossed myself. "I swear by my power -- such as it is -- that I have placed neither poison nor any Craft within or upon these delicious coffee beverages, nor any part of the vessels that contain them."

She nodded, acknowledging the oath as one she knew I wouldn't break, though she still snatched up the cup the barista had placed in front me and drank from that, instead of her own. She considered me for another moment then cocked her head.

"So you must not be male?" she offered playfully, a smile playing on her lips.

I chuckled. "I have documentation of that too -- unless you wanted a more decisive demonstration?"

She smirked. "Another time, perhaps." She tapped a finger on her lips thoughtfully. "You are...what is the word in English...*Hermaprite?"*

I don't speak Czech but I got the idea. "Wrong again. I'm plain vanilla male -- and quite comfortable with being so, before you ask."

She scowled in frustration. "This is not possible. My ancestor's curse cannot be broken!"

"Not as far as I know," I agreed.

"Then how are you *still alive?"* she demanded.

"Easy -- my eighteenth birthday hasn't arrived yet." I explained, casually.

"You *just said* you're eighteen years old!" she snapped.

"That's right. But the day I become eighteen years old *isn't* the day I'm fated to die, now is it?" I pointed out.

"What do you..." she trailed off, and her eyes widened in realization. "A leap year!"

I winked and pointed at her. "You got it. Born on good old Feb. 29 -- I'm eighteen years old, but I'm nowhere near my eighteenth *birthday.* Those come only once every *four* years, for me. I've got a ways to go, before my expiration date.*"*

She burst out laughing, and so did I, defusing the tension.

"I see now!" she said, shaking her head and still chuckling. "That is how it is possible that you *are* male, you *are* 18, and yet you are alive. My ancestor should have worded her curse more carefully."

"Eh, hindsight is 20/20, right?" I offered, with a shrug.

"You are also *a fool,"* she added, wiping a tear of mirth away as her laughter trailed off.

I frowned. "How so?"

"I don't know what clever trap you think you've laid for me, but it won't work." she said, flatly. "You think I wasn't *expecting* it, when I came here? No assault, whether mortal or magical, that you would be able to muster could possibly be a threat to me -- not when you're only a few days past maturity. You have only *begun* to come into your true power, whereas I am already in full possession of mine."

I held my hands up. "No no, I don't have any trap waiting to spring, believe me."

She snorted. "It doesn't matter if you do or don't. The result will be the same -- now that my curiosity is satisfied, I will simply enact the *intent* of my foremothers' curse, by my own hand."

She raised a hand towards me, and hissed an incantation. Nothing happened.

"Powers failing you?" I asked, casually. "Hm. I wonder if that happened to my father, before he died?"

Her eyes widened in horror, as the pale skin of her hand suddenly started to grow even paler.

"My trap is *already sprung."* I said, gesturing to her cup. "Yes, I swore by an oath I could not swear falsely, that I neither poisoned nor cast any spell upon either of our drinks -- and that was true. *My blood,* which the barista mixed into both drinks, is not by any means a poison. And it wasn't *me* who cast the spell on it. It was *your ancestor,* the Vedma, who did that. It was a gift freely given, and by freely *receiving it* from me, it is thus rightfully transferred to *you."*

"No...." she croaked despairingly, holding her withering hands up before her slowly sinking eyes.

"And of course," I added, tapping the top of her cup. "It was *you,* in your paranoia, who decided to switch what had been apportioned to each gender. As *the lady* in this transaction, you chose to instead voluntarily take into yourself that which both the Vedma and the barista -- a female cousin of mine, by the way -- specifically intended for *the gentleman."*

Her cheeks grew hollow, and her mouth contorted into a rictus of pain and rage. She hissed and clawed at me, but I slapped her enfeebled hands aside with little effort, and she fell back into her chair.

"I wasn't lying, when I said I knew no way to break the Vedma's curse..." I said softly, as I stood from the table and watched the gasping woman shrivel up before my eyes. "...but I figured out how to put it back where it *belonged."*

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Submitted by SilasCrane on Fri, Apr 21, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

The men in your family die the moment they turn 18, due to a curse cast on one of your ancestors by a witch. You turned 18 a week ago and are still living, and as a result a descendant of the witch has arrived to figure out why you didn't die.