The Witch Solana
Part of a story written by Kirsten Smart
Waiting.
Six weeks after the whipping, Solana was once again fetched by guards.
“It is time again, Witch!”
The Jailer fitted a key to her heavy fetters, unlocking her wrists. She did not resist as she was
forced onto her belly, a guard kneeling on her back. Her arms were pulled behind her wrists crossed
over, and cords were put about them. Solana gave a whimper as the cords were pulled painfully tight,
crunching into her flesh, biting bone, and then more cord, and more, was wrapped and wound about her
wrists. She could not move her hands, it was as if they had been cast in iron, their bite on her wrists
constant and burning in their savagery.
Satisfied with his work, the Jailer ordered her pulled to her feet, and she was marched from the
cell. They traced a familiar route to the torture chamber: descending into its dim depths. Solana’s legs
were weak with fear as they took her to an enclosure surrounded by torches.
Luisa Consuela leaned against a pillar, a hand on her hip. She wore a brief tunic of white, pinned
at one shoulder, leaving her arms bare as always. Its skirt fell barely below her loins, leaving her long
legs exposed; torchlight glinted on their lean muscularity.
Tiny flames reflected in those dark eyes. “Come with me, Solana Degas. I wish to introduce you
to your next torment.”
Solana was brought forward.
She had seen this obscene device once before, but now, confronted with it truly, her legs lost
their strength. She collapsed to her knees in terror. Sweat broke out over her body.
Five feet high at its apex, it resembled a tall, narrow stool; but in place of a ‘seat’ was an
eighteen-‐inch high pyramid of wood, its steep sides converging to a single, hideous iron point. Nearby
was a pulley and a winch, a heavy hook slung on the end of a long chain.
“Prepare her.”
“No! Please, please please!” Solana gibbered in sheer horror as she was wrenched up by her
trussed arms. They propelled her, stumbling and sagging and shrieking, to the hook, raising her arms up
behind her back and passing her bound wrists over it. It had the effect of doubling Solana forward with
her arms twisted up behind her, an echo of the hideous strappado she had seen before. “I beg you!”
she pleaded to Luisa.
“Pain will release the truth,” Luisa said coldly as she stepped to the winch.
Luisa turned the big wheel of the windlass, and by her tightly bound wrists, Solana’s arms were
wrenched upwards behind her back. She bent forward as the pressure increased in her shoulders,
gasping with the growing discomfort. But as Luisa turned the winch more and Solana’s wrists were
pulled higher, her arms were drawn upwards, past their natural resistance: muscles stood and striated,
her shoulders bunched and cracked loudly, the geography of her armpits twisted oddly. Now the pain
began, and intensified as another turn drew her arms higher up behind her.
“Oh, God! Stop!”
When her heels left the ground and her arms went higher still, true pain hit. For a time, Solana
teetered on her toes, arms wrenched high up behind her back, every muscle fiercely defined, her arms
quivering. Sweat was already streaking her ribcage from each armpit. Her calf muscles were bunched in
the effort to keep her weight on her toes. Pain was spreading through her shoulders and down her back.
Without hurry, at Luisa’s command, the Jailer fitted manacles to Solana’s ankles, each with six
inches of chain ending in a four-‐inch iron ring. As he stepped back, Luisa casually turned the wheel again.
The pain was immense. Lifted off the floor, light flashed in Solana’s eyes as hot agony speared
through her shoulders and along her taut triceps, lancing down her back and sides. It was more than she
could stand and she shrieked and screamed. It felt as though her arms were breaking. As the chain was
wound in, the iron rings trailing from her ankle fetters clattered and then cleared the ground also.
“Oh! Oh!” Solana’s shrieks filled the chamber as she slowly rotated above the floor.
Luisa turned the wheel, drawing in more chain, watching as Solana was hoisted higher and higher
in the strappado. Her arms, behind her back, cruelly and unnaturally strained, feet kicking futilely in mid-‐
air, the heavy iron rings swinging from her ankles. Luisa continued to raise Solana until her desperate
toes were five feet from the ground, then locked the windlass.
“I shall give you two hours to think upon what awaits you,” she told Solana.
Of all the tortures she had tried as a young girl, strappado had been Luisa’s most hated. She had
agreed an hour with her father. He had tied her slim wrists and elbows behind her back and winched her
into the air, and she had at once been shrieking, so quickly and intensely had the pain begun. The
muscles had been defined and bunched in her young arms as they were raised backwards up behind her
head, and her feet had kicked and reached desperately.
She had begged to be let down after just fifteen minutes. Her father had refused, and she had
slowly twirled for the hour, crying and shrieking. At the end of it, he had told her that she would hang for
another hour, deaf to her desperate pleading. When he had finally lowered her after more than two
hours, she refused to talk to him for a week.
When she had ears for his words again, he had explained that strappado could be very effective,
but hard to control; joints could dislocate within seconds and the damage could quickly become
permanent, and unlike other tortures, it could not be easily incremented. It was best saved for the strong,
the young, and the lithe.
Luisa had learned much more than just what pain was like, during her experiences of torture as a
young teen. She knew how to position a witch’s arms so that strappado would be intensely painful but
less damaging than if sloppily done; and she had learned the importance of letting the victim hang
before beginning any additional tortures. Once muscles were exhausted and she could no longer
struggle or thrash about in her pain, there was less chance of unplanned damage.