Witch's Folly
Somewhere at about two miles off the edge of reality floated, in a magical soup seasoned with raw physics and wild imagination- just for that extra touch that gives the unreal a quite plausible look- a large* and blue... no, make that blue-green planet that was inhabited, like so many others, by people who thought of themselves as the only ones in the whole planet-centered universe.
*Since dimensions are relative even in normal physics, the fact that it was surrounded by a dense and quite playful - there were so many things you could do with a planet's shape or size when bored to near evaporation- cloud of magic was not making sizing it any easier.
One of them was talking in a most natural tone with the village's grocer:
"I said, I wanted two tomatoes, you daft old man! I said nothing of any muddy potatoes or any such rubbish!" and she - for it was a woman, short, dark clothes, white skinned, with terribly thin lips and narrow, blue eyes overhung by the stiffest of hair-dues - shoved the bag of potatoes in the beady little man's unexpecting hands.
"Yes, m'am, sorry m'am…"he said in a strangled voice. "I jus' thoughts you said you also wanteds fresh taters… 'eribly sorry I am…" and he fumbled with the bag back to the potato stall.
"Well, don't let it happen again!" she prodded the man with a stubby finger. "Or next time you will find that some food could… well, let's just say that it won't be a pleasant sight." She smugly arranged her tall pointy hat, grabbed the paper bag with the fresh tomatoes from the counter and left without paying anything to the fearful little man now shakily trying to replace the potatoes from the bag back in a neat stack on the open stall. She didn't intend on pursuing the threat- she didn't even know what she would have done. She hadn't done anything much to anyone for a long, long time. She had been a good-what an improper term- witch for years. The last time she had actually done something that would try- not succeed, mind you- to seem magical, was when she had convinced Mr. Redwood that he was in fact a duck. She smiled to herself. He had needed a pond build in the backyard, and even now he had the odd tendency of trying to call out to ducks every time he saw the flocks heading wherever they went during winter.
She had left the dusty winding alleys of the village and had entered the narrow and even more contorted- whatever that meant- paths of the forest. If she had been afraid of the dark and mysterious- which she was not, on the basis of herself being a symbol of the scary, even if not lately- she would have been spooked out by the twisting, gloomy branches of the overhanging trees, the slithering sounds of the forest and the… well, she had intended the path to her house to be so, in order to avoid any visits from wannabe heroes, but this? This was definitely not supposed to be there! A rather large, white, cute, white, cuddly, white rabbit was testily munching on some overgrown ferns, staring at her with his red eyes-why did the cute ones, always have them odd-coloured- tapping impatiently with a paw on the rocky ground.
"Esme W-weatherwax!*" the rabbit spoke in a hoarse high-pitched voice, not very different than an old lady's. He showed a tendency to stumble on sound at times, presumably because of trying to say too much too fast. "I th-thought I'd tole you t-to wait for m-me at home today!" It gave Esme a stare that ought to be hard to endure, not to mention return, if it weren't coming from a fluffy bunny.
* The name, though uncommon, was somehow creating the image of a grubby old lady with a pointy hat and very strict opinions on what traditions meant, but possessing a good, if commanding, heart and who, incidentally, was also a witch. It also brought to mind an old broom that didn't want to start and a vague image of a flat planet amount a gigantic meteor-stricken turtle. But that is only coincidence.
"Am very sorry, Letice, I am, but I had to do some cooki…some potions and I needed the ingredients, now didn't I?" replied Esme dryly. She was in no mood for what she knew was about to come.
"P-potion?? Hah! Don't m-make me l-laugh! You r-ruddy well know y-you hasn't made a-an occult" she paused to enjoy the flavour of this word* "d-deed for years! I t-tole you I be c-coming to t-take your l-license. With all y-your wossname b-backfield…"
"…ground…"
"'S what I said! You s-still can't call y-yourself a w-witch if you don't dos witch…things."
"…craft…" Mrs Weatherwax corrected the rabbit again. She might have been strict about keeping things in the common zone-not that there were unknown things for a witch, it was just that the witch was unknown to them- but from time to time she had picked up -more from boredom than from genuine interest- quite a few more words that had not belonged to her vocabulary - because the words refused to belong to it, of course.
*On this planet- also known as the Colour-blind Planet, or Cobli Planet in short, because of the green and blue hues that resembled the way a colour-blind person perceived a heterogeneous mix of red and green- inspiration, as in many other such almost imaginary realms, flowed in the form of particles that sometimes - and that comes as a relief, mind you- encountered a brain en-route and ignited the spark/flame/scorching-fire of inspiration followed by sounds like Eureka! or whole plays written on the run by formerly unknown artists whose creations still endure (obviously either later on not enough particles have hit one brain simultaneously or have done so but on the wrong brain). On this particular planet, inspiration also came in flavours. That is why some gloomy author might have that haunted, gaunt look- you try looking smart and joyful with a bad taste in your mouth all the time!
"S-stop interrupting a h-higher ranking w-witch likes m-myself! And f-for the love of th-thirteen*, helps me ch-change back to a p-proper-looking witch t-that I am!" finished the rabbit and raised a demanding ear that only contributed to its overall cuteness.
*Thirteen is a holy number for witches for the sole reason of being considered highly unlucky by ordinary people who, occasionally, take their superstition far enough to replace it with the less fierce 12+1.
But Granny Weatherwax-how she was known by mostly all- had had just about enough of this bossing around. She was a proper witch. She knew more about witchcraft -that word again- than most of the others did. She did not practice it, of course; she knew very well what too much magic could do: getting out of control and all that creating stories of its own accord and dragging any poor witch minding her own people-cursing, gifts-and-party- invites-receiving little, old business in a whirl of home-leaving and kindness-of-heart-showing actions that ill suited a proper grubby witch. And she had always tried to be proper. She refused to use mirror magic- what a headache that was, when her sister had used it- sped past fashion changes faster than a Concorde -whatever that was- and utterly rejected any idea of redecorating her house which was one step away of looking less old-fashioned than a hollowed rock. She took pride in being a true, proper witch, not these new types that wanted e-mancy-patience- of which she had a vague idea that would involve divination of some sort or another. And now this worn down, incompetent witch came to her in the form of a soppy rabbit-no doubt a sign of her ineptitude- to take away her right to be what she was born, raised and trained to be, what should actually, be her right. And it was that hierarchy –new and foreign, everything a witch should avoid, not to mention use- that stroke her as the height of unfairness; rankings were for the greedy wizards, not for solitary witches-yet another characteristic Granny tried to keep unchanged, although she had no objection in having a few witches to talk to now and then, of course, solitary together. So she had had just about enough, and her fingers were already beginning to fizz slightly in the forest gloom. Her trained hunched look straightened up and she spoke with the bluntness of a war-hammer and the coldness of absolute zero:
"Mark my words, Letice Earwig, I will not take cheek from someone who is younger than me with 'bout just enough to be my grand-daughter! You want magic? I'll give you magic! Quite more magic than your rodent ears can handle!" and she savored the almond and rum cocktail taste that momentarily was induced by a fleeting inspiration particle.
She raised a hand forward, pointing through the thick trees laden with undergrowth towards the summit rock that the witches used as a secret meeting place, so secret that everyone on a radius of a dozen villages avoided going closer than two hundred yards from the place. Octarine sparks -again, a faint resonance from the flat planet astride the gargantuan turtle flickers through the mind- played menacingly under Granny's oblong fingernail.
She was all smug and grinning on the inside. Her features, however, had become harsh, scary; a big mole that had once receded reappeared on her nose followed by two bonus thick hairs just for the aesthetic touch.
"I am going to say this just once, Letice Earwig, so you'd better listen good! You go back to that daft Allice woman and you tell her that I ain't going to give up that easily," her tone was sharper now, cutting deep to serve its purpose. "And if you don't want to, well, then I guess I'll just be having to make a stew, too… a rabbit stew, that is!" And she gave that blood chilling high-pitched laugh that only she, and a few great witches before her, could concoct. She was well aware of the ridiculous of what she said, for which reason she briefly glanced around with only one eye open, having fleetingly been pierced by the elusive feeling that you are being watched that she came to associate with stories. But it all had its effect. The rabbit was shaking all right.
"Esme W-weatherwax! T-this is an outrage!" Letice was apparently shaking with anger.
A spark whizzed through the air and hit the rabbit precisely on the small, runny nose. It started and speechlessly went scurrying away through the undergrowth. Granny smirked and then continued her way to her dilapidated - and because of that ever so quaint- old cottage. She was sick and tired of "You are the Chosen One" and whatnot. She was too old and too tired for all this.
"Oh, hullo! I didn't exactly expect to see You here!" There was something in the way she emphasized that "you" that made you want to look around suspiciously for anything out of place. And there was something there, all right. The grinning face of Death* was protruding from the darker-than-night cloak staring with the two abyssal holes directly at Granny- he couldn't help it, either: not the grinning, nor the staring, they were sort of built-in features of the human Death.
*Death always comes to pick up the dead, or send some minion- such as Famine, or Plague- to help out. He only reveals himself to wizards and witches. He does not speak much, nor bothers with any of the dramatic top-of-the-hill-on-fiery-skeleton-horse-scyte-in-the-air-full-moon-in-the-background scene, either (anyway, feeding the blasted horse is a real pain in the back; he has tried it and it only put the stable on fire); all in all, a charming personality.
"I HAVE NOT COME FOR YOU," he said in a hammer-on-anvil tone, another of the bonuses of being who he was. "I HAVE MERELY COME FOR YOUR SISTER" a spark in Granny's eyes made him falter a little "…COLEGUE…FELLOW? YES, FELLOW WITCH. WELL, I MUST BE GOING."
"Glad to have met you. You couldn't possibly tell me when I'm due, now can you?" said Granny on conversational tones. She could be a real sweetheart at times, educated, too, especially when she wanted information from someone.
"NO," The answer was neither mean, nor pleasant, nor held any other meaning other than the main one. It had sounded like a far-away thunderbolt drumming for a while after the lightning through the fabric of reality.
"Oh… Ok… well then… I guess I'll see you then, anyway," said Granny, a bit uneasy.
"YES," and with no further ado, Death blended with the setting darkness of the trees next to the cottage. Granny stared blankly at the place he had vanished from for a while, then, with a small sigh of unknown meaning- unknown to others, because a witch always knew what she meant, only the meaning didn't want to say what she meant- she went inside the cottage to have some tee. And all in a day's wossname.
7Created by Toma Catalin