I liked the witch and the Crow. A lot.
She has seen them come. She will see them go.
When all else has crumbled into dust, she would be the only one left standing, tip-tapping her wooden cane down the road.
"They didn't want a third wheel, see," said the crow. He pecked at his feathers, catching a fat bug in his beak.
The witch paused in her carving, looked up from the hammer and wood to stare beadily at the bird.
"You sound a little bitter!"
"Hah! As if!"
It tossed its head back, and the bug vanished with a snap of a huge beak.
"Most folk only have two eyes, aye? The old man didn't need me."
She sniffed, and resumed her patient tap-tap-tapping.
"Ach, you still sound a little bitter."
In those days, she was not so kind (or really, when she had a sharper mind, a sharper memory, when the world had not gained a fuzzy edge) as she was now.
So when the big man came banging up to her door, it took very little to persuade her to sell him a charm.
"I want the strength of ten men," he boomed, black brows beetling over blacker eyes as he looked down at the hunched little crone.
And the crow had cawed, and she had laughed, and she said, "So what will you pay me with then, dearie?"
She'd even managed to sell one of her first efforts at carving, and honestly, she thought that it was a far greater accomplishment than selling a spell.
After all, people came to witches for spells, not carvings.
Tap-tap-tap, went the hammer.
Caw-caw-caw, went the crow.
She did not have the energy to summon up the strength needed to drive the unwanted third brother from her house, so she let him stay.
"You're going to have to pay for your stay, though."
"I can catch insects for you," said the crow, putting its head to the side and looking up at her with wide, black eyes.
"Oh, no no no," she said, and here she smiled, a terrible smile that bared teeth that looked like an accident of tombstones. "Dearie, you are of your brothers' blood, aren't you?"
And if people said that the crow became smarter, became sharper around the edges as the witch seemed to lose her wits and sink into a strange kind of haze, the duo will always be there to rebuff them, dismiss their chatter as silly rumours.
"It's very tiring," she said, and she pinned her hair up into a huge bun. "All very tiring after a while. Who needs memories of their own banishing, really?"
"It may be permanent," warned the crow as it hopped a little closer. "I'm not my brothers."
"No, you aren't." The witch straightened herself, brushed invisible dust away from the front of her skirts. "And that was what I was counting on, dearie."
"I think what you did was a little silly," said the crow one balmy summer night. They were sitting outside the cottage, the witch roasting a rabbit over a fire.
She looked at it, and she squinted an eye.
"What?"
"You know," said the crow, and it did an impatient little shuffle. "Memories."
"OH! Ah!" She nodded sagely, in the way that people did when they had absolutely no idea what they hell you were talking about. "That. What about it, dearie?"
The crow looked away.
"Nothing."
"Git!" The shriek shot through the woods as the crow lunged at a wisp, the black bird swooping through the blue creature as it exploded into a flurry of smoke and disappointed whisperings.
The witch scraped a knife over a particularly stubborn piece of wood, one that had refused to yield up its hidden bear even after a week of worrying and cooing over it.
"Ah, there's no getting round it." She blew at a curl of wood, and frowned.
"Someone's going to come looking for a spell real soon."
And someone did.
"Nobody learns, do they?" the crow said.
The witch shrugged. "It's not my place to judge, dearie."
She petted the creature on the head.
"Now let's get ready for the festival! I think Nanny's going to be there with her clan, and ooh, I'm going to show her up this time round …"
They spread stories about her.
Men in black came to burn her down, to take her to the cross and set her upon a heap of burning wood.
She turned them into bears.
On hindsight, that may not have been the very smartest thing to do.
She got out of there sharpish soon enough.
It had become a hard world, filled with harder people with the coldest hearts.
She closed one eye and looked out at the receding land, watching it fade away into the blue and grey of the sea as the little ship took her, the crow and her carving (conjuring!) tools away to a fresh new place, a land where they said the streets were paved with gold and everybody wanted to become an actor.
It still looked fuzzy to her.
People told stories about mad Mrs. Matheson.
Mad Mrs. Matheson and her countless bear paraphernalia, with the one black stuffed crow that had too-real feathers and too-real eyes that seemed to follow you around wherever you walked.
Mad Mrs. Matheson that glared at you as you paced around her store, looking over the stuffed toys and puzzles and trinkets until you decide, "A cute bear was not enough to compensate for the inevitable curse she'll lay on me." – and you flee the store, never to come back.
"Where did you learn that stare from?"
"From a nancy-boy angel."
They went on holidays.
Zeniba said her servant was better.
She said hers was more intelligent.
And Zeniba looked at the crow, at the sharp defined edges of its feathers and the way it seemed to burn so brightly in the misty in-between world of the spirits and she said, "Anybody can be smarter if they had two souls in them."
"Not really, two-head Joe got himself killed by his wife."
"Shouldn't have gone gallivanting around on her."
She's seen them come. She'll see them go.
In the end of the end, she will be all that remained – just a hunchbacked old crone with a stuffed crow for a pet.
&end.