Chapter 4: Sentence

"Maretta," the witch looked up from her cauldron as the Pumpkin King walked through the old doorway. "Do you have it yet?"

"Right here, your Highness," she grumbled, striding over to a shelf and plucking a vial of orange goo from among them. "I still say this is a bit excessive in terms of punishment."

"Being required to repay for stealing with one potion every year is hardly "excessive", Maretta," Jack said, opening the bottle and sniffing its contents. "Especially considering that whatever you made with what you stole could either be running loose in the forest or dead without a ghost." He put the cork back in the opening of the bottle. "I don't know which is worse, to be honest."

"It was a pumpkin!" Maretta returned to the cauldron. "This town has enough pumpkins. On more or less makes little difference."

"It was a jack-o-lantern," Jack corrected, "the biggest one we ever would have had, if I'd managed to give it a mouth and a candle before you used it to create your… familiar?" He walked over to the book on a nearby table, and opened it. "And then you went and abandoned what you made!"

"It was a useless blob of white flesh and black hair. There was nothing I could do with it." Maretta shrugged as Jack read the recipe on the only page with a bookmark. "One jack-o-lantern wasted on what could have been great, if I'd gotten a cat hair instead of… whatever I did get from that hairbrush."

"A single cat hair from a black cat born in the Uncanny Valley," Jack read aloud from the page, "three spiders that have never bitten, tears of a frightened child, five pages from a tome of ancient lore," he glared at Maretta, "Which I still want back, by the way… and the outer shell of the largest pumpkin grown the night before Halloween, eyes cut out." He shut the book. "All of that effort, and you have no idea where this creature is."

"Dead," Maretta responded, "I'd bet my cauldron on it." She looked at Jack, who was inspecting the bottle. "Why do you need a tracking potion, anyway? Do you intend to find it yourself?"

"I will," Jack said, "but not today."

"Why do you care to find it? Do you consider the thing your property?"

"I consider whatever you made to be my responsibility, seeing as how I unwittingly provided the main ingredient. This, however," he held up the bottle, "is to give me a clue where the girl running around Halloween has gotten off to. Nobody seems able to approach her before she runs off… for an 11-year-old, she's very quick."

"What makes you say she's 11?" Maretta put another eyeball into the cauldron – was that five yet, or four?

"I did the math," Jack responded, "from all of the papers. The first card was a congratulations from 10 years ago on being adopted, and it said she was almost 1 at the time. Another says she was 6 when she came back, the third and fourth she was 9, and the most recent one was a few weeks ago." He shook his head. "But what bothers me is that none of the cards suggest she actually did anything to deserve it. I don't understand..."

"Life's not fair for humans, what's so hard to understand about that?" Maretta stirred the brew. "Now, if there isn't anything else…"

"I'm done," Jack said, and walked out, adding at the door "but I'll expect another potion next year."

"And again until I find the monster, I know," Maretta responded, "I know." He walked out, leaving Maretta to her work. How hard can finding a monster be? After all, it's not hard to miss during most seasons – the little worm reeked of pumpkin.