32
Note: The Old Witch, presented here in her Lesser Form of Evil, is mentioned briefly in the book but never elaborated on. This version of Neverland's witch is, therefore, an original creation of DK Archer and it would be muchly appreciated if she wasn't used without permission. Thankee
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The Old Witch's cottage sat on four hyena legs, folded sloppily under it like a lazy beast. It was a small building, made from clapboards like a colonist's, with a roof made of crooked planks and patched with squares of sod. Red daisies grew stubbornly from the grass. On its face were two windows, with shutters going horizontally like eyelids, both closed. Between them was a red door. The door hissed and rattled at intervals, snoring away in the morning light.
"Are you sure that's a house?" Billy asked hesitantly. "It looks like a monster."
Slightly nodded. "That's the house. It's slightly asleep. Should we knock?"
Mullins scowled "We probably shouldn't touch the thing at all. There's evil in it."
"I'm not going in there." Mason muttered mutinously.
"I never said you had a choice." Mullins growled. Mason thumbed his nose at him and settled back against a tree.
Muttering something that sounded suspiciously religious under his breath, Mullins pulled his dagger from his belt and pounded its hilt against the door three times, jumping back quickly. The house gave a whuffing, hollow noise, like wind through the eves, and the shutters creaked open narrowly. The windows were round as eyes. Grumbling, the house squirmed and stumbled to its feet, its paws sprawled wide, and suddenly towering over them by a good ten feet. Its shutters narrowed at them. It wasn't until that moment that Slightly realized how very bad an idea this might be.
The door slammed open with a whuff of hot air and the house jumped, angling its open maw for them. Slightly screamed and the group split two directions; Mullins one way and Slightly and Billy the other. The house trundled past, recovered, and spun around to face them, chomping its wooden lip. Mason was the brightest one; he was already gone by the time the house looked his way.
Billy and Slightly bolted, and so they were the ones the house followed, a great, awkward lope that sent things crashing in its interior. Mullins grabbed ahold of the rear flower box as the house passed and was pulled off his feet without a thought to it, the massive canine legs pounding away below him as he dangled. He heard one of the boys give a sharp yelp and the door slammed. He let go of the flower box with one hand and eyed the leg beneath him, timing himself just right that a wide swipe with the dagger slit through the pointed heel and the tendon therein. Dust sprayed out at him from the wound.
The house whuffed and stumbled, falling onto its belly and shaking its timbers, knocking Mullins away. It scuttled forward on three legs anyway and the door slammed again. When the building stood awkwardly on three legs, tilting dangerously, Mullins could see that both the boys were gone.
Swearing, he stood as well, readying himself to stab the thing for whatever good it would do. The building lunged for him, and Mullins managed to sink his dagger into the soft wood of the upper left shutter before it twisted and caught him in its mouth, slamming the door behind him.
Grumbling with the noises only a house can make, the cottage scratched the knife out of its eye, turned around three times, and settled back down to sleep.
Not being dead when he ought be dead was always a novel feeling. Mullins peeled himself off the well worn floor and blinked at the jolted cottage. Billy and Slightly were piled together in a messy tangle of arms and legs by the hearth. In the single room, there was a table, a chair, a bed, and a bookcase, all lashed to the wall securely by ropes. There were rows and rows of shelves with square jars and apothecary bottles tied against the back, a Chinese rug that was nailed to the floor, and a tapestry over the bed that traced genealogy in faded gold lines. Over the small, smokeless fire a scalded black cooking cauldron was filled half way with boiled water, miraculously unspilled.
He was receiving an acidic stare from the room's fourth occupant. The Old Witch was hunched down over the table, holding down a set of tiny square bottles and what appeared to be a vivisected starling on a wax slab. Two of the bottles and the series of knives, prods, and pins had gone crashing against the far wall, spattering the base of the bookshelf with wet bits of god-knew-what. She clucked her tongue at them. "Will that be ALL?" she asked sharply.
Mullins blinked at her. Billy and Slightly were disentangling themselves, Billy warding off Slightly's effort to check the bump that was growing on the back of his head.
The Old Witch sighed and scooted over to the bookcase, stooping to collect the pins. She looked a little like a witch. She wore a plain brown dress with black and white striped stockings, and striped evening gloves that had the fingers cut out. Her head was covered by a white woolen cap that tied under her chin, and had two long, black ears like a jester's hat fastened together on top with a jeweled hatpin. She scooped the broken bits into the apron of her dress and frowned at Mullins.
"Fine gentleman you are, upsetting my house and then just sitting there while I clean up. Fine gentleman indeed. What sort of example are you setting for those boys?"
"Uh, ma'am? Miss Witch?" Slightly interrupted timidly, his face a little pink. She turned to look at him with expectantly raised eyebrows.
"I'm Slightly. This is Billy. That's Mullins." He pointed to the American. "We, ah, slightly need some help."
"Of course you do." She said, waving a hand at them dismissively as she emptied her apron on the table. "Nobody ever comes here if they don't want something. It's just a matter of what you want. And what you'll pay. Here, make yourself useful, dearie." She tapped the table. Slightly crept forward and nervously began separating the glass, metal, and biological mess. The bird it had all come from didn't have much of a head to stare at him with, but he felt a little guilty in its presence none the less.
The Old Witch wiped her hands on her apron. "Well let me get a look at you all." She said. "Both you two. Stand up, for goodness sake, Mr. Mullins! The floor is no place for a grown man!"
Billy looked at Mullins, unnerved. He'd been expecting a cackling old bat in a torn black dress and a pointed hat. If they hadn't just been eaten by a four legged house, he'd be inclined to believe this woman was an eccentric old maid.
"You're absolute messes." She said, eyeing them up and down. "You sir, your clothes are covered in dirt. And it that wolf's blood?" she sniffed to confirm her assessment. "You both look like your heads were trampled by elephants and you certainly haven't been much for bathing lately, if ever. You, young man, could do with a proper shirt so the world can't see your belly. Would it be too much to ask to make yourselves presentable before you come calling on me? Honestly. I may be old but I'm not blind." She sniffed again. "Nor is my nose any duller for my years. You smell like something that's crawled from the sea into a cesspool."
Mullins scowled at her. She turned up her nose.
"Be that as it may," she said, turning from them to peer over Slightly's shoulder as he tried to pick flecks of glass and cork from the starling's heart. "I don't see any particular reason to turn you out just yet. Though if we are to conduct any worthy business, I must insist you take a bath and wash your clothes, the lot of you. I'll tell the house to take us to a creek while we talk. And wash your clothes proper, you hear?" she said sharply. "None of this pissing in a bucket you sailors do, that's absolutely revolting! Unsanitary, too." She snorted.
Mullins didn't particularly care for hitting old women, but if she didn't shut her mouth, he just might do it anyway. She swept behind the table again and picked up the surgical knife Slightly had recently freed from the muck, and began to pick away at something in the starling's ribcage.
"So what exactly do you want?" she asked. "A potion? A spell? Most who come here want a love spell, but you wouldn't have come in a group if that were the case." She stopped, picked something out of the starling's chest cavity, and dropped it in a jar. "I'm not killing people this month, by the way. I'm out of chickens."
"We don't want you to kill anybody." Billy said quickly. "We need to know what you can do about ghouls."
"Ah, you're the customer, then." She said with a smirk. "Just a moment. I'll get the house moving."
She tapped the wall behind her, softly. The two windows at the front of the house suddenly popped open their shutters, sending white circles of light into the room.
"To the creek, house." She said sweetly. The house groaned and everything shifted as it rose to its feet. Its steps were decidedly lopsided. The Old Witch frowned. "Did one of you damage my house?" she snipped.
"I cut its leg." Mullins grumbled. "It was eating up the boys."
She sighed in exasperation "It's a HOUSE. What does it matter if it eats you? It's hollow! This will cost extra, you know." She shook a finger at him. "A traveling house isn't easy to come by!"
"What IS the cost, anyway?" Billy asked.
"Depends on what you're after." She said, and picked up the surgical knife again. "It also depends on what you have to offer. If you have something interesting, I may let it go a little cheaper. Now tell me." The knife went into the starling's cranium. "What about ghouls do you want me to do?"
Billy hesitated. "How can you make a person stop being one?"
"By 'a person' meaning you, of course." She said bluntly. "There's no need to tiptoe around me, child, there isn't a sight under the sun I haven't seen. But it depends. If you want honesty, he easiest way to stop being a ghoul is to drop dead and let the gulls eat you. Though I don't think that's really what you want to try, is it."
Billy shook his head.
"I've had some success in arresting a ghoul's age." She continued. "If you catch them young enough, they'll never develop the psychological want of flesh. I'd bet my stockings you're already a bit too old, though, aren't you. Otherwise, you wouldn't be here."
Billy blanched, and nodded again.
"There's repressive potions, of course, but those rarely work for more than five years, and you couldn't keep up the cost of taking one every week. By the time you were twenty you'd be mad as Nero and eating everything in sight. It's not pleasant." She said matter of factly. "Even the clans have to kill those who are driven mad by the potions."
"Then what DOES work?" Mullins snapped, irritated by the obtuse old woman.
"There are spells." She said. "I've only ever enchanted one ghoul in my life, an English ghoul, I believe. He was young enough that I made him not to age. He doesn't pay me his fee until he dies." Her eyes sparkled a bit. "For you, I can make a charm. A very specific sort of charm. I can put it inside of you and so long as it's there you won't even dream of killing. You could be, essentially, a normal human."
"What's the cost?" Billy asked.
The Old Witch smiled and thoughtfully tapped her nose. "What have you got?"
Billy held out his hands. "Only what's on me."
The Witch circled him and gave him a critical eye. She frowned, then glanced at Mullins, and finally to Slightly. Slightly was still diligently trying to separate various indistinguishable parts of starling. The Witch smiled.
"I'll get back to you on that." she said. "First, you'll wash."
As though cued, the house settled to a stop and lowered itself to the ground. She gestured them elegantly towards the door.
"Gentlemen?"
"I don't trust her." Mullins grumbled as he twisted the water out of his shirt in the icy creek. It was a wide, clear trickle that bled eventually into the lagoon, and one the Lost Boys had rarely ever used for bathing. Billy rolled his eyes. He was squatted in the middle of the creek, trying to wash himself without taking off his clothes.
"I think we'd be crazy if we DID trust her." Billy said. "She's a witch. Witches are no good."
"It's slightly better than the fairies." The other boy countered irritably. "She doesn't care if you're a ghoul or the King of Spain."
Billy snorted and turned himself halfway upside down, submerging his hair in the pebble lined water and scrubbing at it. His head protested the temperature change and his vision thrummed red. "I don't know, cully. For all we know she's going to charge me my immortal soul to fix me."
Slightly sighed. "Well I'm slightly out of ideas. If she wants too much I don't know what we'll do."
The boy was working on beating the dirt from his vest at the edge of the creek. Stripped to his trousers to wash, the water dragged his hair down flat and over his shoulders, covering the tiny puncture he'd received from Hook's cutlass. He didn't have another scar on him. Nearby, Mullins was the epitome of whatever the blonde boy was not; under his shirt he was stringy and muscular, and had thick fighting scars on his chest and arms. A line of black hair ran from his collar to his trousers, spreading out across his chest and interrupted by the thick pink line of scar tissue running across his shoulder. The wound where Hook had caught into him was still open and aggravated on the right side.
Strangely enough, it was the only time Billy had ever seen him with his hair untied. Probably because it was the only time since he had known him that Mullins had bathed.
The door clicked shut in the house and all three heads snapped towards it. The Old Witch was climbing down the house's paws, a white handkerchief sticking out the pocket of her apron. She landed on the dirt and brushed her skirt off primly, then proceeded around the house, ignoring them completely. The house shifted and stuck one of its hind legs out, whining at her with its timbers. She frowned and examined the heel. The fur was smothered in dust, and a constant, puffing cloud was coming from the slit Mullins had made in its flesh. The Old Witch knelt and put her mouth to the wound, and started blowing into it, like through a pipe. The boys looked at each other with disgusted expressions, and returned to their washing.
Slightly was the one who froze first. He climbed up onto the dry, sunny bank, shivering, as his clothes dried on a rock. Billy gave up on getting the grease out of his hair not long after and bumbled up after him to shiver too, still clad in his wet clothes, and keeping a good foot or so between him and the boy. Mullins stayed put until he'd managed to beat as much filth as was cooperating out of his clothes, which wasn't as much as he'd rather. Billy glanced back at the Old Witch after a few minutes to find the house had the handkerchief tied around its foot and the witch, her mouth crinkled with dust, was sitting on its thresh hold with her chin in her hand and a smirk on her face. She was watching Mullins. A shirtless, wet, oblivious Mullins. At Billy's stunned look she smiled.
"I may be old, but I'm not dead yet." She said coyly. Billy turned pink and looked away.
When the man finally gave up on his grungy clothes and tossed them up over the rock the Old Witch stood up and smiled at them brightly.
"That's much better." She said, sounding a little smug. "In an hour or two you'll be dry and almost presentable. Come in and warm up by the fire, and we'll talk about what all is going to be involved. Including costs."
Billy felt the sinking feeling of dread as he climbed into the fidgeting house. This is it. he thought. She's going to ask for my soul. After all, wasn't that what evil old crones always wanted in the stories? Something to pay their tithes to the devil?
However, standing barefoot on the warm hearthstones, Billy didn't get the impression of a woman about to rip away his immortal soul. She sat down in the chair and folded her hands across her round belly.
"I won't fool you." she said, looking up at them all. Mullins stood differently when he didn't have his shirt. It was almost amusing. "This isn't a small time charm. The spell involved will be extensive, and it will probably be painful, to boot. I'll have to put the charm somewhere you'll never loose, dearie. That means in here." She tapped her chest. "I won't be able to put it in without cutting you open. Can you handle that?"
Billy nodded; he'd had worse. "But what's the cost?"
"Ah, a wise boy." She said with a smile. "Always looking out for himself. Well, I've decided the cost will be low, this time, quite unbearably low. You don't have much to offer, after all, and what would I do with what you got? So I'll take something you can afford."
"What?" Billy asked.
She looked at Slightly, and smiled. "Him."