Witch, Cat, and Cobb Read online

  I hadn't really needed to chop off my hair. It wasn't as if I could disguise my figure, and people would have been just as likely to notice a boy trekking across the palace grounds in fancy riding clothes as a girl. It had been more of an act of defiance. Ever since the wedding had been announced, people had been fussing over what to do with my hair. I'd thought that the dress-fitting would be the worst, but it had been determined that I'd be wearing my mother's gown, and a simple fitting and a few pokes with pins had been the worst of that.

  The hair though! It was currently fashionable for ladies of Priia to wear their hair poofed up on top of their heads, pinned with pearls from Tchelt, and padded with silk. But my marriage was going to be to the Saishen elf Prince, so might it not be better for me to wear it long and dripping with crystals like the ladies of Saisha did? And then there was the style of the dress, which was Maidren like my mother, so perhaps I should wear my hair in the style to match? But the Maidren style had changed since my mother was married twenty years ago, and I didn't want to appear outdated...

  Actually, I didn't want to appear at all, but that didn't stop the royal hairdresser from having me in for three sessions a week to try out different hairstyles. Never mind that almost all of the styles required my naturally curly hair to be straightened with hot irons that burnt my scalp and my hair. Before it had been silky and easy to brush and braid, but after all the abuse, it felt like straw in my hands, and matted at the slightest touch. In fact, after a particularly long, painful session with the hairdresser, I had gone back to my room to brush it out, and a piece of singed hair had come loose into my hand.

  And that, I had told Fen firmly, was the last straw. I'd chopped every last bit of it off, and done what I'd been threatening to do since I'd first been informed that I was old enough to be wed to a prince. I'd run away.

  I sighed and fussed with the bit of hair left at the nape of my neck before ducking my head under the water and scrubbing away the last of the grime. Then I got out of the tub and padded naked to the window to dry off with the towel. The clothes, a worn tunic and shapeless trousers, were old and a bit scratchy, but I put them on anyway, not wanting to walk around a strange house undressed.

  Though I was beginning to feel very tired indeed, I made myself wash my old clothes as best I could in the dirty water and then snapped my fingers twice and hung them, dripping, from the side of the suddenly empty tub. The door was silent as I opened it, and I sneaked down the hall and into the spare bedroom.

  It was more like a very large closet. Despite the fact that all four of the walls had been molded into an assortment of shelves, they weren't nearly enough to contain the huge amount of stuff that was packed into the room. Books stood in precarious towers, and old clothes and tools and plants and strange-looking dolls were stacked in haphazard piles.

  Fen had jumped up to the highest spot of course, one of the deep-set indents near the roof. He seemed to be asleep, but I suspected he just didn't want to talk to me. In any case, when I began to kick things out of the way in order to get to the bed in the corner, which was stacked high with more books, candles, baskets and bottles of suspicious-looking liquid, he lifted his head a little and peered at me through one open eye.

  He watched me work for several minutes, before obviously deciding it wasn't interesting enough to hold his attention and closing his eye again. "You won't be able to sleep that much as a human, you know," I said as I worked, clearing away the things and stacking them in what spaces were available other than the bed. At last I found the old, hard mattress and pillow, and attempted to fluff them up, before crawling under the patchwork quilt and trying to get comfortable.

  It was easier than I thought it would be, and before long I had drifted off, just as comfortable as I had ever been in my soft feather bed back at the castle.

  TWO

  I awoke to yelling outside my window. Disconcerted for a moment, I threw the blanket off and tripped over a pile of broken wands, then climbed up onto the tower of books under the windowsill to poke my head out, squinting in the bright sunshine.

  It was the witch who was shouting. She was wearing a purple nightgown with the sleeves shoved up and wielding a broomstick at some invisible foe in the garden.

  "I said out! You've ruined my cabbages with your bloody little swords! Try sticking each other with them sometime!"

  "Is everything alright?" I shouted, and the witch looked up at me, her eyes wide and her hair a mess.

  "Does it look alright?" she shouted back, and whacked her broom against the ground once more. I could have imagined it, but I thought I heard tiny, high-pitched squealing as she did so. "No!" she yelled at the ground. "I don't want to hear about property titles!"

  I pulled my head back in the window and looked around the room. The cobwebs and clouds of dust that I had kicked up in my scramble to the window would have looked pretty illuminated by the morning light were they not so disgusting. I thought about shouting out the window that the room was filthy, but thought better of it, as the witch obviously had enough on her plate that morning. Instead I hauled myself over to the door and went into the bathroom.

  I figured out how to use the facilities by snapping my fingers fairly quickly, and spent a few minutes trying to salvage the mess that was my newly short hair in the mirror before giving up and heading out into the kitchen. The witch was there. She had changed into a very nice black and blue dress and had tamed her hair considerably, and she was currently pouring tea into a small shallow bowl for Fen to drink.

  "Good morning," she said evenly as I entered. "Please, sit. Tea."

  They sounded more like orders than suggestions, so I merely nodded and sat quietly at the table as she poured me a tankard of tea. I looked around at the kitchen, noticing that most of the counters, shelves and even the table we were sitting at had been molded from the same pale-orange clay used to make the walls of the house.

  "Did you make this place?" I asked as the witch poured herself a mug of tea and sat across from me.

  She nodded. "I've never been much of an architect, I'm afraid, but it stays together alright."

  "It's not very elvish," I commented.

  The witch stared at me over the brim of her cup. Her eyes were a deep purple and her brows sharp and intimidating. "No," she said. "I suppose it isn't."

  Fen sneezed into his tea.

  "Don't expect to be the beneficiary of my hospitality for long, cat," said the witch, giving him a sharp glare before returning her gaze to me. "And I'm not in the business of providing free room and board either. What is it you intend to do with yourself now that you've run away from all your responsibilities?"

  "I don't know," I admitted, taking a sip of the tea. It was a rich black blend with a hint of sweetness to it. "I didn't assume I'd stay away forever. Just until the Saishen Prince is married to someone else."

  "You're engaged to the elf prince?"

  "Yes." I rested my chin on my fist. "It's supposedly a long overdue political move. My father was supposed to marry the Saishen princess twenty years ago, but she disappeared."

  "I know that much," said the witch. She stood, taking the black teapot from the fireplace and pouring a large dollop of it into her cauldron. "I do go into town occasionally. But I haven't been in a few months, so your engagement must have been fairly recent. Hmm." She leaned over the cauldron and sniffed, before making a critical face and turning to the table to sift through the herbs.

  I took another sip of tea and crossed my arms. "They eventually gave up on the princess, and my father married my mother, and then he died only a few years later. Maybe an alliance between Priia and Saishen just isn't to be."

  The witch selected what looked like a bay leaf and dropped it into the cauldron, prompting a display of pink and green sparks and a loud bang, followed by a poof of grey smoke. "So dramatic." She coughed, waving the smoke away with her long sleeves. "So, you expect me to allow you to stay here, free of charge, for however many months it takes them to decide that you
are dead and marry the Saishen prince off to someone else. Then what, you'll return to the castle and marry whatever prince they pick out for you next? What's so bad about the elf prince?"

  "She doesn't want to marry a prince at all," said Fen from under the table where he'd taken cover from the smoke. "She's dreaming of a princess."

  "Shut up, Fen!" I snapped. "She doesn't have to be a princess."

  "Right," said Fen. "You would have married that serving girl if she hadn't run off with the duke."

  I scowled at him. "I liked you better when you didn't talk."

  "And as for you," said the witch. "Fen, is it now? Silly name. Who chose it?"

  "I did," I said quietly.

  The witch looked stricken for a moment. "Oh. Well, it's an alright name for a cat, I suppose." She turned back to Fen. "You want to be human? What will you do for me?" She took a step towards Fen, who cowered under the table.

  "What do you expect me to do for you?" he squawked. "I'm a cat! Very little in the way of things cats can do, actually. You'd be surprised."

  "Pest control," said the witch.

  Fen stared at her. "What?"

  The witch crossed her arms. "Pest control. That's why they keep barn cats, to hunt mice and vermin."

  Fen bristled. "I am not a barn cat!"

  "Is that what you were shouting at in the garden this morning?" I asked curiously. "Mice?"

  "I wish." The witch suddenly looked tired. "Why don't you come out to the garden and see?"

  The witch lent me a pair of boots that were a bit too large, and we followed her outside. It looked like an ordinary enough garden, though a little more haphazard than the rigorously kept palace gardens, but it was obvious magic had been at work in it. Most of the vegetables were about twice the size I was used to seeing them, and only about a third of the space was devoted to vegetables at all. The rest was taken up by strange-looking flowers, roots, and a few trees that seemed to sway independently of the almost nonexistent wind.

  "Don't touch the euphorbia," said the witch, sidestepping a thorny but otherwise harmless looking white flower. "Or the hemlock, bad business. And watch out for the flytraps, they're a bit overexcited." One of the flytraps snapped at Fen, who made a shocked noise and clawed his way up my back to hunch, bristling, on my shoulders.

  "There," said the witch, as we came to a slightly higher patch of ground where a large patch of pumpkins was growing. Except, looking closer, they seemed a little worse for wear. There were several puncture wounds in the orange flesh of the pumpkins themselves, especially near the base, and most of the leaves near the ground had been torn off or shredded or trampled. Ignoring Fen's claws in my shoulders, I leaned closer, peering at the ground, and noticed several tiny items strewn about. They looked like nothing more than—

  "Yes, those are swords," said the witch with a sigh. "Ooh, and look a tiny bit of grass woven armour. How quaint. Little bastards."

  "Do these belong to people?" I asked, gaping up at her.

  "Yes, little bloody people. If you can call them that." The witch sighed again. "The ones that live over yonder," she pointed in the direction that we had come from the night before, uphill a little from the clearing, where the trees became very dense, "have green skin and they call themselves the Forestlings. And the ones from over there," she pointed behind the cottage, where the ground sunk into a slow, marshy stream, "are the Seafolk. Don't ask me, it's fresh water. Well, technically fresh. I wouldn't drink it. Anyway—" she kicked at the little swords on the ground, "—don't touch those, they're poisonous."

  I froze, having been about to pick one up to examine it further.

  "Not deadly," said the witch at the look on my face. "It just knocks them out for several hours. It's their way of waging peaceful warfare. Once they've all proceeded to take each other out, they come collect the sleeping bodies and draw their little property lines—" she leaned down and picked a tiny stake from the ground next to the pumpkins, bringing with it a tiny red string that extended down into the rest of the garden, "—and then the next day they do it all over again. It's driving me mad."

  "How long have they been at it?" asked Fen.

  "They started a few years after I moved here. It wreaks absolute havoc on my garden, every single bloody year. Which—" she turned to Fen, and grinned, showing white pointed teeth, "—is where you come in."

  "Pest control," said Fen with doomed realisation in his voice. "You want me to get rid of them for you."

  "Exactly." The witch stood, brushing her hands together briskly. "Succeed, and I'll return you to human form."

  "That's ridiculous!" sputtered Fen. "I'll be injured!"

  "You'll be fine, all they've got are little pokey swords!"

  "They're a bit bigger when you're a cat, you realise."

  "Oh, I'm sure you'll come up with something." The witch smirked.

  "It's alright, Fen," I said, giving him a scratch behind his ears to calm him. "I'll help you."

  "Will you?" said the witch. "What makes you think you'll be staying?"

  "I..." I could feel myself shrinking. "What if I promise to pay you after?"

  "Unfortunately you come in the company of one who is absolutely fantastic at breaking promises—"

  "I didn't know!" screeched Fen.

  "Alright," I shouted. "Enough! What the bloody hell happened between you two?"

  We were interrupted by a loud whistling from the cottage. Two of the windows popped open of their own accord, and black smoke began to billow out of them, the noise increasing in volume along with it. The witch let out a singular curse word and hiked her skirts up to race back to the cottage.

  Fen and I walked behind her at a slower pace.

  "Ridiculous," muttered Fen. "She just wants me to get myself killed."

  "I'm sure you'll manage," I said, my shoulders slumping. "It'll just take persistence. You've waited this long."

  "Suppose so," said Fen dully.

  "And I suppose I'll just keep heading North." I sighed. "See if I can—"

  "You! Princess! Brean!" The witch's voice was calling me from inside. I pulled my tunic up over my mouth and ducked into the cottage, which seemed to be producing a never-ending supply of black smoke. It was originating from, unsurprisingly, the cauldron. The witch was grasping the edges of it with her sleeves over her hands and attempting to haul it across the room to the doorway. "Help me with this!" she shouted.

  I rushed forward, pulling my tunic sleeves over my hands as well, and grabbed the edges of the cauldron, tugging it across the cobb floor towards the doorway. A jet black liquid was sloshing around inside. It had the consistency of tar, and every now and then a great black bubble would make its way to the surface and burst, releasing a cloud of noxious black fumes. I leaned my head away, took a deep breath, and continued to heave the cauldron towards the door.

  I nearly tripped over Fen, who was darting underfoot worriedly, and shouted at him to get out of the way. At last, when it felt every muscle in my back would tear, we managed to pull the cauldron out onto the front lawn and set it down. It sloshed, and a great dollop of black liquid splashed over the side and began to eat away at the moss underneath it.

  "Blech!" I exclaimed, wiping my streaming eyes with my newly filthy tunic. "What was that?"

  "It was supposed to be a love potion," said the witch angrily. "I must have gotten something wrong. There goes seven hundred gold down the proverbial drain." She kicked the side of the cauldron violently. "Right, well you might as well stay on as my assistant then, and earn your keep."

  It took a moment for what she had said to sink in. "What? Really?"

  "Yes, well, obviously I am incapable of completing a simple potion on my own. I could use someone to help with dull things like weeding and cleaning." The witch gave the cauldron another prod with her toe, and it responded by belching out another cloud of noxious smoke. "I'm terrible at cleaning."

  "Thank you!" I gasped. "I'm actually very good at cleaning. I know you wouldn't expect it, m
e being a princess and all, but I actually helped in the kitchens quite a bit, and I kept my own room and—"

  "Yes, yes." The witch waved her hand at me distractedly. "I'm sure you'll be satisfactory. I'm going to change. See if you can—" she gave the cauldron a dissatisfied look, "—dispose of this."

  *~*~*

  It took most of the rest of the day to clean out the cauldron. The witch came back outside wearing a very nice emerald green dress and created a hole in the ground next to the cauldron for me to dispose of the failed potion in. At least, it seemed to be a hole in the ground. It was definitely a hole in something, because I couldn't see anything in it, and when I shovelled the slimy mud-like substance that the potion had become into it, it disappeared without any noise or resistance, and the shovel came back out looking oddly shiny and new. I resisted the urge to stick my hand in as well.

  Fen got started on his attempts to alleviate the witch's pest problem. He decided that the first order of business was reconnaissance, and set about spying on the warring factions in their home territory. That apparently involved a lot of sitting on the edge of the swamp and looking down into it while occasionally batting at the water with his paw, and also a lot of napping in trees. I decided not to question him on it.

  I was scrubbing the last of the grime from the inside of the cauldron with a bucket of soapy water and an old brush when the witch called me in for lunch. I stood, patting the dirt off my wet knees and hobbled towards the cottage. Perhaps I wasn't quite as used to hard labour as I thought. Still, it was better than marrying the prince.

  "So have you met him?" asked the witch as we snacked on fresh rye bread, soft cheese and snap peas from the garden. "This prince you're supposed to marry."

  "Oh yes," I said, biting off a large mouthful of bread. "The Saishen send embassies to Priia all the time, and vice versa. They're very keen on forming a strong alliance. Seems like both parties are, so I don't see why a marriage is really necessary, but they're all set on it. Anyway." I took another bite of bread and shoved some cheese in for good measure. "I met the prince lots, whenever they came and visited when I was young, I'd play with him, and we became quite good friends. That's part of the reason I don't want to marry him, see. I want him to be happy with a woman who can love him back."