The Five Aspects of a Witch Read online

  §3. The next morning, inside the hut:

  For two of them, at least, there had been some sleep.

  Frye, with his violent dreams, had gotten rest. And look at him there! Still dreaming! (To tell the truth, though, they were half-dreams by now. Barely any immersive powers to them. The full-fledged ones--those all-consuming dreams--…they had stopped coming hours ago when he should have woken up. But Frye didn’t want to get up and face the day, so he forced himself to continue snoozing. Snoozing, snoring, doze. Boredom was his punishment.)

  Nader, too, had gotten rest. Which did quite surprise him, actually. For the first few hours of the night, he kept sitting up and taking a glance around. “Is she here?” he would think to himself. And then he would get up and sneak towards the Witch’s letter. He wanted to make sure it hadn’t changed in the last five minutes. Luckily, it always remained the same. ‘Not at all,’ the note read. ‘Not at all.’ And then Nader remembered how specific the Witch had been; how she’d made sure to state they had to come, ‘tomorrow.’ ‘Come back tomorrow,’ Nader repeated to himself. ‘Come back tomorrow.’ And he said it over and over again until sleep and comfort overtook him.

  Brett was the only one who had stayed up all night. He pored through his all of his many books, shred by little shred. He was hoping to learn how to repair things.

  What kinds of things? Well his books, for one!

  “Perhaps if I show her some skill,” he thought to himself, “she’ll be impressed and take pity on me!” But try as he might, he just couldn’t focus on anything. All of the words seemed nonsense and gibberish. For three-quarters of the night, he kept trying to piece a single page together. It was only once the birds began to sing that Brett realized all of the words had been scrambled as well.

  He didn’t give up, though! He stayed up and…well, did nothing, really. He was mindlessly scanning tatters of papers. How could that help anything? “It feels more useful taking a nap!” he tried to convince himself. But the feeling was false and the conviction wasn’t really there.

  By the time Nader got up, Brett was sleeping with his eyes open.

  And so it is that nobody noticed Nader going up to the Witch’s letter and ruining it.

  The idea had suddenly come to him like a thunderous epiphany. “If she can write to us, then maybe we can write to her as well!” He looked hard at the note she had left. “But how do I erase what she wrote?” Some of the thick letters had edges that looked like they could be peeled off.

  Hmm. Could he?

  Hmm.

  It wouldn’t hurt to try….

  Nader pinched the top of the ‘N’ from ‘Not at all.’ To his great surprise, the legs of the letter began to writhe about. “Oh my! It looks as though it doesn’t want to go anywhere! Well that’s too bad.” He plucked the letter from off the page and threw it to the side. He did the same for the “o” and the “t” and the “a” and the etc., etc.

  Now with a blank slate, he got out a pen and wrote: “Can you read this, Witch?”

  Within seconds, the letters reshaped themselves into a giant, “YES.”

  Nader plucked the letters off the page and wrote: “Forgive me.”

  “I won’t,” the Witch wrote back.

  “What must I do to gain your mercy?” The Witch took a while. Moments passed, moments passed, and…nothing. Feeling impatient, Nader added another, “?” And another one, too.

  “Bring me the hearts of your friends,” she finally responded.

  Nader didn’t hesitate for even a second. He wrote back, “Gladly.”

  “You would do that?”

  “I would do anything for you!” he wrote. It looked a little false and desperate on the page. Oh well. Too late.

  “I’m glad to hear that.” And then the letters reshaped themselves. “Hmm.” And then they swirled into: “Before you do that, come see me.”

  “Alone?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  He didn’t have to be told twice. He embarked on the road to the Witch’s house at once.

  Thirty minutes later, Frye’s easy, slumbering mind was invaded by a dreadful vision of all the horrible things the Witch was doing to Nader. And Frye couldn’t look away! Oh! It was awful, awful, awful. And so very gruesome, too!

  When the Witch was done with him, she suddenly came for Frye with bloodlust in her eyes. He tried desperately to get up, but couldn’t. It was impossible. Impossible!

  By the time Brett fully awoke and noticed anything, Frye was dried like a prune. “Oh!” Brett covered his mouth. “Oh!”

  Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

  Brett dove under Frye’s bed and prayed and prayed the visitor would go away.

  Instead, the door opened wide. “You’re late!” the Witch said.

  And somehow, Brett noticed his stupid mouth yelling out, “You never specified what time!”

  “Now! Right now!” The Witch stomped her foot. “Come up from under there and look at what I’m pointing at.”

  He didn’t want to come up. He felt safe under the bed. And even if it was a false safety, it was still a comfort he didn’t want to do away with no matter what.

  But what if she dried him like a prune next? That man lying above him…he had blood once! Muscles and fibers and bones! He could flex his biceps and grip his hands and, and, and…. Well it didn’t matter what he could do once upon a time. Because as of now, that man lying above him was no man at all. He was disgusting to look at, utterly disgusting. It probably hurt to have all of that done to him! And what if she did it to Brett next? No, better to obey than to stay under the bed.

  And so Brett did as he was told and got up. He looked at what the Witch was pointing at.

  One of the hut’s walls had been converted into a giant, broken window. “Yes!” he said. He immediately understood her message. She didn’t have to explain herself. It wasn’t exactly subtle, anyway. “That’s true. That’s very true.”

  “What excuse do you have for yourself?” the Witch said.

  “…I didn’t do it!”

  “I don’t care if you weren’t the one who threw the rock. You were involved! I’ll patch the hole over with your skin!” she said.

  “No, no, no!” Brett dropped to his knees. “Please! I beg you!”

  “What could you possibly do for me? Why should I keep your around?”

  “I can….”

  “Yes?”

  “I can….”

  “Yes???”

  But Brett couldn’t think of anything. “I can entertain you!”

  “How?”

  “Oh! I don’t know! I can do anything! Please! Just spare me!”

  “You must look at it from my point of view, human. I know what you three were up to! See your disgusting self as I see you and tell me if I should spare you.”

  Brett thought about it for a moment. He pretended to see things from her perspective. They locked eyes. “Ah.” He shook his head solemnly. “…I understand.”

  “Well? What do you say? Should I spare you?”

  “Mercy is a most magical thing,” Brett said.

  He winced at her reaction.

  “Then you haven’t seen anything properly!” Then, all of a sudden, she was delighted with herself and started to cackle. “But no worries. I can fix your sight.”

  She snapped her fingers and then…and then…. He was outside!

  Only, Brett wasn’t Brett.

  He was…she?

  And it wasn’t day anymore. It was night.

  She looked down. “Oh my! What’s this?” Brett was wearing the Witch’s robe. “And who’s that?!”

  He saw a group of three men huddled outside the Witch’s house. One of them was picking up a hefty rock.

  “No!” Brett screamed. He rushed towards them. “You’ll ruin eve
rything!”

  The Other Nader dropped the rock at once and began to run away. It was a matter of fight or flight and the Other Nader was definitely flying.

  Unfortunately for Brett, the Other Frye was definitely fighting. Rather than running away like the Other Nader or cowering in the corner like the Other Brett, the Other Frye was charging towards her.

  “Wait!” said Brett. “Wait!”

  But before she knew it, the Other Frye smashed her in the face.

  The tremendous punch to the nose dropped her to the ground at once. For a second, it felt like excruciating pain. She reached for her nose expecting to touch blood when…when…when…all of a sudden….

  …ah. Relief.

  She was blissfully out cold.

  Not that being out cold is an enviable position. But at the very least, she wasn’t searing with pain. Right? If she’s on floor anyway, it’s better she’s numb than hurting.

  All that stuff about unbearable pain--that comes a little later.