Magic for Beginners: Stories (13 page)

Small sprang away. The Witch’s Revenge picked up a stone and
brought it down hard, caving the roof in. When they peered inside,
there was nothing except blackness and a faint smell. They waited,
sitting on the ground, to see what might come out, but nothing came
out. After a while, The Witch’s Revenge picked up her catskin bag,
and they set off again.

For several nights after that, Small dreamed that someone,
something, was following them. It was small and thin and bleached
and cold and dirty and afraid. One night it crept away again, and
Small never knew where it went. But if you come to that part of the
forest, where they sat and waited by the stone foundation, perhaps
you will meet the thing that they set free.

No one knew the reason for the quarrel between the witch Small’s
mother and the witch Lack, although the witch Small’s mother had
died for it. The witch Lack was a handsome man and he loved his
children dearly. He had stolen them out of the cribs and beds of
palaces and manors and harems. He dressed his children in silks, as
befitted their station, and they wore gold crowns and ate off gold
plates. They drank from cups of gold. Lack’s children, it was said,
lacked nothing.

Perhaps the witch Lack had made some remark about the way the
witch Small’s mother was raising her children, or perhaps the witch
Small’s mother had boasted of her children’s red hair. But it might
have been something else. Witches are proud and they like to
quarrel.

When Small and The Witch’s Revenge came at last to the house of
the witch Lack, The Witch’s Revenge said to Small, “Look at this
monstrosity! I’ve produced finer turds and buried them under
leaves. And the smell, like an open sewer! How can his neighbors
stand the stink?”

Male witches have no wombs, and must come by their houses in
other ways, or else buy them from female witches. But Small thought
it was a very fine house. There was a prince or a princess at each
window staring down at him, as he sat on his haunches in the
driveway, beside The Witch’s Revenge. He said nothing, but he
missed his brothers and sisters.

“Come along,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “We’ll go a little ways
off and wait for the witch Lack to come home.”

Small followed The Witch’s Revenge back into the forest, and in
a while, two of the witch Lack’s children came out of the house,
carrying baskets made of gold. They went into the forest as well
and began to pick blackberries.

The Witch’s Revenge and Small sat in the briar and watched.

There was a wind in the briar. Small was thinking of his
brothers and sisters. He thought of the taste of blackberries, the
feel of them in his mouth, which was not at all like the taste of
fat.

The Witch’s Revenge nestled against the small of Small’s back.
She was licking down a lump of knotted fur at the base of his
spine. The princesses were singing.

Small decided that he would live in the briar with The Witch’s
Revenge. They would live on berries and spy on the children who
came to pick them, and The Witch’s Revenge would change her name.
The word
Mother
was in his mouth, along with the sweet
taste of the blackberries.

“Now you must go out,” said The Witch’s Revenge, “and be
kittenish. Be playful. Chase your tail. Be shy, but don’t be too
shy. Don’t talk too much. Let them pet you. Don’t bite.”

She pushed at Small’s rump, and Small tumbled out of the briar
and sprawled at the feet of the witch Lack’s children.

The Princess Georgia said, “Look! It’s a dear little cat!”

Her sister Margaret said doubtfully, “But it has five tails.
I’ve never seen a cat that needed so many tails. And its skin is
done up with buttons and it’s almost as large as you are.”

Small, however, began to caper and prance. He swung his tails
back and forth so that the bells rang out and then he pretended to
be alarmed by this. First he ran away from his tails and then he
chased his tails. The two princesses put down their baskets,
half-full of blackberries, and spoke to him, calling him a silly
puss.

At first he wouldn’t go near them. But, slowly, he pretended to
be won over. He allowed himself to be petted and fed blackberries.
He chased a hair ribbon and he stretched out to let them admire the
buttons up and down his belly. Princess Margaret’s fingers tugged
at his skin; then she slid one hand in between the loose catskin
and Small’s boy skin. He batted her hand away with a paw, and
Margaret’s sister Georgia said knowingly that cat’s didn’t like to
be petted on their bellies.

They were all good friends by the time The Witch’s Revenge came
out of the briar, standing on her hind legs and singing

I have no children

and my children have no children

and their children

have no children

and their children

have no whiskers

and no tails

At this sight, the Princesses Margaret and Georgia began to
laugh and point. They had never heard a cat sing, or seen a cat
walk on its hind legs. Small lashed his five tails furiously, and
all the fur of the catskin stood up on his arched back, and they
laughed at that too.

When they came back from the forest, with their baskets piled
with berries, Small was stalking close at their heels, and The
Witch’s Revenge came walking just behind. But she left the bag of
gold hidden in the briar.

That night, when the witch Lack came home, his hands were full
of gifts for his children. One of his sons ran to meet him at the
door and said, “Come and see what followed Margaret and Georgia
home from the forest! Can we keep them?”

And the table had not been set for dinner, and the children of
the witch Lack had not sat down to do their homework, and in the
witch Lack’s throne room, there was a cat with five tails, spinning
in circles, while a second cat sat impudently upon his throne, and
sang

Yes!

your father’s house

is the shiniest

brownest largest

the most expensive

the sweetest-smelling

house

that has ever

come out of

anyone’s

ass!

The witch Lack’s children began to laugh at this, until they saw
the witch, their father, standing there. Then they fell silent.
Small stopped spinning.

“You!” said the witch Lack.

“Me!” said The Witch’s Revenge, and sprang from the throne.
Before anyone knew what she was about, her jaws were fastened about
the witch Lack’s neck, and then she ripped out his throat. Lack
opened his mouth to speak and his blood fell out, making The
Witch’s Revenge’s fur more red now than white. The witch Lack fell
down dead, and red ants went marching out of the hole in his neck
and the hole of his mouth, and they held pieces of Time in their
jaws as tightly as The Witch’s Revenge had held Lack’s throat in
hers. But she let Lack go and left him lying in his blood on the
floor, and she snatched up the ants and ate them, quickly, as if
she had been hungry for a very long time.

While this was happening, the witch Lack’s children stood and
watched and did nothing. Small sat on the floor, his tails curled
about his paws. Children, all of them, they did nothing. They were
too surprised. The Witch’s Revenge, her belly full of ants, her
mouth stained with blood, stood up and surveyed them.

“Go and fetch me my catskin bag,” she said to Small.

Small found that he could move. Around him, the princes and
princesses stayed absolutely still. The Witch’s Revenge was holding
them in her gaze.

“I’ll need help,” Small said. “The bag is too heavy for me to
carry.”

The Witch’s Revenge yawned. She licked a paw and began to pat at
her mouth. Small stood still.

“Very well,” she said. “Take those big strong girls the
Princesses Margaret and Georgia with you. They know the way.”

The Princesses Margaret and Georgia, finding that they could
move again, began to tremble. They gathered their courage and they
went with Small, the two girls holding each other’s hands, out of
the throne room, not looking down at the body of their father, the
witch Lack, and back into the forest.

Georgia began to weep, but the Princess Margaret said to Small:
“Let us go!”

“Where will you go?” said Small. “The world is a dangerous
place. There are people in it who mean you no good.” He threw back
his hood, and the Princess Georgia began to weep harder.

“Let us go,” said the Princess Margaret. “My parents are the
King and Queen of a country not three days’ walk from here. They
will be glad to see us again.”

Small said nothing. They came to the briar and he sent the
Princess Georgia in to hunt for the catskin bag. She came out
scratched and bleeding, the bag in her hand. It had caught on the
briars and torn open. Gold coins rolled out, like glossy drops of
fat, falling on the ground.

“Your father killed my mother,” said Small.

“And that cat, your mother’s devil, will kill us, or worse,”
said Princess Margaret. “Let us go!”

Small lifted the catskin bag. There were no coins in it now. The
Princess Georgia was on her hands and knees, scooping up coins and
putting them into her pockets.

“Was he a good father?” Small asked.

“He thought he was,” Princess Margaret said. “But I’m not sorry
he’s dead. When I grow up, I will be Queen. I’ll make a law to put
all the witches in the kingdom to death, and all their cats as
well.”

Small became afraid. He took up the catskin bag and ran back to
the house of the witch Lack, leaving the two princesses in the
forest. And whether they made their way home to the Princess
Margaret’s parents, or whether they fell into the hands of thieves,
or whether they lived in the briar, or whether the Princess
Margaret grew up and kept her promise and rid her kingdom of
witches and cats, Small never knew, and neither do I, and neither
shall you.

When he came back into the witch Lack’s house, The Witch’s
Revenge saw at once what had happened. “Never mind,” she said.

There were no children, no princes and princesses, in the throne
room. The witch Lack’s body still lay on the floor, but The Witch’s
Revenge had skinned it like a coney, and sewn up the skin into a
bag. The bag wriggled and jerked, the sides heaving as if the witch
Lack were still alive somewhere inside. The Witch’s Revenge held
the witchskin bag in one hand, and with the other, she was stuffing
a cat into the neck of the skin. The cat wailed as it went into the
bag. The bag was full of wailing. But the discarded flesh of the
witch Lack lolled, slack.

There was a little pile of gold crowns on the floor beside the
flayed corpse, and transparent, papery things that blew about the
room, on a current of air, surprised looks on the thin, shed
faces.

Cats were hiding in the corners of the room, and under the
throne. “Go catch them,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “But leave the
three prettiest alone.”

“Where are the witch Lack’s children?” Small said.

The Witch’s Revenge nodded around the room. “As you see,” she
said. “I’ve slipped off their skins, and they were all cats
underneath. They’re cats now, but if we were to wait a year or two,
they would shed these skins as well and become something new.
Children are always growing.”

Small chased the cats around the room. They were fast, but he
was faster. They were nimble, but he was nimbler. He had worn his
cat suit longer. He drove the cats down the length of the room, and
The Witch’s Revenge caught them and dropped them into her bag. At
the end there were only three cats left in the throne room and they
were as pretty a trio of cats as anyone could ask for. All the
other cats were inside the bag.

“Well done and quickly done, too,” said The Witch’s Revenge, and
she took her needle and stitched shut the neck of the bag. The skin
of the witch Lack smiled up at Small, and a cat put its head
through Lack’s stained mouth, wailing. But The Witch’s Revenge
sewed Lack’s mouth shut too, and the hole on the other end, where a
house had come out. She left only his earholes and his eyeholes and
his nostrils, which were full of fur, rolled open so that the cats
could breathe.

The Witch’s Revenge slung the skin full of cats over her
shoulder and stood up.

“Where are you going?” Small said.

“These cats have mothers and fathers,” The Witch’s Revenge said.
“They have mothers and fathers who miss them very much.”

She gazed at Small. He decided not to ask again. So he waited in
the house with the two princesses and the prince in their new cat
suits, while The Witch’s Revenge went down to the river. Or perhaps
she took them down to the market and sold them. Or maybe she took
each cat home, to its own mother and father, back to the kingdom
where it had been born. Maybe she wasn’t so careful to make sure
that each child was returned to the right mother and father. After
all, she was in a hurry, and cats look very much alike at
night.

No one saw where she went—but the market is closer than the
palaces of the Kings and Queens whose children had been stolen by
the witch Lack, and the river is closer still.

When The Witch’s Revenge came back to Lack’s house, she looked
around her. The house was beginning to stink very badly. Even Small
could smell it now.

“I suppose the Princess Margaret let you fuck her,” said The
Witch’s Revenge, as if she had been thinking about this while she
ran her errands. “And that is why you let them go. I don’t mind.
She was a pretty puss. I might have let her go myself.”

She looked at Small’s face and saw that he was confused. “Never
mind,” she said.

She had a length of string in her paw, and a cork, which she
greased with a piece of fat she had cut from the witch Lack. She
threaded the cork on the string, calling it a good, quick, little
mouse, and greased the string as well, and she fed the wriggling
cork to the tabby who had been curled up in Small’s lap. And when
she had the cork back again, she greased it again and fed it to the
little black cat, and then she fed it to the cat with two white
forepaws, so that she had all three cats upon her string.