The first 3 chapters of the sequel to On the Subject of Witches, available October 2026.
Written by Briland Schack-Farnell. Illustrations by Elizabeth Simmons-Allen
Chapter 1. Something Wickeder This Way Comes
Petunia’s parents did not realize she had been replaced. They simply thought she was odd.
The girl had been born perfectly ordinarily. A small but healthy infant, arriving after some hours in labor in the same farmhouse that her father had been born in. She cried, as all babies know how to do, and she slept, and she nursed, and she cried some more. Her parents were nothing but pleased. They were young and excited to start their family after months of waiting. Their daughter was perfect- a sweet angel with eyes as green as the apples they grew, and they could not have asked for anything more.
But if they could, they would have asked for everything around them to stop dying. It was a strange coincidence that their prized hen- who had been perfectly healthy- died, seemingly without cause, on the same day Petunia was born. Stranger still that within a few weeks of the birth, many of their crops had withered and molded. After that, it was the dog. Then Petunia’s own grandmother.
But surely that wasn’t the child’s fault.
As the child grew, she cried so much at night. Those two new parents barely slept for some months, and they started to worry that they themselves might die of exhaustion, despite everyone telling them that a child crying was perfectly normal. They knew this, but still they couldn’t help but worry that their child cried more than should be expected. Petunia would wail on and on throughout the night, crying herself hoarse. They took turns rocking her, singing to her, feeding her- all things that devoted and loving parents do for their newborn. Still, she cried and cried.
Until one night, she stopped.
The two of them had rushed to the nursery, terrified that something was wrong. Why would she stop all of a sudden? But Petunia was pleased as could be, sitting in her crib, looking up at them with a wicked smile and no cares in the world.
“Perhaps she likes that the window is open?” suggested her father, Michael.
“Why did you leave it open,?” Asked her mother, Annabelle. “She’ll catch a chill!”
“I didn’t leave it open, I thought you had!”
“Certainly not, I closed it after the sun set with all the others!”
Annabelle went to close the window once more, aware of the distinct feeling of being watched by the night. Everyone in the Autumn Lands knew not to leave windows open at night. There are witches about.
“She couldn’t have caught a chill, look at her, she’s sweating!” Michael said as he pulled her from the crib. The child was damp all over, her bright red hair- same as her father’s- clinging wet to her crown.
Annabelle came over to the child. “Ugh, she stinks! Like bad breath. Give her to me.” She transitioned smoothly to a voice that people reserve for talking to infants and especially cute animals. “You young lady are going to get another bath.”
Petunia, who had been an exceptionally sweet child until this moment, only seemed to glare at her mother throughout her washing. It was a glare of contempt and disdain. But she did not cry. Nor did she wail as per usual when she was put to bed again. For the first time in many months, Petunia went to bed silently.
In fact, she would not cry again for many years.
She grew to be a strange child. She looked as sweet as could be, with long, dark red hair and dashing green eyes. She had inherited her mother’s freckles, which were adored by many. But she was a solitary girl, who did not appreciate the company of others, not even her parents. And, to be fair, they did not enjoy her company either. They would never say this to anyone, especially not Petunia. But their own daughter terrified them, and they could not say why. They only spoke of it to each other, in hushed tones so that she would not hear them.
“It’s the way she’s looking at me, ‘Belle,” Michael would say. “She’s got that look in her eye again.”
“It’s the way she tears apart bugs,” Annabelle whispered to her husband, watching Petunia from the window.
“Why don’t she sleep? I hear her floorboards creaking all night long, like she’s pacing. Makes my spine shiver.”
“Won’t she become ordinary? Tell me she’ll grow out of it Mike, please.”
“Roots and rocks, she’s picked another one.”
They watched as she locked eyes with a goat. It bleated at her. She stood, moving away from the grasshopper she had been dismembering, and went over to pet it. It stood still and let her, its eyes closing contentedly.
Most parents would be happy with their child taking an interest in the farm animals, showing affection for other living things. Michael and Annabelle should have been especially pleased, as usually Petunia didn’t care for other creatures. But they were not thrilled at all, since this goat was a producer of fine milk, and Petunia only showed interest in animals that were soon to die.
The goat passed three days later.
“You hear that?” Michael asked his wife. He had been asleep, but had woken to the sound of voices.
“Yes,” said Annabelle. He turned to see her laying in bed next to him, but showing no signs of sleep. Her eyes were wide, staring at nothing at all, and she was stiff as a board. Tear trails streamed down from her eyes to the pillow.
“What’s wrong, love?” He asked her.
“I’m afraid,” she whispered. “The voices have been coming from Petunia’s room. They’ve been talking for hours. I cannot hear what they’re saying, but there’s someone with her. I am so afraid, Mike.”
He squeezed her arm and looked away from her. He could not show her that he was afraid, too. He knew he must go to Petunia’s room, but did not know if he had the courage for it.
After all, there are Witches about.
Once a lantern was lit, he felt better. He made his way slowly across the narrow hall that separated the two bedrooms in the small farmhouse. There definitely were two voices coming from his daughter’s room. There was Petunia, asking a question, though he could not hear what it was. The answer came in a woman’s voice, deep and silky and mature. It was low and quiet, and he leaned forward to understand. Underneath his foot, a floorboard creaked. The voice stopped.
Michael opened the door to find Petunia standing in the center of the room, looking at him. Behind her, the window was open, letting in the chill air of the Autumn Lands. The moon shone brightly, as if it were watching through the window.
Petunia held her favorite toy- a stuffed rat. It was not like the teddy bears that normal children cherish. This one was missing the buttons that had once served as eyes, and much of the stuffing had been pulled out. The result was a stuffed animal that looked like it had died several weeks ago. Annabelle had tried to fix it many times, and Petunia had always returned it to the way it was.
“My sweet,” Michael started with a gulp, thinking that Petunia looked anything but sweet, “Who are you talking to?”
“The horned lady,” Petunia said. She smiled, and she almost looked pleasant doing it. She was a beautiful child, just ten years old. If she smiled more, perhaps he would not have been so disturbed by it. But her smiles were so rare- usually reserved for lightning strikes and funerals.
“Is that a friend of yours?”
“Yes, father.”
“An imaginary one?”
“No, father.”
Michael gulped again. “Where has the horned lady gone, dearest?”
“Away. She doesn’t like you.” Petunia’s head cocked to the side, as if she were considering whether or not she liked him as well. It didn’t look as if she did.
“I’m sorry to hear that. Well, now she’s gone, get some sleep my love.” He stepped back into the hall, pulling the door closed behind him.
“But the moon is awake, and I like the nighttime,” Petunia said.
“Please sleep, sweet ‘Tune,” he said. He did not look back into her room. If he met her eyes, he would be too frightened to argue with her.
When Petunia turned thirteen, her parents asked her if she wanted a party.
“We could invite the other school children?” her mother asked her. “I could make pies, we could bob for apples, play games? It would be fun, right ‘Tune?”
“I don’t want a party. I don’t like the other children.”
“What would you like for your birthday, dearest?” Her father asked.
“The horned lady is coming to visit me. She says it will be special.”
And that was that. Petunia often spoke of the horned lady, and Michael and Annabelle had heard the voice coming from their daughter’s room many times over the past three years. But they had never seen her. They had told each other that it was Petunia’s imaginary friend, and that their daughter had a talent for creating a peculiar voice with which to answer her own questions. But they knew they were lying to each other, and it did not help them sleep at night.
So the day of Petunia’s thirteenth birthday came, and there was no party. No school children visited to celebrate, no gifts were given. The only special thing that happened took place at dinner time.
They were eating Petunia’s favorite stew. That is not to say that Petunia identified this particular recipe as her favorite, but simply that she always ate it without complaint, finishing her bowl each time. This was not true of most dishes Annabelle prepared, so she took this to mean that it was Petunia’s favorite. It had rabbit and potato and dill, with a thick, creamy broth tying it all together. Petunia ate it happily.
And then, halfway through her bowl, she stopped. She stood, and walked around the table. She came to her mother’s side, looked her in the eye, and smiled. Then she pet her mother’s hair, affectionately, three times. Then she turned, did the same to her father, and returned to her seat to continue eating. And that was that.
Annabelle and Michael did not sleep that night. Annabelle couldn’t stop crying, and Michael could only hold her and shiver. They could not shake the feeling that now, more than ever, there were witches about.
Not long afterwards, they both died.
Chapter 2. Prodigy and Prophecy
“You do not weep for your parents?” Asked the horned lady.
“No. Why should I?” the child answered. The horned lady did not respond.
They had left the farmhouse behind. Both Michael and Annabelle had died of unknown causes within twenty four hours of each other, and had been promptly buried by the village folk. It was a kind thing for them to do, since the girl called Petunia certainly wasn’t going to do it.
The people of the small village didn’t care for the child. She didn’t shed a tear when her parents were laid to rest. She hadn’t even seemed interested in the funeral. Instead, she had just looked among the farmhands and merchants. As if analyzing which would find themselves in the ground next.
“Mike and Annie didn’t have no sickness,” one of the farmhands had said to another after the burying was done. “That wee girl, she scared the life outta ‘em.”
“Nearly did to me today,” the second man replied, shivering.
They would not see the girl again, and none of them cared to.
The night after the funerals, the horned lady had come to fetch the child, as they had discussed. Petunia set the only home she’d known ablaze with little ceremony, and the two of them walked into the Fire Forest together.
“I’ll be back for them,” the girl said decisively, breaking the silence.
“Back for whom?”
“Mom and dad,” she answered. She hadn’t ever called them that before.
“I see.” The horned lady seemed somehow pleased with this announcement. As they continued to walk through the forest, the woman spoke: “I am Nemain. But out of respect, you will call me Granny.”
“Yes Granny.”
“And what do they call you, little thing?”
“Petunia,” the girl practically mumbled.
“No. No, that won’t do at all. I will not have some child of mine be named after a flower. That name is dead now. Pick a new one.”
“It can be any name?” the child asked excitedly.
“Be swift about it, we have much to discuss.”
The girl thought quickly of names she had heard and liked. There were not many.
“Ursula,” she decided. “I will be Ursula.”
“Why that name?”
“I read about a great general in the wars. She took much land, and killed many men. Even some bloodsuckers. Ursula is a strong name. A conqueror’s name.”
“What happened to her?” the Granny asked.
“The same thing that happens to everyone else. She died.”
For a long while the two of them marched through the Fire Forest. To Ursula, it seemed there was no true direction in which they were walking. Certainly they had left the path hours ago, and the trees and mushrooms were too similar to serve as landmarks. What’s more, the moon far above was a thin crescent, casting little light. Ursula followed the Granny by sound as much as by sight.
Then there came a time when the horned lady stopped suddenly, and turned.
“Listen, child. This night is the most important of your life, and if you do not do exactly as I tell you, it will be your last.”
Ursula felt true fear. Not at the threat of death, but fear of letting down this woman before her. This wise and benevolent mentor, who had come to talk to her and teach her secret things by night for so many years. The horned lady, who had always been so kind to her, now had a wild and fierce look in her eye. She removed a long dagger from within the folds of her inky dress. In the thin moonlight, the blade shifted through all colors of the spectrum, like oil on water. All around them, the pale light of the moon’s grin seemed to grow and stretch, both attracted to and frightened by the knife.
“We are going to my home. It will be yours, if all goes well. Another witch is there, and she claims to be the Granny. She is not. That title belongs to me. She must die.”
Nemain held out the knife to Ursula. The girl nodded. Slowly, at first, but then more enthusiastically. Of course she would do this.
“The witch is strong, and will not fall easily. You must prove that I have not wasted these years on you, child. Show no emotion, let no distraction fall upon you, and wait patiently. When the time is right, you will strike. You will kill. Can you do that?”
“Yes, Granny. Anything, I swear it. You haven’t wasted anything on me, I’ll show you-”
“Enough,” Granny Nemain cut her off. She looked into the sky, peering through the garnet and gold leaves of the black barked trees, swaying in the cool wind. High above them, the moon was smiling. “It is time.”
A few short minutes later, the false Granny was slain at Ursula’s hand. The cottage that Nemain had told her so much about was tattered and torn apart by the sorcerous duel, and Ursula had three long, deep gashes across her face.
But most peculiar, most upsetting of all, was the boy. Granny had never mentioned a boy.
Ursula did not care for the omission. Boys were things of trouble. Cruel, crude things that pulled on her hair or chased her after school. Boys were the ones that Ursula had asked the Horned Lady to curse and haunt, and she had refused, claiming that Ursula would one day have the power to do so herself. Boys were things that she despised and detested. And there was one here. In her new home.
Why had Granny never mentioned the boy?
And he had offered to help her! When Granny Nemain fought the old Witch and their magics had created a storm of ice, glass, fire and fowl, the boy had tried to lead Ursula to safety.
Why?
The answer was simple. It had been a trick. A ruse, a cunning attempt to earn her trust in order to betray her later. It might have even been a test laid for her by Granny Nemain in all of her wisdom. But Ursula was too clever for that. Far too clever. She had seen through it, and the boy showed his true colors soon enough. He had tried to warn the false Granny of Ursula’s attack, tried to make her fail. But she hadn’t. She had done what the Horned Lady asked.
Despite the pain it caused her face, Ursula smiled.
She sat in the entry room of the cottage- that wonderful cottage with anything and everything a witch might need. All around her on the floor, shards of glass glimmered like fresh raindrops. Various vials of bloods had spilled: newt at her feet, virgin behind her, and across the room, an unbroken bottle of the stuff that read “once mummified”. Eyeballs slowly rolled across the floor, searching wildly for the exit so that they might make their escape. A dark flower sat just out of arm’s reach, its petals torn asunder by its collision with the floor.
The battle for control of the coven had not been far gone when Granny Nemain pulled Ursula to her feet.
“You did well, Sister. Come. You will be rewarded.”
Ursula was led by the Granny and the other witch, the Shifting woman with dark skin and white tattoos, to a clearing outside the cottage. With a raising of Nemain’s hands, a bonfire erupted from the earth, all green flames. Immediately, she began to speak, and Ursula was guided by Auntie Agatha to stand across from the Granny. On either side of her stood a tawny grey cat and a spider the size of a hound.
“This Spirits Eve, we call a new witch to our Sisterhood. Hear me, spirits! A Sister who has taken the lives of her birth parents, the life of a Grandmother witch. She has paid for her powers three times. She has paid in lives and in her own flesh and blood. With your guidance, she will now become one of us.”
“One of us,” Agatha chimed in, eyeing Ursula.
“As is tradition, the familiars of her superiors will guide the Sister’s own spirit from her, to her, as her own familiar.”
The cat and the spider approached Ursula, and she felt no fear. They circled her, and as they did, she saw the spirits of others do the same. It was the Spirit’s Eve, of course. And they were welcome to do what they pleased.
A gathering storm of spirits formed, more than Agatha or Nemain had ever seen. They screamed and howled as they circled the child, a twister of ghosts interested in- fascinated by- this prodigy of the dead. Still, she felt no fear.
Before long, a spirit flew too close. If you or I had tried to grab it, we would have had more luck grasping the morning mist, or catching a cloud of flies. Ursula, however, reached out and held on to the spirit as if it were a sheet on a clothesline, dancing on a calm breeze.
The spirit shrieked in shock and surprise. A phantom that had not been touched in hundreds of years, suddenly held fast, unable to pull free. The cry was unlike anything heard in this world or the next, and will never be heard again.
When it happened, Nemain’s eyes widened in surprise. Agatha took two stumbling steps backwards. Ursula didn’t notice. As far as she knew, this was what was expected of her.
“Do I just choose one? Do I bend it to my will?” she asked. The spirit in her hand pulled and fought, but made no headway against her. It grew small in her hands.
Nemain said nothing. Only watched, a delightful curiosity playing out before her. Her head cocked to one side at the same moment that the large spider did the same, both observing the new witch already testing the limits of her natural affinity with the dead, and already achieving more than they had thought possible. At last, Agatha spoke up.
“No, child! Release that spirit. Your familiar must come from you.”
Ursula glared at Agatha, a seed of hate growing. No one told her what to do. No one but Granny. A drop of blood fell from one of her cuts across her face and into her eye. Still, she did not flinch. She barely blinked it away. But eventually, she let the spirit go.
The familiars of the witches, the spider Alvynra and the cat Gwydion, cautiously continued their pacing around her. Granny Nemain then continued to speak.
“For a witch to gain a familiar, a piece of her own spirit must be torn from her body. This is most easily done on the Spirits Eve, this most holy of nights. Now the spirit is the familiar, and where the spirit of the familiar is, there is freedom. Are you ready to receive your familiar, Sister Ursula?”
“I am.”
Granny Nemain lowered her head, her lips almost forming a small smile. Almost. “It is not a pleasant process, child.”
“I feel no fear.”
Nemain nodded. “Good.”
It was not a pleasant process.
The result was Dayvies, Ursula’s truest spirit companion. The vulture was nearly as large as she was, a great and powerful bird. But- actually- he was no bird, no raptor or condor. He was her, and she was him. When he flew, she felt it in her heart. When he spread his wings and tore meat with his talons, she felt his power. But most notably, she felt his mind, his emotions, his cunning and his malice as extensions of her own.
It was almost like having a friend- though also not like that at all. Ursula had never truly had a friend, so she didn’t know for certain how similar the two might be. Regardless, she would never desire anything else, wanted nothing more in this world than the company of her familiar. Dayvies practically never left her side, and when he did, he was never far away. They had the same mind on all matters, their thoughts linked together, paired like words on a page and the narrator who speaks them aloud.
Amongst these, they had two emotions that spoke louder than any other: Their love for each other, and their hatred for the boy.
She learned that Malefaust was his name, but she never used it. He was simply “the boy”, and that would do. He was a constant, vexing presence in the cottage. Ursula had thought that after leaving her village, she had been done with boys. “This is a world of witches,” that’s what Granny had told her. And yet here Malefaust was.
She supposed that Granny Bloodwillow had never mentioned Malefaust before because she didn’t consider him worth mentioning. Which was fair, of course. He was nothing special.
And yet everything that Malefaust did irritated Ursula beyond belief. The way he moved about, lanky and uncoordinated and yet still trying to be unnoticed. The way he twitched at any movement. Worst of all was his incessant stammering, stumbling, stuttering speech.
“Even your words are terrified things, boy,” she had once spat at him. “They irk me with their hesitancy. Speak swiftly or be silent.” That alone had been enough to shut him up for some days.
Another time, she asked Dayvies to screech at the boy every time he attempted to speak up. It was a delightful game, until Granny decreed that it must stop. So instead, she just had the vulture follow the boy, circling him like a dying thing. The fear in his eyes was worth more than any of his silences. And when the boy had tried to run away from Dayvies, falling down the stairs and bruising his entire torso… she had never cackled so gleefully, and rewarded her familiar lovingly.
Often, Ursula asked Granny Nemain why they kept the boy. Sometimes she would give the Sister witch a reasoning, such as “we use him for parts,” or “the Auntie is fond of him, and we need her,” but this never seemed like the whole truth to Ursula. There was always something missing, something the Grandmother was not saying.
But whatever reason it was that they kept him, harm to the boy was not something the Coven was worried about. Granny Nemain never chastised Ursula for taunting the boy, nor for scarring or upsetting him. And in her growing hatred for the boy and with ample time to spend, Ursula did this often.
For three years, Ursula detested the boy and haunted him as much as she could. Then at long last, he revealed his sinister secret, some falsehood that gave him magic like a witch, and she chased him from the cottage. She would have preferred, of course, to kill him, but Granny Nemain had stopped her.
Then, days later he returned, with a witchslayer at his heels and followed by some mortal girl. Again the chance to kill Malefaust was taken from Ursula, again he – a boy – displayed an impossible talent for magic. He and the Auntie embarrassed her, and worst of all: made her feel fear. Her hatred for him grew more than she thought she could bear. But at least he was out of her life now, leaving the cottage for good this time, and she would never have to lay eyes on that boy again.
Or so she had thought.
“Come, Sister. I have a task for you.”
It had been but a few hours since the boy’s departure. Ever since, the Granny had been consulting the green flames of the witches’ fire – a difficult thing to do, since the fireplace had been turned on its side in the blast of the witchslayer’s attack. The flames still licked towards the cauldron that hung within, but now they stretched horizontally instead of reaching upwards towards a chimney. And so the Granny knelt with her head cocked to one side, trying to understand the meanings of the flames and occasionally storming away, dissatisfied, only to sulk back to the mislaid mantle moments later. Auntie Agatha had been busying herself with the slow task of regathering pieces of the cottage that had flown out into the forest, chasing or coaxing them back. All the while she hummed a dark lullaby with a satisfied smile that sickened the Sister.
And for these past hours Ursula had been kicking through the cottage rubble, unsure what to make of the debris and not really sure of what to do at all. It was a furious sadness she felt, seeing her home in shambles around her, like a broken mirror, each piece reflecting another. She felt herself shaking with rage, and- what was that? No, no, certainly it could not have been the quiver of a lip? Of course not. Ursula could not remember the last time she had cried, and this incident would not break her.
At the call of Granny’s beckon, Ursula quickly composed herself from any emotion other than excited obedience. Dayvies ruffled his wings in anticipation from his perch on a pile of bricks. Doing so disturbed the bookshelf that had been precariously leaning nearby and it fell, the hallway stashed between the bindings stretching out like a damaged accordion and sounding much the same way. The two of them, Ursula and Dayvies, witch and familiar, hardly even noticed. It was no different than the crunch of broken glass and shattered clay beneath her feet.
As she followed the sound of the matriarch’s summons, Dayvies flew over and landed on Ursula’s shoulders. She loved it when he stood there. Her guardian, her protector, like her own gargoyle stationed to watch over her, his warm feathers brushing gently against her neck and cheeks. She lifted an arm to his naked neck and he nuzzled her hand affectionately.
“Yes, Granny?”
“There are things the flames will not tell me. Will not clarify. Whispers that they spoke of when the boy was first brought here are unchanged.”
“Shall I grab my bones?” Ursula asked eagerly. All witches have ways to read the future, and hers was a small bag of animal bones marked with symbols, runes, and hieroglyphs. Casting them together, a small handful at a time, often revealed truths and omens to the Sister witch.
“No, Sister, but you can take them with you.”
In the years since arriving, Ursula had never left their cottage. She didn’t want to, especially now, when there was so much work to make the Auntie do. “Where? Where am I going?”
“You are to follow the boy. You are to watch him. Report back to me on his doings.”
“But… why? He is gone now, and unimportant. You always said, you always told me that he wasn’t important, that we shouldn’t concern ourselves-”
“Hush, Sister. I am giving you a task, I will have you complete it.”
Ursula stamped her foot. “No, no I won’t!”
The Grandmother witch moved like lightning, faster than Ursula could understand. One moment she was at the fire’s edge, the next she was towering over Ursula, her hand gripping the Sister’s throat, her pointed nails puncturing the flesh. Dayvies, in his surprise, fluttered backwards off of her shoulders and to the ground. Granny’s own familiar, the black spider Alvynra, emerged from her nose and leapt off of her face. It landed on the vulture, crawling across his beak and poking, prodding at the exposed eyes.
“You dare defy me, child?” Nemain hissed. She pushed Ursula’s head down to the rubble, holding it there. “You see what this day has wrought? Our coven is at its weakest, our place of power and safety is destroyed, and the mortal boy responsible for it walks free. If any other witch heard a whisper of the events of this day we would be finished, I tell you, finished. I give you an order now in this hour and you would defy me?”
“I’m sorry, Granny, please, I- I-”
“Stuttering, Sister? Tell me, are you any better than the boy? The imbecilic male can hardly string a sentence together and now here is my prodigy Sister witch stuttering?”
“No Granny,” Ursula managed, her face still pressed to the dust at Nemain’s feet.
“Good. Now, you will follow the boy, and you will do so without his notice. You will tell me what you discover of his intentions. You will hinder him when you can so long as it does not reveal your stalking. Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Granny,”
“Good.” Nemain gave her neck one more push and puncture, then released her. As Alvynra left Dayvies, he hobbled over to her, and the two of them embraced, hurt and humiliated.
The Granny continued. “If you do this and I am pleased with you, then at the end of your journey I may offer you a gift: When I am satisfied with what we have learned and the task is done… I will allow you to kill the boy.”
Ursula’s head shot up, and any negative thought that she or Dayvies had about Nemain dissipated that instant. “Truly, Grandmother?”
The horned lady smiled her cruel, beautiful smile, her horns growing in the way they did when she was proudly pleased with herself. “Truly, Sister. But you must wait for me to allow it. Can I trust you with this?”
“Of course, Granny. I’ll do it, I’ll show you, and-”
“Fine, Sister,” Nemain cut her off with a wave of her hand, then placed a long, sharp finger under Ursula’s chin. “Make what preparations you need, my dark prodigy. Then be on your way.”
Chapter 3. Mother Knows Best
After their conversation, Ursula had her own brow-furrowing considering to do. She wandered down to the black river, its slow current soothing her as it meandered by. All around her fell leaves of blood red and wilted yellow, crunching underfoot. The water at her feet was cold as the grave, unwelcoming as a coffin. All around her were small shrooms of decay and rot.
It was the perfect place for a good think.
“I don’t understand,” she said aloud. “Granny didn’t care what happened to the boy when he left the first time. What’s changed?”
“Nothing has changed,” Dayvies spoke in her mind. You or I could not have heard it, had we been present, but she heard it as clearly as her own heartbeat. His voice echoing through her mind was regal and proud, smooth and guttural with a growling underdone that sounded delightfully like the grinding of bones. “We simply know more.”
“Perhaps she is as shaken as we are?” Ursula mused. “The boy cast a spell of Elementing, and Shifts as well as the Auntie. He flies on a broom that chose him. None of these things should be true.”
“They should not be, but they are. Despite this, Granny cannot fear the boy… she is much too powerful to fear him. As are we.“
“As are we, you’re absolutely right, my love. But the witchslayer? Certainly he is one to fear, and the stupid boy let him get away!”
“Stupid boy,” Dayvies agreed.
“Is our cottage not as safe as we thought? Are we not hidden enough from this world?”
“Granny is wise. Granny is powerful. She will guide us.”
“Of course my love.”
All around Ursula, her life was upheaved. Not only did it seem that everything she had known before now was false, but the cottage she had called home was still in shambles. It had been blasted apart, and not by magic- at least, not of any sort she recognized. A small stick of incredible power was responsible, a seemingly harmless piece of spark that contained within it such a large flame.
She recalled what had happened, just some hours before. The stick of… what did they call it? Dynotime? No… Dynamite. It had been nowhere near the cottage. In fact, it had been right next to her.
And then the stupid boy had thrown it away. Thrown it at their home.
“You may be dead if he hadn’t,” Dayvies chimed in, reading her own thoughts as they passed through her. “I couldn’t allow such a thing, I couldn’t bear it.”
“Hush now my love, all is well. Except…”
The thought hadn’t left her. Not since the moment it had happened.
WHY did he throw the dynamite away? Why did the boy save her?
“He could have let it explode. It might have killed me, his enemy. But instead he threw it away. Why, Dayvies?”
“Stupid boy,” was his only response. The conundrum was just as puzzling to him.
Ursula considered the various possibilities for a long moment, then decided on the most logical one. “It must be because he wants to kill me himself. His honor won’t be satisfied if he were to allow me to die by another hand. You know how men are, obsessed with things like honor and other weaknesses.”
“Of course, this must be the truth,” Dayvies agreed. “You are wise.”
“We must be careful when the time finally comes to kill him. He may be growing more devious out in the world.”
“Finally…” The vulture savored the word, tasting it like flesh in his mouth. He was patient, and would wait as long as was needed, but she could feel his anticipation and his excitement.
“We’ve wanted the boy dead since we arrived at the cottage. At last we’ll be free of his shadow, his embarrassment to the Coven.”
Before Dayvies could respond, there was a rustling behind them. The movement of stumbling limbs through fallen leaves, the snapping of twigs under heavy, clumsy footfalls.
Ursula didn’t have to turn around to know who was there. She could sense them.
“Hello mom. Hello dad.”
Lumbering up beside her were two figures. Their clothes were old, stained with mud and gunk and blood. Their sleeves had been stuffed with straw to add some bulk after the decay had set in, and she had put burlap sacks over both of their faces so that she didn’t have to look at them any more. But they were her parents. What was left of them, anyways.
The one that used to be Michael sat beside her. The one that used to be Annabelle sat behind, petting roughly at her long red hair. If the mother could have braided it, she would, but the fingers of the corpse had long been too rigid, and many of them had fallen off. So instead, it was just an awkward petting.
“I’m going to have to leave for a while,” Ursula told them. “I don’t know how long I’ll be gone.”
Her parents were awfully silent. The grave has that effect on most people.
“Of course Dayvies is coming with me. He will go everywhere I go. He is my soul, the sweet thing.” She pet her familiar affectionately, not dissimilar to the way her corpse of a mother was doing to her now.
“No, I’m not sure where I’m going. I’ll be following the boy.”
The one sitting next to her, her father, turned his burlap sack of a head.
“Granny wants me to find out what he’s up to. After that, I get to end his life.” She beamed with pride. Her mother stopped the petting and set cold hands on Ursula’s shoulders, Dayvies’ favorite resting place.
“Yes, it’s a very important mission,” Ursula assured them. “I’ll have to get going soon, the boy has a broom of his own… they could be headed anywhere.”
The silence that followed was so full of questions that she became almost immediately exasperated.
“Well because I needed to think first! Plot. You know…”
“No, of course I’m not nervous. The idea of failing Granny never crossed my mind.”
“She gave me this mission because she trusts me, and I’m going to prove that she’s right to do so.”
“Look, if you’re so anxious about my going, I’ll toss the bones. That’ll show you there’s nothing to worry about.”
Ursula reached into the pocket of her dress, finding within a small, black velvet bag. Pulling the drawstrings open, she emptied the contents into her hand. There, she held six bones: One each belonging to a cat, a wolf, a hare, a crow, a badger, and a human long dead. All of the bones were long and thin, about the length of her fingers. Often when she was thinking or concentrating, she would find herself fiddling with one of them, letting it twirl as she spun it delicately from one knuckle to the next. Carved into these bones were the symbols that allowed her to read the portents they would provide, a language that required fine interpretation.
“Hold out your hands,” she told what remained of her father. He did so.
“Hold them still!” she chastised. For a being that knew no pain, no itch, no flinch, who needed no heartbeat and felt no breeze… you might expect that it could hold its own body perfectly rigid.
You may even choose to believe that her father’s twitch was a way of joking with his daughter, in that frustrating and endearing way that fathers do. Or perhaps if you were a cauldron-half-empty kind of person, you may think that the scarecrow shuddered at the thought of what the bones might tell. For Ursula’s sake, it would probably have been best if she did not make this reading.
Regardless of what may have caused the stirring, subsequent to Ursula’s scolding, the scarecrow sat as still as a soldier.
And she tossed the bones.
They bounced and clacked in the hands of mortuary Michael, twisting this way and that to favor one rune or another. This dance was tantalizing, a tease of the future by six messengers who seemed to be in disagreement of what they wanted to say.
Ursula watched without realizing that she was holding her breath. Dayvies flicked his feathers with annoyed anticipation. The scarecrow that was once Annabelle leaned further over Ursula’s shoulders, straining to see. Even Michael, dead as he was, felt a sense of suspense.
Still the bones danced.
Ursula was beginning to become certain that it was her father’s fault that they weren’t settling… until they did.
All four faces crowded over the hay-poked outstretched palms. Each of them took in the exact arrangement of the necrotic messengers, reading the runes and the riddles contained within. Of course, the only one who could truly read them was Ursula. The other three realized this all at once, and together they each looked to her.
Ursula’s brow was furrowed. Her lips scrunched and twisted to one side. The freckles across her face flickered with its movement, her deep scars waving.
For a long time they waited.
Finally, Ursula pointed to a single bone, which had settled apart from the others.
“The wolf is separated from the pack. That’s easy enough to understand, I am to leave the coven for this mission. Its runes show “large” and “cold”. I interpret that those symbols make reference to my journey.
“The rest are… confusing. The cat and the hare are touching end to end, like a chase, predator and prey, which is what this mission is… and the crow crosses both of them. If that were all… If that were all I would be pleased. I would take it to mean that the chase ends in death. See that rune there on the crow? It means “permanence”, and the other one is “severance”. The chase will end with something being torn away, permanently. All that is good, right? But look at the runes on the hare and the cat, they’re all about reversal, distraction, and failure. And to make it more confusing, the badger and the human cross each other almost exactly at their centers.”
“What does it mean, my love?” Dayvies asked.
“It’s… it’s a step away from the world, I think. A division, maybe? And the runes on them are “tool” and “pain”. But… I can’t piece together what it means, Dayvies. Usually it’s so clear.”
“You are powerful and wise,” he reminded her. “We will learn of its meaning.”
“Yes my love, of course. Thank you.”
At long last, Ursula looked back to her parents.
“So, I have to go, you see? And everything will be alright. I get to kill the boy, the bones said so. I’ll leave, hunt him down, and the journey will end in death. I, being a Raiser, and a prodigy at that, use death as my tool, like this rune says. It’s a delightful reading, see mom and dad?”
They did not sound convinced. Mostly because they didn’t say anything, but Ursula was a talented conversationalist when it came to corpse talking.
“Well it’s a good thing I don’t need your permission, seeing as I’m in charge of you and you can’t stop me!”
As one, the scarecrows moved towards her, as if to support her, wrapping arms around her shoulders, and yet also in an attempt to keep her exactly where she was.
“I don’t need you!” She shouted, the words echoing through the Fire Forest. Ursula rebuked them, her hands pushing them away and shunning the reanimation out of them. The two collapsed, slumping to the ground, and very suddenly they were no longer walking corpses, simply scarecrows stuffed with the most vile of recycled materials.
“We don’t need them,” Dayvies repeated. He nestled up next to Ursula, placing his own head under her chin. And while she had reacted with great force and violence to the attempted contact from her parents, it was always a comfort from this severed piece of her own soul. “We don’t need anyone,”
“So long as we have each other,” Ursula finished.
She stood, brushing black dirt and fallen leaves from her dress as she began to make her way back to the Bloodwillow cottage.
“Goodbye mom, goodbye dad,” she said. “I’ll be back… I don’t know when. But don’t go anywhere!”
She laughed, knowing that without her power, they couldn’t.
When she returned to the scattered remains of the cottage to gather her things, the Auntie was waiting for her.
“You do not have to follow her orders, Sister,”
Ursula had never liked the Auntie. Not since that first night, when Agatha had tried to give her a command. She did not like the Auntie’s attitude of superiority, did not feel it had been earned. Ursula was quite certain she could challenge the Auntie for her position and be victorious, yet still Agatha did not treat her with the fear or respect that she should. What was even more impossible to forgive was Auntie Agatha’s affection for the boy.
And now, here she was, in what remained of Ursula’s room, still trying to protect him. Despite all he had done. Despite the harm he had caused them, the embarrassment he had caused her.
The Sister raised her chin, trying her best to look down her nose at the taller witch. “If I told the Grandmother that you said as much, she might finally be rid of you.”
Agatha gave a halfhearted shrug, unmoved by the threat. She bent down and picked out a piece of the rubble from the pile of detritus and debris. Standing again, she blew a cloud of dust from the stone and placed it in the fractured wall behind her, as if returning a drop of water to a pool- there was no seam or crack visible any longer. Still, the wall was unfinished, and the ceiling above them had caved in to reveal the dusk sky above.
“I have disobeyed Granny Nemain before, I have ignored her commands. She may punish me, harm me, or threaten worse… but this Coven requires three, and I have my uses. She knows replacing me would be difficult, and she would be weaker in the meantime. And I am not favored by her as much as you, Sister.”
Ursula heard none of the logic in the Auntie’s words. “Your warmth towards the boy has always been sickening, unbecoming of a witch… but this is a new low. How dare you suggest I disobey the Granny in order to help him-”
“I am not helping him, Sister. I am trying to help you.”
The young witch was taken back by that, no doubt. Even Dayvies, perched on her shoulders, cocked his head, his feathers ruffling.
Finally, Ursula spoke. “What ruse is this?”
“No ruse, Sister. Of course I care for Malefaust, but the boy is gone now. He is where he needs to be: away from here. If you were to follow, you would not be chasing him but seeking vengeance for perceived slights.”
Ursula scoffed, her eyes rolling at the elder witch’s inaccurate wisdom, but the Auntie continued: “In your desire to harm him, you will only harm yourself.”
“What would you suggest instead, Auntie? That I face the wrath of our matriarch so that your precious boy can live a life without consequence for his arrogance and his crime here? I think not.”
“I would suggest that you leave, that you depart from this place for a time. A witch on her own is an unnatural thing, but you would survive. You truly are a prodigy, Sister, but you could be much greater. Staying in this cottage with nothing but hatred for him and love for yourself will not make you a better witch.
“Leave and wander, not following the boy but your own interests, your own questions and fascinations. Wander, explore, learn… the world is a big place. When you feel ready, return here. Tell the grandmother that you were unsuccessful, and in that time her rage will have subsided, and Malefaust will be far from her mind. You will be welcome back, and you will be better for the time you devote to yourself, not him.”
Ursula only scowled. “I should not be so surprised. You have always been weak, Agatha. Hatred and vengeance- these are tools of our kind. I plan to use them.”
The Auntie shook her head and began to make her way out of Ursula’s room, stepping over a shattered wall and through a space that had not been an entryway, but now functioned as one.
“A tool, used incorrectly, can harm its wielder,” she said, walking out.
“I’ll show you!” Ursula called after her. “You think you know so much but you know nothing. I’ll return with the boy’s corpse dancing behind me, and then you’ll be next, and then I’ll be the Auntie, you’ll see!”
But there was no reply. Auntie Agatha had left without retort.
“Next time she turns her back on me, she will not live to regret it,” Usula growled.
“Fool,” said Dayvies, narrowing his eyes and lowering his head.
“She is wrong, of course, right my love?”
“Of course she is. Dead wrong.”