The Wizard seemed to flinch, but he quickly smoothed his face over. “How close, old woman? Close enough for you to slip a knife under my ribs? I think not. I need not even offer evidence—your admission of a great-granddaughter is enough.” He looked at me with a hot stare that clung to my skin and held me limp in its grip. “The dam has foaled—where is the colt?” I tried to speak, to protest, but Grandmother silenced me with a squeeze of her hand on mine.
“You will not get what you desire this way, either. It is not for you,” she hissed. And at this the Wizard did step closer.
“I will not get it, you dried up old soup-bone. I will take it.”
But his one step had been enough. With a cry like a bear run through with a spear, Grandmother laughed at him, drawing a silver knife with a hilt of bone from her tattered dress. The knife cut true, and slid redly across the Wizard’s neck.
THE FIRE HAD GUTTERED TO NOTHING AND THE Prince sat in darkness, staring at palms he could not see. The Witch touched lightly the knotted scar on her fore head, the line that twisted and looped like a sea serpent. She smiled grimly, her mouth knotting upward in just the same line.
The accusation lay between them on the table, fat and hideous, black-spined and full of smoke. The Witch said nothing, and he tried not to look at the corpse which lay covered in soot and dew, leaning against the fireplace like new-cut wood.
“I didn’t know,” the Prince whispered. “I couldn’t have known. How could I? She was just a bird. I didn’t mean…” He had ruined the only thing his precious quest had touched.
The Witch covered his shaking hand with hers. Her voice was soft and kind, as soft and kind as a Witch can manage.
“If you had meant it, my beautiful boy, I would have eaten your liver and smiled through the meal.”
Prince Leander looked up at Knife with a sudden passion. “But there has to be a way to bring her back! There has to. You are a Witch. I am a Prince. In all the books, where there is a Witch and a Prince there is a way.” He seized the edges of the table and leaned close to the crone. “Tell me how to do it and I will save her. It is what a Prince ought to do, to save maidens. I beg you, send me to the farthest ice cap, or the widest swamp, but I will go if it means her life.”
The Witch smiled, a real and tender smile, as from a grown wolf to a whelp.
“Maybe. As you say, it is the main thing Princes are good for.”
The Witch was silent. She collected the dough from the table, flour and blood and tears and all, and slid it into a hulking oven.
“How did you escape from the Castle?” the Prince asked suddenly, wary as a cat.
“I was banished,” she replied shortly, pushing the misshapen loaf farther onto its iron grille.
Leander could see the rest of the tale piling up like fat parchment scrolls behind Knife’s eyes. But just as plainly he saw that she had told him all she wished to tell.
“All you must know is the evil your family has done to mine. She was the last of us, the last child of that poor girl who crouched in her tent while men butchered stars. Now that she is dead there will never be any more of us. That is a truth you can hold like a sun-baked brick in your hand. It has weight, it has heft. To save my daughter you need no more.”
“So there is a way. What must I do?” The Prince fixed her with that sincere gaze which all Princes possess.
The Witch grunted, squinting at him through the low light. “She must be wrapped in the skin of the Leucrotta under the new moon. Then it is possible, though not likely, that she will be restored.” The Witch waited for a response, but none came. “Really, boy. Have you never seen the outside of the Castle walls? The Leucrotta is a terrible beast who lives in the Dismal Marshes. He is the color of clotted blood, part stag and part horse, of a size that dwarfs both, a mouth that stretches ear to ear, and instead of teeth it has twin rows of solid bone. It is very fearsome, I assure you.”
“I am not afraid!” cried the Prince, nearly tripping over himself to show his willingness to brave any challenge to rescue the beautiful bird-maiden and redeem his family name.
“Wait, boy. You do not understand. Let me tell you a tale of another Prince who went to face the Leucrotta…”
ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS A HANDSOME PRINCE who went to rescue his innocent sister from the fell beast.
The Leucrotta snapped his spine with one crack of its jaws,
and wore his head and hands on its antlers for a fort night in celebration.
The Witch sat back with satisfaction.
In the Garden
THE BOY GIGGLED. HE SAT PRIMLY ACROSS FROM THE GIRL NOW, NOT nearly brave enough to attempt to touch her again. She laughed, too, a low, quiet sound in the dark. Her eyes drifted up through the cedar boughs, black hawks darting towards him and away again. They were nervous now, skittish and afraid of Dinarzad’s thunderous steps which surely were not far off. There was no supper to distract them, only the two, eager to tell and eager to hear, awkward and unsure, terrified of discovery.
In the night, which cantered towards morning like an eager mare, he inched closer to her, and urged her not to stop.
The girl drew her breath inward and began again, with her voice of waving willows bordering a dark lake.
WHEN LEANDER LEFT THE HUT IN THE MORNING half-light, the Witch gave him a knowing grimace and kissed his cheek with her leathery lips. It was an awkward gesture, and he did not look her in the eye. But her hand fell to his, and unwrapped the leaves from his stumps. He was not very surprised to see that they had healed over entirely, new skin pink and warm, the fingers severed neatly at the knuckle, with no blood or scar to be seen.