?? gulped September, when the cake had settled in her belly, “that you would tell me what was ahead of me, so I could look out for it.”
“Hello, I believe we have an utterly unique specimen on our hands: a child who listens,” Goodbye said, laughing. Goodbye laughed a lot.
Manythanks shook his head. “That’s really more a seer’s business, love—”
“I’d be happy to show you your future, little one,” interrupted Hello, but her voice was dark. The witch dipped her bare hand into the gurgling, boiling soup of the cauldron. She hauled out a handful of lumpy muck, the color of bruises and jam gone off. She flung it at the earth, where it steamed and wriggled and reeked. All three witches peered at the gob intently. Mankthanks poked at it with a neatly trimmed fingernail. It quivered. The sisters looked meaningfully at one another. September tried to peer as well but did not feel she had the hang of it.
“My future looks lumpy,” she said uncertainly.
Goodbye broke ranks with her family and swooped around the great cauldron, kneeling before September. The witch suddenly looked very beautiful, her pale hair swept back, her eyes dark and bright. September did not remember her looking so beautiful before, when she was stirring the pot. But now, Goodbye’s face fairly glowed, her lips perfectly rose-colored, her cheeks high, aristocratic, even blushing a little. “September,” she breathed. Her voice was pure honeywine, warm and deep and sweet. “That’s what you said your name was, yes? I prefer October, myself, but it’s such a pretty name. Your parents must have loved you very much, to give you a name like that. Do you like my name? It’s unusual, like yours.”
“Y … yes.” September felt odd. She wanted to please Goodbye very much—but more, she wanted Goodbye to like her, to love her even and tell her more about how much they were alike. The witch laughed again. But now it was a long rippling laugh full of notes, almost a song.
“My sister has no shame at all, September,” Goodbye continued. “That’s a very secret thing she did—right in front of you! You see, the future is a kind of stew, a soup, a vichyssoise of the present and the past. That’s how you get the future: You mix up everything you did today with everything you did yesterday and all the days before and everything anyone you ever met did and anyone they ever met, too. And salt and lizard and pearl and umbrellas and typewriters and a lot of other things I’m not at liberty to tell you, because I took vows, and a witch’s vows have teeth. Magic is funny like that. It’s not a linear thinker. The point is if you mash it all up together and you have a big enough pot and you’re very good at witchcraft, you can wind up with a cauldron full of tomorrow. That lump of greasy, slimy goop is a prophecy, and my sister cast it for you.”
“What does it say?”
Goodbye smiled like a sun rising. “Oh, so many things, September, if you know how to look. Would you like to know how? Would you like to be able to divine the meaning of that blob there, the color of mashed potatoes, or that vein of jelly? Would you like to be a witch?”
“Witchery is a life of wonder,” said Hello, “all the wheeling stars at your command, all the days of the future laid out before you, like dolls in bronze armor!”
“And a really top-notch hat,” added Manythanks.
“The Marquess has a fine hat, too,” said September, shaking her head to clear Goodbye’s sudden perfume. “I’ve been told.”
Their faces darkened a little.
“Well, I’m sure we’ll all be wearing tweed trousers by fall,” Goodbye snapped sarcastically. She shut her eyes and shook her head. When she opened them again, they were once more pools of deep violet, glistening with promises. “But we were discussing your prospects, my dear. For as much as I would like to bring you into my coven this very day, something bars me from accepting such a charming, polite, intelligent young ward. For a witch is nothing without her Spoon, and the Marquess stole mine years ago, because she is capricious and selfish and a brat.”
Hello and Manythanks drew back from Goodbye as though the Marquess might appear that very moment and punish the brazen witch soundly.
Goodbye hurried on. “But if some intrepid, brave, darling child went to the City and got it back for me, well, a witch would be grateful. You’ll know it right away: It’s a big wooden spoon, streaked with marrow and wine and sugar and yogurt and yesterday and grief and passion and jealousy and tomorrow. I’m sure the Marquess won’t miss it. She has so many nice things. And when you come back, we’ll make you a little black bustle and a black hat and teach you to call down the moon gulls and dance with the Giant Snails that guard the Pantry of Time.”
September’s stomach hurt. She found it terribly hard to speak. “I’ve only just gotten here, Miss Goodbye. I … I don’t think I want to be anything but myself just yet. It would be like deciding on the spot to become a geologist back home. What if I don’t like rocks when I’m older? Witchery sounds very nice now, but I’m sure I should take better care with my … my prospects.”
“But the future, child! Just think of it! If you see something you don’t like—pop! In go leek and licorice, and you can change it. What could be better?”
“Does it really work that way? Can you really change the future?”
Manythanks shrugged. “I’m sure it’s been done once or twice,” he said.
September wrenched her eyes away from Goodbye’s loveliness. Her head cooled and cleared and smoothed itself out. “Miss,” she said, “don’t you really just want your Spoon back?”
Goodbye stood up abruptly and brushed off her black dress. The perfume was gone, and she shrank a bit, still a somewhat handsome woman, but the glow, the perfect colors of her, were muted and usual again.
“Yes,” she said curtly. “I can’t get it, the Marquess has lions.”
“Well … you don’t have to shine at me and offer me a bustle, you know. I … I could get it for you. Maybe I could get it for you. Anyway, I could try. What did I come to Fairyland for, after all? To wander around on the beach like my grandfather, looking for dropped wedding rings?” September laughed for the first time since leaving Omaha, picturing her grandfather in his patched jacket waving his metal detector over the beach of Fairy gold. A quest, she thought, excitement rising in her like bread, a real quest like a real knight, and she doesn’t even see that I’m short and I don’t have a sword.
“Well … how gallant of you, child,” said Hello. “She didn’t mean to offend with her shining … it’s only that the Marquess is fearful and fell. Long ago, she hunted witches. She rode out on a great panther and wielded her iceleaf bow against us. She broke our mother’s Spoon across her back and killed our brothers Farewell and Wellmet. Fine witches in the prime of their craft, all pierced with her arrows, laid out in the snow. And all because we would not give her what she wanted.”
“What did she want?”
Goodbye answered, her voice thick and ugly. “A single day. She commanded us to simmer for her a single day, the day of her death, so that she could hide from it. And we would not serve her.”
September let go a long-held breath. She stared into the roiling black-violet soup, thinking furiously. The trouble was, September didn’t know what sort of story she was in. Was it a merry one or a serious one? How ought she to act? If it were merry, she might dash after a Spoon, and it would all be a marvelous adventure, with funny rhymes and somersaults and a grand party with red lanterns at the end. But if it were a serious tale, she might have to do something important, something involving, with snow and arrows and enemies. Of course, we would like to tell her which. But no one may know the shape of the tale in which they move. And, perhaps, we do not truly know what sort of beast it is, either. Stories have a way of changing faces. They are unruly things, undisciplined, given to delinquency and the throwing of erasers. This is why we must close them up into thick, solid books, so they cannot get out and cause trouble.
Surely, she must have suspected the shape of her tale when the Green Wind appeared in her kitchen window. Certain signs are unmistakable. But now she is alone, poor child, and there do not seem to be too terribly many fairies about, and instead of dancing in mushroom rings, she must contend with very formal witches and their dead brothers, and we must pity her. It would be easy for me to tell you what happened to her—why, I’d need only choose a noun and a few verbs and off she goes! But September must do the choosing and the going, and you must remember from your own adventuring days how harsh a task lies before her at this moment.