once there was a witch who lived in the woods. she was ugly and mean and loud, as all witches are, and she never found love. the little girls of the village were warned of the witch, who was known to steal daughters. she would eat them, maybe, or destroy them in her experiments. they were not seen again in any case, so it was all true.
you learned of her by way of your mother, who had hair so beautifully blonde while yours was your father’s rusty brown. you learned of her because you had spilled the water coming back from the well. then you learned again of her when you talked back. then you learned again when you were caught with your fingers in a book, staring at the squiggles you did not understand. the witch, the witch, the witch.
your mother, it is known, was protecting you. she said she did not want you to be one of the girls that were stolen or hurt or eaten or all three. she said that girls like you are particularly likely, on account of being, she must admit, uncomely and unfortunately prone to curiosity.
at seven you told your best friend Patience: i do not fear the witch, but i do wonder how she finds girls. just that year she took a girl named Charlotte, who was lovelier than you by far, so you might have been next, had you not learned to bite back your retorts and stop making snide comments and to only read in the dark, where people could not see you agonizing over teaching yourself.
at fourteen you told your best friend Patience: i do not fear the witch, but i wonder what she eats when it is not children. patience laughed and said - like you, she eats books.
at sixteen you told your best friend Patience: i do not fear the witch, but i would like to see her, to know what she is like. patience has long, shiny hair, and lips so pink they are a sin, and always smiles when she looks at you, even when you are uncomely (as your own mother has admitted). Patience is like a bath of milk, decadent. she holds your hand and says do not go see the witch, for i could not stand if you did not return. so you do not go.
at seventeen, you and Patience uncover a book in the back of charlotte’s farm. shaking, the two of you say a spell over a bowl of violet water in the light of a full moon. the spell is a secret, and i will not write it, but when you come home, you forget the words, thinking instead of how patience looked, wild and grinning, her hands locked in yours, her head thrown back and her eyes closed. wild, untamed. your mother would say uncomely. for the first time, you wonder if the word means - to unbecome.
at eighteen, you told your best friend patience: i would not mind, being a witch, but she is alone. in a sob, Patience tells you: my father will marry me off next year. you both cry into each other’s arms. you have no marriage offers, for you are known to be too-much, a lady who is frightfully observant and clever, neither of which are appropriate behaviors. she sleeps in your bed this night, and smells of lavender. long after the moon rises, you watch her breathing. she wakes up from a nightmare and reaches out to hold you, tucking you against her so easily it is as if you have been displaced your whole life until now, and have only found home by the fitting of her limbs.
for a year, you spend like this. playing with each other’s hair and sleeping in the same bed like little girls. sometimes, when it is late, she looks at you, dark eyes all full and wide, you think she is about to speak. she never does, only reaches out and holds your hand.
on midnight the day before her wedding, she wakes you. i do not fear the witch, she says, for it is better to be eaten beside you.
there are three witches who live in the woods. they are clever, and wicked, and ugly. they take girls and eat them - girls who would have been married, girls who would have been mothers, girls who like terrible things like asking questions and talking loudly and speaking back to their fathers. do not be fooled by the illusion they will help you - why, two girls from this very village ran off one night, and the witches disintegrated them. i myself found their clothes by the river, and when i turned i heard nothing but laughter, deep in the woods, followed by the scent of lavender.
