The Winter Riddle Read online

  On this particular trip, the current that she followed led over Santa’s Village. She’d flown over it a few times before, and had always meant to visit as soon as she could come up with a pretense. Pretenses were essential things. How would it look for a witch to simply be curious about something that wasn’t her business? Nosy, that’s how. Witches don’t like nosy people, so they have to set an example.

  But despite her best intentions, Volgha was curious, and justifiably so. The whole place was a constant light show that needed seizure warnings all over it. She assumed he was some sort of alchemist, what with the frequent explosions. A well-funded alchemist, at that. She’d flown low enough on one occasion to see that the village was almost entirely populated by elves, most of whom appeared to be engaged in scientific work. Was this Santa character their employer?

  She wondered that again as she flew over the village, watching the elves scurry about. She’d not met many elves and didn’t have a good sense of how intimidated they’d need to be.

  It isn’t good enough for a witch to simply wear a pointy hat and meddle with dark forces beyond mortal comprehension. People, dullards that they are, have expectations. They expect those who meddle with dark forces beyond mortal comprehension to have other qualities as well. In people’s minds, witches should be mysterious. They should be dark—hence all the wearing black—powerful, and frankly a bit scary.

  A friendly witch would confuse most people. Confused people tend to be angry people, and angry people band together with pitchforks and torches. Thus, a smart witch will approach strangers with an abrasive and intimidating demeanor.

  There is a great deal of magic in witchery, to be sure; however, a lot of the routine stuff is managed through intimidation. Anyone not well-versed in the art of witchery might be surprised at how many things witches accomplish without any magic at all.

  Take flying on brooms, for instance. To the casual observer, it doesn’t seem possible without magic. It’s certainly out of the ordinary, but there is nothing magical about it. Flying on brooms is accomplished through sheer intimidation. It makes perfect sense once the facts have been made clear.

  Broom shafts are made from branches. Their natural state is to be up in the air, attached to a tree. Octomedes’ Third Law of Doing Work clearly states that “a thing set to a purpose not of its own volition will resist that purpose whenever possible.” Simply put, branches don’t want to spend time on floors, and they certainly have no interest in cleaning them.

  This works out for witches. Instead of sweeping floors, they’d rather see the brooms follow the natural inclinations of the branches from which they were made, and rise up into the air. The first witches tried gently coaxing them up, and that was why they failed. If a simple “please do what comes naturally instead of moving dirt around” would do the trick, witches’ spell books would include chapters on etiquette. However, brooms, like people, have expectations. Polite requests are met with confused silence. This assertion can be tested by anyone, by politely asking a broom to do the sweeping on its own.

  On the other hand, when a witch insinuates to a broom that she’ll reduce it to splinters if it stays on the ground for another instant, it rises up without hesitation. It didn’t want to be on the ground anyway, so a witch’s threat is just the push it needs.

  Unfortunately, this assertion can only be tested by witches. Brooms are wily enough to recognize that regular folks are just as lazy as they are, and couldn’t be bothered to go and buy a new broom, to say nothing of the sweaty work of obliterating one.

  In order to intimidate successfully, a witch has to be what everyone expects a witch to be. This is why they wear the pointy hats. There’s nothing particularly helpful or magical about them, they’re basically just badges. You see a woman wearing all black, you could think anything from ‘she must be in mourning’ to ‘she probably listens to depressing music and spends a lot of money on eyeliner.’ Add the hat, and there’s no mistaking that she can answer a vex with a hex; unless, of course, she’s simply bought the hat because it goes so well with her eyeliner. In any case, it’s safer to avoid vexing black-clad women in pointy hats.

  While it’s rumored that witches can control people’s minds via magic, that’s patently false. Of course, none of them will admit that. If questioned on the matter, a witch would likely chide the ninny who asked and threaten to show them the hard way.

  Over snow-covered hills and dales Volgha flew, until she finally reached the valley. She flew down into the pine-covered bottom, finally spying the grove in the autumn twilight. Though the higher air currents were warmer than usual, they were still bitterly cold, and she felt frozen solid. It was the North Pole, after all.

  She touched down gently, barely disturbing the fresh powder that had fallen in front of her cottage. The snow wouldn’t have minded, but it was a part of nature, and the Witching Way had taught her to respect nature. She took that to mean that she should disturb it as little as possible. How was she to know that the spirits of the forest weren’t agonizingly specific in their arrangement of snowfall, and likely to be very put out if some oblivious pair of boots went crashing through their work with abandon?

  She didn’t. She couldn’t. The spirits of the forest—and the ones in her grove in particular—were temperamental, and it wouldn’t be a good idea to go around vexing them, disturbing their snow and such. That was a sure-fire way to guarantee that every woodland creature in the grove went out of its way to relieve itself on her porch until sun-up.

  Volgha had an agreement with the spirits. At least, she felt that she did. The conversations that she’d had with them to date were less substantial than she’d have liked, mostly on par with small talk about the weather. Not that discussions about the weather weren’t important, especially to the spirits of nature.

  There was a line of demarcation that started at her front porch. She did her very best to maintain the serenity of the grove on the other side of it, and kept most of her affairs in the immediate vicinity of the cottage. As she walked up the steps, she used her broom to clear off the snow—much to the broom’s chagrin—and pushed the front door open.

  It was dark inside. She used a piece of flint against her little knife to spark a candle alight. She could have magicked a flame onto its wick quite easily, but she was neither pressed for time nor trying to impress anyone. Flint and steel would do nicely.

  As the tiny light stretched itself thinly into the corners of the room, she saw that everything was just as she’d left it. Dried herbs hanging from the ceiling, seeds and other ingredients lining the little shelves in bottles, the Grimoire open on the stand to a spell that would gently persuade chipmunks to favor the nuts recently fallen from the trees, and away from the ones she’d recently planted.

  The log in the fireplace was half-burnt from the last time it had been lit. She coaxed a flame from it with the flint and added a pair of new logs to thaw the frozen stew in the little cauldron that hung there in the hearth.

  It was a proper stew, one that she’d inherited from Osgrey. There was no recipe. Recipes are for soups and casseroles, which are occasionally confused with stews. No, this very cauldron of stew had been hanging in the hearth when she’d first moved into the place, and she’d had no idea whether Osgrey had started it, or possibly his own mentor before him.

  No one knows how stews get started. It’s a mystery for philosophers to puzzle out, and they usually do so over a bowl of stew, to which they’ve made no contribution. Philosophy doesn’t pay very well, generally just enough to cover leather elbow patches. Those who inherit a proper stew just start adding meat, vegetables, and leftovers from other meals, and thus set themselves about maintaining it.

  Eating a proper stew is dining on history. Depending on the particular confluence of the pot, the story it tells can be triumphant, tumultuous, or even a bit bloody in the case of rare beef.

  Volgha had inherited a rather dull pot of history and elevated it with some nettle, earthbloom, and a bit of
black pepper. Now she was slicing an onion into it, and trying to avoid thinking about where it had acquired a faint aroma of strong cheese. It hadn’t been there before, and she hadn’t added any.

  Best not to think too hard about stew. Volgha trusted that her stew knew what it was doing, and it had never treated her poorly.

  Once the onion was in, she hung her blankets from the hooks under the mantle. They blocked some of the heat from entering the room, but they’d be colder than a joke about puppies with cancer if she didn’t warm them up before bed.

  She sat in her chair while the stew and the blankets soaked in the warmth of the fire. In the stillness, her mind had nothing to do but bully her into reliving everything that transpired at the castle. Reconciling it all was about as simple as herding kittens, though significantly less adorable.

  What was Ghasterly’s problem, anyway? The two of them had always been at odds, and it had always been his fault. It wasn’t that she wanted to be friends with a dusty old skeleton who had religious objections to hygiene, but he didn’t seem to like anybody. That couldn’t be good for the kingdom, him being the court wizard and all.

  She was severely vexed by their last encounter, but she was having trouble calculating revenge. It was an awful state of affairs, given her hatred of the sneering old worm sack and her love of revenge.

  She knew why. As much as she hated to admit it, even quietly to herself, she was afraid of him.

  Taking a deep breath, she pondered the Witching Way. What did it have to say about fear? Fear isn’t rational, it’s a fantasy. Being a witch meant living entirely in the light of truth and reason, with the exception of telling as many lies as she wanted.

  But those lies were for other people. She needed to be truthful with herself, no matter how inconvenient.

  She rose from her chair, went to her bedside table, and picked up the little silver mirror she kept there. It had been her grandmother’s, or possibly her grandmother’s ferret’s (they were constantly stealing it from each other, so it was hard to tell). She studied herself in its tarnished surface, locking eyes with her reflection and pursing her lips severely.

  “I am afraid of Ghasterly,” she said aloud. There. That was the ugly truth.

  “I am afraid of Ghasterly. I am afraid of Ghasterly.”

  Admitting a fear is the first step in overcoming it, and telling the truth aloud three times means its truth is no longer open to debate. Volgha knew this because it was written thrice in the Grimoire.

  Anyway, it was just a little bit of fear. Keep in mind she’d split a god in half, thank you very much. A god. It would have been impressive enough to divide the mind of a person, but a god? Ghasterly couldn’t claim to have done that! He didn’t even try, the coward!

  Then again, if she were totally honest with herself, she understood why Ghasterly had refused to do it. She actually felt a bit foolish now, cutting gods in half all will-nilly. She’d feel childish, only she hated to imagine the child who could manage that sort of thing. Beware the monstrous toddler who goes around bisecting deities.

  Feeling foolish was the downside of total honesty with one’s self. Small wonder that regular folk avoid it.

  Volgha’s mind was running in circles. The only thing that could make it stop was sleep. Fretting over that which she couldn’t control this close to bedtime was a recipe for bad dreams, worse than the naked in school one.

  Her feelings of foolishness had robbed her of her appetite, so she said good evening to the stew without sampling it. She whisked her blankets from their hooks, twirled as she leapt for the bed, and was tightly cocooned in warmth and softness and security. Within seconds, she was snoring at the top of her lungs, as though her life depended on it.

  It was dark as pitch in the cottage when she awoke. The fire had gone out, so at least a few hours had passed. That was good. Nothing soothes the nerves like a good sleep, and sleeping at the castle was about as soothing as a sugar-overdosed toddler playing the drums.

  It had been a dreamless sleep, which was rare for witches. When you spend a good deal of time traipsing across the void into the shadow realms, things tend to seek you out in dreams and engage you in bizarre, unintelligible conversations. That was the whole point of witchery, of course. Living in the light of truth and reason shouldn’t have to be boring.

  She opened the shutters a crack. It was grey outside—no surprises there—and it was snowing a bit, to her further lack of surprise. There were a lot of things that would need her attention, first of which would be her late autumn herb garden. She pulled on her boots, reached for her basket, and said a swear word as she realized yet again that it was lost to her.

  Oh well, she thought. Crying over spilled milk, in Volgha’s experience, was the province of royalty. She grabbed an old basket that she’d taken when she’d first left the castle and walked out into the grove.

  She marched through the trees with a determined expression, signaling to everyone who wasn’t there that she was still a witch, and not to be trifled with.

  Trifle with a witch, and you’ll be sorry you did. Then, as though some fool had been paying attention and decided to call her bluff, she saw a heap of twisted metal that had dropped onto her garden to the tune of one severe trifling.

  The thing had elfish written all over it. Even if it hadn’t been literally covered in elfish script, she’d seen enough elfish craftsmanship in her day to recognize it now. Santa’s Village was the only place nearby where one might find elves, a fact that Santa would choke upon soon enough.

  Santa’s Village was always giving off some sort of minor nuisance that she could overlook. The occasional thunderous boom, the erstwhile blinding flashes in the sky, and the rare fluctuation in the Northern Lights were all easy enough to forgive and forget, but the wreckage of some infernal machine gone clog dancing over her herb garden was just the sort of thing to land an insolent neighbor at the top of the revenge list.

  Oh, yes! The spirits were simply philanthropic with cause for revenge of late. There must have been a surplus. It was shaping up to be a very busy winter.

  Adding insult to injury, Santa probably had no idea that his detritus had inconvenienced anyone. If she did nothing about it, he’d most likely go on with his life as if nothing had happened. Not a chance! Walking away from this would require legs! Functional ones, with knees intact!

  Volgha stood there, fuming. She wasn’t very handy in dealing with people. Plants, yes. Animals, to be sure. The occasional Viking was fine, as long as they were full of mead and beef and you toasted Valhalla with them once or twice. However, your standard, run-of-the-mill person came with all sorts of things. Feelings, needs, complications. It was disgusting, really.

  She swore revenge and stomped back to the cottage, where her spirits were lifted somewhat at the sight of Sigmund, the snow lion. Volgha liked having him around. She never saw bears in the grove, and while she had no solid proof that Sigmund was keeping them away, she had no solid proof that he wasn’t either.

  He sat on her porch next to a magnificent stag, or rather, the earthly remains of that which was once a stag. Although the Witching Way prevented her from killing a creature from the wilderness, Sigmund had no similar compunctions, and occasionally murdered her up some fresh meat. She was grateful, although she was aware that a cat bringing her a fresh kill meant that he thought her a lousy hunter.

  Well, he wasn’t wrong.

  Volgha looked over the offering and scratched the top of Sigmund’s head in thanks. Irrespective of the spirit in which it was given, good meat was good meat. It was turning into a busy afternoon, between the new cause for revenge and the deer that needed dressing; but her cauldron would benefit from the venison, and she was running dangerously low on ground antler without her basket. Supposing she needed to draw down the moon, and she hadn’t enough antler to balance out the cobwebs? She’d look a right fool, it goes without saying.

  The spell she intended to cast later would have to wait for the clouds to part, so sh
e passed the time by carving the stag into its useful parts, gathering firewood, preparing tallow for candles, and a dozen other mundane tasks that, for anyone else, might join together for an entirely humdrum collection of chores.

  So much of witchery was bound up in this sort of thing. Between chores and revenge, witches had precious little time for magic. At times like these, there was little to differentiate them from hermits (intending no offense to those practicing hermitry, of course). This was all fine and dandy for Volgha. She was curious, but she wasn’t a sensationalist. She was curious on a very practical level, not one that would get her into trouble, like Pandora or Prometheus who, like her sister, were nitwits by trade.

  She was trying to work out some maths around the wards that obviously hadn’t done much to protect her garden when a certain stillness crept into the air. She saw the light from the setting sun between the parted clouds, and a smile crept across her face. It was time to do some real magic.

  The logs in her bonfire circle had nearly burned away, but the flames were still hot. She piled on a few more logs, and within moments the flames were leaping for the sky with an earnest fury. It was a princely sort of fire, one that the spirits of the grove were sure to appreciate. She didn’t yet know what secrets the spirits would reveal to her, but any little whisper could be valuable beyond measure if she knew how to apply it.

  Sometimes it was just gossip. The spirits of the forest were like anybody else, really. They wanted to tell you the secrets that they knew, but without being too obvious about it; hence all of the ceremony. They needed to have it wooed out of them a bit.

  Other times it was griping. “You’ve planted where our gnomes like to dance,” or, “Do you really have to put so many pine needles on the bonfire? They smoke terribly, you know.”

  On rare occasions, she’d learn something truly useful that would make all of the rubbish worth the bother. As she chanted over the fire and cast ground herbs into it, the veil lifted for her and showed her that this would be one of said rare occasions.