Kindling the Witch

L.J. Longo

“Darling is this a new trend?” That’s what her husband would say if he could see her pressed against the side of a baker’s oven. “Are other witches doing this too?”

She rubbed her arms over the silk of her blouse, squeezing the bones. A tiny fire spread though the ancient wood.

Her mother’s would say, “Grettel, come out of that oven. Don’t you know it could be dangerous?”

Outside of the steel and stone, the house, which was not her house, fell in on itself, thatched roof tumbling to the bare floor, the glossy sign that read “Marjoram’s Bakehouse: spells by appointment only” yellowed and hanging by one screw. Daylight peeked in through the oven’s cracked door.

And if her grandmother knew. That would be a moment to remember: the woman, drawn tight as a violin string, plucking apart and shouting, “Do you have any idea how absolutely ridiculous you look? Mrs. Goloff would certainly take her broom to this! So would the papers.”

She closed her eyes, uncertain if they felt heavy because of the make-up covering the dark veins middle-age had given her, or if she’d had too much wine at her stepdaughter’s wedding. Her husband rarely let her drink in public. She never let him eat in public.

The mirror wouldn’t be surprised to find her. “This burning thing of yours, sweetie? It’s not going to work. And it’s going to take me hours to recondition your hair from all this heat and soot.”

She breathed in the smoke pouring back down the chimney. She listened to the fir snapping her feet. The flames leaped from log to log like brilliantly colored dancers chasing the darkness, gobbling it with their beauty. No one ever told those little performers how to act.

The mirror would laugh. “Of course, no one ever told the fire how to act. It’s fire. Fire doesn’t have to worry about not being invited to the gala opening of the new art museum, or about getting such bad publicity that no one buys her latest spell, or about ruining her husband’s career with silly whims. For example, a fire wouldn’t mind the headline: ‘Beast drives Beauty to suicide after daughter’s wedding’.”

She knew the mirror’s voice so well she could practically hear the intonation, the breathy stops and starts, the trembling glassy voice that only spoke the truth. The glass voice that lay broken all across the floor of her tower bedroom.

A year ago, the mirror said, “Guess who’s going to the Kliff Klub tonight? Right! Your stepdaughter. And guess who’s going to get completely drunk and arrested by midnight? Your stepdaughter. Right again! And guess who’s name is going to be all over the papers tomorrow instead of yours? Oh, you’re on fire tonight, girl! Final question, what are you going to do about it?”

She didn’t have an answer. She said, “I’ve thought about putting a sleeping spell in one of those enchanted apples she uses out there. What are they called?”

“Exploding apples. Eve fruits. Solid joys. That ought to kill her.”

“It would look like an accidental overdose.”

“Dress appropriately. A halter top and a leather skirt. With something sparkly on you neck! You’re not too old to pull off that look, yet.”

“I didn’t say I was going to do it.”

“You are going to do it,” The mirror said.

She turned from the mirror, and conjured a pair of boots. “She doesn’t have to die. I just need her to stay out of my way until the latest spell book comes out.”

“Nobody wants to buy spells from a wicked witch.” She and the mirror said it together. The mirror giggled. She frowned.

“Well, honey, your stepdaughter is only going to get prettier and wilder, and if you don’t do something her reputation will sink you too. She’s probably ruined her father already. All your hard work and suffering married to that boring dis-enchanted beast and it comes to nothing because of this side-effect of a wilderness wedding.”

“What kind of spell should I use?”

The mirror hummed. “Probably a depressant. Oh! A hair of dog spell. Those are always flying around near exploding apples.”

She checked that her low cut halter and tight skirt matched the image the mirror sparkled before her. Before she left, she picked out a shard of the mirror from the upper right corner and tucked it into her Louis Vuitton handbag.

Her husband had given her that shard. He’d said, “I’m giving you a full length magic mirror and this piece…it completes the mirror like you complete me.” And he’d taken her hand and pressed the shaped and polished glass into her hand and then kissed her knuckles. She smiled, pretending to be touched by the clichéd sentiment. She could remember it from a commercial on Spike T.V.

She told interviews he’d given her the mirror in an upscale French restaurant, someplace like La Grenouille with old wizards and their wives and the ogres to overhear. But such dainty restaurants were out of the question, until his enchantment was lifted. He’d given her the shard in Gorge E’s, the finest steakhouse in the city, favorite haunt of rich talking animals with no need for silverware or manners.

He released her hand and picked up his beer, his cheeks red beneath the thick fur. He added, “Anyways I hunted down the witch who enchanted me and had her make it for you and I thought it could give you advice. I mean, I always think you look great, but I know you worry.”

She meant her smile then, embarrassed that he knew her so well and overwhelmed that he had noticed. He smiled too, gazing back at her across the wide table with wet fangs and a sloppy beard, awkward and endearing. For a moment, she was certain that she loved him.

When he gulped down his beer, she looked into the shard. The spell that made her eyes blue had faded and her hair was flat. Her grandmother insisted that she used too much product, too much dye, and that her hair was never meant to curl. Her mother worried about her self-image.

Maybe it was that single moment where she loved him, sandwiched between recycled romance and personal disappointment, that changed her mind at the Kliff Klub so many nights later. Her stepdaughter, surrounded by those seven other animals, danced furiously ignoring the tempo and rhythm of the music and beating out their own song. She had fired the spell into the apple, watched the girl bite, gasp, choke, fall, die. The seven around her began to call for a witch, a spell-breaker, a paramedic. One, a tiny man who was at least half-coyote began to howl, tears pouring from huge eyes and falling into the wide hole of his mouth. She scoffed at this public grief. Even her husband wouldn’t grieve like that. The thought made her hands tremble.

She called the deadliest part of the spell back into her hands and quietly aiming it into the floor. A sleeping spell remained. Months later, long after her latest spell book flew off the shelves to mixed reviews and great suspicion from good witches everywhere, her stepdaughter woke up and stopped eating exploding apples. She combed her hair and joined her father on the campaign trail, a reformed daughter from the wild, the perfect complement to her father’s polished animal image. His wildness was part of his charm. Enchanted animals trusted him and the made other citizens thing he was reliable. They’d postponed their wedding twice to accommodate for this constituency. Then when he was elected advisor to the Marquis, they had married in a huge ceremony with television coverage and several feature stories in prominent magazines. With the spell broken, he became a blue-eyed, dark haired world leader. She had trouble recognizing him.

A branch near her ankle sparked and exploded. She smiled and said to the distant man, “Oh Darling, I think I liked you better as a beast.”

This newest fire threw embers up her blue skirt. The mirror’s design: soft and flowing and high and tight around her waist. It was hard to breath in that skirt. Maybe it was the smoke. She watched the flame eat the lacy hem and spiral calmly upwards.

The mirror would cry to see the dress destroyed. Her mother chastised, “You and your obsession with fire and animals. Get out of that oven, Grettel.”

Her grandmother cocked her head to one side and considered her child. “He’s still your husband. Go home to him and apologize for disappearing like this. Forget this silly fire business. It’s just how you feel now. You’ll change your mind in the morning.”

The mirror sniffed, recovering from the burning dress, “Yeah, and even if you want to divorce him, it could do wonders for your career. Good Witch. Bad Times. An Autobiography.”

Her grandmother agreed. “We could market that.”

The mirror gasped, “Oh my God, think of the scandalous affairs you could have with beautiful young men! You could even have that wolf you’ve always wanted.”

The wolf. She breathed too deeply, forgetting how to stand amidst the thick musk of the smoke. She fell into the door, knocking it open. The metal seared her hands and the dusty light of the day outside invaded the red glow of the fire. The fresh air made the flames leap.

The wolf. She sat down by the fire, crossing her legs instead of tucking them neatly to one side. The flames crackled though her skirt and moved up to her blouse. Even as her skin became a stage for the tiny performers, she felt the cooling breeze from the outside world, the promise of cold stone and water. She could see the corner of the bake house where another witch’s body decayed, coated with dust, disintegrating rags, and the skeleton of a wolf. After painstakingly cleaning everything in Marjoram’s Bake House, shelving loose potions and oils, taking out the trash, and folding all the towels, the wolf had laid down on his witch’s lap and died. The mirror would have been unkind to them. She closed the oven door again, locking them out.

Her wolf had been younger than she was, and she had been young. He’d never really been her wolf. The day they met, she’d rocked in a hard plastic chair in the Wellness Center of Eastern State University surrounded by goblins groggy and miserable, waiting to begin their nocturnal support group. A juvenile talking bear picking up a sedative to control the mood swings he had around curly haired blondes made her nervous. She tugged at her newly permed hair, glad she’d been in a mood to have red hair. And then he came in from the hallway.

A neon green tie, striped trousers, funny furry sneakers designed to look like wolf’s paws. His smile filled with pointed and thin teeth, but natural and disarming. That coarse hair on his arms and like a mane around his face was sandy and so pale it was almost grey. She couldn’t summon his voice to her mind, but she remembered the smoothness of his words and the roughness of the sound. He’d called her Red Cap, because she wore a patchwork baker boy hat.

His voice suddenly came back to her, the conversation, the flare and flicker of his inhibitions. He had laughed, “Oh, I’m here because I’ve been relapsing on a shepherd addiction lately. I’m a wolf. You might not have noticed.”

“Oh no, I noticed. I mean you are a little-”

She had stopped speaking, stared at the floor. He finished for her. “Odd?”

“Hairy, actually.”

He laughed, throaty and beautiful. She stared at his hands, short stubby fingers covered with that thick pale hair. She said, trying to fill space, “my grandmother sent me. I have a problem with setting thing on fire when I’m nervous.”

“Oh, a pyromaniac? I knew you were an interesting person.”

“I have a talent for spontaneous combustion. Nothing is destroyed usually, but it’s embarrassing. Grandma wants me to learn to control my anxieties.”

“Huh.” He nodded and his mouth curled slightly showing his gums and his sharp teeth. “That’s… uh.”

“Odd?”

“No. Hairy. Very, very hairy.”

They’d gone for sushi after she’d made an appointment, and then when he didn’t ask for her to leave she followed him to his dorm. Climbing the fourth staircase, the wolf told her, “I don’t plan on doing a thing with my degree. I study art history because my witch took me to a museum once, and I couldn’t tell the difference between a Courbet called Origine du monde and a centerfold. She was very angry with me.”

The wolf shrugged and keyed open the door. “My poor witch, she never knows if she wants me to be an animal or a man. Oh well.”

He howled as he opened the door. Inside three of more voices howled back, less adept. One yapped like a coyote. The wolf leaned near her ear, ushering her inside, crackling her skin with his nearness, “That’s Preeble. He’s a non-conformist.”

When the crooked grandfather clock chimed eleven forty five, she sat listening, the wolf’s long chin resting on her knee. She stroked his hair tucked behind his tampering ears, as if he were no more than a household dog and she was a visiting dignitary sent to witness the war crimes against the Carabas ogres.

Preeble, the ogre, the entertainer, the non-conformist said, “There is more to ruling a people than driving up in a fancy car and convincing the peasants it belongs to you. The people here seem to forget that the ogre they assassinated took care of his people. Yes, he was an enchanter. Yes, he was an over lord. But he took care of them. They were all fed. They were all sheltered. There was an elfin healer in every village. And that’s more than this new Marquis can say. Liberty my ass. Liberty to starve and die of small pox.”

She’d read about Carabas, but she’d never met a political exile. She wanted to ask, “How cold were the winters? How did he like the food in this country? Was he afraid of talking cats?” But it was rude to interrupt and even ruder to question.

The satyr who lived down the hall and hadn’t stopped staring at her shoes passed the mandrake to the wolf. A red strip of cloth bound the little black root’s thrashing limbs together and a red sack covered its head and muffled its screams. She hoped the wolf didn’t notice how keenly she watched him, learning the technique as he bit down on the mandrake’s shoulders letting it squeal into his mouth. His dark eyes rolled up from the pleasure and he grinned dreamily when he released the plant from his mouth. “That’s a good one.”

Preeble paused his politics long enough to agree, “One of the best I’ve ever had.”

The three-eyed hunchback across the room giggled and said, “it should be. I got it from his witch’s garden.”

The wolf’s shoulders knotted. She could see the coarse hair on the back of his neck rising. He said, “Stay out of her garden. The last man she caught there… she ended up stealing his little girl.”

No one said anything for a moment. She looked from the satyr to the hunchback to the ogre and then to the wolf and wondered if anyone knew about his circumstances or if everyone else was curious too.

Preeble snorted, not one to understand an awkward moment, and said, “So much for liberty and justice here.”

“It’s not like that, Preeb. I want to stay with her. I don’t expect you to understand; it’s a very primitive arrangement. Anyways it’s not important,” The wolf turned to look up at her, changing the attention of the room and pressing the root into her hand. “Put its head behind your teeth and bite. You can see everything you ever wanted.”

She smirked at him and lied, “I know how to use mandrake. I like them best when they’re stimulated.”

The wolf’s tall ears settled back surprised and he watched as she ran her fingers between the root’s flailing legs, tickling the tumors, stroking the long thin torso. She’d read that this made the mandrake more potent. When she laid the writhing creature in her mouth, she was afraid to bit , faking a loud moan of excitement and then spitting the thing out as if the sensation had been too much joy.

The satyr’s jaw dangled open. The hunchback’s two eyes fixed on the floor, but the third stared at her wide. Preeble, giant and regal on the broken love seat, put out his hand to receive the root. She handed it to the wolf and said, “It will do more than show you want all you ever wanted.”

The wolf looked up at her and then shook his head and said, “Naw. This thing was strong enough before it was… uh, stimulated.”

He rolled to his feet and brought the mandrake to Preeble who was not afraid. She noticed, as the wolf turned to sit next to her again the peak in his trousers. She stopped herself from gasping, but she could not stop herself from staring. She wondered why people called it a tent or a bulge, on him it was a solid outline, firm beneath the horizontal designs. He made no attempt to hide, sinking down next to her and returning his head to her lap.

Since Preeble’s huffing and groaning took the attention of the room, she whispered to the wolf, “You have no shame.”

He grinned. “Byproduct of the ear-petting. It’s an erogenous zone for a wolf.”

“I know.” She lied again, wondering how many she could tell before he became suspicious.

At a quarter to one, after they’d moved from the living room to the pile of bamboo-fiber pillows and over-starched sheets the wolf slept in, he kissed her and said he wanted more than just one night. It wasn’t important to her.

He troubled the buttons on her blouse, sheepish. “I’ve been training myself to… uh, not turn into a wolf if I leave just my socks on, but sex kind of, you know, brings out the animals so…” he looked up from the button, looking her directly in the face, with an honesty that stunned her. “You decide which half I keep on.”

She closed her eyes and settled her shoulders back, trembling with fear but pretending she knew what was about to happen. Disinterest was better than ignorance. “I like your tie.”

He hummed, a sound that counter-intuitively resembled a purr, and he said, “Now I get to pick what you leave on.”

She looked down at her clothes. His hand didn’t seem to belong on her breasts, touching the buttons on her pink jacket, pink to match the embroidery on her jeans and the trim of her baby-sleeved T-shirt. Her grandmother bought the outfit. She felt it looked teenaged. She couldn’t imagine herself without her clothing in front of him. “I want to be naked.”

“Can the cap stay?” He touched the brim as he kissed her neck, his breath too warm on her throat, his teeth brushing her skin. “I saw this in the Wellness Center and I said ‘that hat… is delicious. It belongs to someone interesting’.”

She’d forgotten about the cap completely. She took it off to let him tug her shirt over her head and when she settled the wide brim back over the loose curls of her freshly dyed red hair, she closed her eyes and leaned back into the pile of sheets and pillows. She pretended to be someone else, maybe a witch, a rich powerful one like the witch that he talked about with averted eyes and tense shoulders. The kind of woman who never experienced anything unexpected. The kind of woman who never had a first time.

She waited for reckless passion, for an animal’s violence, but he peeled her clothing away, devoured her body with manners. She put her hands in his hair, made her fingers lie near his ears until he growled. Still he kissed and whispered. She wouldn’t let him take off his clothes, just loosen them. She didn’t want to touch his skin, or see the sandy grey hair on his chest. She felt the coarseness of his hair inside her thighs and she spread her legs wider. When he asked if she was sure, she lied again.

He probably would have been a great lover, if she’d wanted it. She should have bitten the mandrake, then she would have known what she wanted. She could have gone home before midnight.

By three, she tripped toward her grandmother’s gated community. The city’s gardeners kept the tree tamed by day, but at night they grew outwards to trap the snakes of light. She had class in five hours. She wasn’t sure if everything with the wolf was worth it now. She didn’t want to see him again.

The light in the dining room dusted everything in the foyer with shadows. She wasn’t ready for this confrontation. She had no plausible excuse, not even a more appropriate one. Her grandmother expected better.

“Grandma, I’m here.” She peeked around the corner. The wolf sat in the kitchen, his hands folded on the metal table.

“Sorry. I thought you’d get here before me.” He smiled and pulled her cap from under the table. “You forgot this.”

She lurched forward to grab her hat and then backed away. “How did you find out where I lived?”

“Well, Grettel,” the wolf folded his hands and leaned on the table, charming, amused. “You seem to forget that I work for a witch. Every now and then she does me a favor. Like sending me to your house.”

“You need to leave now. If my grandmother catches you…” She wasn’t certain the threat of her grandmother’s disapproval would resonate the same way with the wolf. “There will be trouble.”

“That wolf is already in more trouble than he can handle.”

She jumped and turned startled by her grandmother’s presence. The woman stood in the doorframe of the dining room, her blue silk robe draped over her boney shoulders and a long white wand smoking in her hand.

The wolf wasn’t as startled, standing and asking, “What are you doing here?”

“I live here,” Her grandmother replied.

The wolf’s ears sank back and his mouth fell open. He looked at her and then at her grandmother and began to tremble.

She said, “He’s not a trespasser, Gramma. I know him from-”

Her grandmother looked past her. “Do you know this is my granddaughter, wolf?”

His mouth curled, not into his friendly smile, but into an unpleasant sneer. “Sorry, she looks more like the next-door neighbor’s.”

Her grandmother flicked the wand, ashing the tip. The spell travelled through the air. She could see it and she watched it strike the lean pane of the wolf’s abdomen. A tiny loss of balance, but then nothing. He looked at her grandmother confused and terrified waiting for worse.

The old woman put the tip of the wand between her lips, making the burning tip glow brighter as she smoked. “What? You were expecting an explosion? Trust me, it’s punishment enough.”

He smirked and shifted his weight forward, opening his mouth to reply. The cocky words froze and left his mouth open and stunned. The contortion lasted for a few awful seconds and then flashed into misery. He lifted his hands to his abdomen and looked at the old woman not daring to try speaking again.

“Stones. In your stomach.” Her grandmother exhaled a thin stream of smoke. “I’ll remove them when I see fit. Now take off that ridiculous outfit and get back to the basement where you belong.”

He whimpered. Her grandmother wasn’t moved. Fidgeting with her pink jacket, she stared at the black and white tile under her feet and waited for her own punishment. She didn’t move her eyes when she heard his clothing rustle, or when she saw the neon tie and his striped trousers drop to the floor. He worked slowly to avoid pain. When she heard the clicking of a dog’s nails on the tile she looked over to the sneakers, which now did look ridiculous and too furry without his feet to fill them. The sandy grey wolf crawling to the basement stairs, tucked his tail between his legs and bowed his head, his belly dragging on the floor.

Her grandmother crossed the room and closed the basement door and with an efficient click, locked it. Then turned and glared at her granddaughter. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“I met him in the Wellness Center. The doctor said… she wanted me to try to make more friends and relax more. We went for sushi and a movie. Then one of his friends drove us to his apartment. I would have been home by twelve, but…his friend wouldn’t drive me. So I stayed. There was a mandrake involved. I didn’t bite it though. I’m sorry.”

Her grandmother blew out another long stream of smoke from the wand. The smoke coiled in the air, morphed slowly into a great hand. She closed her eyes when her grandmother’s spell fluttered through her hair, straightening her perm and carrying the auburn dye away from her curls. Her hair fell around her shoulders, brown and uninspired. “Well, no harm done. We’ll go to a respectable salon tomorrow.”

“I didn’t know you had a wolf.”

“Don’t go running to the press about it.” Her grandmother scoffed and then put the wand between her lips again. “I took him in long after I’d made a reputation for myself. Up-and-coming young women like you can’t afford to be seen running around with men like that.”

She protested against everything at once; her grandmother’s abuse of magic, the wolf’s punishment, her own innocence, and the unfairness of living up to that elite ideal of a witch. But the words came together in her mouth, gelled there, and refused to leave. Her silence weakened her.

Her grandmother said, “You won’t be seeing him again. Wolves aren’t good for your image. Not very professional.”

She nodded and could only speak to agree. “Image is everything.”

In that oven so many years later, her tongue finally loosened enough to tell the truth. It wasn’t as large and unwieldy as it had seemed that night, and flowed from her throat easily, blowing through the flames near her face. “Oh grandma… professional, financially stable, utterly alone grandma, the image isn’t enough.”

Then her mother, unmagical but so beautiful, screamed, “Grettel! Get out of that oven! You’re my only little girl. Mommy needs you. Why are you doing this to me?”

She tried to remember how she came to the oven. After the wedding, the reception, dancing with her husband, the guests-so many guests they paid someone to keep a count of them- vanished on their own. She did too, drifting from spell to spell, transporting herself across oceans and then back to her husband’s estate, and then after a long walk and more misty spells she’d been in that forest outside, at first so strange and foreign. Like it was familiar but such an old familiar that it was unrecognizable. The fire prickled her skin and she blocked out the smell of her own burning flesh as she remembered and smiled. Of course, it was the forest near her childhood home.

She’d been wandering back to that old three story house, built in a development with hundreds of identical three story houses. Back to that place where dinners were never quite on time, and birthday presents were opened with meticulous organization so that every single guest would receive a proper thank you note. An ogre had given her a “My First Spell Book” the same year that Hansel got troll repellant and a net for catching fairies from… someone. There were always so many guests and always a magician, and a face painter, and an inflatable slide, and a unicorn petting zoo. Hansel got bored when the guests had left and the slide deflated. While their parents hand wrote each “so happy you could make it”, Hansel sprayed himself with the troll repellent and entered the great forest. She had followed, clutching the brightly colored spell book, begging, “me too, Hans. Spray me too.”

The trees were less manageable as a child. Her brother lead her into the forest until it became too dark too see and then began to cry when he wasn’t as prepared as the boy scouts promised he would be. Out of sympathy, she cried too, but then she used the little spell book to create her first fire.

And then this cottage, this very oven. How old was this memory? Could it be trusted? She remembered a wood sign, hanging on two nails, freshly painted that read, “Marjoram’s Bake House: Homemade baked goods, liquors, and spells.”

And the witch’s wolf, the same one curled up and dead in her lap, was just a scruffy dog in the corner yawning when the two children sobbed and told the witch about their night in the cold dark forest. He backed into a pair of dirty jeans puddled on the floor besides him. As the animal straightened, its body stretched to fill the denim. The fur fell away from his skin in clumps and left an old shriveled man, knotted muscles and patching white hair on his chest, kneeling on the floor. His knees cracked when he stood and yawned again. “Want me to call the police, then, Marge?”

The witch, fat and smiling, had winked at the children and said, “Oh take your time, dear. I think this girl has potential. She wants to help me bake a bit first, right?”

She had nodded, uncertain if now was an appropriate time to say no.

The wolf put on a fuzzy cardigan and picked up the phone, but the witch pulled them into the kitchen before she could see him make the call. There was delicious pie and bread and organic jelly and being told to pick berries from the back yard. Hansel unpacking glass jars and then breaking down the cardboard boxes. A big plate of sandwiches at lunch and Hansel hissing, “just eat and stop being difficult, Grettel. Do what she says or we’ll never get home.”

And then – she laughed with the bubbling fire, twisting her finger through the flame in her blackening hair- she sat at that wide wooden table, the same one rotting away just outside of this oven and she rehearsed that first fire spell over and over again, saying it until the little sparks jumped neatly from one finger to the next.

And Hansel asked, “what are you doing?”

“Planning our escape.”

“Our parents are coming soon.”

“Witches eat children.” She insisted.

Her brother’s face had paled, “No, they don’t. How did you know?”

And then the witch saying, “Oh my! What healthy appetites you have. I’ll have to make another pie. Fatten you up some more.”

And then Hansel trembling, about to cry. And she refused to cry with him.

And then the witch saying, “Sprinkle that sugar lightly now, just like I showed you and then you shall each have one cookie. The rest are for our customers.”

And that oven, gloriously black and shining, hiding the secret roar of the fire, smelling sweetly of cakes. She jumped to her feet when the witch opened the oven door and said, “Let me help you, Ma’am.”

The witch’s face melted with sweat glowing in the fire. “Oh no. That job is too dangerous for a little girl. Sprinkle the sugar.”

And when the witch leaned in to set the cupcakes on the rack, she saw her own small hands getting lost in the dough of the witch’s back. The woman tumbled forward with a short cry. The metal door slammed shut.

And Hansel shouting, “Grettel! She’ll burn.”

And the wolf standing behind the register in the front room of the little store, waiting patiently for the next customers. Hansel barreling into him, shouting as loud as he could, and she had followed chanting that fire spell and filling the place with small, quickly dying fires.

And finally, in the street outside, the bread and donuts Hansel had gathered rolling in the short nearly cropped grass, the wet glaze on the donuts picking up dirt and bits of green. The police cruiser stopping in the dirt driveway with their parents inside.

The witch materialized outside, her big face flushed and her hair scorched and her fat cheeks sucked into her eyes as she laughed. The wolf hairy and naked and on all fours again darting between Hansel’s legs and barked once then growled at his witch’s feet. The witch pet his head and said “Don’t worry about the fire, officer. The poor dears thought I was going to eat them.”

Her mother hugged her, until it felt like her ribs were cracking. She closed her eyes and saw the flames dancing behind her eye lids. “But Mommy, how did the witch get out? I thought… I thought…”

“I know, I know, you were so scared. She’s a good witch, honey.”

“No, I mean…I thought that I saved us. But if she could get out…” Her mother pulled away crying looking at her face, confused. She looked at the grass and then back at the house. She hoped to see her little fires, but they were all gone. “I wanted to save us.”

Crumbling and laying down in the oven, she laughed at this too. Her mother had been so frightened, so confused and unable to understand her child’s disappointment. “I’d forgotten all about that.”

The mirror said, “Good thing too. You were a stupid kid.”

“No, that was clever. If we’d been in real danger…” She laughed harder, holding her stomach.

“But you weren’t in real danger. You were silly and stupid, just like now.” The mirror pleaded, “Please Grettel, let’s just go home. A nice bubble bath, a massage. You’re not even that badly burned yet. You might not even scar. But who cares if you do. You could invent new spells to cure damaged skin. And a new book. You can read about Carabas. You don’t know enough about Carabas and then you can talk all about it with everyone and meet political exiles and-”

“No, I’m staying right here.”

“I’ve never steered you wrong.”

“I don’t want to be steered anymore.”

They were all fluid to her in that dry heat. Her mother, her grandmother, even the bake house witch. They molded into one, not just the same highlights and concealing cream. The fire melted them into one shining thing and she saw her own face distorted, made to look like them. Something wild, that was brushed and fed, until it was tamed. She howled at it. Or maybe it was that first tongue of flame really getting under her skin.

The night she poisoned her stepdaughter, after that exploding apple, after the hospital, after sitting in the dark bedroom ready to cry or to sleep or to drink something tall and strong, shaken and frail as she had ever been, the mirror had said, “You failed again.”

“I spelled the apple like you said.”

“But she’s not dead. You’ll never be as great as you could have been. You’ll be overshadowed by her forever now. She’s going to marry a physical therapist she meets in rehab and live happily ever after in your limelight.”

“Let her.” She’d lifted her face to the mirror, looking directly at the sparkling magic for the first time in a long time.

It shimmered a moment, reflecting only the darkness, but pleased to be looked at. Its voice gentled, “Sorry, honey. What did you say?”

“I said, let her. I’m sick of all this.”

“Oh, no you’re not. You’re just going through a tough time.”

“I’m done with magic…” She scoffed. “I’ve done exactly what my grandmother would have done with magic. I’m sick of it.”

“It’s too late.”

“It’s never too late.”

The mirror said, defensive, “I can only speak the truth.”

“I know,” She laughed. “I don’t want to hear that truth anymore.”

The mirror said she couldn’t break it. She threw the magic at it like a stone, and when she stepped over the shards, gasping and glimmering on the floor under her stocking feet she whispered to it, “you lied.”

It felt good. Better than burning alive in a broken oven. The smoke was thick and black and none of it was leaving the oven now. She worried she would suffocate instead of burn.

The mirror’s voice in her mind said, “No. You’ll burn. It’s almost to the bone now.”

She asked, “Didn’t I already destroy you?”

“Never permanently.”

Once she wore a pink checkered skirt on her head. She hated it around her waist, because she hated pink, checkers, and skirts, and she ran around her backyard grunting and barelegged until her father roared. She couldn’t remember his voice or his words, but she was afraid so she pulled the skirt off her head and held it in front of her stick legs. She smiled, sidled up to the giant man, ready to see him melt and then ask him to swing her over his head. “Sorry, Daddy. I love you.”

“Put your clothes on and behave like a decent girl.”

She had cried then, but now she laughed. She wished there was cloth left in her skirt so she could wrap it around her hair, red and curling because of the fire. But the flames had danced all the way down to her skin, but that was fine too. She hated the color pink anyway.

Even now she knew she could escape the oven. Other witches, not as good as she, had escaped this oven. It’s not that she wanted to die, so much that she had no reason to go back to that life. And now in this moment, there was neither mother, husband, or mirror to tell her not to dance in the fire until she fell down from exhaustion and burned from the beauty.

And when there was nothing but ash and charred bones, the witch drew herself back together. She sighed, relieved refreshed and cool in the chilling oven. Her breath extinguished the last flickering ember, letting the fire rest and the smoke pour out the oven door. She flew between the teeth of the thatched roof, among the tree leaves, and nestled in the ear of a sleeping wolf.