Chapter 1
In Which Gretsella Receives an Unusual Delivery
Once upon a time, on a somewhat muggy Wednesday afternoon in late August, the witch Gretsella arrived home to her cottage in the Dark Forest of Brigandale in the Kingdom of Evermore to find a bottle of milk on her steps. There was also a screaming baby.
The milk was there because the milkman always came on Wednesdays. Gretsella paid him to do so. She didn’t know when or why a babyman had come as well, though it seemed clear that when the babyman cameth, he had cometh for her. Attached to the baby’s ankle was a luggage tag that read “To be taken into the care of Gretsella, the Witch of Brigandale with the Reasonable Prices.” This was, in fact, Gretsella’s preferred epithet. When it came to making a career out of witchery in today’s economy, whether you were agoodwitch or abadwitch was of less concern than whether you were a witchwhose subtle arts were accessible to the middle-class homemaker.
The baby was still screaming.
“Stop that,” Gretsella said.
The baby did.
“Well, at least you know your manners,” Gretsella said, and carried the baby inside.
Gretsella’s cottage was a nice, cozy little place, if Gretsella said so herself, which Gretsella often did. Gretsella was firmly convinced that her home could not be surpassed by the finest mansions in all of Evermore. On this point, she might not have been entirely incorrect. It was a cottage perfectly positioned and enchanted to catch only the coolest, most fragrant breezes in summer, and in winter it was always snug and warm and smelled of the rosemary tincture that Gretsella used for everything from washing her hair to mixing up a fortifying drink with a modest slug of gin. There were always fresh sweet rushes on the floor, and the hearth was swept as clean as the dinner plates. It was, in short, a very wholesome atmosphere for a baby to visit, if a baby saw fit to go visiting. Gretsella could think of no reason why the baby shouldn’t be invited inside.
Though she had never had any children of her own, Gretsella had never found herself particularly intimidated by babies. As she saw it, they were a bit like wolves and termites and fast-growing asymmetrical moles: One only needed to befirmwith them. That was, at least, her own experience. She’d noticed that people who had the misfortunenotto be witchesseemed to find things a bit more difficult. In any case, within half an hour or so, she had given the baby a thorough scrubbing down in a dishpan and diapered him with a clean tea towel, then set him down in a breadbasket, where he proceeded to placidly gnaw upon his own fist.
“I don’t see whyyou’relooking so satisfied with yourself,” Gretsella said. “A helpless infant all alone in the world, with no way to make an honest living.”
The baby had nothing to say for himself.
“And why give me a baby?” Gretsella asked him. “It isn’t as if I took out an advertisement in the paper.Wanted: one able infant-of-all-work.Ridiculous! Of what possible use could you be?”
The baby made no reply.
“Ah, well, if youinsiston being difficult, I suppose there isn’t anything else for it,” Gretsella said, and began to search the cottage for supplies to make the baby a more comfortable bed.
Over the next few days, Gretsella and the baby embarked upon their new life together, and she found herself growing fond of him. It was a bit like having a particularly useless familiar. Her last familiar had been a black cat who could smell demons. The baby mostly smelled terrible. He was lovable, though, in his own way. Gretsella had worked miracles for people who expressed less joy and enthusiasm for her efforts than the baby did whenever she pretended that a spoonful of mashed peas was an owl flying into the hollow of a tree.
She decided to name him Bradley.
Bradley was, on the whole, a very well-behaved young person. He only very rarely made a fuss in the evenings. On these occasions, Gretsella would sing him to sleep with songs of her own invention, which tended to run along broadly similar lines:
Go to sleep, little baby, and don’t give me cause
To feed you to creatures with sharp shiny claws.
The forest is teeming with creatures who creep,
So quit with your crying and go straight to sleep!
This generally seemed to do the trick.
One day—after Bradley hadbeen sleeping in one of her bureau drawers and dirtying her tea towels for almost a week—Gretsella was outside hanging some laundry on the line, with Bradley grubbing around in the grass by her feet, when she heard horses approaching.
She straightened up and glared in the direction of the sound as two armored men came riding into sight. “You there! Old woman!” one of them called out.
She glared harder. “Witch.”
“You!” the soldier said.
“Yes,me,” she said. “I’m awitch. Now try that again.”
“Oh,” the soldier said. “You there! Witch!”
“Yes?” Gretsella said politely.
