Today, in honor of Bradley’s naming day, she had brought a crumb cake.
The witches all gathered in Gretsella’s sitting room for coffee, cake, and the admiring of Bradley. Dressed in one of the little suits Gretsella had finally, begrudgingly, knitted for him, he was passed from hand to hand, and complimentary remarks were paid to his person.
“He looks awfully young for you to have lured him here, Gretsella,” said Magnetia, who was not very well acquainted with small children.
Hyssop and Yarrow cackled like the respectable hags they were. Barb, like the notorious iconoclastshewas, explained: “Bradley wasn’tlured, Maggie. He wasabandoned. It’s very traditional to leave a lost prince on the doorstep of a local witch. Was it a loyal nurse who left him, Gretsella?”
Gretsella blinked. Much as it would have embarrassed her to admit it, if Gretsella were capable of embarrassment, she’d been too occupied with tending to Bradley to spend much time thinking about who must have brought him to her, or why. “I don’t know,” she said. “I suppose it might have been. Have any princes gone missing in the past month or so?”
“You haven’theard?” Magnetia asked, in great apparent shock. “It’s been in all of the papers! The dear queen died just after the birth of her first and only child, King Weltham was fatally thrown from his horse, and the poor little prince was stolen from his cradle in the night! King Weltham’s uncle Horack will be crowned king in only a week!”
“I don’t readpapers,” Gretsella said witheringly. “I’m awitch.” If there was anything she needed to know, she would scry it herself; she didn’t need toread papers. She looked down at Bradley. “So Bradley is the infant son?”
“Hemightbe,” Magnetia said.
“Almost certainly,” Yarrow said.
“Well,” Gretsella said after a moment, “shall we have our naming celebration?”
There are, it must be admitted, very few distinct differences between a witch’s naming celebration and what might otherwise be referred to as achristening. The difference is theintent, and their intent was devoid of all concepts of sin or salvation and very full of frogspawn and cackling. They cackled their way through the traditional phrases for the benefit of a deeply unaffected-looking Bradley. Then it was time for the gift giving.
Hyssop and Yarrow stepped forward first. “To you, Bradley,” Hyssop said, “we grant the gift of beauty.”
Gretsella was unsurprised. It was, after all, a very traditional gift to grant to a possibly royal baby, and Hyssop and Yarrow were, in their own ways, staunch traditionalists. Magnetia was frowning. “Shouldn’t it behandsomeness, for a boy baby?”
“Oh,really,” Yarrow said. “If beauty is good enough for a woman, then it’s certainly good enough for aman.” Yarrow was of the school of witchery that detested men.
Magnetia immediately conceded the point—she was too intent upon becoming a hag in good standing among her peers to argue with a bit of stuffy old-fashioned misandry—and then stepped forward to grant her own gift. “To you, Bradley,” she said, “I grant the gift of politeness.” Then, a bit too loudly: “It’s very important forchildrento know how to be polite.” Magnetia made occasional attempts to ally herself with the school of witchery that detested children.
Yarrow and Hyssop murmured approvingly. Then Barb stepped forward. Everyone else watched with a degree ofapprehension. It was always nerve-racking when a witch so disconcertingly fixated onoriginalitywas allowed to bless a baby.
“To you, Bradley,” Barb said, “I grant the gift of a powerful right hook.”
The assembled crones all gasped. “Barb!” Hyssop said. “Do you really think it wise to grant a baby such a violent gift? What if he grows up to be ahusband?” Hyssop knew nothing at all about husbands except for the things she’d heard from women who had come to her seeking help in eliminating their own.
Barb appeared unruffled. “Well,” she said, “I’m sure Gretsella would never raise a child who would hurt someone else unprovoked, but that doesn’t keep other people from botheringhim. If Bradley is beautiful, no one will want to bother him. And if he’s polite, then he should be able to talk his way out of any trouble. But if he everdoesget into trouble, then a powerful right hook certainly won’t hurt.”
Gretsella imagined someone threatening Bradley with violence. Bradley, in his breadbasket, burbled and pulled off his own sock. Were he denied the gift of a powerful right hook, Gretsella wasn’t sure that she liked his prospects in a brawl. “So may it be!” she declared, and Bradley was well and truly named, and ready to embark upon what Gretsella hoped would be an utterly unremarkable life.
Chapter 2
In Which Gretsella Is Continuously Aggravated by Prophecy
Over the next few years, Bradley grew up, which Gretsella refused to find impressive. It didn’t, after all, take any sort of extraordinary ability for a baby to grow larger. They did it without any effort whatsoever. There was nothing at all to applaud about a baby growing up into a sturdy little boy, or that little boy growing up into a tall and handsome andexcessivelylikable young man.
Even Gretsella had to admit that Bradley wasbafflinglylikable. She prided herself on rarely tolerating anyone, but she wasextremelytolerant of Bradley. It wasn’t the thick black hair or the gleaming white teeth or the winsome dimple in his chin that did it. Generally, Gretsella was staunchly unmoved by the winsome dimples of the menfolk. It also wasn’t his excellence at all of the sports the boys played in the village, or his pleasant baritone singing voice, or his talent for dancing.Bradley was likable not because he was good-looking and talented but because he was constantly, effortlesslykind. He was the sort of young man who would dance with the plainest girl at the wedding so that she didn’t feel left out. He was the sort of young man who would help an old man do repairs around the house under the pretense that he, Bradley, needed to be taught how to do themproperly. In short, Bradley was the sort of young man who was happiest when he was making other people happy, and other people were therefore happy whenever he appeared upon the scene.
There was, however, an unfortunate side effect to Bradley’s general and universally agreed-upon delightfulness. Bradley, having grown up in a blessed cloud of good looks and sweet-temperedness, had never—despite all of Gretsella’s best efforts—learned how tothink. Whenever dear Bradley faced the merest difficulty, someone would notice his slight frown or heavy sigh and immediately swoop in to solve his problem for him, so he’d never been forced to simply grit his teeth andfigure it outin the way that his fellow nonwitches often did. He sometimes floated through an entire day without having a single thought of any note, and he was perfectly capable of going an entire month before tallying up a full minute of earnest reflection.
This lack of thought made it somewhat difficult for Bradley to find himself a suitable profession. He first apprenticed himself to a blacksmith, imagining that he’d like to work with his hands, but after only a week, he abandoned the attempt on the grounds that the forge was too hot. Next, he tried to be asecretary at a local countinghouse, but he lasted only a fortnight before declaring himself sick to death of numbers and then quitting on the spot. When he arrived back at the cottage, Gretsella handed him a basket brimming with stinging nettles that needed to be stripped from their stems for her potion making. “If you refuse to find a profession of your own, then you’ll do well enough as a witch’s apprentice,” she said.
The next day, Bradley apprenticed himself to the local hairdresser.
Working as a hairdresser suited Bradley. He had a natural gift for it, so he never had to bump up against the disagreeable sensation of having to truly apply himself. He got to work with his hands without having to sweat over a forge all day. The customers always had stories and gossip for him, so he was never bored. And, best of all, he got to make people happy by making them look their best. Making other people happy was all that Bradley needed to be happy, and—much as it pained her to admit it—Bradley’s happiness was also Gretsella’s chief source of joy. Seeing Bradley come through the front door of their cottage all smiles after having produced an especially flattering curl on the head of an especially difficult customer filled Gretsella with as much pride as the time she’d turned a particularly rude village mailman into a newt. Or withmorepride, perhaps. As satisfying as the postal newtification had initially been, it had caused a great deal of chaos in the delivery of her packages.
Everything went smoothly until the evening of Bradley’s eighteenth birthday. The day itself was perfectly pleasant:Gretsella, to her great shame, spent the whole morning cooking and cleaning and wrapping Bradley’s presents, which were some nice new boots and a pair of his very own haircutting shears. When he came home after work, the gifts were on the kitchen table next to a vase of flowers and a golden-brown roast chicken, and he immediately swept her up into a hug. “Oh, Mother, you didn’t have to go to all of this trouble!”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she said. “Sit down and eat your dinner before it gets cold.” Then she took the opportunity of his sitting to wipe away a revoltingly sentimental tear.
