“Well,” Barb said, “I don’t think it’s a very good idea to try to keep children from following their dreams. If you disapprove of something your child truly wants to do and try to discourage them, it can easily turn into a power struggle where you become the enemy, and they stick it out longer than they otherwise would because they don’t want to give you the satisfaction of getting to say ‘I told you so.’ If I were you, I’d express my concerns once, very mildly, allow Bradley to make his own decisions, and be a sympathetic listening ear if and when things go badly.”
“Interesting!” Gretsella said. “You have been very helpful, I’m sure. Convocation dismissed!” Then she set out to do exactly what she had planned on doing in the first place, which was to thoroughly convince Bradley of her obviously superior point of view.
She did her best, at least. She put forward her arguments.She reminded Bradley of how much he liked working at the barbershop. She reminded him of how much he had disliked sitting in an office looking at paperwork, which she told him that she was certain a king would have to do day and night. She reminded him of the particularly handsome woodsman who had turned his head the previous week. She even considered dropping a little Oil of Enchantment into his soup, but ultimately decided against it; he had helped her brew potions since he was old enough to toddle, and thus would figure out what she’d done and be extremely annoyed with her the second the effects wore off. In short, she threw every last bit of her powers of motherly persuasion at the boy and went to bed fairly confident that she’d won him over to her point of view, a confidence that persisted until a knight in shining armor came riding into her garden.
It was as if he’d been made in a workshop as a weapon designed to test Bradley’s resolve. He was square-jawed and broad-shouldered, and his hair brushed against said shoulders like an array of golden feather dusters. His eyes, even from a distance, were so clearly and provokingly blue that they looked as if they’d been painted on. Even hishorsewas handsome. “Your Majesty!” he called out. “Your Majesty!”
Within a few moments, Bradley, still in his bathrobe, was out the door as if he’d been spring-loaded. Gretsella assumed that he would want privacy while talking to the handsome knight, so she didn’t follow him outside. She stayed inside the cottage and watched them through the curtains of the kitchen window instead.
She couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. It certainly looked impassioned, whatever it was. At one point, the handsome knight got off his horse and then went down on his knees. “A low blow, sir,” Gretsella hissed at the window. Bradley looked fairly overcome. “Stay strong, Bradley,” Gretsella whispered, though she wasn’t at all confident in Bradley’s ability to maintain any kind of strength at all in the face of such a spectacle.
Just as she had expected, within a few minutes, Bradley came lolloping back into the cottage while the knight remounted his charger. Bradley’s whole handsome, silly face was alight with newfound conviction. “Sir Harold has explained everything to me, Mother,” he said. “I have to go reclaim my throne. The fate of the whole kingdom rests upon it.”
“Is that so?” Gretsella asked. “How has Sir Harold’s family been faring under the current government? I don’t suppose that they’re a mining family?” The current king had recently decreed a new sales tax on copper and iron.
“But what does that have to do with anything, Mother?” Bradley asked, looking genuinely perplexed. Then, before Gretsella could begin to explain, he said, “I have to pack my things. We’re about to march to the capital.”
“You’re about towhat?” Gretsella asked, but Bradley was already flitting off again.
Chapter 3
In Which Gretsella Is Proven Right, as Usual
By later that afternoon, all Gretsella could do was watch, helpless, as her darling, dunderheaded son packed all of his earthly possessions into a small satchel. The army that was forming in her garden began to present a rapidly increasing danger to her delphiniums. At one point, Bradley picked up the scissors she’d given him for his birthday, then sighed and lovingly set them back in their rightful place. “I suppose that I won’t need these once I’m king,” he said.
“You don’thaveto be king,” she said, but it was as if she hadn’t said it at all.
He wrapped his arms around her and gave her a squeeze. “I promise to write every week.”
At this point, to her great shame, Gretsella panicked. She wrenched herself out of Bradley’s arms and darted into the back garden, where she snatched two toads out of her toadhole. What she was about to do would normally require a very involved bit of spellcasting, but today there was no time to waste. She threw both toads into a cold cauldron, did a bit of chanting at them, and then yanked them out again, hoping for the best.
“Here,” she said, and thrust a toad toward Bradley. “It’s for you.”
Bradley received it very carefully and cradled it gently against his chest. “A toad,” he said. “Thank you, Mother.”
“It’s atoadaphone,” Gretsella said.
Bradley blinked at her. “Pardon?”
“Atoadaphone,” she repeated. “You can use it to speak with me as often as you want. Like this.” She gave her toadaphone a firm pat on the head, then told it, “I’d like to speak to Bradley.” After a brief pause, she said, “Hello, Bradley.” A moment later, the toad that Bradley was holding said the same words in Gretsella’s voice.
Bradley, to his great credit, didn’t drop his toadaphone. Instead, he held it at arm’s length, as if he thought it were about to spit venom in his eye, and said, “So I have to…slap the toad and then speak to it? And your toad will speak to you?”
“Toadaphone,” Gretsella corrected. Her traitorous eyes were stinging. She resolutely refused to blink. “Don’t go, Bradley. This is stupid.”
“Ihaveto go,” Bradley said, and then gave his toadaphone a gentle little pat before tucking it into his pocket. “I’m going to name him Peepers.”
“Witches nevernametheir—” Gretsella started, then gave up. “Peepers is a very nice name. And I hope that the toadaphone will be useful. Sometimes they also give advice.” She felt something absolutely horrible bubbling up within her, like a tentacled creature rising from the ocean floor to eat a cargo ship. That dreadful thing was the phraseI love you. She swallowed it back.
“I…tolerate you, Bradley,” she said. “Pleasebe careful.”
“Oh,Mother,” Bradley said, and gave her another big squeeze, along with a small sigh. “I love you too.” Then he climbed onto a white horse and rode off to reclaim a throne that he hadn’t even thought to be interested in a few daysearlier.
A Very Brief Digression on the Subject of Love
There are a certain number of people in the world who are at their best and happiest when they are alone. They roam across their private terrains like tigers, with the confidence of animals who know that no one else will ever steal the deer they want to eat for dinner. This sort of person will never waste a moment’s time talking about how little they yearn for or need someone else, just as a tiger will never sit up and suddenly start talking about how a true apex predator would never need to hunt in apride. The sorts of people who loudly declare that they’re much too strong and independent and tough-minded to indulge in anything as gooey and irrational asloveare, generally, the opposite of what they’d like to be. They’re as delicate as ferns and as fragile as pigeons’ eggs. Rejection of their love would be a blast of wiltingly hot summer air. It would crack them rightopen.
Chapter 3.5
