Call to Arms by Elle Casey
“Wow, nice pad.” My eyes roamed over the inside of her house – it had been carved right into the tree. “This must have been one hell of a whittling project.”
I heard more cackling coming from another room that was connected to the one I was in – the room she had just disappeared into. This main room was lined with shelves covered in jars and other piles of things I was pretty sure I didn’t want to look at too closely.
She came back out of the other room with something black hanging from her hands. She threw it down on the table that was in what looked like must be her kitchen area. I stepped closer to see what it was and was instantly disgusted as recognition hit me. “Ew, is that a crow?”
“Yes!” she barked at me.
I looked at her deranged expression and decided then that Tim had brought me to the home of one bat-shit crazy witch. No wonder she expected me to be afraid. I probably should be. I could totally hear Finn in my head. ‘Eatin’ crow just ain’t right.’
“Are you going to eat crow?” My sick sense of humor was starting to rear its ugly head. I decided as long as she wasn’t waving a magic wand at me I was probably okay.
“No!” she yelled.
I reached up and cleaned out my ear with my finger. “You do realize you’re yelling every time you answer me, right?”
Tim pulled my hair.
“Ow!”
“What?! Why are you yelling?” she yelled at me.
“I’m not! You are!”
“Oh. I am?” she said in a softer, not so harsh voice.
“Well, you were. Now you’re not.”
“Yes, my apologies. I’m used to talking to Melvin and Marshall.” She leaned towards me, using her hand to put up a wall next to her mouth, like she was sharing a secret with me. She whispered loudly, “They’re old.”
I looked around cautiously, wondering if Melvin and Marshall were figments of her imagination. My curiosity got the better of me. “Who are Melvin and Marshall?”
“My rats.”
I heard Tim’s squeak at the same time I felt a small chunk of my hair being pulled out. I worked very hard not to lose my temper.
“Tim. If you fucking pull my hair one more time, I’m gonna squash you like a bug.”
The witch looked up, sniffing the air, looking around the room. “Who are you talking to?”
I could feel Tim quivering.
“Um, no one?”
The witch picked up a wooden spoon and banged it down hard on the tabletop – then she pointed it at me threateningly. “I don’t. Like. Liars.” The menace in her voice was unmistakable.
“Fine. I was talking to Tim the pixie in my hair.”
Her eyes lit up and began to sparkle. “Did you say ‘pixie’?”
“Yes. Pixie. Little guy? Wings? Nervous too.”
She cackled. “Oh, what a joy! A pixie has come to my house. Isn’t that nice. I so rarely see pixies anymore. I used to have a pixie here, yes, I did. But he left, oh, yes he did. Flew right out that door.” She poked her spoon in the general direction of the green door.
She shuffled over closer to me until she was at my elbow. “Oh, pixie! Come out to see Maggie, won’t you? Come now ... Melvin and Marshall won’t hurt you, WILL YOU MY PETS?!”
I cringed at the last bit, it was yelled so loudly near my ear. I guess she had to yell since they were hard of hearing.
I heard some clinking and shuffling on one of the shelves in front of us. The witch was still looking up at me, searching around my head for the pixie. But I was more interested in the sounds I’d heard. I caught a movement near one of the jars that was dusty and covered in cobwebs. A nose with whiskers popped out from behind it.
“Wow. That’s a big friggin’ rat.”
The witch turned. “Ah, yes. Melvin. MOMMA’S BIG BOY, AREN’T YOU MELVIN?!”
Man, this witch was going to give me a headache if I had to sit in here for much longer listening to her yell at her deaf rats.
I cleared my throat to get her attention. “So anyway, Maggie, my friend Tim the pixie, who, ah, thinks you’re just the coolest, smartest witch he knows,”
“Be careful fae girl. Lies ... ”
“Oh, shit. Yeah. So maybe you’re the only witch he knows, I’m not sure. But he seemed to think you could help my friend. And none of the witches back where we live know how to fix his problem, so that means if Tim told me to come here, you must be a pretty kickass witch. And that’s the truth, I swear.”
She shuffled over to her table, reaching below it to grab a black pot, which she heaved up and dropped onto the table with a bang. Her big, gnarly, matted and dirty pet rat didn’t even flinch at the noise, but Tim and I sure did. I think I lost another few hairs by the roots.
The pot had four short, squat feet on it. The entire thing was sooty black and had a metal ring-type handle at the top. She turned to the shelves behind her and started pulling things off, putting them on the table next to the pot while singing to herself, “Something green, something green, nothing’s good without something green ... ”
I kept talking without waiting for her response, since she didn’t seem to want to contribute to the conversation much. “So my friend was shot in the back with an arrow that had some kind of spell on it.”
She picked up the dead crow from the table and looked at it, saying, “You’re not green.” And then she threw it into the pot.
I tried not to feel sick to my stomach, but it was hard. She wasn’t even going to pluck it or take the head off? Oof.
“Mmmm,” I said, getting ready to comment favorably on her ingredient list, but with a warning look from her I altered my comment, “that doesn’t look delicious at all.”
She cackled at me as she picked up and set down different bottles and jars on her shelves, looking for something she wasn’t finding. “You may tell me about your friend.”
My eyes moved from the pot to the rat that was now fully out from behind the jar. He was the size of a small cat. “Shit, Tim, no wonder you’re afraid of mice here in the forest. If they’re even half the size of that mofo, you’d make a nice meal for one of ‘em.”
“Your friend!” she barked.
“Oh, yeah, sorry. So he got shot in the back with the arrow and fell asleep or was paralyzed. He’s been in this coma for a few days now. His pupils don’t react to the light.”
I felt Tim creep out of my hair and stand behind my ear, still quivering. “Tell her his pulse is slow, one half normal rate, and his heart rate is irregular.”
“His pulse ... ”
“I’m not deaf! I can hear your pixie!”
“Oh. Well, you have better hearing than I do, then. I can barely hear him.”
“So!” she yelled, turning around back to the table, holding a purple glass jar in her wrinkled, liver-spotted hand. “Are you here for the spelled friend or for your hearing problem?”
I looked at her like she was nuts. “For my friend. I don’t have a hearing problem.”
She put the purple jar down at the table and squinted at me. “Did you not just say you cannot hear your pixie?”
“Yeah, but that’s normal. He has microscopic vocal chords.”
“A simple spell, girl, a simple spell will rectify your problem.”
I hadn’t thought about that. “Well, my first priority is my sick friend. If you can also help me with my, uh, hearing problem ... well, that would be good too, I guess.”
The witch smiled at me craftily. It made me instantly nervous.
“Yes, I can help you. I know what ills your friend. There are Dark Fae in these woods who have arrows of the hawthorn soaked in tincture of dropwort and calotropis. An angry mixture. What has your friend done to upset them?”
“Well, the arrow was meant for me actually.”
She raised her gray eyebrow at me. “You are the elemental tapping into the ley lines. I have felt your touch.”
I tried not to feel guilty about something that may have bothered her. My eyes went back and forth as I s
She cackled, jabbing her spoon out in the air for emphasis at the end of every sentence. “No apology necessary. It was fun. I haven’t felt that energized in centuries.” She thrust her spoon at me. “You have a rough and undisciplined spirit and terrible technique.” She paused for a minute to suck her gnarly teeth. “ ... but you have power. Great power. You could be a formidable force in this world. With the correct training, of course.”
“The fae say they’re going to help me learn.”
She snorted, grumbling to herself. I got the impression she wasn’t impressed with this program.
“So, do you think you can help me, then?”
“A bargain!” she shouted.
Dammit. How did I know this wasn’t going to be easy?
“What kind of bargain?”
“Two spells. One to help your friend. One to solve your hearing problem.”
“Okaaaay.”
“For one green pixie wing!” She cackled like crazy then, clearly delighted with her end of the deal.
I was instantly pissed. I’d come all the way out here and hung around her gross house with her mangy rats for nothing.
“You crazy bitch. Are you a sadist or what? No one’s ripping off anyone’s wings so you can mix it into some nasty dead crow brew.” I turned to leave. “Come on, Tim. We’re outta here.”
The demented witch started to whistle through the space in her teeth. I could hear jars clanking as she moved them around.
Tim pulled my hair hard and yelled, “Wait!”
“Tim, I swear to all that is holy, if you fucking pull my hair one more time ... ”
“Wait. Please. Go back,” he pleaded in my ear.
I was nearly to the door. I snuck a look back at the witch; she was busy adding things from the jars to the crow in the pot, all while singing about adding something green, whatever that meant. I shuddered, thinking about what a horrid stew that was going to make. Disgusting.
Tim moved closer to my ear as I turned back to the door. “You have to make the bargain with her.”
I spoke as low as I could. “No friggin’ way, Tim! You’re nuts! She wants to dismember you!”
“Listen. Pixie wings grow back. I’ll just grow another one.”
I hesitated a second. “Yeah, but that’s gotta hurt, having it ripped off.”
He didn’t answer me right away.
“Tell the truth, Tim,” I warned. I felt like the witch for a brief second – tired of all the lies. Frightening to think that we might have something in common.
“It hurts ... but not a lot! And we have to do this, or your friend will be gone forever.”
“What?!”
“I have seen this sickness before. What the witch said earlier ... it is an angry poison that has been used against him. If he is not helped soon, there will be no help for him at all.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me! Why is this happening?” I was frustrated, mad, and sad all at the same time. To save a friend who had helped me, I had to dismember another friend offering to help me. My life as a fae was seriously messed up.
Tim continued his plea. “You saved me. I owe you. Let me do this for your friend.”
“That was a low blow, Tim. We have a bargain already. I saved you in exchange for two promises, which you have kept.”
“Pixies do what they have to do. I do not demand anything in return for my wing. It is a gift.”
“How are you going to fly? How long will it take for your wing to grow back?”
“I won’t be able to fly without two wings, so I will need to depend on you to help me, at least for a little while. You can hide me in your room until I heal if you want. Or someplace out here in the forest.”
“No way, Tim. I’d never leave you out here where something could ... I don’t know. Eat you? Rip your other wing off?” I shuddered to think how dangerous this world could be to a one-winged pixie. He was small, but he had a life to live as big as Chase’s, as big as mine, as big as any big person’s I knew. And now I knew his heart was huge too. I felt like I was agreeing to let him pull an arm off for me. It was actually kind of revolting in a way.
“I don’t know, Tim. I can’t make that decision. It’s too much.”
“You don’t have to.”
With that, he flew off my shoulder and over to the witch. He landed on the edge of her pot. “Take the wing, witch. The bargain has been struck.”
She started cackling then, and slowly picked up her spoon. I saw the evil glint in her eye before she did it, but by then it was too late – the spoon had already come up swinging, delivering a harsh blow to Tim’s tiny body, sending him flying into her black brew pot.
Chapter 21
“Nooooo!!!!!!” I screamed, lunging towards the pot to save my little friend.
The witch pointed her wooden spoon at me, muttering under her breath. I was two steps away from her and my feet suddenly froze. I looked down and was shocked to see that they had grown roots into the floor.
“What the fuck!” I screamed, desperation in my voice. Then I tried to get Tim to help himself since I was stuck. “Tim! Fly out of there! Fly out!”
The witch reached into the pot and started pulling something out. It was the limp form of my friend. She held him up by his little body.
I started to sob. “You killed him! You horrible awful bitch! You complete asshole! Why did you do that?! He’s a nice pixie you fucking hag!”
The witch was completely unaffected by my insults and runaway emotions. She held Tim up to the light, examining him from all sides. I was horrified at her casualness in the face of this murder and mayhem.
“Put him down! You don’t deserve to touch him! He is one hundred times the fae you are!”
Through my anger I began to feel something. It was The Green – connecting with me through my pain.
“That’s it, you heartless bitch. Now you’re gonna be sorry.”
I used the pain and anger I was feeling and channeled it directly into The Green. I felt the wave of energy coming to my aid. It was roaring through the channel I had created. This was something I had never felt before. It was more raw. More sharp. More everything. I didn’t care at this point if I went up in flames too. I had lost my friend Tony, knocked out my friend Chase, and now my little friend Tim had been murdered in front of my eyes by a callous bitch and her evil wooden spoon. She was going to pay ... ”
The witch looked over at me and began speaking. I was two seconds away from blasting her to the Underworld where she belonged when her words began to sink in.
“Girl. He is not dead. I have merely made his wing removal less painful for him. Power down or you will miss all the fun.” She looked at the floor by my feet. “You’re standing over a ley line right now, you know.”
What? “You’re lying.” He had to be dead.
“No. I don’t lie. I despise lying.”
For some reason, I believed her then. Even Tim had told me she didn’t like lies. I held off sending The Green into her ugly, haggy face; but it stayed with me. I wasn’t ready to let it go. The withheld energy was making my skin tingle all over and the pent up energy made me giddy. Either I was going to have to blast the shit out of her soon or let this link go; I didn’t know how much longer I could hold it.
“You’d better hurry the hell up if you don’t want me turning you into dust, old woman.” It was partially an idle threat, since I didn’t know if I was even capable of doing that, but it sounded good.
She opened up one of the jars on her table. From inside she took a pinch of some powder. This she carefully sprinkled over one of Tim’s wings. I watch as the wing wrinkled up a little bit and then fell off. She caught it with the lid of the jar, gently placing it down on the table. She whispered to herself, “Beautiful green wing. Green, green, green ... every good brew must have something green ... ”
Then she shu
I let out the breath I’d been holding, putting out my hand to take my friend Tim from her. I let go of The Green, thanking it for being there with me. It slowly receded, leaving me feeling a little bit emptied.
She put Tim in my hand and said, “Sit!” in a demanding voice, pointing to a chair off in the corner. I looked down and noticed my feet were no longer rooted to the floor. They looked normal again.
I pulled up the bottom of my tunic to make a sling, laying Tim gently inside. I walked carefully over to the chair, making sure to jostle him as little as possible. My throat was hurting from the pain of unshed tears. He looked so pitiful in there, with just one wing and a shriveled up stump next to it. I sat down with him cradled in my lap.
“Shit,” was all I could say. I was so sad. Why did this have to happen? Why were witches so mean?
“The most powerful spells require the most powerful sacrifices.”
“You needed something this big to heal my other friend?”
“The wing? No. That is for something else. Your friend’s problem is simple to solve, as is your hearing problem.”
I looked at her, my mouth hanging open in shocked anger. “That is so unfair!”
She frowned. “Not at all. You made the bargain.”
“You named the terms. They weren’t negotiable.”
She smiled at me, flashing me those witchy bitchy teeth of hers. “Everything is negotiable, my dear. Everything. Don’t forget that.” Then she laughed maniacally, her eyes glinting with madness.
Even my sadness didn’t stop the trickle of fear I felt in that moment. This witch was certifiably crazy. I needed to get the hell out of there, with or without the secret brew for Chase.
I was eyeing the door, trying to figure out how fast I could move without hurting Tim anymore than he was already hurt, when she started speaking again.
“Here you are. Two potions for one pixie wing.” She held up a small blue jar and a leaf.