Chapter 1.5 A Return to the Narrative That Was Interrupted by the Preceding Digression
A Return to the Narrative That Was Interrupted by the Preceding Digression
After Bradley had been living with her for a month or so, Gretsella decided that there was no use in putting off the inevitable any longer.
It was, in witch circles, generally considered perfectly respectable to raise a child who had been abandoned on one’s doorstep, but one did have to observe the usual customs. Gretsella made coffee and cake and set out an extra umbrella stand to accommodate the broomsticks.
She went to her front door and, on the sign that hung there, moved the arrow pointer from Not at Home: Go Away to Receiving Coven: Go Away. Then she waited.
Hyssop and Yarrow were the first to arrive, riding two to a broomstick, as usual.
Their matching names and stout figures often led people to the mistaken impression that they were related in some way.
The truth of the matter was that they were, in fact, longtime business partners, and had selected their botanical witchnames in order to better promote themselves as the type of old-fashioned, rosy-cheeked village herbalists whom one could really trust to make a healing salve or efficacious philter without any rat poison in it.
They had become so successful at their venture that they’d opened an apothecary in the capital, bought themselves a large town house apiece, and had not so much as harvested a sprig of lavender for a scented sachet with their own hands in almost ten years.
Their abandonment of traditional witchly occupations in favor of success in the world of commerce had opened them up to a certain degree of criticism from their fellow witches.
Gretsella, for her part, put much of the criticism down to jealousy over the fact that the complainers hadn’t concocted the scheme themselves.
The next to land in the garden was Magnetia, a very young witch who was ceaselessly torn between her desire to be taken seriously by her elders and her alarming propensity for doing things like buying a metal whisk with gears and a crank on it for mixing her potions.
She arrived wearing all black, despite a summer heat that would convince even the most tradition-bound old crone to assent to some navy blue, and riding a broomstick that had been outfitted with what appeared to be a rubber pad for sitting on.
Then, at last, came the final member of their coven.
She arrived late, as always. Barb (she claimed to have selected this peculiar witchname after having spent several days in dread communion with a spirit from a dark realm known as Weehawken) was married (to a man, of all things) and had given birth to several (it seemed rude to inquire as to the exact number) children, who often prevented her from leaving her house in a timely fashion for, presumably, their own iniquitous purposes (Gretsella preferred not to dwell too much on the details of what might occur within such an unnatural household).
Barb lived just off the main street in a very ordinary village, where, it was rumored, she sometimes crossed hallowed ground in order to participate in a profane ritual she called “the annual church spaghetti dinner.”
Gretsella, who abhorred all gossip except when she was the one maliciously spreading it, could certainly not say whether or not these rumors might be true, and had made herself a bit of an object of controversy among local witches by inviting Barb to join her coven in the first place.
Despite her eccentricities, though, Barb was a valued coven member and a hag after Gretsella’s own heart: Her accomplishments as an enchantress were undeniable, and even when Gretsella called for a witches’ convocation on very short notice, Barb could be relied on to bring a dessert.
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 iconoclast she was, explained: “Bradley wasn’t lured, Maggie. He was abandoned. 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’t heard?” 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 read papers,” Gretsella said witheringly. “I’m a witch.” If there was anything she needed to know, she would scry it herself; she didn’t need to read papers. She looked down at Bradley. “So Bradley is the infant son?”
“He might be,” 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 a christening.
The difference is the intent, 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 be handsomeness, for a boy baby?”
“Oh, really,” Yarrow said. “If beauty is good enough for a woman, then it’s certainly good enough for a man.” 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 for children to 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 of apprehension. It was always nerve-racking when a witch so disconcertingly fixated on originality was 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 a husband?” 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 bothering him.
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 ever does get 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.