Chapter 2 In Which Gretsella Is Continuously Aggravated by Prophecy
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 and excessively likable young man.
Even Gretsella had to admit that Bradley was bafflingly likable.
She prided herself on rarely tolerating anyone, but she was extremely tolerant 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, effortlessly kind.
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 them properly.
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 to think.
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 and figure it out in 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 a secretary 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 with more pride, 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.
The birthday dinner proceeded without incident.
Bradley was effusive in his praise of the roast chicken and even more effusive in his thanks for the birthday presents, which he declared were exactly what he had wanted.
He then started badgering Gretsella into letting him cut her hair.
She bridled. “And what’s wrong with my hair, young Bradley? ”
“There’s nothing wrong with your hair, Mother,” Bradley said. “It’s only that…well, it makes you look like a witch.”
“And what’s wrong with looking like a witch?” Gretsella asked, affronted.
“There’s nothing wrong with it, Mother,” Bradley said. “But you always complain about people stopping you when you’re on your morning walks to ask you how to cast a spell to enchant their one true love.”
Gretsella eyed him. Bradley gave her a very sweet smile.
Gretsella, backed into a corner, scowled.
“Oh, fine,” she said. “In two minutes.” Then she went out to use the outhouse, hoping that maybe he would get distracted by something like an attractive young woodsman walking past the cottage window and forget that his mother had made any promises.
Gretsella was walking back to the cottage when a bat swooped ominously past her head.
This, in itself, was not unusual. It was dusk, after all, which was the proper time for vespertine pests.
Gretsella, being a witch, approved of a nice traditional bat doing a bit of nice traditional ominous swooping.
What was entirely untraditional was when the bat swooped past her head a second time and, in the voice of a horrible little man, screamed, “Hail, King Bradley! Hail to the One True King!”
“Oh, shut up,” Gretsella hissed, and started furiously waving her hands through the air to try to fend it off. “Bradley doesn’t want to be the king. Now go away! Shoo!”
“Mother?” Bradley said, poking his head out the door. He was already wearing his haircutting apron. “Who are you talking to? And why are you waving your hands in the air?”
“Don’t you comment on a witch’s business, young Bradley,” Gretsella said, and swept back into the cottage, resolving to cast a spell in the morning that would make her home smell overwhelmingly of large, vicious bat-eating cats.
The next few days continued to present challenges to Gretsella’s usual equilibrium.
She was hounded at every turn by prophetic creatures of the forest, all of which seemed heaven-bent on relaying their dreadful tidings to her son.
At first, she thought it was purely a mania that had seized the local bats, and that she would be safe so long as she kept Bradley indoors during the evening hours.
This pleasant fantasy was brutally squelched the first time she went into the forest with Bradley to gather mushrooms and spied a squirrel sitting on a branch.
The squirrel very clearly spotted Bradley at the same time.
Its beady little eyes widened with shock, which Gretsella hadn’t been aware was a facial expression available to squirrels.
Then it dropped the acorn it was clasping, sat up on its furry haunches, and opened its mouth.
It had just barely managed to get out a shrill “Hail!” when Gretsella flung a rock at it.
“Mother!” Bradley cried as the squirrel scampered away. “Why would you throw a rock at a squirrel? The poor animal didn’t do a thing to you!”
“It hasn’t done a thing to me yet,” Gretsella said. “You never know what the filthy creatures might be planning.” Then she grabbed ahold of Bradley’s elbow to drag him away.
The squirrel, unfortunately, was far from the last of Gretsella’s problems. That evening, Gretsella was forced to light a fire to smoke out an owl that was trying to hoot prophecies down the chimney, and she spent most of the following morning chasing a large family of chattery rabbits out of her garden before they could fill Bradley’s dear, simple head with dangerous ideas about the role he ought to play in international geopolitics.
She only felt entirely free to let her guard down when Bradley was at work.
The hairdresser’s shop was blessedly free of little woodland beasts who might attempt to crown him without his mother’s consent.
After two weeks of this nonsense, Gretsella reached a day when she felt as if she had, perhaps, emerged victorious.
She passed an entire blissful morning without any wretched animals attempting to disrupt her domestic tranquility with their relentless prophesizing.
Then Bradley came home from work, and Gretsella knew immediately that something was afoot.
In the nearly eighteen years of their acquaintance, she had never before seen Bradley with this particular expression on his face.
He had the look of a young man who was, for the first time in his life, confronting a question that no one had been able to immediately resolve for him after a single glance at his delightful face.
“Mother,” he said, “a bunch of singing mice came into the shop from the back alley today.”
“Singing mice!” Gretsella said, affecting utter astonishment. “Whoever heard of such a thing! I suppose that some high-spirited young witch must have been playing a practical joke.” Mice. She hadn’t even considered the possibility of Bradley being waylaid by a bunch of mice.
“A practical joke?” Bradley asked, looking distinctly relieved. “Do you really think that’s it, Mother? They told me that I’m the true king!”
“Oh really, Bradley,” Gretsella said. “A bunch of musical rodents barge into your workplace to sing songs about how you’re the head of our national government, and your first response is to believe them?
Don’t you think that a practical joke is the more likely explanation?
” She felt slightly guilty for misleading him like this, but it wasn’t a very urgent feeling.
Bradley would be much better off without all this king nonsense cluttering up the thus far blessedly well-ventilated space between his ears.
“You know, I think you’re right,” Bradley said. He looked more cheerful already. “How silly of me! I was starting to get awfully worried about it too. What would I do without you, Mother?”
“I have absolutely no idea,” Gretsella said, and then they sat down for some tea and cake.