A Digression on the Subject of Fairness, and the Lack Thereof
Once upon a time, about fifty years ago, Gretsella—the witch of Brigandale, who was just starting out in the witchcraft industry and hadn’t yet settled on reasonable prices as her unique selling proposition—moved into a cottage not very far away from her mother’s. This, it turned out, was a mistake.
She’d tried her luck in the capital, but it hadn’t worked out.
The rents were wildly unreasonable, and there were too many other established witches around for a young aspiring witch to really get a toehold in the industry.
So she’d moved back home to Brigandale, a decision she quickly started to regret.
Her mother was the problem. She refused to take Gretsella seriously, even if she kept insisting that she did, of course I take you seriously, Greta.
She kept calling Gretsella Greta, despite Gretsella reminding her over and over again that it’s Gretsella now, Mother.
Greta was the name that her mother had given her, after her grandmother.
She was such a wonderful woman, Gretsella’s mother would say.
When you were a baby, I used to cry, sometimes, thinking about how unfair it was that she never got to meet you.
The first Greta had been a wonderful woman, Gretsella was told, because she was gentle, and kind, and made the best pies in the world, and was adored by children and animals.
These were not the ways in which Gretsella wanted to be wonderful.
She didn’t want to be another nice little Greta having a nice little life in the cottage down the way.
She’d told her mother that a hundred times, but her mother kept calling her Greta half the time anyway, and claiming that it had been an accident.
Gretsella’s mother also kept doing things like asking her when she thought she might get married, and whenever Gretsella would remind her mother that she had a career as a witch, her mother would say something like I don’t see why a witch can’t find a nice man to settle down with, and Gretsella would snap at her mother, who would leave Gretsella’s cottage in tears, as if she hadn’t started the whole argument in the first place.
It was all so infuriating that Gretsella would sometimes refuse to speak to her mother for months on end, until eventually she’d give in and drop by her mother’s house with the excuse that she needed to borrow a few eggs or wanted her apple cake recipe so she’d have something to bring to the next meeting of her coven.
It was on one of these occasions that Gretsella walked into her mother’s kitchen, got a good look at her mother’s face, and knew immediately that something was very, very wrong.
Once upon a time, in the Great Forest of Brigandale in the magical Kingdom of Evermore, a young witch found out that her mother was dying of cancer, and there wasn’t a thing she could do about it. In every time and every place, there are some things that even magic can’t do much to change.
Gretsella’s mother died only a few weeks after that. No one ever called her Greta again.
About thirty years after the day of her mother’s funeral, Gretsella held a wriggling baby boy in her arms, pressed her nose into his soft black hair, and said, It isn’t fair, Bradley.
It isn’t fair, it isn’t fair, it isn’t fair.
Her shoulders shook, and her voice cracked, but there was no one there to say if her eyes were red and puffy later that day, or if her voice was raspy, or if she struggled to get through her evening’s chores.
By that time, she had spent thirty years without anyone who would notice or care about her tears.