Magnus was silent for a while. He looked out the window at the city and all the people and the life beyond. Susan watched him. Finally, he turned to her and spoke.
‘Sometimes I think you’re too ready to use the blue pill.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Susan. ‘I really didn’t expect to that time. I never thought they’d all be in it, or that they would suspect us and be ready. I mean how could they … oh, I see.’
‘Yes,’ agreed Magnus. ‘Mycroft also, is too ready to use the blue pill. Especially against enemies of the state.’
Susan nodded, and reached out to pull him down, so that his head was on her lap. Magnus resisted for a moment, then relented. Susan took off the towel and lightly scratched his head through his hair.
‘Mann said I’ll get better,’ whispered Magnus. ‘No blue pill then, and my nights will be my own.’
‘Yes,’ said Susan. ‘You will get better.’
She did not look at her bag, and its box of Krongeitz pills, the blue … and the yellow. Magnus did not know about the yellow pills.
Susan hoped he never would.
An Unwelcome Guest
‘THERE’S A GIRL IN THE south tower,’ reported Jaundice, the Witch’s marmalade cat. ‘The same one as almost got in last year.’
‘Well, go and bite her or something,’ said the Witch. She was busy stirring a huge bronze cauldron. She had twelve coworkers coming for lunch and was mixing up a batch of jelly, which had to be poured into an architectural mold and put in the ice cave before eleven.
‘Can’t,’ purred Jaundice. ‘She’s in the top chamber.’
‘What? How did she get up there? I spelled the lower doors shut!’
‘She’s grown her hair,’ said Jaundice as if this explained everything, and started licking her paws. The Witch stopped stirring the jelly, ignoring the sudden series of pops as several frogs jumped free.
‘How does that relate to her getting into the top chamber of the south tower, pray tell?’ asked the Witch sternly. Jaundice, like all witch’s cats, prided herself on her independence and liked to tease her mistress. The Witch didn’t usually mind, but she was feeling flustered. The last thing she needed was a girl trespassing on the premises. Particularly a repeat offender.
‘She’s grown her hair very long,’ said the cat.
She paused to lick her paws some more, till the Witch lifted her ladle and started dripping jelly mixture toward her familiar.
‘And braided it into a rope … with a grappling hook woven into the end,’ continued Jaundice, leaping to the Witch’s favorite chair, ensuring her safety from dripping jelly.
‘She climbed up the south tower using her own hair as a rope?’ asked the Witch. ‘How very enterprising. I suppose I’ll have to take care of the matter myself then?’
‘It shouldn’t be my job, anyway,’ said Jaundice. ‘Mice, rats, goblins, and intruders no taller than four feet, that’s my province. Not great tall galumphing maidens with ten ells of yellow hair woven into a hawser. She’s a sight too handy with that hook, as well. You want to be careful.’
‘I am a witch,’ said the Witch. She carefully put the ladle aside and began to undo her ‘A Cook’s Kitchen Is Her Castle’ apron.
Jaundice muttered something inaudible and her whiskers twitched.
‘What was that?’ asked the Witch sharply.
‘Nothing,’ said Jaundice. ‘Just remember I told you about the grappling hook.’
The Witch nodded thoughtfully and instead of taking up the traditional pointy hat she’d gotten out for the luncheon, she put on her bicycle helmet instead, and for good measure, added the leather apron she wore when silversmithing. Last but not least, she went to the broom closet and after briefly considering several of her favorites, took out Minalka, a sturdy Eastern European besom with a rough-stained ash handle and a thick sweep of bundled birch sticks.
‘You can call up everyone and tell them lunch is off,’ said the Witch as she greased the broomstick with flying ointment.
‘But I want to see what you do to Rapunzel,’ complained Jaundice.
‘Rapunzel,’ said the Witch. She shook her head, the rat bones woven into her three pigtails clattering on her shoulders. ‘I knew she had a stupid name. But stupid name or not, you know I can’t do anything to her, since she’s already inside. Not without upsetting the Accord. I’ll just ask her nicely to leave, that’s all. You get on with those calls, Jenny.’
‘Don’t call me Jenny!’ spat the cat, her back arching in agitation. ‘My name is Jaundice! I am the evil servant of a wicked witch!’
‘You aren’t even yellow,’ pointed out the Witch. ‘You’re orange. And I saw you put that mouseling back in its nest yesterday. Call that evil?’
‘I was full,’ said Jenny, but her heart wasn’t in it. She let her back smooth out and jumped over to the telephone, batting off the receiver with a practiced paw.
‘And I’ve never been wicked,’ said the Witch firmly. ‘Least, not by my measure. Just independent-minded.’
‘Wickedness depends on where you’re standing, doesn’t it?’ said Jenny. She thrust out a single claw and started pushing phone buttons. ‘Want me to call Rapunzel’s parents after I’ve done the coven?’
‘Yes!’ exclaimed the Witch. Having been born fully adult by a process of magical fission from an older witch, she had no parents and tended to forget such things existed.
‘Won’t do any good, but I’ll call,’ said Jenny. She winked at the Witch, one emerald eye briefly shuttering, then turned her head to the phone as someone answered. ‘Hello? Oh, Fangdeath, is that you—’
‘Fangdeath?’ interrupted the Witch. None of her coworkers were called Fangdeath.
Jenny held a paw over the receiver and quickly whispered, ‘That’s what Bluebell calls himself. You know, Decima’s familiar.’
The Witch nodded and sighed again, hitching up her tartan skirt and the leather apron as she straddled her broom. Sometimes she wondered if the familiars regretted entering the Accord, the agreement that had brought peace, order, and security for both ordinary folk and those who either practiced magic, had magic, or were magic in themselves.
Not that the Accord was perfect. There were a few little loopholes and both sides had been known to exploit them now and again.
This girl Rapunzel had managed to find just such a loophole, and as the Witch flew out her kitchen door and rocketed up toward the south tower, she wondered just what she might be able to do to get rid of her unwelcome guest.
Rapunzel was eating ice cream straight out of the silver cornucopia and watching television when the Witch flew in through the tower window and screeched to a hard-brush landing that scrunched up the carpet and made the coffee table slide into the wall.
The girl put her spoon down and slowly turned her head to look at the Witch. She had to turn her head slowly because her hair weighed a ton, even with most of it coiled up next to her on the sofa.
‘Hello,’ Rapunzel said brightly. Apart from her ridiculously impossible hair, she looked just like any of the other thirteen-year-old girls that the Witch often saw playing soccer on the oval across the road from her Witchery. She was even wearing her sports uniform, complete with cleated soccer boots. They had probably come in useful for wall climbing.
‘You know you’re not supposed to be here,’ said the Witch. ‘This is private property and you’re trespassing. You have to leave at once.’
‘Why don’t you call the police, then?’ asked the girl snarkily, her face twisting into a disrespectful moue. ‘You old bat.’
The broom shivered in the witch’s hand, Minalka eager to leap forward and smack the insolent brat who had tilted her head to one side and was smirking in a very self-satisfied way.
‘You know I can’t call your police,’ hissed the Witch. This was one of the problems of the Accord. If Rapunzel had been detected trying to get into the tower, it would be a matter for the police. But she was already inside, and under the Accord, the ordinary folks?
?? police could not enter the Witchery.
Usually this wouldn’t be a problem, as the Witch could deal with intruders any way she liked. But there was another loophole, and Rapunzel knew it and had taken advantage of it. She had not just moved in to any part of the Witchery. She was in the Witch’s guest room, and she had eaten her bread and drunk her wine. Or in Rapunzel’s case, eaten the Witch’s ice cream and drunk her lemonade.
From the moment she had done so, she was no longer an intruder, but a guest. An unwelcome one, but that made no difference. The Witch could not use magic against her without inviting the retribution of numerous magical entities that defended the guest right with both vigor and cunning.
One of them was watching now, the Witch noticed, from next to the television. A brownie in the shape of a porcelain Labrador. It winked and stuck out its tongue as it saw her looking.
‘I think I’ll stay for quite a while,’ announced Rapunzel. She collapsed back into the sofa and picked up the cornucopia and her spoon. ‘I like it here.’
‘Why don’t you move in permanently?’ asked the Witch in her nicest tone.
Rapunzel waggled the spoon at her.
‘You think I’m stupid? The second I agree to that I turn into a housemate and the second after that, probably a toad, right? I’m a guest, right?’
The Witch snarled and looked at the brownie, calculating the odds. It bared its teeth and flicked an ear at the big armchair. The cushion there tilted up to reveal a host of dust-fey, fully caparisoned for battle, many of them mounted on shiny black cockroaches.
The Witch closed her eyes and willed herself to be calm, at the same time tightening her grip on Minalka. The broom had gone beyond wanting to smack Rapunzel. Now it wanted to beat her up.
‘Bye-bye, old bat!’ mumbled Rapunzel, her mouth full of ice cream. ‘Don’t forget to bring a different cornucopia up tomorrow morning. And some clean towels and an extra blanket. And get some more channels for your television, this one’s pathetic.’
The Witch closed her eyes down to narrow slits, to hold back the magical glare that she knew was pent up behind her lids. The brownie and the dust-fey moved and muttered, but the Witch knew they would not attack unless she gave Rapunzel a full Force 10 eyeball assault – which she dearly wanted to do, but knew she could not.
It took some effort to tear Minalka away and aim her at the window, but the Witch managed it. Firmly astride the angry broomstick, she tried to think of some cutting farewell remark, but nothing came, and Rapunzel had changed the channel to a music video station and turned up the volume, a blaring song driven by overcranked bass beginning to shake the room.
The Witch flew out the window. Out in the open, she opened her eyes and let her rage paint the sky above the neighboring sports field with a temporary but very colorful aurora.
Two hours later, the bass from the tower was still pumping and the Witch was still seething. All her nine brooms jiggled and hummed around her as she sat in her favorite chair, and Jenny was curled up on her lap, trying to calm the Witch with a gentle purr.
There had been a brief moment of calm and possibly even hope an hour before, when Rapunzel’s parents had shown up, but it hadn’t lasted. The girl’s father said he washed his hands of his daughter, that she never listened to him and hadn’t for years, and anyway he had to go and milk the sheep or there’d be no specialty cheeses in the shop the next week to keep house and home together. Rapunzel’s mother had sobbed and cried and raved about the Witch stealing her little girl away until her husband had shouted at her to face reality and accept that they’d raised a monster and then both of them had stormed out, leaving the Witch no better off.
‘There must be some way of forcing her out without upsetting the guest right,’ muttered the Witch. ‘A lure of some kind, perhaps.’
‘Not her,’ said Jenny. ‘She knows too much.’
‘Knows too much,’ repeated the Witch. ‘She does, doesn’t she? Far more than any soccer-playing farm girl ought to …’
‘She reminds me of someone,’ said Jenny.
‘Her hair is too long, too strong,’ added the Witch. ‘It’s unnatural.’
Cat and witch sat thinking and the nine brooms gently swept around them in a mystic pattern that was possibly conducive to deep thought.
‘She’s one of the Bad Old Ones come back,’ said Jenny finally.
The Witch wrinkled her nose. ‘Possibly. Even if she is, she’s still a guest.’
‘We could ask for help,’ suggested Jenny tentatively. ‘I mean, if she is one of the Bad Old Ones reborn … we could ask Decima and Nones and perhaps that smith by the crossroad …’
‘No,’ said the Witch. ‘That would show weakness. I am not weak.’
‘It would show common sense,’ said Jenny.
‘Shush,’ said the Witch. ‘I’m thinking. I can’t force a guest to leave, can I? Not unless I want all those under-folk and eaves-dwellers on my back.’
‘No,’ said the cat.
‘What about if I force a guest to stay?’ asked the Witch, and her lips curled back a fraction, not quite enough to show teeth or be called a smile.
‘But we don’t want her to stay! How would making her a prisoner … ,’ said Jenny, her ears pricking up in sudden attention. Then she did smile, showing her sharp little teeth. ‘Oh, yes. I see.’
Rapunzel was asleep in the Witch’s second-best feather bed, when the brownie licked her face. She sat up at once and tried to slap the porcelain dog, but it ducked under the blow.
‘What do you want?’ she asked. ‘Is that old hag up to something?’
‘Yes and no,’ said the brownie. ‘I just wanted to tell you that you’re not under our protection anymore.’
‘What?’ shrieked Rapunzel. ‘Why not?’
‘The Witch has declared you a prisoner,’ said the Brownie. ‘So we’re clearing off. Bye!’
The brownie vanished and from under the bed there was a sudden flourish of trumpets.
Rapunzel flounced out of bed and ran into the living room, hair uncoiling behind her like an astronaut’s tether. Everything was as it was. She touched the cornucopia and ordered a milkshake and it was there, fresh and cold. The television came blaringly on at the touch of the remote.
‘Stupid old fashion disaster,’ said Rapunzel. ‘I don’t want to leave anyway! There’s things I can do here.’
She sat on the sofa and wound in her hair, thinking evil thoughts, while animated monsters fought with each other on the television. But after a few minutes, she began to hear something annoying outside. She tried to ignore it, but it just didn’t stop and she thought she could hear her name. Finally she cracked, flicking the television off and flinging open the window.
There was a man at the base of the tower. Or, a boy, rather. He was dressed in a red and yellow uniform and was carrying a large flat cardboard box.
‘Delivery! Rapunzel! Pizza delivery for Rapunzel!’
Rapunzel scowled. The cornucopia didn’t do pizza, and she was hungry. She stuck her head out the window.
‘Who ordered me a pizza?’ she asked. She could smell pepperoni and anchovies and it was extremely tempting.
The boy looked up. He was slightly odd-looking, Rapunzel thought. His ears were a bit long and his hair was white, rather than blond.
‘We got the prison contract,’ he said. His voice was high too, and Rapunzel lowered her estimate of his age. ‘We do the city jail, the police cells, and now here. How do I get up there?’
‘You don’t!’ snapped Rapunzel. She lugged her hair over to the window and started lowering the braided tresses. She’d taken the grappling hook off before she went to bed. ‘Just tie this rope around the box and I’ll pull it up.’
‘The pizza’ll get mushed up though.’
‘Do as you’re told!’
‘Whatever,’ said the boy, and shrugged. Even his shrugging looked a bit strange, as if his shoulders were oddly proportioned. ‘Say, you know, my brothers and I, we do rescues as well as pi
zza delivery.’
‘Just tie up the box and clear off,’ said Rapunzel. Her hair-rope was almost at full stretch, dangling just above the boy’s head. He reached up and pulled it down. As he grabbed the hair, two other, almost identical boys jumped out from where they’d been hiding behind the hedge of thorn bushes and also took hold of the braid.
Rapunzel just had time to brace herself in the window frame before the three boys gave her hair rope a hefty jerk, and she was bent in two, her scalp burning with the sudden strain on her head.
‘What are you doing, you idiots!’ she shrieked.
‘Rescuing you,’ shouted the three boys, and they hauled on her hair again.
Rapunzel shrieked again and something inside her, something old and cold and strange that should never have come back to the world, bubbled up from where it was hiding and used her voice to speak a spell. The carefully pruned thorn bushes shivered in answer and their branches suddenly grew long and the thorns much sharper, and they lashed out at the three boys, scratching horribly, tendrils seeking their pale red eyes.
‘Do something!’ said Jenny to the Witch. They were both on Ellidra, fastest of the brooms, hovering just behind the corner of the kitchen garden wall.
‘I can’t,’ said the Witch. ‘Not until she’s rescued.’
‘But it’s not even her,’ protested the cat. ‘It’s one—’
‘Blind!’ screamed one of the boys. He let go of the hair and clutched at his face. ‘I’m blind.’
‘Pull,’ whispered the Witch. ‘Pull! She’s almost out!’
The two remaining boys pulled on the hair as hard as they could, even as the thorns scratched at their eyes. Rapunzel clung to the windowsill with one hand and one foot, as whatever was inside her screeched spells and imprecations, most of which were diverted by the charms and defenses of the Witchery gardens.
Then the remaining two boys let go, both with their hands pressed to where their eyes had been. As Rapunzel’s hair whipped away from them, one of her stray curses undid the magic that the Witch had used upon them, and instead of three blind pizza delivery boys, three mice scampered in circles, squeaking and crashing into one another.