Spring In Winter - Blog Posts

Deep in the woods, not far from a babbling brook, in a small clearing filled with wildflowers, stood a witch’s cabin. The walls were made of bright red brick, green ivy grew up the sides, laden with flowers that threw off a wonderful scent, and there was an honest-to-goodness picket fence surrounding a small patch of cleared ground in which a few vegetables grew. 

Walter Wilis, supernatural journalist extraordinaire pulled his pants up a bit and tightened his belt a notch. He’d interviewed hundreds - thousands - of witches and warlocks in his time. Some nice, some mean. Some beautiful, some ugly. Most were disturbingly normal. 

As one nice old witch had told him once, “we’re people, too, Walter. Magic is just another way of looking at the world. Think of us as just eccentrics.”

And eccentric was most definitely a good way of describing people that had the ability to manipulate this mysterious force called magic. It had been part of human society since the dawn of time, and it still persisted in being unquantifiable to any other than those who could sense it. Walter was not one of the lucky ones, but he’d been fascinated by it anyway, and so had spent his life investigating, searching, interviewing any and all practitioners who would speak to him. Made quite a name for himself doing it, too. The normals read his articles with hungry awe, and the magicians liked that he made no attempt to demonize them.

Which all went to explain how he ended up here, in the middle of a very pretty nowhere minutes away from interviewing the most powerful witch on the planet. Quite possibly to have ever existed. She could alter the weather, make flowers bloom out of season, start fires with a flick of her eyelashes, and steal the hearts of men with her smile. Or so the stories went. 

Walter took in a deep breath, let it out, and nodded his head. He was here to find the truth, and he wouldn’t be able to do that out here. He nodded again, and began to walk. Out of his pocket, Walter pulled a hand-sized recording device and began to record his impressions. 

“Beyond the boundaries of this witch’s garden, it is the dead of winter. Inside, the flowers bloom, the breeze is gentle, and I can hear bees somewhere close by.” Walter knocks on the door, striving for a confident rap. “Miss Crystal?” he calls out into the silence of the house. “My name is Walter Willis. I’m here to interview you. We spoke over the phone?”

There was a pause, then the sound of hurried footsteps that came close, but not close enough to open the door. “Y-yes? Just…give me a moment, Mr. Willis.”

“All right, Miss Crystal.” Walter looked around the garden while he waited, speaking once more into his microphone. “There is an herb and vegetable garden to the side, surrounded by a white picket fence. I can see thyme, mint, and basil growing next to pumpkins, squash and what looks like strawberries. This should not be possible, of course, as some flower in spring, others in fall. But Miss Crystal is powerful enough that it doesn’t seem to matter.”

The door is flung open with a snap, and Walter instantly drops his hand, plastering a smile on his face while he takes his first look at the infamous witch.

She is young. Maybe not even eighteen yet, with bright red hair and a harried expression on her face.Her purple smock is covered in brightly colored threads.  She smiles distractedly at him and gestures for him to come in. Walter does so cautiously. Most witches have wards and barriers set up around their lands, and more powerful ones concentrated at the entry points to their houses. Miss Crystal has evidenced no sign of any such defenses.

There is a small explosion from the back of the house, and the witches eyes go wide. She turns and runs, leaving Walter standing just inside the threshold by himself. He wanders through the front rooms while she handles whatever minor catastrophe is going on in the back. 

“Miss Crystal’s house is remarkably normal. Aside from a few esoteric items - the glowing green vase stands out - it could be the house of any normal. There are couches and rugs and lacy white curtains on the windows. There is no television, but the phone set up in the halls looks like it gets regular use. There are no power lines, but that doesn’t seem to stop Miss Crystal,” he narrates into his recorder. “The living room is just off the foyer to the right, the kitchen off…to…the…” Walter trails off, his eyes fixed upon what he sees as he peers through the doorway. 

In the center of the kitchen, three brightly colored aprons hover in mid-air, folded gently at the sides as if wrapped around a body. The first, a bright aquamarine with orange piping, waves its ties gently in the air, one holding a rolling pin aloft, the other a feather duster. It twirls them around in a complicated dance, the neck loop bending and twisting as if the invisible person was bowing and arching their back as they danced. Next to it, the second apron, this one yellow with pink piping, dances what looks to be an attempt at the robot with a bowling pin and a lamp. The third apron almost fell away into the background, until Walter took a closer look. In its left hand (hand?) it held a set of scales. In its right, a conductor baton. The fabric of the apron was a dull grey, its stitching a slightly lighter grey. But where the other two had simple piping, this one has designs stitched throughout. Storms shimmered in and out of existence inside the neck loop. Waves crashed upon rocky shores, lightening crackled upon the ends of the ties. And it directed the movements of the other two with every flick of its baton.

A judge, maybe? Walter wondered. 

Sounds behind him, and Walter scoots over a little, making space for Miss Crystal to come stand next to him in the doorway.

“Oh!” she cries when she sees what he is looking at. “Aren’t they lovely? I made four this morning, but the last one kept trying to kill me.”

Slowly, Walter turns his head to look at her in horrified fascination.

She catches him staring out of the corner of her eye and smiles at him. “It’s fine,” she assures him. “I threw it out.”

Odd Prompts for Odd Stories