The witch

"This is truly bad hearing," croaked the witch, " but we shall beat them yet ; and you must deal with each Prince as he comes. Would you like them to become dogs, to come at your call, or birds, to fly in the air, and sing of your beauty, or will you make them all into beads, the beads of such a necklace as never woman wore before, so that they may rest upon your neck, and you may take them with you always."
I met the witch one summer's afternoon in the park. She was seated on the bench next to my friend Malory who is passionate about birds and roses and 77 years old. Malory and I had agreed to meet to talk about her boyfriend "trouble", but she'd refused to tell me what "trouble" meant.

So there I was, walking towards the both of them, when the air was filled with the sound of beating wings and a flock of about 30 birds of varying species gathered at their feet. Naturally I freaked and gave a (small) scream that was cut short by the fact that all the birds had gone still, and had fixed their beady eyes on me, watching, waiting, their heads cocked.

The witch smiled at me with small, even teeth and wide-set green eyes. "Hello," she said, in a delicate, breathy voice. She looked like a pre-Raphelite painting with her rich auburn hair falling in bright ripples to her waist and her loose soft dress trailing the ground. Malory was rubbing her hands in glee.

"Great. Now that you're here, we can really get down to business." Malory said to me. To the witch she said, "please tell them what we've decided." So she did.

The witch sang a series of warbling coos and chirrups. "You who sit and listen / to the slug creep gently / over the humming grass / Come sit and listen to / a song so sweet: / the memory of first love." She sang of the sunrise and the sunset. She sang of the cool earth after the rain, the warmth of the nest and feathered downy breasts, the silence of the earthworm, and of a snail's shell shiny crackle. Finally, she sang of an old woman's heartache. The birds listened mesmerised.

And when she had finished, she spoke to the birds in English: "Fly away my pretty ones." One by one, they shook themselves from the spell and flew off in a flurry of feathers.

"Sunrise, love, worms, Malory. Yep. Ok. I think I need to sit." My legs were shaking. I didn't want to understand, I didn't want to know what Malory had gotten herself into.

"You've got a beautiful voice," Malory told the witch.

"Thank you," said the witch, dimpling, "I sang with the Siren Sisters once and practiced with the Harpy Choir back in the day."

"How long will the spell last?"

"Give it a week," said the witch, "my pretties have gone to spread the word around the city. Your boyfriend's going to be hearing birdsongs about your melancholy beauty wherever he goes from now on."

Malory gave a long, hard cackle. "Heh. Poor George is going to be so confused. That'll teach him to call me his lovely lady lump."

"It's from a song!" I told her, "he's trying to be hip??"

"It's rude, that's what it is," said Malory grimly, "there are other ways to compliment a woman."

"Is this some kind of weird magical prank?"

"Not weird, no" said the witch, "perfectly natural. It's an ancient tradition and the birds have always sung of beauty. We have records of the singing competitions between shepherds and nightingales singing of —"

She gave a little flip of her hair and gazed off into the distance. Her eyes took on that far-away misty look of golden age Hollywood starlets in black-and-white films. A passing cyclist who was staring at her rode straight into the duck pond. She chuckled.

"The point, is," said Malory, looking at me in a very pointed kind of way, "I told him to stop but he didn't. George learns from his mistakes, I get my revenge at little cost, and we all live happily ever after. The End."

"Melancholy beauty." I said, looking hard back at her.

"One of my favourite kinds of beauty!" said the witch brightly. "Always gets a man sorry. I remember helping a young girl float down the river to the home of the man who'd forgotten about her. She was dead by the time she got there, of course, but what a picture she was in that white dress. He cried and cried and swore never to —"

"I say, the spell won't harm me, will it?" said Malory nervously, "I mean I did give you my prize tea-rose as payment ..."

"Not at all," the witch said pleasantly, "and thank you for the rose, it had remarkable anti-ageing properties."

The rose she'd been cultivating for the Garden Festival in 3 days! She'd been talking about winning with that one variant for weeks! I must have made a sound because they both turned to look at me. "Steep price," I muttered. Malory blushed. The witch only laughed musically.

"But a small price for getting your heart's desire!" Said the witch, tapping her straight nose conspiratorially. "Well, it's been nice meeting you both, I must be off. Here's my card if you ever need me." She rose gracefully from the park bench and handed me a business card. It read, in spidery copperplate script:


"Gosh. You live in California?"

"Camelot, my dear. Well, it's not my permanent home address, but it's where most of my mail ends up anyway." She paused. "Something about the desire spell mechanism and times of need. Hey, I think that king messed up the system!" The witch looked off into the distance all wide-eyed and trembled her bottom lip. We heard the squeal of bicycle tires and angry shouts.

"Cut it out!" said Malory.

"What's the point of looking like a dream if you can't have some fun?" Said the witch with a little shrug. "Anyway, I'm really good at granting heart's desires, sing my name to a bird if you ever want to get in touch!" she said, twiddling her fingers in my face. "I foresee love trouble in your future."

We sat on the bench watching the witch walk off into the wood. Her silken tresses tumbling, gleamed in the sunlight, her dress glimmered across her body in liquid folds; she disappeared in a soft improbable mist.

Somewhere overhead, a bird sang the first bright notes of the witch's song.

----------------------

A dapper old gentleman said to his younger companion: "You know Jim, I thought I understood that magpie's song. It sounded something like 'Melancholy Malory, lovely as a shiny key'?"

"No way," said Jim, "I was just gonna say that I thought a couple of ducks were rapping about duckweed and some lady called Malory the other day. Thought I was going crazy."