To say my mother wasn’t pleased when I arrived home, all manner of odd curios held behind my back, was an understatement. But she must have seen something in my pale complexion and bloodshot eyes. If she noticed the strange goods I arrived home with, she didn’t comment on them further. Only told me to get to work. I didn’t even reply to her as I dragged myself up the stairs to my room. 

While all I wanted to do was throw myself onto my bed and squeeze my eyes closed, I got onto my hands and knees and pulled the almost-dress out from its hiding place. Parts of it remained unfinished and in need of stitches, with only needles holding it together. Well, too many parts did, really. Could I finish it? More than likely. I’d finished similar dresses before… though I’d also had far more time to perfect them and make sure they were the quality my mother’s name was comfortable with selling. What was it like to be a famous and rich tailor? The sort that had dozens of assistants and didn’t have to run to the market to get their own fabrics. They’d never have to worry about if they had the beads for this or the thread for that. 

I slid myself up against the closed door. I straightened my back and heard it pop and stretch. I’d spent enough nights hunched that I wondered if it would stunt my height. If I were confident in what I could turn this fabric into, I could and would ignore the book, bag, and flask. The raw materials were great, but it took more than that and a bit of talent to make something worthwhile. Someone could be good at something, have a good idea, and have the right tools at their disposal, but it would still not be enough. Wasn’t my mother an example of that? She was talented and smart, and she even knew how to talk to people. But somehow, it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough to make her life more than a struggle. 

Was it magic that we were missing? Or something else. That hint of something that made the world decide you deserved the “more” that everyone always spoke of. I heard my mother walk up the stairs before she knocked on my door.

“It’s dinnertime.”

“I’m not hungry.” It didn’t matter if she thought I was sulking. And I suppose it didn’t matter to her if I skipped dinner or not either, as there was no further argument on her end. Just the sound of her walking back down the stairs.  

Old Maggie’s house wasn’t exactly in the middle of nowhere. While the main road went north from our village to where the rest of civilization and the castle, Old Maggie’s was off of the main road to the south. Directly in between our village and the jagged cliffs of the coast. There was an old dirt trail that started by the farms before winding into the forest. Once the hills of the farmland flattened and dots of trees became wilds of trunks, no one could be seen. Only hunters or foragers went in this direction, and only during certain seasons. The further I walked along the path, the more overgrown it became. Dying wild grass and the dried leaves of autumn. They crunched cheerfully under my boots as I glanced beyond every tree, worried I might miss her hut. 

I’d tried to think of if I’d ever heard of someone actually go missing because of Old Maggie. Of course, every child was told to stay away. Whenever the livestock got sick, or a woman had difficulty getting pregnant, or even a window broke, there would be whispers that Old Maggie did it. When I’d asked my mother why, during my childhood, she hadn’t bothered with the tales of witches or magic. Her answer had been similar to the one I’d received that day. That "you shouldn’t want to be around people who isolate from society", which had been a bit too hypothetical for a five-year-old. The warnings I got from the farmers’ wives that she’d rip out my liver and eat me were much more effective at the time. But, I’d never claimed my mother was any good at talking to children. 

Now, I looked over my shoulder, and with the ability to see the tops of the hills of my home, I found the term ‘isolate’ a tad harsh. 

It would have been a pleasant walk under any other circumstance. But I fiddled with the velvet bag as my mind spun with worry about what Old Maggie would be like. What would she want from me if I asked for her help? What if she didn’t want the book? What if the flask was poison? What if she didn’t care at all and simply set a curse upon me? I wouldn’t be able to help Ella if I was turned into a toad.

Then, before I’d had time to fully prepare for a meeting with a witch, there was Old Maggie’s property. Or I had to assume there was only one person living south of the village. 

A vine-entwined fence marked the edge of what I assumed was her land. While the fence had turned yellow-green with weeds and dotted with brightly colored beetles and dead buds, it seemed sturdy enough. The path either ended at the fence, or it had been entirely buried by dirt and wild plants. Burdock, whose buds had already shriveled, grew nearly as tall as me. Near everything that I had to push through to get to the cottage itself were things I recognized. Juniper, dandelion, and blood-red rose hips. All things Ella and I would scavenge for. Which made me wonder if they’d been planted on purpose. I remembered the thought that if Old Maggie never came to town for food, she’d need an alternative. I wasn’t about to pick any of these rose hips to see for myself, though.

The cottage, at a glance, was similar to the wild yet colorful growth of the property. Surprisingly vivid ivy framed the windows and edges of the roof. Out-of-season honeysuckle filled my nose, though I didn’t see any, and I might have caught a hint of lavender. They were such sweet scents that I forgot my previous dread when I reached out to knock on the oak door streaked with mineral staining. 

The brief memories I had of a crooked figure in a dirty cloak didn’t match the tall woman who drew the door back. “Old” was as accurate a description as anything else, as lines of time riddled her mouth, neck, and eyes. But she seemed anything but decrepit. She stood tall and unyielding. The citrine-tinged brown eyes reminded me of an alert cat ready to pounce upon a barn mouse. Her hair was grey but wrapped up into a neat braided bun that sat on the top of her head. 

“What is it?” She said like my mother did whenever I interrupted her measuring.

 

With a hole in my stomach, I realized I hadn’t prepared what to say to her. Everything on the tip of my tongue sounded horribly foolish when the exceedingly “not crone” looking woman raised a dark eyebrow towards me. I opened my mouth but nothing came out. Would this had been easier if she looked like a grizzled old skeleton? When I didn’t say anything and instead stared at her, she clicked her tongue and moved from the entryway. 

“Well, come in, I suppose.” 

Maggie was completely out of sight before I made myself follow after her. 

“Don’t forget to close the door.”

I quickly patted down the loose strands of hair, suddenly wanting to look more proper, and then pushed the door closed. This felt much more like asking my mother for a favor than treading into the hut of a hag. The home was significantly smaller than my own. The single room held a fireplace, table, counter, and firewood oven arranged together. Maggie had turned, or returned, to chopping something. My eyes darted around the room, desperate to find anything that said magic. But it was just a comely home, albeit one with an above-average amount of clay ware. Frying pans hung from hooks set above the window. Pots and pans stacked together on rustic wood shelves. There was garlic, thyme, and basil, all hanging to dry. 

The thoughts of Old Maggie’s home had always been filled with images of skulls, bottles of green liquids, a bubbling cauldron, and maybe a black cat or a snake. But there were just jars of pickled morels, like the ones Ella and I would collect in the spring. I’d never thought to pickle them as we never found enough to. 

 

Maggie’s back was to me as she calmly chopped away. Her figure was just so strikingly like my mother’s, it made me hesitant to say anything. Could a witch ground me? No, she’d probably do much worse. There was, after all, a knife in her hands. But the closest thing to a witch’s hoard was an orange pumpkin on the table. It sat next to a bumpy green squash, and a long oblong yellow one. It’d probably make good soup. Could the orange one be considered suspiciously large? A magic pumpkin? I nudged it and nothing happened. It didn’t grow a face or change shape. It just sat there as pumpkins did.  

“Are you a witch?” I finally asked. I felt so dreadfully stupid that maybe everything I’d heard was wrong. While I couldn’t explain an explosion of orange feathers or a trader that appeared and disappeared in thin air… Old Maggie had never shown such extraordinary skills. Maybe she was just another woman living by herself like my mother. Maybe her husband or children had just left her long ago, and now she pickled morels. 

Her stance didn’t change and she lifted up the wooden cutting board to scrape the chopped herbs into a bowl. “If that’s what they call me, I suppose I must be.” 

“Which witch is a witch if you ditch the switch?” A third voice croaked. I looked around for its speaker. “I said which witch is a witch! Or does it go which witch is which? Maggie, which is which?” I looked at the window, then at the door, and then under the table. Where? “I’m right here, girl, right here!”

The green squash was talking to me! Then it blinked at me. One eye and then its matching one both blinked at me at different times. Bumps twitched into legs. And I realized it had never been a squash at all, but a toad.

A particularly ugly toad. 

“Ew.”