Miranda was starving. She hadn't eaten anything in at least two weeks. Those stupid little sprites had not brought her anything, except the boy. She had cast the spell on them because, in her weakened state, she was unable to find food on her own. The mindless little insects were easy to control, and she wondered why she had wasted so much energy over the years getting food for herself.
She could have been sending these ridiculous sprites out to gather children for her meals all along.
All those nights spent transfigured into wolves and crows and the like had put her in the foulest of moods and made her smell like wet dog half the time.
How could any respectable Wood Witch allow herself to get to this point? Living alone in a forest, only miles from the city, foraging for the flesh of children but surviving on the putrid corpses of rabbits and any other woodland creatures that she could catch. It was shameful and embarrassing.
Well, no more. With the unwilling assistance of the sprites, Miranda would once again dine like the queen that she was meant to be.
She was positively salivating at the thought of dining on the young boy's tender flesh. Boys were tasty, but if they could find a girl, that was a delicacy to be savored. But alas, she had to wait for the boy to get fat enough to make a decent meal. The past few weeks had been so hard on her, waiting for the boy to plump.
Miranda uncorked the wine that she had retrieved from the cellar, a one-hundred-twenty-year-old vintage that she had taken from a colonial family at the last turn of the century after she had dined on their daughter.
That was a meal to remember. Children had yet to be contaminated by soda pop and "happy meals." They were still pure and good, unsullied by pop culture, absent of any guile or cunning. Just the way Miranda liked them.
As she took a deep whiff from the aging cork, Miranda looked over at the sleeping boy in the metal cage. Tonight, he would be roasted on a spit, and she would sleep, sated with a full stomach and a light heart.
Stoking the fire, Miranda hummed a tune, anticipating the first decent meal she would have in more than two decades.