TINY MAGIC
THE VIOLENCE STARTED YOUNG. It was the air they breathed. In the midst of such an unfortunate beginning, and always curious, they liked to explore the known world of their apartment. And so it was, at age three, they opened the cabinet beneath the sink. It led into a tiny space, like a cave, and the cave was just their size. Within the cave, they found a rainbow of potions, and dragged and hefted them up in thin, pale dough-skinned arms, each elixir thwumping to the kitchen floor, the kind with those repeating tiles perfect for making square little homes for each and every smashed-faced doll.
Every three-year-old knew beyond a shadow that magic was real. And these potions bore helpful spray nozzles—perfect for dousing the world in enchantment. They lined up their treasure, and THE MOTHER careened into the room, smacking them. “That is poison, you idiot. Chemicals. Don’t ever touch them again.” From a careful distance, they watched as she slammed every potion back into the cave.
When THE BOYFRIEND first came to live with them, the adults were ribbons twisting together in the breeze. Aged four, slightly less tiny, they observed from corners of rooms or through narrow cracks between doors how bodies might blossom under fists into such plum shades. And they passed through the kitchen, remembering their potions, and they returned to their dolls. Until.
Until THE BOYFRIEND took their hand and placed it on his twitching stick, all that peculiar feeling hair disappearing their fingers. There might be much they did not know at age five, but they knew they hated that twitching stick.
Two steaming brown drinks on the counter. “Momma’s morning juice,” THE MOTHER would rasp. They were bigger now. The potion did not thwump so loudly on the ground as they lifted it from the cave.
The magic worked. The monster died. When those people came, the ones with shiny symbols on their shirts, they put silver rings on THE MOTHER’S wrists and put THE BOYFRIEND on a bed of spider legs and lowered a pale sheet over his bubble bath-filled mouth.
Things changed quickly. Their bright eyes ate it all, the wooden halls with old men in black robes banging toy hammers. Grey rooms with soggy donuts and juice boxes and dizzying cartoons for hours. Car rides smelling of pee. A new home with other kids and OTHER ADULTS. The house, too, smelled of pee.
On their first night, they snuck from their bed and sock-walked to the kitchen, opening the child-locked cave beneath the sink to find familiar potions. It was a relief of sorts to know their magic was nearby.
Things were fine—for a time. Life went on—for a while. Some years passed, and it happened again, A MAN waving about his twitching stick like it was a gleaming, hirsute trophy.
Out came the potions.
Silver bracelets cinched their wrists this time, and the words of others trailed behind them. “Like their mother.” It had only ever been like themself, the magic so happy to be used as they needed. The two following years did not matter, so they did not bother to remember them. Until.
Until the transfer came. “Cutbacks.” “State budgets.” “In the red.” Guards muttered those enchantments down juvie halls, and thirteen-year-old them listened. Day after day, shackled children waited at exits. Their own transfer went differently.
The van carried only them. Unshackled, for they had not shown violence in two years, their hands grasped at lumpy seats and scratched walls as the van careened from the road. “Idiots,” they heard in their head, the smoky voice a rasp. But she was not there. Had not been there in many years.
And they were alive.
The guards, not so much.
They picked through the guard supplies, shouldering a bag with first aid, crispy chips, two half-drunk water bottles, cash. A knife. Some other treasured items. Wrapped themself in a guard’s heavy coat. The guns they left behind.
The forest curled its skeletal arms around them, and they disappeared down softly soiled hills beneath a green, green wood. Second Home had housed a kid obsessed with apocalypses, and he’d roped them into building shelters and disinfecting water, making bow drills and encouraging fire with gentle, kind breaths. They went deep in the woods now. They covered their tracks. They slathered mud over their pale clothes and trudged miles and miles into the forest, and night after night, they slept wrapped in an emergency blanket inside a log or beneath a pine bough or in any sliver of camouflage they found.
No one else ever seemed to believe in magic. Even though they knew magic to be real, they did not see THE WITCH coming. Fourteen now, their forest home had already provided for them for several months. Over time, they had worked themself further into untamed lands, until.
Until THE WITCH tripped them up, tied their legs, and cut their hair, putting it into a bag, and said, pinching at their skin, “My, what are you? Fourteen? Not much meat, but enough. Boy or girl?” She jutted her smooth, spray-tanned face, expecting an answer that would never come. “Well, if you’ve nothing to say, I’ll bash your head in now and get started on dinner. Night comes early these days.”
In a life-flashing second, they thought about tiny caves, potions, and about learning the true magic of the world. With a bit of desperation, they said, “I have killed two men with poison. I would learn, instead, if you would have me. I would sweep your home. Collect wood. Do your laundry. Boil your water.”
The witch stared at them down a long, beautiful nose—only a hint of orange tanner caked in the creases—like she saw them in a light that perhaps no one else ever had. “Two men, is it? Did they deserve it?”
They nodded in silence.
The witch bobbled her head, her face appraising. “I suppose I do have a rather dirty cave, what with the floor being stone and dribbly with water.” She raised her chin, her eyes glacial. “You show me you’re willing to work, first, then maybe I’ll teach you. Or, maybe I’ll eat you.”
They shrugged in the guard’s too-big coat. There had been worse things.
The witch’s cave was a spacious affair. It glistened from the dribbly water, and the stone ran their voice back into endless depths. It was cold, but it became a sort of home, and they did not mind terribly the cold, or the dribbling water, or the work the witch had them do. Until.
Until the witch began teaching her trade in earnest, and they learned about the sort of magic the witch performed, all those babies; their bloody entrails.
The witch cleaned only with a broom and an MLM-purchased essential oil she bought in bulk from a suburban mom. And while the witch brewed many poisons, she also practiced mithridatism. They would need a different sort of poison. An old potion, one they first met years ago.
“Witch,” they said (they called her witch, for she had never given another name, but she had become a sort of guiding mentor and therefore the name carried less stifling weight), “I’d like to go with you to town next time. I’m craving iced cream something awful.”
“Augh.” The witch spoke through a disgusted face of clenched front teeth. She hadn’t menstruated in a few centuries, so she claimed. “It’s about that time of the month, isn’t it?”
They flopped their shoulders about.
The witch sighed and settled her needlework on the table nearby, the one made of baby femurs. They had thought it animal bones when they first arrived. How pure they were back then. “Tomorrow won’t be raining,” the witch said thoughtfully. She sniffed as if she were about to relay terribly important information. “The rain messes with my dealer’s blowout.” The dealer was the MLM essential oil-selling suburb mom who wore a quarter inch of makeup and a stiff white smile.
They picked up the broom and swept to cover their excitement. The cave was atrociously dirty. No wonder the witch did not eat them. Plus, she seemed to prefer the doughy arms of small children. A delicacy, she said after one particularly slurping bite before using the viscera in her spells.
As promised, it did not rain the next day. The forest was forever gracious to them.
The witch dropped them in the town center and ordered them to return in a few hours. After getting her essential oils, she needed to check out a new daycare, and it took time to pretend to be a prospective parent and tour the facility and sneak out with a baby instead.
The hardware store sat next to the iced cream shop. With the money the witch gave them, they would say they got a milkshake—a more expensive purchase, meaning less change to return. When they entered the hardware store, a young woman wrapped in a lavender shawl, with arched brows, sleek black hair, and medium brown skin, leaned casually on a stool, reading a book. She smiled at them and easily dropped her eyes back to her book, concern for the world falling away.
The potions were in the back. Size mattered for concealment, but that was why they had stuffed an envelope down their pants. The young woman rang them up, gave them a quirked smile, and disappeared into the book’s embrace.
Outside, they poured the powder into the envelope, dumping the rest of the box in a garbage can. And they waited. Later, the witch’s rusted truck pulled down the road, so they went into the iced cream shop and purchased a child-sized cone for her. She loved tiny things.
“Change,” asked the witch once they climbed into the truck. One of those smooth hands reached out, the nails all done up for her daycare performance. On the seat between them was an unmoving black bag. The witch smiled into the wind of the open window. “Dinner will be a roast tonight, I think. I picked up some fresh tarragon at the market. You know how I love tarragon and how poorly it grows for me. And yes, before you ask, I got you tempeh. You really should try the roast. Anyway, best head out before the sirens start.”
It was not odd for them to make the witch her evening tea. The trouble was that tea came after dinner. They had planned for this, too.
Sticking their face down the old mine shaft might take a few years off their life, their throat seizing horribly in gasps and choking coughs, but it got the witch heating a kettle. While the witch poked through her herbs to find the appropriate ones for her idiot charge, they walked past the witch’s mug and dumped the poison in with a tea bag. They stirred in copious amounts of sugar on their next pass. Then they cast all their hope into the powers of sweetener.
Mewling came from the shifting bag on the ground. The witch never made a kill until she started dinner. Wanted them fresh, but she drugged them for the getaway. This one was waking. They tried to ignore it. At present, they could do nothing more than they already had.
The witch plopped several handfuls of herbs into the kettle, let the fragrance grow, and poured it over a strainer into their mug, the one with a winky face half chipped away. They smiled plainly at the witch and inhaled the bitter scent. They were used to such things by now.
Easing herself into a rickety chair, the witch gave them a once over. “You’re really coming into your own. Soon, I should think, I’ll be revealing all the lore of my lineage.” In a distantly sad sort of voice, she said, “Then you might leave me and go off on your own. Perhaps you’ll even find your own protégé.”
“Perhaps,” they said and did not look at the black bag, but sipped the scalding tea to soothe the poisoned air burning in their throat.
The witch sipped her own tea for a while, grimacing at the extra sugar, but drinking it all the same. When she finished, she crossed to her shelves to gather cooking twine and seasoning, oil and knives of various pedigrees and sat to arrange each item with care. Light from the cave entrance shaded to black, night wandering in at the corners, curious about this room glowing in its dark embrace.
“Oh, my stomach.” The witch clutched her belly and grunted. “Right. Time to prepare the meat.”
A sheen of sweat broke out on the witch’s face. She waddled to the black bag and awkwardly carried it to the table. A nasty belch escaped her mouth. Blinking several times, the witch sniffed harshly and gripped the bag’s zipper before moaning and bending over, her hands at her stomach again.
She groaned out her words. “Those suburb moms. New lesson: never accept the food they offer. It’s always undercooked.” With that, the witch heaved herself to the washbasin, a bowl-shaped impression in a small boulder, and vomited globs of melted tissue, splattering crimson across the cave walls.
Setting down their tea, they checked the witch’s pulse. Silent.
The bag unzipped slowly, and they lifted from within the would-be dinner. The infant balled its tiny beige fists and mewled again. “You’ll find, I think, that many people, and especially adults, believe they can do as they please simply because they are something called aged. But that’s not the case at all.”
Wrapping the infant in a ragged shawl they had knitted, they spared the dead witch a glance. The body should be buried far from here and salted, and her eyes covered, and perhaps a few other things, so her ghost would not return, but the cave would go on making quite the home for two children lost no longer.
The baby bellowed its first true thoughts. For lack of anything better, they put a finger into the infant’s mouth. “There’s a cache of goat’s milk in the river. We’ll start there, and when you’re older, I’ll teach you all about the monsters that walk around wearing people suits and the magic to kill them.”