This story is a prequel to “Witches? What Witches?”
Tibby, the tortoiseshell cat, followed her young mistress, Tisha, up the stairs of the tower.
“Don’t understand why Milly gets to learn witchcraft and I don’t,” her mistress Tisha muttered.
She padded upwards on socked feet, iron key clutched in her hands. She’d snatched that key while her mother was busy in the kitchen, and her sister was hiding away with her ravens.
Her mistress Tisha was now eight years old. Milly, her sister, was twelve. Tibby was fairly sure young witches went through lots of development between eight and twelve. Milly was certainly taller than she had been at age eight. She could grab Tibby off the shelves above the kitchen bench by herself now. Her mistress still needed a stool.
The cat and her girl reached the very top of the stairs. There stood a heavy wooden door; all that stood between them, and Tisha’s mother’s potion workshop. Tisha fitted her stolen key into the lock, jiggled it around, and turned it with a click. Wood scraped, and hinges creaked, as she pushed the door open.
Tibby darted through the gap, into the forbidden workshop.
The whole place smelt of a pungent mishmash of plants, with underlying currents of wood smoke, old paper, and a tantalising hint of meat. Slits of golden sunlight streamed though the cracks in the shutters of the west window. The walls were lined with eminently climbable shelves, and a large wooden table stood in the centre of the room.
Tibby leapt up onto the table. Atop it sat an unlit lantern, a few cups, a bitter smelling bowl, and a spoon. She knocked over one of the cups. It was disappointingly empty, but rolled across the table, then off the edge, and hit the floor with a satisfying thunk.
Her mistress jumped.
“Tibby! What have we said about knocking things off tables?” she admonished.
Tibby believed the word, “don’t!” was often involved. But she was her own cat, and need not pay heed to the words of witches.
Her mistress closed the door behind her, then picked the cup up off the floor.
“You leave this cup be, OK?” she said, pointing a finger in Tibby’s face.
“Mrow,” Tibby responded, which meant, “I acknowledge you are speaking to me,”
“OK,” Tisha said, and put the cup back down on the table.
Tibby humoured her, and did not immediately knock it over again. Instead, she settled next to the lantern, and watched her mistress circle the room.
She opened the shutters, letting in the light. It hit a row of glass jars shelved on the wall opposite, giving them a golden glare. Tisha crossed the room, and tapped her nails along the row with a clink, clink, clink.
She rifled through draws, and ran her hands along the spines of books. Then she turned around, and ran her hands over the spines of the books again.
Tibby jumped off the table, and wove between her mistress’s feet.
Her mistress stepped on her paw.
“Miaow!” Tibby said, which meant, “watch where you’re going!”
“Tibby! Watch where you’re going!” her mistress said, as if this were Tibby’s fault.
After walking up and down the bookshelf a few times, Tibby’s mistress began pulling books down. She made a small pile on the floor, and sat down beside it. Tibby sat down beside her. Her mistress took the book from the top of the pile into her lap, and began flicking through it.
Her brow furrowed.
“Who wrote this? I can’t read a word of it!” she said, and turned a book to show Tibby, “can you read this?” she demanded.
“Mrow,” Tibby responded, which meant, “I’m a cat,”
“Exactly!” her mistress said.
She set the book aside in disgust, and picked up the next in the pile.
Three books later, Tibby’s mistress said, “At least there are pictures in this one,” she turned the book to Tibby, and pointed at one of the pictures, “does that look like lavender, or rosemary too you?”
“Mrow,” Tibby said, which meant, “Why are you asking me?”
“Hm,” her mistress said.
She got up, leaving the book open on the floor, and strode purposefully over to the fireplace. Tibby followed. The fireplace was coated with a layer of cold grey ash. Beside it stood a stack of wood, and over it hung a big, black pot.
From the pile of wood, her mistress took an armful of small twigs, and piled them into the fireplace. Then, she went back to rifling through draws.
Tibby picked a large log, and began to scratch, bark peeling up under her claws.
“Firelighter, lighter, firelighter, lighter, I know you’re here somewhere…” her mistress muttered to herself, “Aha!”
Done with her rifling, Tisha knelt back down in front of the fireplace. She broke off a chunk of chalky white firelighter, and added it to her pile of sticks. Then, she took the lighter too it. Tongues of yellow flame sprung up.
Tibby kept scratching her log.
Fire burning beneath the cauldron, her mistress went back to the shelves, pulling down jars, and bits of plant. She dumped these on the table.
Tibby jumped back up onto the table. She sniffed at the jars, and batted at the dried plants. They crunch beneath her paw.
“Leave those alone,” her mistress said.
Then, Tisha dragged a stool over to the shelves, its feet scraping across the floor. Tibby gave the crunchy dried plants one more bat, then sat back to watch as her mistress climbed onto the stool, and began pulling even more things from the higher shelves. Several more jars and crunch plants, and a few loose raven feathers were added to the pile on the table. Tibby began to chew on one of the feathers. Her mistress gave a put-upon sigh, but didn’t tell her to stop.
“Right,” her mistress said, “now the potion ingredients go in the cauldron,”
Tibby, with a mouthful of feather, looked at the cauldron.
“Mrow?” she said, which meant, “have you checked the fire?”
Her mistress looked over.
“Oh! Oh, the fire!”
The firelighter had burnt out, and the smouldering orange flames were quickly burning through the thin sticks Tisha had piled up.
“More wood, more wood,” her mistress said, shifting a few larger sticks into the fireplace. She blew on them until they caught.
Tibby grew bored with her feather, and went back to crunching the plants.
Satisfied with the fire, her mistress turned back to the collection of potion ingredients. She grabbed a couple of jars, and emptied the thick liquid, and pungent powder they contained into the cauldron. It coughed up a cloud of grey smoke.
All the while, she chanted, “Magic potion, magic potion,” to herself.
Tibby watched as her mistress poured in the contents of more jars, the crunchy plants, and a handful of feathers Tibby was yet to mangled. The smoke changed from grey, to green, to purple. The room took on the faint odour of fish, which was odd, considering the lack of fish. Tibby chewed on her feather some more.
Tibby heard a flutter, then scratching. Ears perked, she looked towards the sound. A glossy black raven perched on the windowsill, watching.
“Mrow,” Tibby said, which meant, “there is a raven watching us,”
“Magic potion, magic potion,” her mistress went, adding another powder to her potion. The smoke went green again.
“Miaow!” Tibby insisted. She jumped off the table, and nipped at her mistress’s ankles. This meant, “you really should know that one of your sister’s ravens is watching us.”
“What? What is it, Tibby?”
“Miaow!” flicking her tail, Tibby looked pointedly over at the raven, then back at her mistress.
Her mistress followed her gaze. Her eyes widened, and mouth dropped open.
“Oh, no,” she said softly.
The raven cawed, then spread its wings, and took off from the windowsill.
“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” her mistress repeated to herself, looking around at the mess of potion ingredients on the table, the books on the floor, and the cauldron billowing green and purple smoke, “oh no, oh no, oh no.”
Tisha bounced on the balls of her feet, then bent down and bundled all the books up in her arms. She carried them back to the shelf, only dropping two along the way.
Tisha piled the books back onto the shelf, knocking another off in the process. Then, she started grabbing jars.
“MUM! TISHA’S IN YOUR WORKSHOP!” a shrill voice carried from downstairs.
Tisha fumbled a jar. It thudded to the ground. The lid popped off, and a slimy substance spilled across the floorboards.
“Aah, oh no, oh no,” Tisha said.
“WHAT?” another, deeper voice called, “TISHA!”
“Oh no, oh no,” Tisha continued. The smoke from the cauldron turned black. The fishy smell grew stronger.
There was an ominous thud, thud, thud from the staircase.
Tibby’s mistress tried to scoop the slimy substance back into its jar, using just her bare hands. It smeared across the floor, and stained her fingers red.
Tibby stretched out a paw, and knocked another jar off the table. It landed with a satisfying thunk, but sadly the lid stayed put. It did roll half way across the room, though.
Her mistress glared at her, “You are not helping,”
“Mrow,” Tibby said, which meant, “why would I be trying to help?”
With slippery red fingers, her mistress scrabbled with the lid of the jar, trying to screw it back on. Most of the slime was still spread across the floor.
The thud, thud, thud from the stairs grew louder.
Her mistress gave up on the lid. She climbed back up on her stool, and tried to hide the jar at the back of the shelf.
Bang! The door slammed open.
In the doorway stood Tisha’s mother, hands on her hips, glowering across the room.
“LETITIA WESTWOOD,” she bellowed, in a voice that may well have carried across the forest and into the next town.
Tibby’s mistress winced, and knocked another jar of the shelf.
It landed with a comparatively quiet thunk, and out spilt a puff of grey powder.
“What do you think you are doing, young lady?” Tisha’s mother demanded.
“Nothing?” Tisha squeaked.
Her mother looked around the room. The cauldron was billowing black smoke. There was still crunchy plants, and the odd feather spread across the table. That was to say nothing of the mess made of the jars.
Tisha’s mother glared wordlessly. Tisha was still poised red-handed on the stool.
“Mrow,” said Tibby, which meant, “how did you think this would end?”
Brittany Lee is the co-founder, and editor of Banksia Journal. She is a writer from Perth, Western Australia, with a BA in Linguistics, and Postgrad Diploma in Journalism. Her work has appeared in AntipodeanSF, Dusty Attic Publishing, and Perth’s Raine Square Story Dispenser. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, knitting, and taking photos of flowers (such as banksias).
You can find her online at brittanyerinlee.com.