The Witch and the Fox (Part I)

The Witch and the Fox.

Part 1.

She watched as the fox slinked its way through the clearing where her house stood. It didn’t move right. It felt wrong. She squinted trying to see through the glamour.

It was not a fox.

It was black and red and covered with fur…

But still not a fox.

“Interesting…” she said quietly as she watched it from her kitchen window.

She then gave a muffled shriek when Cornix squawked beside her ear “Not a fox!”

The witch shooed the crow off her shoulder while she waited for her heart rate to return to normal. A fox that was not a fox was wandering in her garden and sniffing around her hives. The bees buzzed angrily as the fox pawed at the ground beside the hive and huffed a breath, its ears twitching to the sounds around it.

The witch tapped a long fingernail against her teeth as she thought. Turning anything into anything was difficult magic. It wasn’t shadow magic by any means, unless the transformation was forced onto another, usually it was a deal gone wrong. There was a reason people thought witches turned people into toads, they just didn’t do it often. Well...she didn’t but that’s because the whole process was bothersome and had the tendency to go very wrong. That’s why she knew that the fox sniffing round her hydrangeas was clearly not a fox. It was a big one too, that was a give away in itself. All that mass had to go somewhere it didn’t just disappear when it changed.

“Poor thing” she said quietly and opened the window to see better. The fox looked up suddenly in her direction, focusing on her through the glass of the window and with a flick of its tail was gone, streaking off into the woods surrounding the house.

The witch didn’t see it again for a week or more and she largely forgot about it in that time. After all it wasn’t her problem, she didn’t cast the spell. Besides that she had more important things to do. Making poultices and teas for her regular clients, getting ready for the market that took place at the end of the month that she could sell her candles and soaps at and, if the client knew how to ask right, spells for people in need.

It was one warm evening and the house was quiet, if you disregarded the sounds of the clock gently ticking on the wall, the tap faucet dripping with a quiet plip in the kitchen, a bee that had flown into the bathroom and was trying to find its way out through the window. The witch was being suitably witchy and swiping on her phone trying to find a date, which was unsurprisingly difficult for someone who lived in a cottage in the woods, wore a suitably pointed hat and heavy black eyeliner. Oh and did magic. She sighed and sat back, perhaps some people are just made to be alone, she thought.

Her phone rang, buzzing and blaring out some Stevie Nicks, because some stereotypes were true, and there was a crash in the kitchen as something had become startled and panicked, knocking over a bowl of water left on the floor by the back door, which had been propped open for the summer breeze to work its way in. The witch answered as she stood, making her way into the kitchen to check on the noise.

“Hello?” She said cheerfully, listening as the person talked on the other end, making the occasional affirmative noise as she did so.

“Uh huh…” she said quietly as she bent over to look under the centre island counter, “no I am listening darling” she said on automatic. She wasn’t listening and she turned to look out of the door and there at the treeline, sat primly with its bushy tail pulled over its feet, sat the fox. I didn’t do it the posture said, daring the witch to contradict. She snorted a laugh through her nose before her attention was pulled back to the phone on her ear “yes my sweet I hear you!” and when she looked back again the fox had vanished once more. It did not return for a few days.

She had pushed it to the back of her mind, read: forgotten about it, until she saw it again days later and it occurred to her that this may be part of the curse on the not-fox. This time she was sitting on her patio by the open back doors of her cottage, at the cast iron table and matching chair, sipping tea from mismatched crockery and reading a wonderfully smutty novel. She didn’t react to the fox as it stared at her, she just sipped her tea before she broke off a piece of her dainty ham sandwich and dropped it onto the floor beside her chair. It skulked closer, moving with infinite slowness and caution before it gently plucked the sandwich from the floor between its sharp little teeth and bolted away. She licked her teeth and watched the spot it had disappeared into and called to Cornix. The crow swooped down and she flinched as its wings passed through her hair and it landed on the rim of the table, its claws clicking as they made contact with the iron.

“Cornix…swooping is bad.” she sighed, then offered him some of her sandwich “Be a dear and see if you can follow our little foxy friend” Cornix cawed loudly in a mocking laugh after it swallowed down the sandwich and took off in a rustle of wings, mussing the witches already unmanageable curls again. She sighed. Really! Was it too much to ask for a little respect in her own cottage?

After an hour or so, with no sign of her familiar, she decided to head inside and change the tea to something stronger. The kitchen was warm and comfortable as she sat at the scarred wooden dining table and sipped her sweet mead and finished her book. The room was quiet with only the sound of the cuckoo clock on the wall ticking gently. The window over the sink had been propped open awaiting the return of Cornix. Her mind ticked away with the clock. What was the fox really? Did it know it could get help from her? How long had it been a fox because it certainly hadn’t been born one, she could already feel the fox slipping from her mind.

With a sudden flurry of wings, the crow alighted on the windowsill and rustled its feathers, settling each one before beginning to groom itself. The witch nearly sighed but waited, she knew the crow would be enjoying itself, making her wait, drawing out the moment. He really was the most dramatic creature, she thought.

“Well?” She said impatiently.

Could crows look smug? This one did. It clacked its beak once.

“Found fox!” It cawed.

She very nearly said "what fox?" before she saw the curse twisted around it. A cursed fox. How delightful.

"I'll get my hat" she said.