On Oubliette Island1, near So Long Beach, there lived a boy, and there lived a girl.
The boy lived in the Forgotten Forest2, inside a giant hollow tree–a tree house, in fact. The tree that the tree house was in stretched high above all the other trees surrounding it, and its trunk was wide enough that the boy never felt cramped or uncomfortable, even on the fourth floor, which was where he kept all of his many books (and which consequently was stuffed with bookcases).
The girl lived on the Fancy Plains3, in a skinny little house on top of a tall, thin mushroom that smelled of used teabags. Both the house and the mushroom were coloured pink and purple, although the house was stripy and the mushroom was spotty.
The boy liked running and climbing and tending to his gumdrop bushes, and fighting back wild growth with his sword, which was made of two sticks tied together with a couple of bits of string. It was the most powerful sword in the world. He also (when it was raining or he otherwise didn’t feel like going out) liked reading and drawing and making things out of bits of wood. When he read, it was mostly adventure stories about people who didn’t really exist. He usually wore tough clothes that didn’t tear even if you snagged them on a branch, and his favourite colour was dark red.
The girl liked walking and chatting and gathering herbs, and baking bread and other things in her impressive oven. She had a large collection of books (some of which she had made herself) about an astonishing variety of subjects, although mostly to do with cooking. She also liked researching and learning and studying, whether it was nice outside or not. When she read, it was mostly about real things and facts. She liked wearing sweeping cloaks and pointed hats, and her favourite colour was purple.
Every day the boy and the girl would meet, because they were best friends. Neither one of them ever questioned why this was, they just were, and that’s all there was to it. The boy would bring gumdrops and vegetables that he’d grown himself, and pots of honey that he’d been given by the bees that lived inside his tree, and the girl would bring bread and other baked goodies, and they’d share lunch on So Long Beach or beside Two Big Rocks, or they’d visit Cliff Face or Mr River together. After that they’d usually go for a walk, or just sit and talk, wherever they were. Sometimes the boy annoyed the girl, or the girl annoyed the boy, or they both annoyed each other, or there was a Disagreement, or the girl would argue at the boy while the boy sat and smiled, but they never really got mad at each other, or not for long, at least. They were best friends, after all, and that was that.
The boy didn’t really have a name, or if he did he’d forgotten it, and so he was just The Boy, sometimes shortened to T. Boy, although the girl had told him it was impolite to write your name using just a letter (or so she had read once4), and thus, The Boy.
The girl had a name, but because she was a witch she wasn’t supposed to tell anyone what it was, and because she was quite small she usually thought of herself as Little Witch. This was never shortened to anything, nor did she permit anyone to address her using just one of these words; Little by itself seemed just so rude, and Witch (by itself) could be referring to any witch at all. Sometimes The Boy would point out that they didn’t know any other witches, to which Little Witch would usually reply that this wasn’t the point, that it was a matter of distinction and respect, to which The Boy didn’t really have any reply at all.
One day, when The Boy and Little Witch had just finished lunch, they decided to take a walk through the Forgotten Forest and towards the Leaning Cliffs.
“We can say hello to Mr River while we’re there,” Little Witch said, as she rustled around in the bushes. “And maybe even pay a visit to Cliff Face.”
“I can’t be long today,” The Boy replied. “There’s been a lot of wild growth around my house lately, I have to be there to beat it back and protect my gumdrop bushes.”
“Huh. That’s because you don’t keep your section neat,” said Little Witch, as she tossed a handful of drooping yellow flowers out of the bushes and onto the path.
“I don’t think I have a ‘section’,” said The Boy. “Just the clearing around my tree.”
“What’s that, then, if not a section?” Little Witch’s voice came from deep within the bushes now, followed shortly by another handful of flowers. “Do you even know what a section is?”
“Yes,” The Boy said, as he watched yet another handful of flowers land on the path in front of him. “It’s the part of a house that isn’t the house. Outside it. Surrounded by a little white fence.”
“That’s what my section looks like,” said Little Witch, just before she emerged from the bushes, wiping her hands against each other to get the dirt off. “But it’s not what a section is.”
“Oh,” said The Boy, as Little Witch gathered the flowers from the path and put them into her bag, which was floppy and brown. He frowned in thought. “What is a section, then?”
“A section,” said Little Witch, in her favourite tone of voice, a high, superior, I-know-everything kind of tone, “is a small part of something big.”
“Oh,” said The Boy, again.
“And the clearing around your tree is a small part of the forest, and that means it IS a section, and you don’t keep it tidy enough, and that makes it an ‘untidy section’, and I’ve read that wild growth is both produced by and attracted to untidy sections, and THAT, The, is why you have so many problems with wild growth.”
In fact Little Witch was wrong about this. Wild growth was not necessarily produced by untidy sections, nor was it attracted to untidy sections. The fact was that nobody really knew what caused it, only that sometimes there appeared great shambling masses of branches and leaves, sometimes in the vague shape of a person, sometimes in the vague shape of an animal, sometimes in the vague shape of nothing much at all, but ALWAYS a nuisance, and always necessary to beat away with a stick or broom or similar handy thwacking tool. The Boy always used his sword to beat them away with, because it was very good indeed at thwacking things with.
“I’ll have to try and keep it tidier,” he said, as Little Witch did up the last buckle on her bag. “Thank you for the advice.”
“Well,” said Little Witch, “what are best friends for?”
The Boy considered this seriously as they walked along the winding forest path.
“Walking along paths with?” he suggested.
“Well, YES, obviously that’s one thing best friends are for, but really I meant it as a kind of rhetorical question–”
“What does ‘rhetorical question’ mean, again?”
“It means,” said Little Witch, once more adopting her favourite tone, “a question to which an answer is not expected.”
“Oh,” said The Boy. “I thought it was something like that.”
Little Witch stopped to pick up a curly stone, holding it up for The Boy to see. “Look!” she said. “One of Justin’s Rocks! I thought I’d collected all of them from this part of the forest.”
“Maybe a bird dropped it,” The Boy suggested, as Little Witch put it safely away inside her bag.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Little Witch, as they began walking again. “What kind of bird would go around dropping Justin’s Rocks?”
The Boy considered this for a moment, in case it was some kind of trick question.
“Possibly a Red Crested Justin’s Rocks Dropper?” he tried.
Little Witch waved her hand at The Boy dismissively as they walked along. “That’s just what they’re called, they don’t actually go around dropping Justin’s Rocks. The very idea! Really now, if you read more proper books and less of your silly adventure stories then maybe you’d know this kind of thing.”
“Probably I would,” The Boy said. He looked up at the path ahead. “There’s my fork. What will you do, while I go home and beat away wild growth?”
“Probably I’ll visit Cliff Face,” said Little Witch. “I have a very important question for him. I’ve been thinking of it for some time.”
The Boy nodded. “Will we meet tomorrow?”
“Of course,” said Little Witch. “I’m going to bake pies tonight, so I’ll bring one for our lunch. What kind of pie would you like?”
The Boy considered this question very seriously.
“Would starberry be a possibility?” he asked.
“Possibly.”
“If starberry were a possibility, then I think I’d like a starberry pie,” said The Boy.
“I’ll see what I can do,” said Little Witch. She waved as The Boy went down the path leading to his house. “See you tomorrow!”
The Boy waved back, and the two best friends left each other for the day.
* * *
Cliff Face was old, or so he assumed. In honesty he couldn’t remember much past a decade or so, and even that was fuzzy, but upon consideration (and he had an awful lot of time in which to consider things) ‘old’ seemed more appropriate than ‘young’, and so he’d gone with that. Further consideration led Mr Face (he considered the ‘Mr’ to be fitting considering his age) to the conclusion that ‘old’ did not necessarily mean ‘dull’, just as ‘young’ did not necessarily mean ‘exciting’. And so, in the end, it didn’t really matter so much whether he was young or old, except in a funny sort of way it did, and so, ‘old’.
Cliff Face lived near So Long Beach–overlooking it, in fact. He had a wonderful view of the sunrise every morning and an even more wonderful view of the sunset every night.5 If he looked to his right he could see the Fancy Plains, where Little Witch lived in her mushroom house, and if he looked to his left he could see Forgotten Forest, where The Boy lived in his tree house, and if he looked up he could see the sky and the birds, and if he looked down he could see the ground and other birds (ones that couldn’t, or wouldn’t, for whatever reason, fly). He could also see, just below him, the little cleared area that The Boy had made (with Little Witch’s direction); it had a large, wide, smooth tree stump in it, which served as a perfectly good table, and two comfortable wooden logs beside that, which served as not-quite-perfectly-good-but-fairly-close-to-that seats.
All in all, Cliff Face considered, he couldn’t ask for a more peaceful and contented existence. Or, rather (because Mr Face liked to consider all considerations), he COULD, but doing so would seem ungrateful somehow, and undignified, especially for a geological feature of his (assumed) age.
“Helloooo!” came the cheery voice of Little Witch, as she came up the path towards him.
“Hello-o-o,” Cliff Face replied, a grating noise sounding out over the little clearing as he smiled. “Where is T?”
“The,” Little Witch corrected, as she sat down on one of the not-quite-perfect-as-a-seat wooden logs. “He’s in his section, beating back wild growth.”
“Ah,” said Cliff Face, sagely.
“That’s all right, though, because I have an important question for you today,” said Little Witch. “And if The was here I’m sure he’d interrupt.”
“I rather enjoy The’s interruptions,” Cliff Face said, thoughtfully.
“So do I, but this is a VERY important question.”
“Ah,” said Cliff Face. “Well, then. I must prepare myself to hear it VERY carefully.”
Little Witch waited patiently as Cliff Face rearranged his granite features, this accompanied by much grinding and grating and gravelling.
“Very well,” said Cliff Face, his expression now serious and thoughtful. “I believe I am ready to hear your very important question.”
“Good,” said Little Witch, who was beginning to get just a little impatient. “What I wanted to ask was this: were you ALWAYS a cliff?”
Cliff Face gave this question careful consideration before replying:
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I can’t remember being anything else, but then again I can’t remember a lot of things. What I can’t remember is almost certainly more than I can remember, but then one can never be quite sure about these matters. What I mean is that what one can’t remember could, in fact, be a lot less–or a lot more!–than what one can remember–”
“Because,” Little Witch interrupted, having patiently waited the six seconds that the Petite Book Of Proper Behaviour had advised was the appropriate and polite length of time to wait before interrupting someone who was boring you, “I was thinking lately that you may have been transmogrified.”
“Transmogrified,” Cliff Face repeated, rolling the word around in his large, stony mouth. “What a wonderful word.”
“Do you know what it means?” Little Witch asked.
“I think that I may have known what it means once,” said Cliff Face. “But upon consideration I find that I have forgotten.”
“It means to be changed in some very significant way,” Little Witch explained. “For example, if I were to turn that kiki bird over there into a frog, I could be said to be transmogrifying it.”
“Ah,” said Cliff Face. “I thought it might be something like that.”
“Of course, I wouldn’t actually transmogrify a kiki bird,” said Little Witch. “That was just an example.”
“Do you know,” said Cliff Face, “that I’m very happy to hear that? In my considered opinion, kiki birds should remain kiki birds, and frogs–to state it clearly–should remain frogs. The world is complicated enough as it is, without things being what they aren’t.”
“Yes, well, anyway,” said Little Witch, “do you think that some kind of transmogrification might have happened to you, to turn you into a cliff?”
Cliff Face gave this matter due consideration.
“It might have,” he said, after a considerable amount of time, just as Little Witch was beginning to get fidgety from waiting. “But then, it might not have. As I was about to say before you politely interrupted me earlier in this conversation, I have given the matter not inconsiderable consideration. Was I always here? If not, how did I get here? Was it some punishment? Or curse? Or boon? Or reward? Was I something else, before being a cliff? If so, what? Was I a man, or a beast, or a butterfly, or a trombone?”
“Why would you think that you were a trombone?” Little Witch asked.
“Sometimes I dream of being in a brass band,” Cliff Face explained.
“Oh,” said Little Witch.
“In any case, after giving the matter due consideration, I came to the conclusion that it doesn’t really matter if I used to be something else, or how I came to be here. The simple fact of the matter is that I AM here, and that I can watch the sunrise every morning and the sunset every night, and I can see your house if I look to the right and The’s house if I look to the left, and the birds if I look up, and the other birds if I look down. I have this nice little table and slightly less nice little log seats, for you and The to sit on when you come and visit me, and when you’re not here the kiki birds sometimes have little parties upon them, which I also enjoy. How I came to be in such a privileged position seems almost beside the point; be grateful for what you’ve got, is the conclusion I came to.”
“Hm,” said Little Witch.
“Speaking of questions,” said Cliff Face, “I wanted to ask you about your hat.”
“What about my hat?” Little Witch replied, reaching up to touch it. She was currently wearing her best most favourite hat, which was tall and pointy and very, very purple, and which had a black band around its base, and at the front of that a metal buckle that The Boy often said looked extraneous, although Little Witch knew that he only said that to show off that he knew what ‘extraneous’ meant.
“Well,” said Cliff Face, “lately I’ve noticed that the Magnetic Winds which blow in from the ocean are getting stronger, and I’ve also noticed that your hat has an extraneous metal buckle on the front of it–”
“It’s not extraneous,” said Little Witch. “It’s a feature.”
“Oh,” said Cliff Face. “Well. In any case, the buckle is metal, and I worried that the Magnetic Winds might carry your hat away. And so, what I wanted to ask you about your hat is … is …”
There was a grating noise as Cliff Face frowned, then another grating noise as the frown turned into an expression perhaps best summed up with the acronym V.P.A.R.E.W.I.W.Y.W.G.T.S.6
“Ah, yes,” Cliff Face said, as Little Witch looked up at him patiently. “What I wanted to ask is this: are you fond of your hat?”
“Yes,” Little Witch replied, without needing to consider her answer at all. “This is my best most favourite hat, if the Magnetic Winds stole it I’d be very cross indeed.”
“Ah,” said Cliff Face. “Yes. I thought that might be the case. Well, then. I shall give you some advice.”
“Hold onto my hat?”
“Hold onto your–ah! Six steps ahead of me, as usual!”
“Thank you anyway,” said Little Witch. “I hadn’t noticed the winds getting stronger but I’ll be extra careful to hold onto my hat anyway.”
“Good, good. Are you going now?”
“Yes, I have to go gather starberries.”
“Ah. Of course.”
“Goodbye, Cliff Face. I’ll probably come and see you tomorrow, or the day after if not then.”
“Goodbye, Little Witch. I’ll look forward to seeing you again tomorrow, or if not then the day after.”
* * *
So Long Beach stretched further than the eye could see, impossibly straight in either direction, as if it made up one side of some improbable square. It wasn’t particularly wide–if you wanted to run from the forest at its landside edge to the shallows of the ocean it wouldn’t take you more than half a minute to do so–but nevertheless it held a sense of place, a sense of weight, a sense that this was a beach not to be taken lightly. This was, perhaps, partly due to the Authoritarian Crabs, which scuttled busily here and there in their pairs or their dozens, whistling their authoritative whistles and clicking their authoritative claws as they zig-zagged up and down the length of the beach. The crabs were mostly blue, though some were white, and all of them had beady little eyes on the end of long stalks, which cast a disapproving glare upon any who dared venture onto the dark sands of the beach.
One such person was The Boy, who had returned home to find his clearing oddly empty of wild growth. After some thought he had decided that there was no sense in wasting an afternoon, and he had put on his trusty helmet, which was made from an old metal sieve, and he had rummaged through his second basement until he’d found his bucket and his spade, both of which were dark red, and then he’d walked down the short path that led to the beach.
“Hello, crabs,” he said, and they clicked their claws at him in response, perhaps angry at the intrusion. Even so, they parted to give him space, and The Boy sat on the beach, and he started making a castle.
After some time, he looked up.
“Hello,” he said. There was a funny little bearded man standing on the beach, a short distance away, a smile on his face and a battered hat on his head.
“Hello!” said the funny little bearded man. “That’s a fine castle you’re building there.”
“Thank you,” said The Boy. “My name’s The, what’s yours?”
“Oh, I’m nobody special,” said the funny little bearded man. “A lot of people don’t believe me when I tell them that, but it’s true, it’s entirely true. Do you know, there are thirty-six other funny little bearded men just like me? All over the world! All of them with a battered little hat and a silly little smile, and a rugged little pack and a friendly little mouse.”
“Hi!” said the friendly little mouse.
“Hello,” said The Boy. “How are you?”
“I’m a mouse!”
“Don’t talk to him, mice are terrible conversationalists,” said the funny little bearded man, as he pushed the mouse back down into his pocket. “Especially unspecial mice like this one.”
“Unspecial?” said The Boy.
“Unspecial,” confirmed the funny little bearded man. “Just like me. I couldn’t possibly be special, there are thirty-six other funny little bearded men just like me running around. If I went away, and one of the others came back, you’d never know it wasn’t me.”
The Boy considered this for a moment.
“Do you think that I might be unspecial too?” he asked. “I used to have a proper name, but I forgot it. That’s why now I call myself The Boy.”
“Aha, now, that’s a good question, but I think I know the answer,” said the funny little bearded man. “Because you call yourself ‘The’ Boy, correct?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“You see? ‘The’ Boy, not ‘A’ Boy. No, no, no, you’re not unspecial. Not in the least.”
“Oh, I see,” said The Boy. “That’s good to know. Maybe that’s why Little Witch doesn’t like to just be called ‘Witch’.”
“Who’s Little Witch?” asked the funny little bearded man.
“She’s just my best friend,” said The Boy. “Did you just arrive here?”
“Yes, I did! I blew in with the Magnetic Winds.” The funny little bearded man fished around in a pocket and brought out a twisted bent little fork. “I used my lucky fork.”
“Where did you come from?” The Boy asked, without much hope. The funny little bearded man started to answer, then he frowned, then he frowned a bit more, then he opened his mouth, then he closed it again, then he did a bit more frowning, and then finally he answered:
“I can’t remember! Isn’t that funny? I just came from somewhere, but I can’t for the life of me remember where it was!”
“Don’t worry about it,” said The Boy. “Nobody ever remembers. But I always ask anyway. Just in case.”
“Do you live near here?”
“Yes, in that forest over there. It’s called the Forgotten Forest.”
“Why is it called that?”
The Boy thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I don’t remember.”
“Oh. It looks more like a wood to me.”
“I think so too, but it’s definitely called the Forgotten Forest and not the Forgotten Wood. I asked Little Witch about it once and she said that the terms are interchangeable, so I suppose it doesn’t matter much, except she also said that it’s important to call things by their proper name.”
“Interchangeable! Like me and the thirty-six other funny little bearded men!”
“I suppose so. Are you on a quest to find them?” The Boy asked.
“No, no, no, I’m just wandering around, looking for some kind of purpose. I don’t suppose you have any?”
“Purposes?”
“Yes.”
“There were some swimming around here a few days ago, but I don’t know where they are now.”
The funny little bearded man thought about this for a moment.
“Are you sure you’re not thinking of porpoises?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I probably am,” said The Boy. “Porpoises. Like dolphins, except not so easily confused. I don’t know where you might find a purpose, but most people who come here travel towards the centre of the island.”
“The centre, you say?” said the funny little bearded man. He looked around, then pointed towards a little track between two trees. “This way?”
“Yes. If you follow that track through the Forgotten Forest you’ll come to the Leaning Cliffs, and past those the Very Convenient Path starts. Most people follow that.”
“Most people, eh? I suppose I will too, then. Thank you for your help, The!”
“You’re welcome,” said The Boy. The funny little bearded man saluted him, then turned and walked towards the track, and The Boy returned to building his castle.
* * *
There were trees on the Plateau Of The Long Silence, but few of them, and those thin and leafless. When the wind blew, which it did from time to time, it carried with it the scent of the distant Autumn Mountains; smoke, and scarlet leaves, and old books. If you stood very still upon the plateau, and forgot the sound of your own breathing and of your heart beating and of your hair and fingernails growing, you could hear a soft noise, gentle and detached, regular like clockwork, the steady tick-tick-tick of an empty space slowly being filled by silence.
This was where starberries grew, or, to be more precise, it was one place where starberries grew, in little clusters that huddled together for warmth, mostly along the Starberry Path, which was a narrow little road made up of dusty-brown hexagonal tiles, each of them with a worn star-like symbol upon its surface. Crabapples also grew here, on tiny little crab-sized trees, and as Little Witch walked along the Starberry Path she saw a pair of Authoritarian Crabs in the distance, gathering apples in tiny little crab-sized apple baskets.
“Hm,” she said, not for any particular reason, just because she liked to say ‘hm’ sometimes. She had a pretty little red and white umbrella balanced on her shoulder7, and she was wearing her special black berry-gathering gumboots. Little Witch was also carrying a small basket, into which the occasional ripe starberry leapt.
“That’s a good trick,” came a voice from Little Witch’s left. She turned to see a fox, which was wearing a Laughing Mask. “Are you a witch?”
“Yes, I am,” said Little Witch. “Are you a fox?”
“That depends,” said the fox, “on what you mean by ‘fox’.”
Little Witch rolled her eyes. Foxes were always like this, tricky and vague and impossible to pin down, and ones that wore Laughing Masks were particularly bad. They could be dangerous too; foxes were, after all, wild animals. She walked on, towards a likely-looking patch of scrubby brown grass. The fox followed her, slinking and slipping around her shadow, scurrying up trees to peer down at her, and sprinting down holes to pop up again in unexpected places. Little Witch ignored this; she thought it better not to encourage show-offs.
“What are you doing on the Plateau Of The Long Silence?” the fox asked, after popping up behind a turtle-shaped rock Little Witch had just looked at.
“I’m gathering starberries,” Little Witch replied. “Why do you think I’ve got my black berry-gathering gumboots on?”
“Blackberry-gathering?” said the fox. “But you just said you were gathering starberries! Blackberries don’t even grow around here!”
Little Witch didn’t reply to this, just walked on as the fox laughed.
“Are you using magic to make those starberries leap into your basket?” the fox asked, after slinking out of a hole shaped like a crescent moon just ahead of where Little Witch was walking.
“Yes, I am,” said Little Witch.
“Why are you doing that?”
“Because I like walking and carrying a basket, but I don’t like bending over and pushing leaves aside and checking which berries are ripe,” said Little Witch. “That’s what magic is for; taking care of the things you don’t enjoy doing.”
“Is it?” asked the fox, as it padded past Little Witch to trot lightly along in front of her.
“Yes, it is,” said Little Witch. “What’s the point of being a witch if I have to do things I don’t want to do?”
“Don’t ask me,” said the fox, as it slunk back past Little Witch, just the very tip of its bushy tail brushing against her leg. “I’m just a fox.”
Little Witch clucked her tongue as she passed a row of starberry bushes, and a line of them leapt neatly into her basket one by one.
“It looks like fun,” said the fox, from where it sat on the thin branch of a thin tree, looking down as Little Witch passed. “What makes them leap like that?”
“Persuasion,” said Little Witch. “I just tell the starberries that they’d much rather be in my basket than on their bushes. Only the ripe ones, of course.”
“Of course,” said the fox, as it spiralled down the tree to scamper along beside Little Witch as she continued on down the path. “How many berries do you need?”
“More than I have now,” said Little Witch.
“Oh,” said the fox, in a bored sort of way. “How interesting.”
Little Witch walked on, and the fox followed alongside, and the wind blew silently across the plateau.
“Don’t you want to know what I’m doing here?” the fox asked, as it tripped lightly across a pattern of low rocks, short and short and long and short, then long and long and long, then long again and short and short, and finishing on long. “You MUST be curious.”
“Why would I be curious?” Little Witch asked, as she lowered her basket for a snatch of starberries to leap into. The fox laughed.
“Because I’m a fox! Don’t you know that foxes are carnivorous? There isn’t anything for me to eat here, I don’t eat starberries and I certainly don’t eat crabapples, and Authoritarian Crabs are far too despotic for my digestion.” The fox grinned under its cheery Laughing Mask, showing its sharp, white teeth. “And even though you are a very little witch, I think that you are probably too big for me to eat.”
“I think that I probably am, too,” said Little Witch. The fox was closer now, stalking along behind her, its head close to the ground.
“But I always find ‘probably’ interesting,” the fox said. “Because it means that something might not be true, and at the same time it means that it very well might be true, too.”
“That sounds like fox-sense to me,” said Little Witch. She was walking a little faster than she had been before, but so too was the fox. “Because ‘probably’ actually means that something is more likely to be true than it is to be false.”
“Oh, I see,” said the fox, in the kind of tone that suggested that of course it already knew this. “Well then, perhaps I should say that you are possibly too big for me to eat.”
“Perhaps you should,” said Little Witch. “Accuracy is important, after all.”
“I agree,” said the fox. It was very close to Little Witch now, its nose almost touching against her legs as she walked. “Do you know what kind of fox I am?”
“The very annoying and persistent kind?” Little Witch suggested.
“No,” said the fox. It licked its chops. “I’m the kind of fox that will try anything once.”
Little Witch stopped and turned to look back at the fox, which sat neatly in the middle of the path, its front paws tucked tidily together, its bushy tail flicking softly, its eyes gleaming behind its mask.
“Really,” Little Witch said. “Because I was just thinking that you’re probably the kind of fox that isn’t too big for ME to eat.”
“Pardon?” said the fox. “Did I hear you correctly? Did you just say that you might eat me?”
“Not exactly,” said Little Witch. The fox’s tail twitched.
“Then I don’t understand,” it said.
“It’s quite simple,” said Little Witch, and she smiled, showing her flat, white teeth. “You might be carnivorous, and only eat other animals, but I am omnivorous, which means that I … eat … ANYTHING.”
“Oh,” said the fox. Its tail twitched again. “I don’t think I’d taste very nice. Carnivores usually don’t.”
“I’m the sort of person who’ll try anything once,” said Little Witch, as she turned and started walking up the path again, a few nervous starberries leaping into her basket as she went.
“Are you?”
“Yes,” said Little Witch, her tone quite airy. “I certainly am.”
The fox slunk along behind her for a while. Its Laughing Mask didn’t look quite so cheery now.
“Are you sure you’re omnivorous?” it said. “I heard that lots of witches are herbivorous.”
“Did you?” said Little Witch. Her basket was almost full now. “I can only speak for myself, but I’m certainly not herbivorous.”
“You do seem to be very definite about that,” the fox said. It sounded quite defeated now. “So you eat anything?”
“Anything,” Little Witch said.
“Anything which includes foxes?” the fox inquired, innocently.
“Anything which especially includes foxes,” Little Witch replied, not innocently at all.
“Oh,” said the fox. “I see.”
After that Little Witch walked on in silence for a few minutes. When she looked back, there was no sign of the fox at all.
“Good riddance,” she muttered, and, with her basket full, she went home to start baking.
1Which was really more of a peninsula.
2Which was really more of a wood.
3Which actually were plains, in the sense that they were an open, mostly level expanse of land, and not at all in the sense that they were a kind of knitting stitch. As the girl would put it, precision is often important.
4The book in which the girl had read this was called the Petite Book Of Proper Behaviour, a slim volume of advice for the Modern Young Lady about How To Behave in Polite Society. The girl didn’t actually know if she lived in Polite Society or not, and didn’t like to ask, as she wasn’t sure whether or not this would be considered Proper Behaviour (the book itself, regretfully, had nothing to say on the subject). Still, she rather took the book’s advice to heart; after all, whether she lived in Polite Society or not she was certainly a Modern Young Lady, of that there was no doubt in her mind whatsoever.
5That it might be odd that the sun rose from and set to the same horizon had never occurred to Cliff Face, even with all his considerable considering.
6Very Pleased At Remembering Exactly What It Was You Were Going To Say.
7She didn’t need an umbrella, the sky was a little cloudy but it almost certainly wasn’t going to rain, it was just that from time to time Little Witch liked walking with an umbrella, especially if it was a pretty little red and white one.
