Witches: Wicked, Wild & Wonderful (60 page)

At last he knows what happened to the little, starving, naked thing in the forest, where it went. It crawled into his catskin, while he was asleep, and then it climbed right inside him, his Small skin, and now it is huddled in his chest, still cold and sad and hungry. It is eating him from the inside, and getting bigger, and one day there will be no Small left at all, only that nameless, hungry child, wearing a Small skin.

Small moans in his sleep.

There are ants in The Witch’s Revenge’s skin, leaking out of her seams, and they march down into the sheets and pinch at him, down under his arms, and between his legs where his fur is growing in, and it hurts, it aches and aches. He dreams that The Witch’s Revenge wakes now, and comes and licks him all over, until the pain melts. The pane of glass melts. The ants march away again on their long, greased thread.

“What do you want?” says The Witch’s Revenge.

Small is no longer dreaming. He says, “I want my mother!”

Light from the moon comes down through the window over their bed. The Witch’s Revenge is very beautiful—she looks like a Queen, like a knife, like a burning house, a cat—in the moonlight. Her fur shines. Her whiskers stand out like pulled stitches, wax and thread. The Witch’s Revenge says, “Your mother is dead.”

“Take off your skin,” Small says. He’s crying and The Witch’s Revenge licks his tears away. Small’s skin pricks all over, and down under the house, something small wails and wails. “Give me back my mother,” he says.

“Oh, my darling,” says his mother, the witch, The Witch’s Revenge, “I can’t do that. I’m full of ants. Take off my skin, and all the ants will spill out, and there will be nothing left of me.”

Small says, “Why have you left me all alone?”

His mother the witch says, “I’ve never left you alone, not even for a minute. I sewed up my death in a catskin so I could stay with you.”

“Take it off! Let me see you!” Small says. He pulls at the sheet on the bed, as if it were his mother’s catskin.

The Witch’s Revenge shakes her head. She trembles and beats her tail back and forth. She says, “How can you ask me for such a thing, and how can I say no to you? Do you know what you’re asking me for? Tomorrow night. Ask me again, tomorrow night.”

And Small has to be satisfied with that. All night long, Small combs his mother’s fur. His fingers are looking for the seams in her catskin. When The Witch’s Revenge yawns, he peers inside her mouth, hoping to catch a glimpse of his mother’s face. He can feel himself becoming smaller and smaller. In the morning he will be so small that when he tries to put his catskin on, he can barely do up the buttons. He’ll be so small, so sharp, you might mistake him for an ant, and when The Witch’s Revenge yawns, he’ll creep inside her mouth, he’ll go down into her belly, he’ll go find his mother. If he can, he’ll help his mother cut her catskin open so that she can get out again and come and live in the world with him, and if she won’t come out, then he won’t, either. He’ll live there, the way that sailors learn to live, inside the belly of fish who have eaten them, and keep house for his mother inside the house of her skin.

This is the end of the story. The Princess Margaret grows up to kill witches and cats. If she doesn’t, then someone else will have to do it. There is no such thing as witches, and there is no such thing as cats, either, only people dressed up in catskin suits. They have their reasons, and who is to say that they might not live that way, happily ever after, until the ants have carried away all of the time that there is, to build something new and better out of it?

About the Authors

Elizabeth Bear
was born on the same day as Frodo and Bilbo Baggins, but in a different year. She is the Hugo and Sturgeon Award-winning author of over a dozen novels and nearly a hundred short stories. Her hobbies include rock climbing and playing passably bad guitar. She lives in Southern New England with a giant ridiculous dog and a cat who is an internet celebrity. Her most recent novel is
Range of Ghosts,
from Tor.

Leah Bobet
drinks tea, plants gardens in alleyways, and wears feathers in her hair. Her short fiction has appeared in venues including
On Spec,
Realms of Fantasy,
and several year’s best anthologies, and her first novel,
Above,
will be published by Arthur A. Levine Books in April 2012. Find her at www.leahbobet.com.

Neil Gaiman
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of novels
Neverwhere,
Stardust,
American Gods,
Coraline,
Anansi Boys,
The Graveyard Book,
and (with Terry Pratchett)
Good Omens
; the Sandman series of graphic novels; and the story collections
Smoke and Mirrors,
Fragile Things,
and
M Is for Magic.
He has won numerous literary accolades including the Hugo, the Nebula, the World Fantasy, and the Stoker Awards, as well as the Newbery medal.

Theodora Goss
was born in Hungary and spent her childhood in various European countries before her family moved to the United States. Her publications include the short story collection
In the Forest of Forgetting
;
Interfictions,
a short story anthology co-edited with Delia Sherman; V
oices from Fairyland,
a poetry anthology with critical essays and a selection of her own poems; and, most recently,
The Thorn and the Blossom: A Two-Sided Love Story.
She has been a finalist for the Nebula, Locus, Crawford, and Mythopoeic Awards, as well as on the Tiptree Award Honor List, and has won the World Fantasy and Rhysling Awards.

Four-time Bram Stoker Award-winner
Nancy Holder
has published seventy-five books and more than two hundred short stories and essays. She has written or co-written dozens of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Smallville, Saving Grace, and Angel projects. Novels from her series, Wicked, appeared on the
New York Times
bestseller list. Her two new dark young adult dark fantasy series (with Debbie Viguié) are Crusade and Wolf Springs Chronicles. She teaches in the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing Program, offered through the University of Southern Maine. She lives in San Diego with her daughter, Belle, and their growing assortment of pets. Visit her at nancyholder.com.

Ellen Klages
is the author of two acclaimed YA novels:
The Green Glass Sea,
which won the Scott O’Dell Award, the New Mexico Book Award, and the Lopez Award; and
White Sands, Red Menace,
which won the California and New Mexico Book Awards. Her short stories have been have been translated into Czech, French, German, Hungarian, Japanese, and Swedish and have been nominated for the Nebula Award, the Hugo, World Fantasy, and Campbell awards. Her story, “Basement Magic,” won a Nebula in 2005. She lives in San Francisco, in a small house full of strange and wondrous things. Her website is www.ellenklages.com.

Mercedes Lackey
has written over one hundred books in a career that has spanned two decades—and she hasn’t slowed down yet. In her “spare” time, the bestselling author is also a professional lyricist and a licensed wild bird rehabilitator. Lackey lives in Oklahoma with her husband and frequent collaborator, artist Larry Dixon, and their flock of parrots. Her website is www.mercedeslackey.com.

Ursula K. Le Guin
has received five Hugo Awards, six Nebula Awards, nineteen Locus Awards (more than any other author), the Gandalf Grand Master Award, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America Grand Master Award, and the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award. Her novel
The Farthest Shore
won the National Book Award for Children’s Books. Le Guin was named a Library of Congress Living Legend in the “Writers and Artists” category for her significant contributions to America’s cultural heritage and the PEN/Malamud Award for “excellence in a body of short fiction.” She is also the recipient of the Association for Library Service for Children’s May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award and the Margaret Edwards Award. She was honored by The Washington Center for the Book for her distinguished body of work with the Maxine Cushing Gray Fellowship for Writers in 2006.

Margo Lanagan
’s latest novel is
The Brides of Rollrock Island.
She is a four-time World Fantasy Award winner, and her work has also been nominated for Hugo, Nebula, International Horror Guild, Bram Stoker, and Theodore Sturgeon awards, and twice been placed on the James Tiptree Jr. Award honor list. She attended the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop in 1999, and has taught at Clarion South three times and also at Clarion West. Margo lives in Sydney, Australia.

Tanith Lee
was born in 1947, in London, England. She worked at various jobs until in 1974-75 DAW Books began to publish her sf and fantasy, beginning with
The Birthgrave.
Since then she has published over ninety books and over three hundred short stories, written for TV and BBC Radio. Her latest novels are available from the Immanion Press and reprints—such as Flat Earth sequence and The Birthgrave Trilogy via Norilana Books. Much of her work will soon be available in ebook form via Orion, and other houses. She lives on the Sussex Weald with her husband writer/artist/photographer/model maker John Kaiine.

Madeleine L’Engle
(1918-2007) is best known for her Newbery Medal-winning novel
A Wrinkle in Time,
and its sequels
A Wind in the Door,
A Swiftly Tilting Planet,
Many Waters,
and
An Acceptable Time.
In addition to the numerous awards, medals, and prizes won by individual books, L’Engle’s honors include being named an Associate Dame of Justice in the Venerable Order of Saint John, the USM Medallion from The University of Southern Mississippi, the Smith College Award “for service to community or college which exemplifies the purposes of liberal arts education,” the Sophia Award for distinction in her field, the Regina Medal, the ALAN Award—presented by the National Council of Teachers of English—for outstanding contribution to adolescent literature, and the Kerlan Award. She also received over a dozen honorary degrees naming her not only as a Doctor of Humane Letters, but a Doctor of Literature and a Doctor of Sacred Theology. She was recognized with a World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievement and received the National Humanities Medal.

Kelly Link
is the author of three collections of short stories,
Stranger Things Happen,
Magic for Beginners,
and
Pretty Monsters.
Her short stories have won three Nebulas, a Hugo, and a World Fantasy Award. She was born in Miami, Florida, and once won a free trip around the world by answering the question “Why do you want to go around the world?” (”Because you can’t go through it.”) Link and her family live in Northampton, Massachusetts, where she and her husband, Gavin J. Grant, run Small Beer Press, and play ping-pong. In 1996 they started the occasional zine
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet.

Silvia Moreno-Garcia
grew up in Mexico and now makes Canada her home. Her work has appeared in
Evolve 2,
The Book of Cthulhu,
and many other places. She’s even won and been nominated for a couple of literary awards. She owns and operates the horror micro-press Innsmouth Free Press. She is currently working on a novel about magic, music, and Mexico City. You can find her at silviamoreno-garcia.com or on Twitter @silviamg.

Andre Alice Norton,
née Alice Mary Norton (1912-2005) is often called the Grande Dame of Science Fiction and Fantasy. The first woman to receive the Gandalf Grand Master Award from the World Science Fiction Society, she was also named as a Grand Master by the Science Fiction Writers Association. SFWA created the Andre Norton Award, to be given each year for an outstanding work of fantasy or science fiction for young adults beginning in 2006. She wrote novels for over seventy years and her three hundred or so published titles have had a profound influence on at least four generations of science fiction and fantasy readers and writers.

Richard Parks
has been writing and publishing sf/f longer than he cares to remember . . . or probably can remember. His work has appeared in (among many others)
Asimov’s,
Realms of Fantasy,
Lady Churchill’s Rosebud Wristlet,
and several year’s bests. His second novel,
To Break the Demon Gate,
is due out in late 2012 or early 2013 from PS Publishing. He blogs at “Den of Ego and Iniquity Annex #3”—also known as www.richard-parks.com.

T.A. Pratt
has written seven novels (and a few stories) about ass-kicking sorcerer Marla Mason, beginning with
Blood Engines.
The most recent book,
Grim Tides,
is being serialized for free at MarlaMason.net in the first half of 2012. He lives in Berkeley, CA. “Ill Met in Ulthar” owes a debt of inspiration to the works of Fritz Leiber, H.P. Lovecraft, and Peter Phillips.

Linda Robertson
is the author of five books about Persephone Alcmedi;
Vicious Circle
was the first,
Wicked Circle
is the most recent; a sixth will be published in late 2012. She is also the mother of four awesome boys, owns four guitars, and has one goofy dog. Once upon a time, she was lead guitarist in a heavy metal cover band. She has worked various other jobs over the years, but writing has always been her passion. Her website is www.authorlindarobertson.com and she blogs at www.word-whores.blogspot.com.

Delia Sherman
writes short stories and novels for both adults and younger readers. Her short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies and magazines, most recently in the YA anthology
Steampunk!
and Ellen Datlow’s
Naked City.
Her adult novels are
Through a Brazen Mirror,
The Porcelain Dove,
and
The Fall of the Kings
(with Ellen Kushner). Her middle-grade novels,
Changeling
and
The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen
are set in the magical world of New York Between. Her newest novel,
The Freedom Maze,
is a time-travel historical about antebellum Louisiana. When she’s not writing, she’s teaching, editing, knitting, and cooking. She lives in New York City with partner Ellen Kushner and a whole lot of books