Chapter Text
In the middle of a glade deep within the Dunklewald Forest stood a gingerbread house.
Thick white icing embellished with colorful oversized chocolate button candies festooned the light brown walls. The roof was made from enormous overlapping cookies, attached with frosting. The front door – a carved slab of dark chocolate – opened onto a wraparound porch made from wafers and licorice sticks. The front yard was enclosed in a fence made from peppermint-striped candy cane, and within it lollipop clusters sprang from artfully arranged clusters of gumdrops.
The whole arrangement was cheerful, brightly colored, and tantalizing– a direct contrast to the dark and foreboding woods that surrounded it. In those woods, dark creatures prowled.
In fact at that very moment one of those dark creatures was prowling amidst the brush in the trees surrounding the house. Its eyes seemed to glow in the semi-gloom of the early morning light, as it focused on its prey, its brown fur blending into the shadows to render it otherwise near-invisible.
Suddenly, something enormous descended from the sky into the glade, sending out a massive whooshing wind that made the branches of the trees shake. The nightingale that Fiddlesticks the cat had been preparing to pounce on took flight in a flap of wings.
Fiddlesticks chose to slink nonchalantly back to the gingerbread house as if this was all entirely according to plan.
“Why is a dragon landing in our glade?” Fiddlesticks meowed through the small chocolate flap at the bottom of the front door.
“Must be in response to my advertisement on the frog network,” said the owner of the house, as she emerged from within. She was dressed in proper witch’s robes, but on top of these she was wearing a green-checked apron, on which she now wiped her floury hands. Aside from the robes she did not look much like a witch– her hair was a ginger color just a bit deeper than the walls of her house, her skin was lightly freckled instead of green, and her nose lacked even a single wart. Another cat, white and fluffy, followed her out the door
“Are you Morwen?” the dragon who had just landed in the clearing asked.
Morwen– for that was indeed the witch's name– nodded. She craned her head to look up (and up, and up) into the dragon’s green-gold eyes. It was lucky that Morwen had already become quite practiced at never allowing herself to feel small despite her size, or she would have felt very, very small indeed. The dragon loomed. The dragon towered. The dragon occupied space in a way that made a person very aware there was a dragon, smelling faintly of brimstone, with a very large mouth very full of very sharp teeth, practically on your front doorstep.
On the front doorstep, the white fluffy cat (whose name was Miss Eliza Tudor) raised her hind leg and began licking it, pointedly.
“My name is Kazul,” the dragon said. “You advertised gingerbread house roof tiles available free for whoever would move them?”
“That’s right,” Morwen said. “The house is due a re-roofing and I’m happy to have someone else help with clearing out the old cookie-tiles.”
“Excellent,” Kazul said, smiling. “I am on my way to meet my newest grandchild, who is due to hatch any day now, and your roof looks like the perfect treat to bring for the older siblings.”
“Wonderful!” Morwen said, smiling back, with far fewer teeth. “In that case, let me put the latest batch of cookies into the oven and then I’ll come help direct you what to remove first. There’s a loosening charm to get the frosting softened, but it works best applied in sections.”
They worked the entire morning. They made a good team, smooth and efficient. As they worked they discussed some of the theory of magic for flying spells, interspersed with some stories from Kazul about her grandchildren’s various shenanigans. She gave the impression of a fond but strict grandmother, which Morwen approved of.
By the time they mutually decided they had reached a good stopping point for lunch, most of the roof cookies (each as wide across as Morwen was) were stacked into piles tied neatly with twine so that Kazul could hold them in her claws as she flew.
Morwen brought out a cup of tea for herself and a large bucket of tea for Kazul. She sat, cradling the cup in her hands, careful not to lean against the licorice railings of the porch. Experience had taught her this was an excellent way to get her robes sticky. She sighed.
“If I’d known a witch with a gingerbread house lived here and was willing to share, I’d have come sooner,” Kazul commented. “It’s always a challenge finding dragon-sized desserts worth eating.”
“Well, I’ve only started to be in charge of this one recently,” Morwen admitted.
“Oh?”
“I was here before– I was apprenticing as a witch– but I’ve never really intended to be the candy house sort of witch. It’s just that my mentor, Gertrude Izzlenath, decided she was retiring and that I should take over. Well, more exactly, I woke up one day to discover she’d left a note that she was off to sunny Arbasca and had no intention of returning, good luck!”
She sighed again. “I hadn’t even finished reading the letter when the first batch of children arrived to be dealt with. Gertrude never ate the children– she just had an enormous sweet tooth, that’s how she ended up in this line of witchcraft– but she was a properly fearsome witch, with thick black billowing hair, bushy eyebrows, and a magnificent cackle. She was excellent at scaring the children away with just a few hints about how plump and juicy they looked. Whereas all the children that have come here while I’ve been in charge have ended up treating me like a big sister, and they always refuse to leave, too. I’ve had to come up with increasingly more inventive ways of chasing them out of here before they strip the lollipop garden bare.”
“It is a very nice garden,” Kazul commented politely.
“I know, isn’t it?” Morwen agreed. “It’s my favorite part of the house, I’m very proud of it. The rest of it, though... It is impossible to keep a gingerbread house properly clean. The walls are made of crumbs! And everything is sticky all the time, too. There’s no way to wash a floor properly if the floor itself is made of hard caramel, and don’t get me started on the candy-floss curtains! And then you add cat hair to the mix–!”
She paused, twisting her hands in her lap.
“I’ve been thinking of moving, but it’s not like witch’s houses are easy to find,” she said. “I know I’m lucky to have this one.”
“Hmmm,” Kazul said.
“Anyway,” Morwen said, sipping the last bit of tea in her cup and standing up. “It is what it is. Let’s finish getting the roof off. I don’t suppose you’d be willing to stay around to help with getting the next batch on, as well…?” She added, hopefully.
“It would be my honor,” Kazul said, and she ended up staying for dinner, as well, before finally continuing on her way to her grandchildren laden down not only with the cookies from the roof but with several slabs of chocolate from the garden shed as well.
After Kazul had left, Morwen went to find a talking frog, so she could update the frog network that her advertisement was no longer relevant, before some other dragon or giant or valley ogre swung by to be disappointed they’d missed their chance. It didn’t take very long. The frogs were information brokers first and foremost– they had only added the advertising services more recently– so they often hung around places of potential interest, like witches’ houses, for any gossip they could gather.
The frog she found accepted the large fly Morwen offered and swallowed it with a gulp, and then gave a large, impressive ribbit. A few moments later the ribbit was echoed further along in the forest, and then again more faintly.
“That should do it,” the frog said.
“I don’t have any information to pay with, yet,” Morwen said. “Unless you want news about this season’s crop of chocolate lilies.”
“We have that covered by our network down south,” the frog said. “I’ll keep your credit for the moment. Right now we have a bounty going for any information about disappearances of small animals, so if you hear anything about that, let us know.”
Morwen nodded, and the frog hopped away into the mossy damp. Morwen returned home. It would be her first night in quite a while to sleep in her bed without waking up covered in crumbs from the aging roof tiles, and she was looking forward to it.
She wasn’t expecting another visit from Kazul, but it was a pleasant surprise when she got one anyway, only a week later.
“It’s nice to see you again,” she said. In the background Fiddlesticks was muttering something about having his hunt ruined again but Morwen chose to ignore him.
“Likewise,” the dragon said.
“Give me a moment to put on some tea,” Morwen said, and hurried back into the house. She already had some water boiling, for a recipe she’d been planning to try for skin-smoothing cream. Well, she’d been planning to try a variation of it that might let her polish the floors. But for now it was just plain water and she’d been boiling it in her regular cauldron, not the potion one, so it shouldn’t have magic in it and should be perfectly safe to drink.
Kazul sighed appreciatively when Morwen brought out her bucket.
“You cannot imagine how nice it is to have some nice tea with a sensible person who won’t argue about the most inane, pointless things, all the way to the bitter end,” she said.
“I probably can imagine,” Morwen said. “I do have seven cats.”
“I thought witches usually had one,” Kazul said.
“Well, I’m not a very usual witch,” Morwen said. “And it’s no use asking me how it happened, I didn’t do it. Except for Jasper, who I found as a baby before I was officially a witch, all the rest of them decided to adopt me. And there’s no use asking the cats, either. They’re cats. They did it for cat reasons.”
Murgatroyd came over and rubbed against Morwen’s leg. Morwen scratched him gently behind the ears.
“Anyway, they do bicker incessantly, but I don’t mind so much. And they’re very handy for more complex spells.”
“And they never expect you to chair a committee,” Kazul said.
“Absolutely not,” Morwen agreed. “That would distract too much of my attention from them, which would be unforgivable.”
Kazul gave a chuckle, a little spurt of smoke wisping its way from her nostrils.
“Last time I was here, you mentioned your problems with living in a gingerbread house,” she said. “Are you still feeling annoyed about them?”
Morwen shuddered. “Some kid threw a ball at my windows and the sugar cracked, and then the new panes I ordered weren’t tempered right, and yesterday my cauldron overflowed and melted a giant hole in the back door I still haven’t gotten round to patching, and a gumdrop got stuck to my best set of robes and I haven’t managed to unstick it yet. And I had to fend off a half dozen children…” She gave a shrug, apologetic. “I think you’re choosing the wrong day to ask.”
“Or maybe I’m choosing the right day to ask,” Kazul said. “I had an idea for you.”
“An idea?”
“There’s an unclaimed witch’s house in the Enchanted Forest. Good location, lovely garden, but unfortunately the last serious owner it had decided to install a magical door and got a bit overly ambitious on the space twisting spells. So now it only opens onto the endless void filled with the screams of fathomless abominations, and no witch has been able to hold the place for more than a week.”
“Deadly killer door that has chased off every previous owner, but a great garden… Sounds like an upgrade,” Morwen said. Then she frowned. “Enchanted Forest… I feel like I’ve heard of that.”
“You probably have, it’s both vast and highly magical so it borders on more countries than is strictly feasible via pure geography. It’s also closer to the Caves of Fire and Night than this place is, so if you move I can visit more often.”
“It’s not the kind of place to do witch-burnings or anything like that?” Morwen asked. She was fairly sure Kazul would never suggest such a place to begin with, but at the same time it was always possible it was the kind of thing dragons didn’t think of when choosing a new home.
“The current king is a stick in the mud sort, real stickler for tradition, but he thinks tradition includes a healthy respect for witches. He’s only got the one child, the crown prince. I haven’t met the prince personally, but I’ve heard reports about him and he seems to be fine, maybe more of a rebellious streak than his father.”
“It certainly sounds promising. When should we head over? I can get my broomstick now.”
Kazul gave a soft hmmm. “If you’re visiting the forest for the first time, maybe it’s best I bring you,” she said. “That way I can… introduce you, I guess. The forest can be a bit picky, but I think it will like you. After that it should be fine to go by broomstick, you’ll be able to find it again.”
“Find it again?”
“Well, the borders are a bit magical, if the forest doesn’t let you in it can be impossible to get to.”
“Sounds fascinating,” Morwen said. It sounded like a rich vein of possible magical research, especially the potential for developing a find-me-not spell – she regretted that she hadn’t thought of it earlier for the gingerbread house.
Morwen went to get her broomstick. It only had room for her and at most two cats, so the cats had to negotiate between themselves to decide who was coming. Jasper took a seat on the broom before any other cat had a chance to protest. After some quiet squabbling, Scorn declared that she wanted to see an eldritch abomination house, so she came along as well.
Although Morwen was proud of the flight charms on her broomstick, it was obvious Kazul was deliberately slowing herself so that Morwen could keep pace. Morwen appreciated it. They didn’t talk as they flew– pointless, when the wind would have torn away any words they said– but there was something nice about the companionship of it.
She was able to feel when they entered the Enchanted Forest. There was a weird feeling of resistance, like pushing against a wall of gelatin– and then the feeling dissipated, even though nothing was visibly different. They flew only a few minutes more before Kazul said they were almost there.
They circled slowly down towards the ground, and Morwen saw, gradually growing bigger, her first sight of the house.
It was a lovely grey house, with a wide wooden porch and a red roof that was made from real, actual clay tiles. Surrounding the house was a garden and oh, Morwen could already tell it had the potential to be a truly wonderful garden. It was bordered by a white picket fence that needed a new paint job but looked otherwise sturdy, and it had an enormous apple tree standing on one side of the gate and a blooming lilac bush on the other. As they got closer Morwen could even smell it - it smelled a little bit like earth and a little bit like smoke and absolutely nothing at all like candy or baked goods.
“Oh no,” Morwen thought to herself, staring at it. “I’m in love.”
She tried to get a grip on herself. Eldritch monster magic door, she chanted. But she knew, already, it was hopeless. She needed this house.
Kazul was watching her, and gave a little laugh. “Well, I can see what you’ve decided,” she said.
“Yes,” Morwen breathed out, and had enough awareness left to be embarrassed by the intensity of the longing in her voice.