by Ted Chiang
When Small and The Witch’s Revenge came at last to the house of the witch Lack, The Witch’s Revenge said to Small, “Look at this monstrosity! I’ve produced finer turds and buried them under leaves. And the smell, like an open sewer! How can his neighbors stand the stink?”
Male witches have no wombs, and must come by their houses in other ways, or else buy them from female witches. But Small thought it was a very fine house. There was a prince or a princess at each window staring down at him, as he sat on his haunches in the driveway, beside The Witch’s Revenge. He said nothing, but he missed his brothers and sisters.
“Come along,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “We’ll go a little ways off and wait for the witch Lack to come home.”
Small followed The Witch’s Revenge back into the forest, and in a while, two of the witch Lack’s children came out of the house, carrying baskets made of gold. They went into the forest as well and began to pick blackberries.
The Witch’s Revenge and Small sat in the briar and watched.
There was a wind in the briar. Small was thinking of his brothers and sisters. He thought of the taste of blackberries, the feel of them in his mouth, which was not at all like the taste of fat.
The Witch’s Revenge nestled against the small of Small’s back. She was licking down a lump of knotted fur at the base of his spine. The princesses were singing.
Small decided that he would live in the briar with The Witch’s Revenge. They would live on berries and spy on the children who came to pick them, and The Witch’s Revenge would change her name. The word Mother was in his mouth, along with the sweet taste of the blackberries.
“Now you must go out,” said The Witch’s Revenge, “and be kittenish. Be playful. Chase your tail. Be shy, but don’t be too shy. Don’t talk too much. Let them pet you. Don’t bite.”
She pushed at Small’s rump, and Small tumbled out of the briar and sprawled at the feet of the witch Lack’s children.
The Princess Georgia said, “Look! It’s a dear little cat!”
Her sister Margaret said doubtfully, “But it has five tails. I’ve never seen a cat that needed so many tails. And its skin is done up with buttons and it’s almost as large as you are.”
Small, however, began to caper and prance. He swung his tails back and forth so that the bells rang out and then he pretended to be alarmed by this. First he ran away from his tails and then he chased his tails. The two princesses put down their baskets, half-full of blackberries, and spoke to him, calling him a silly puss.
At first he wouldn’t go near them. But, slowly, he pretended to be won over. He allowed himself to be petted and fed blackberries. He chased a hair ribbon and he stretched out to let them admire the buttons up and down his belly. Princess Margaret’s fingers tugged at his skin; then she slid one hand in between the loose catskin and Small’s boy skin. He batted her hand away with a paw, and Margaret’s sister Georgia said knowingly that cats didn’t like to be petted on their bellies.
They were all good friends by the time The Witch’s Revenge came out of the briar, standing on her hind legs and singing:
I have no children
and my children have no children
and their children
have no children
and their children
have no whiskers
and no tails
At this sight, the Princesses Margaret and Georgia began to laugh and point. They had never heard a cat sing, or seen a cat walk on its hind legs. Small lashed his five tails furiously, and all the fur of the catskin stood up on his arched back, and they laughed at that too.
When they came back from the forest, with their baskets piled with berries, Small was stalking close at their heels, and The Witch’s Revenge came walking just behind. But she left the bag of gold hidden in the briar.
That night, when the witch Lack came home, his hands were full of gifts for his children. One of his sons ran to meet him at the door and said, “Come and see what followed Margaret and Georgia home from the forest! Can we keep them?”
And the table had not been set for dinner, and the children of the witch Lack had not sat down to do their homework, and in the witch Lack’s throne room, there was a cat with five tails, spinning in circles, while a second cat sat impudently upon his throne, and sang:
Yes!
your father’s house
is the shiniest
brownest largest
the most expensive
the sweetest-smelling
house
that has ever
come out of
anyone’s
ass!
The witch Lack’s children began to laugh at this, until they saw the witch, their father, standing there. Then they fell silent. Small stopped spinning.
“You!” said the witch Lack.
“Me!” said The Witch’s Revenge, and sprang from the throne. Before anyone knew what she was about, her jaws were fastened about the witch Lack’s neck, and then she ripped out his throat. Lack opened his mouth to speak and his blood fell out, making The Witch’s Revenge’s fur more red now than white. The witch Lack fell down dead, and red ants went marching out of the hole in his neck and the hole of his mouth, and they held pieces of Time in their jaws as tightly as The Witch’s Revenge had held Lack’s throat in hers. But she let Lack go and left him lying in his blood on the floor, and she snatched up the ants and ate them, quickly, as if she had been hungry for a very long time.
While this was happening, the witch Lack’s children stood and watched and did nothing. Small sat on the floor, his tails curled about his paws. Children, all of them, they did nothing. They were too surprised. The Witch’s Revenge, her belly full of ants, her mouth stained with blood, stood up and surveyed them.
“Go and fetch me my catskin bag,” she said to Small.
Small found that he could move. Around him, the princes and princesses stayed absolutely still. The Witch’s Revenge was holding them in her gaze.
“I’ll need help,” Small said. “The bag is too heavy for me to carry.”
The Witch’s Revenge yawned. She licked a paw and began to pat at her mouth. Small stood still.
“Very well,” she said. “Take those big strong girls the Princesses Margaret and Georgia with you. They know the way.”
The Princesses Margaret and Georgia, finding that they could move again, began to tremble. They gathered their courage and they went with Small, the two girls holding each other’s hands, out of the throne room, not looking down at the body of their father, the witch Lack, and back into the forest.
Georgia began to weep, but the Princess Margaret said to Small: “Let us go!”
“Where will you go?” said Small. “The world is a dangerous place. There are people in it who mean you no good.” He threw back his hood, and the Princess Georgia began to weep harder.
“Let us go,” said the Princess Margaret. “My parents are the King and Queen of a country not three days’ walk from here. They will be glad to see us again.”
Small said nothing. They came to the briar and he sent the Princess Georgia in to hunt for the catskin bag. She came out scratched and bleeding, the bag in her hand. It had caught on the briars and torn open. Gold coins rolled out, like glossy drops of fat, falling on the ground.
“Your father killed my mother,” said Small.
“And that cat, your mother’s devil, will kill us, or worse,” said Princess Margaret. “Let us go!”
Small lifted the catskin bag. There were no coins in it now. The Princess Georgia was on her hands and knees, scooping up coins and putting them into her pockets.
“Was he a good father?” Small asked.
“He thought he was,” Princess Margaret said. “But I’m not sorry he’s dead. When I grow up, I will be Queen. I’ll make a law to put all the witches in the kingdom to death, and all their cats as well.”
Small became afraid. He took up the catskin bag and ran back to the house of the witch Lack, leaving th
e two princesses in the forest. And whether they made their way home to the Princess Margaret’s parents, or whether they fell into the hands of thieves, or whether they lived in the briar, or whether the Princess Margaret grew up and kept her promise and rid her kingdom of witches and cats, Small never knew, and neither do I, and neither shall you.
When he came back into the witch Lack’s house, The Witch’s Revenge saw at once what had happened. “Never mind,” she said.
There were no children, no princes and princesses, in the throne room. The witch Lack’s body still lay on the floor, but The Witch’s Revenge had skinned it like a coney, and sewn up the skin into a bag. The bag wriggled and jerked, the sides heaving as if the witch Lack were still alive somewhere inside. The Witch’s Revenge held the witchskin bag in one hand, and with the other, she was stuffing a cat into the neck of the skin. The cat wailed as it went into the bag. The bag was full of wailing. But the discarded flesh of the witch Lack lolled, slack.
There was a little pile of gold crowns on the floor beside the flayed corpse, and transparent, papery things that blew about the room on a current of air, surprised looks on the thin, shed faces.
Cats were hiding in the corners of the room, and under the throne. “Go catch them,” said The Witch’s Revenge. “But leave the three prettiest alone.”
“Where are the witch Lack’s children?” Small said.
The Witch’s Revenge nodded around the room. “As you see,” she said. “I’ve slipped off their skins, and they were all cats underneath. They’re cats now, but if we were to wait a year or two, they would shed these skins as well and become something new. Children are always growing.”
Small chased the cats around the room. They were fast, but he was faster. They were nimble, but he was nimbler. He had worn his catsuit longer. He drove the cats down the length of the room, and The Witch’s Revenge caught them and dropped them into her bag. At the end, there were only three cats left in the throne room and they were as pretty a trio of cats as anyone could ask for. All the other cats were inside the bag.
“Well done and quickly done, too,” said The Witch’s Revenge, and she took her needle and stitched shut the neck of the bag. The skin of the witch Lack smiled up at Small, and a cat put its head through Lack’s stained mouth, wailing. But The Witch’s Revenge sewed Lack’s mouth shut too, and the hole on the other end, where a house had come out. She left only his earholes and his eyeholes and his nostrils, which were full of fur, rolled open so that the cats could breathe.
The Witch’s Revenge slung the skin full of cats over her shoulder and stood up.
“Where are you going?” Small said.
“These cats have mothers and fathers,” The Witch’s Revenge said. “They have mothers and fathers who miss them very much.”
She gazed at Small. He decided not to ask again. So he waited in the house with the two princesses and the prince in their new catsuits, while The Witch’s Revenge went down to the river. Or perhaps she took them down to the market and sold them. Or maybe she took each cat home, to its own mother and father, back to the kingdom where it had been born. Maybe she wasn’t so careful to make sure that each child was returned to the right mother and father. After all, she was in a hurry, and cats look very much alike at night.
No one saw where she went—but the market is closer than the palaces of the Kings and Queens whose children had been stolen by the witch Lack, and the river is closer still.
When The Witch’s Revenge came back to Lack’s house, she looked around her. The house was beginning to stink very badly. Even Small could smell it now.
“I suppose the Princess Margaret let you fuck her,” said The Witch’s Revenge, as if she had been thinking about this while she ran her errands. “And that is why you let them go. I don’t mind. She was a pretty puss. I might have let her go myself.”
She looked at Small’s face and saw that he was confused. “Never mind,” she said.
She had a length of string in her paw, and a cork, which she greased with a piece of fat she had cut from the witch Lack. She threaded the cork on the string, calling it a good, quick, little mouse, and greased the string as well, and she fed the wriggling cork to the tabby who had been curled up in Small’s lap. And when she had the cork back again, she greased it again and fed it to the little black cat, and then she fed it to the cat with two white forepaws, so that she had all three cats upon her string.
She sewed up the rip in the catskin bag, and Small put the gold crowns in the bag, and it was nearly as heavy as it had been before. The Witch’s Revenge carried the bag, and Small took the greased string, holding it in his teeth, so the three cats were forced to run along behind him as they left the house of the witch Lack.
Small strikes a match, and he lights the house of the dead witch, Lack, on fire, as they leave. But shit burns slowly, if at all, and that house might be burning still, if someone hasn’t gone and put it out. And maybe, someday, someone will go fishing in the river near that house, and hook their line on a bag full of princes and princesses, wet and sorry and wriggling in their catsuit skins—that’s one way to catch a husband or a wife.
Small and The Witch’s Revenge walked without stopping and the three cats came behind them. They walked until they reached a little village very near where the witch Small’s mother had lived and there they settled down in a room The Witch’s Revenge rented from a butcher. They cut the greased string, and bought a cage and hung it from a hook in the kitchen. They kept the three cats in it, but Small bought collars and leashes, and sometimes he put one of the cats on a leash and took it for a walk around the town.
Sometimes he wore his own catsuit and went out prowling, but The Witch’s Revenge used to scold him if she caught him dressed like that. There are country manners and there are town manners and Small was a boy about town now.
The Witch’s Revenge kept house. She cleaned and she cooked and she made Small’s bed in the morning. Like all of the witch’s cats, she was always busy. She melted down the gold crowns in a stewpot, and minted them into coins.
The Witch’s Revenge wore a silk dress and gloves and a heavy veil, and ran her errands in a fine carriage, Small at her side. She opened an account in a bank, and she enrolled Small in a private academy. She bought a piece of land to build a house on, and she sent Small off to school every morning, no matter how he cried. But at night she took off her clothes and slept on his pillow and he combed her red and white fur.
Sometimes at night she twitched and moaned, and when he asked her what she was dreaming, she said, “There are ants! Can’t you comb them out? Be quick and catch them, if you love me.”
But there were never any ants.
One day when Small came home, the little cat with the white front paws was gone. When he asked The Witch’s Revenge, she said that the little cat had fallen out of the cage and through the open window and into the garden and before The Witch’s Revenge could think what to do, a crow had swooped down and carried the little cat off.
They moved into their new house a few months later, and Small was always very careful when he went in and out the doorway, imagining the little cat, down there in the dark, under the doorstep, under his foot.
Small got bigger. He didn’t make any friends in the village, or at his school, but when you’re big enough, you don’t need friends.
One day while he and The Witch’s Revenge were eating their dinner, there was a knock at the door. When Small opened the door, there stood Flora and Jack. Flora was wearing a drab, thrift-store coat, and Jack looked more than ever like a bundle of sticks.
“Small!” said Flora. “How tall you’ve become!” She burst into tears, and wrung her beautiful hands. Jack said, looking at The Witch’s Revenge, “And who are you?”
The Witch’s Revenge said to Jack, “Who am I? I’m your mother’s cat, and you’re a handful of dry sticks in a suit two sizes too large. But I won’t tell anyone if you won’t tell, either.”
Jack snorted at this, and Flora
stopped crying. She began to look around the house, which was sunny and large and well appointed.
“There’s room enough for both of you,” said The Witch’s Revenge, “if Small doesn’t mind.”
Small thought his heart would burst with happiness to have his family back again. He showed Flora to one bedroom and Jack to another. Then they went downstairs and had a second dinner, and Small and The Witch’s Revenge listened, and the cats in their hanging cage listened, while Flora and Jack recounted their adventures.
A pickpocket had taken Flora’s purse, and they’d sold the witch’s automobile, and lost the money in a game of cards. Flora found her parents, but they were a pair of old scoundrels who had no use for her. (She was too old to sell again. She would have realized what they were up to.) She’d gone to work in a department store, and Jack had sold tickets in a movie theater. They’d quarreled and made up, and then fallen in love with other people, and had many disappointments. At last they had decided to go home to the witch’s house and see if it would do for a squat, or if there was anything left, to carry away and sell.
But the house, of course, had burned down. As they argued about what to do next, Jack had smelled Small, his brother, down in the village. So here they were.
“You’ll live here, with us,” Small said.
Jack and Flora said they could not do that. They had ambitions, they said. They had plans. They would stay for a week, or two weeks, and then they would be off again. The Witch’s Revenge nodded and said that this was sensible.
Every day, Small came home from school and went out again, with Flora, on a bicycle built for two. Or he stayed home and Jack taught him how to hold a coin between two fingers, and how to follow the egg, as it moved from cup to cup. The Witch’s Revenge taught them to play bridge, although Flora and Jack couldn’t be partners. They quarreled with each other as if they were husband and wife.
“What do you want?” Small asked Flora one day. He was leaning against her, wishing he were still a cat, and could sit in her lap. She smelled of secrets. “Why do you have to go away again?”