A Nameless Witch

'What sort of perils?'

'Oh, the usual sort, I expect,' I replied.

The grin faded from his bill. 'You don't have to talk in circles with me. I'm your familiar.'

'Yes, but it's good to keep in practice. Now, go clean yourself up.'

Newt was far too excited to get upset. He dashed into the tent to wash the gobling slime from his feathers. He stuck his head outside the flap. 'Are you certain we have to take the White Knight along?'

'Quite certain.'

He was far too zealous to be bothered by this either.

Gwurm was still fussing with his red nose. He'd twist it one way, then another. Nothing looked right, especially since I sensed a streak of vanity in the troll. Men might find it strange that such an unsightly creature cared so much about one misshapen nose. Though Gwurm was the only troll I'd known, I felt positive he was quite handsome by trollish standards. Even if I was wrong, one didn't have to be beautiful to be vain.

I held out a hand. 'Can I see it a moment?'

He plucked off the offensive crescent and gave it to me. I clasped it in both hands, pressed my palms together, and rolled them in four small circles. Then I held up a new nose. It was his exact shade of gray and rounded, less hookish.

He twisted it onto his face. 'Eye dinkyu furgud sumdin.'

I took back the nose long enough to poke out two nostrils. He held it between fingers and thumb and studied it with one squinted eye. 'Not bad. Strong without being overbearing. Excellent symmetry. And I think it will add some character to my profile.' He plugged it into place and pretended to gaze thoughtfully in the distance. 'What do you think?'

'Quite handsome,' I replied. 'Perhaps even a touch dis­tinguished.'

'Do you really think so?'

'Certainly.'

I started toward my tent.

'I couldn't help notice you're whole again,' Gwurm said.

I held up a hand that only hours ago was a few threads of bloody flesh clinging to bone. Now there wasn't even a scar. I wiggled the fingers and didn't feel a stitch of pain. My new leg was as strong and reliable as the old. I'd known myself practically immortal, but I'd never been hurt so badly before. I'd hoped the damage would at least last the day.

'I didn't want to make you feel self-conscious,' Gwurm said. 'I just wanted to tell you that when I first saw you dragging yourself across the field, just after you'd defeated the horde, that I thought to myself that you were the most dreadfully appalling sight I had ever laid eyes upon, a corpse mocking death and all the natural world.' He adjusted his nose a little to the left and smiled. 'Just something I thought you'd like to know.'

I kept my back to him to hide the blush upon my cheek. As men and trolls, even witches had their vanity.

14

It had Seen atiring day, and both my familiar and my troll fell asleep soon after dusk. My undead nature denied me sleep once again. Penelope didn't ever sleep, though such things were difficult to discern with a broom. I passed the long night staring into the sky and reading the stars.

A voice interrupted my stargazing sometime in the early morning hours. 'Looking for something?'

I didn't glance down at the gray fox standing by my feet. 'Still alive, I see.'

'Yes. Those goblings were a tremendous disappointment. Although I did enjoy the battle. Very colorful. Very unpre­dictable.'

'You were watching.'

'Curiosity is an affliction I bear proudly as a fox. So you'll understand that I must ask, what do you hope to see up there?'

I stopped gazing long enough to glimpse the fox's grinning face. 'Nothing. And everything. Isn't it enough to just look at the stars?'

'I wouldn't know.' Her tail flicked side to side. 'I've never found them very interesting. But we beasts aren't of the mind to see them as men do. They're too distant. Just something to fill the part of the sky not occupied by the moon.'

'That's how most men perceive them,' I said.

'Well, men aren't as far removed from animals as they might pretend. Their hands are their gifts, not their minds.' She lay in the grass and rolled on her back. 'Tell me, what does a witch see in the sky?'

'Omens.'

She squinted and scanned the heavens from one horizon to the other. 'What does an omen look like?'

'Everything. And nothing.'

The fox chuckled lightly. Whereas Newt found my witchly way with words annoying, she appreciated the twisted and turning phrases. 'Can we beasts see omens?'

'I don't know. If any beast can, I would imagine a clever and curious fox could.'

She rubbed her nose with her forepaws in a show of humility. 'Then I think I'll watch with you.'

The fox joined me in my omen-searching, and being both clever and curious, she soon spotted a sign in the twinkling heavens.

'Is that one?' she asked of a pair of shooting stars.

'Yes. You have a good eye.'

'What's it mean?'

I help up my hand as if to touch the sky. 'It portends the birth of a monster in the southlands, who shall one day threaten a kingdom.'

'My, that is a good one.'

'Very good. You've got a knack.'

She looked a short while before picking out a row of five twinkling stars.

'Ah, another excellent find. Those stars speak of a love that is doomed to be swallowed by the sea.'

'Really?'

I nodded.

Beside being clever and curious, the fox was also skeptical. She asked about a patch of clouds she expected to have no significance. A notion I corrected.

'Somewhere, a curious fox is asking questions.'

She squinted at the moon. 'Is everything an omen?'

'When one knows how to see them, the universe shares its secrets easily. Perhaps too easily. In the hooting of the owls I hear of a fort's soldier suffering a terrible nightmare. In the fluid waves of the grass, I see a termite mound waging war against a neighboring anthill. Those falling leaves, their swirling flights speak of a priest's indigestion and a serving girl's stubbed toe at the same time.'

'Must be terribly distracting.'

'It is. But only at first. Then one learns to ignore the vast, trivial majority. That is the real talent. Not in seeing omens, but in not seeing them.'

'So I gathered. But I must say I am glad to be a fox and not a witch. I wouldn't want to learn something to unlearn it.'

'There's a great deal of unlearning in the witch's trade,' I admitted. 'There is a limit to how many forbidden secrets a mind can safely carry.'

We resumed omen-watching. As I was in an oracle's frame of mind, I still glimpsed the occasional portent. Nothing too important. Just the stomach flu of a king I'd never know whispered by a gossiping breeze and the pure joy of a new mother somewhere to the north shown in dancing shadows. A flight of birds told of a continent that would be sunk by a careless wizard's apprentice. That one could be prevented, but as I didn't see which continent or when, I gave it little thought.

A stag dashed from the wood, chased by a wolf. The wolf caught the stag, sinking her teeth into its flank, but he kicked free. By the time the stunned wolf had regained his senses, the stag had escaped. The disappointed wolf