Tasting notes

Issue seven: flash fiction by Cislyn Smith

Have you ever wondered how solitary witches establish their woodland cottages, or learn their trade? Cislyn Smith’s delicious flash fiction offers a story about how one very old and tired witch hands on the recipe for becoming a witch to the next witch. A sweet tale, tangy, that leaves a decidedly peculiar and unsettling taste in the mouth.

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Baba Yaga by Ivan Bilibin (1899)

Ground ginger, sharp and biting

I hope I don’t have to explain to you that sometimes murdering your friends is the right thing to do. You’re a good girl, and you’ll be a better witch, but I worry that you don’t know how to bite back. Consider: you went back to the house of the man who tried to kill you twice, knowing full well what he was trying to do. He was your father, but he was poison: nightshade, or hemlock thriving in the shade. You should know better than to go back for seconds at a feast like that. And yet, I can’t blame you. This is the love you knew, left in the cold again and again. A love that lets go too easily.

Sugar. Not too much, but more than expected

I am your friend, dear Gretel. I hope I don’t have to explain that either. Until you found me, your life was hard. It still is hard, of course. But now the hardness has a different flavor. Even blood and sweat can taste sweet when tempered with magic, with knowledge, with power. You spun candy floss on my spinning wheel, laughing as the colors flowed under your hands. You watched our rock candy creations melt in the rain and smiled, thinking of how you’d harden the coating on the next batch, how you’d make them shine. You collected beetles and spider legs and centipedes and watched with hungry eyes as I turned them into something delicious. Here. I give you everything I can. Take it.

A pinch of ground cloves, bitter and hot on the tongue

I’m not a good friend. There are far better friends to be had. When you build - or bake, or grow, or hatch - your house, you’ll understand that. There is no better friend than a home that loves you. Do not mistake me for a good friend. A good friend would not ask you, even by such a crooked route, to kill her. A good friend would not have screamed at you so often, nor sent her birds to peck at you, nor threatened to eat your brother—even if it was an empty threat. A good friend would not use you in this way.

Flour. More than you think you need, to hold it all together

I have lost the capacity to be a good friend, even to my house, who loves me beyond all reason. The wounds in the walls I have patched poorly with dough. The wind creeps in through the sugar pane windows and the peppermint lintels are cracked and sagging. Still, it sustains me. I make food for you, and take none for myself. I forgo sleep. If I try to leave, the house will not let me step beyond the front door. The house is trying to be a good friend. It will not give up on me. It should, though. It should.

The oven’s flame. Hot enough to make your eyes water

A good friend knows how to be soft, and can figure out when to be. I cannot. I am baked hard by the years—or rather, gone stale beyond saving. What little softness I had I gave long ago to my house. Mercy and kindness are different. Consider that truth when you look to the flames. I don’t want mercy.

Molasses, slow-moving and dark

I hope you have learned how to be angry by now. Savor that. Feel it move inside you, slow, ponderous. Taste it. Let it coat your hands, your tongue, your throat. It’s yours. You earned it. I have earned it, too.

Butter, softened

I am afraid. There, that is the truth. I will knead it into this dough, roll my fear and my heart and my hope flat and disguise it with icing for you to eat. I will give you truth in a cookie and hope you still have a taste for sweets. I have taught you to taste carefully. To lick, and listen, and know what secrets are being delivered. I trust you, even though I am afraid.

Dew collected from thirteen poisonous toadstools under a full moon

I am afraid of your kindness. I fear the mercy that may lurk in you. Maybe you will decide I want this too much, and therefore should not have it. I will make the end easy for you—I promise! But this is the only way for me. The house will not let me end myself and no manner of magic I can cook up can subvert it. I tried for years. Now I work a different kind of magic, one I have never practiced, one nearly lost to me: the art of asking.

One egg, for possibility. Beaten beyond recognition

The forest needs a witch like the sky needs lightning and the night needs wolves. You have learned enough. You studied hard. You tamed that crow when you thought I wasn’t watching. You snuck into my larder late at night to lick the walls, to know my magic inside and out. You will do, and you will do well. But to become a witch you first have to do this thing. This last, difficult, and horrible thing.

Ground cinnamon, enough to dust your palms and sting

Burn the house down afterward, of course. I can’t imagine it would allow anything less. I have faith you can escape the flames, though the scent of burnt sugar will follow you all your days. I know you can run. You made it here, past all the teeth and traps and creatures that waited for you in the dark.

Bake until singed black at the edges

I know you can be brave, Gretel, my friend, my little witch. You will have to be. You will live longer than you like and see wonders beyond telling. You will not take my place. You will take your own, and the only way you can. Let the oven devour me, and go find your own place in the woods to sow the seeds of a home, whatever it will be made of. Let the woods have its witch, let your soft brother go home to your hard parents, and let me rest—finally, finally. Make magic from the ashes and raise a house that will be the right kind of friend to you, all the days of your long life. Let it learn from your life, from your mistakes, from your love and your yearning. And teach it, too, about letting go, so that when the time comes you need not seek your own end in an oven.

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Cislyn Smith likes playing pretend, playing games, and playing with words. She calls Madison, Wisconsin her home. She is occasionally dismayed by the lack of secret passages in her house. Her poems and stories have appeared in Strange horizons, Diabolical plots, and Mermaids monthly. She is the co-editor of Small wonders magazine and wears many hats at The Dream Foundry.