The witch repeated the gesture with the other two; the Wolf triedto get away but was too slow to be successful. Only Brunie seemed genuinely disinterested with the whole affair, ignoring the chaos and licking his paws. Risa hadn’t even realized that the cat had returned.
“You must be weary from your travels,” the witch observed with a gentle voice. Those silver eyes fixed upon Risa, and her chin tilted a fraction, probing. Whatever she saw in Risa’s face must have been deficient, as she moved along to place a calming hand between the horses’ wild eyes. “Please join me in my humble abode to rest for a moment, and then I can help you find your way out.”
This wasthewitch. The one who had made the Underground Pass. Who might be able to finally break Risa’s spell.
The group trudged after her in a daze. Risa couldn’t tell if they took only a few steps or walked for miles. The witch glowed so brightly that the rest of the tunnel seemed to drown in the light, until finally, she stopped and threw her hands out.
“Welcome to my home.”
The witch dimmed her glow as they stepped into a vast cavern. Torches cast odd shapes across the walls that made little sense to Risa, no matter how many times she blinked away the daze. It took several moments for her to understand, for the pieces of the scene to slide into place.
The mustiness that had first emanated from the Pass when it tumbled open was but a whiff of fresh spring air compared with what wafted from the witch’s home.
The shapes were trash. Heaps of it. The contents of everything in the world were strewn upon the floor, spilling out from the mouth of a smaller cave like the insides of a gutted animal. Different piles were scattered across the area. Broken chairs here, uprooted dead trees there, upside-down cast-iron stoves, tangles of dried kelp,several pieces of winding rope. Wherever she turned, a new pile emerged out of the disarray. A small mountain of shoes—but only the lefts. Ragged bits of cloth. Half of a wrecked pirate ship, the wooden figurehead of a woman’s naked torso intact.
“This is horrifying,” the Wolf’s voice echoed.
Brunie climbed up Risa’s legs and perched around her neck like a furry snake, tail tucked gingerly under her nose.
At the sight of the cat, the witch gave a melodramatic wail. It reverberated amid the trash, echoed against the damp cave walls. She flung herself onto a settee made of what might have been comfortable bits of trash accumulated over the centuries. A large brown canvas cloth was thrown over it in an attempt at home decor.
“I know!” the witch cried, arching backward, a poor, tragic heroine rendered in the flesh. Her anguished sobs tinkled like music. Glittering diamond tears ran down her cheeks. She draped a delicate pale forearm over her eyes. “It’s an awful, horrible mess! I didn’t expect company.” She sat up suddenly, nose and cheeks tinged the delicate pink of dawn. “Tea, anyone?”
The Wolf picked her way through the garbage. Short arms flailing, she hopped from one clear spot to another, boots landing with a softsplatin what Risa hoped was a puddle of stagnant water.
“No, thank you,” the Wolf responded, the only one retaining any form of manners. She teetered near the rotted half of the pirate ship and stared up at the figurehead’s flyaway hair, whipped back by invisible winds. “Would you like some?” she asked Risa.
“Sure,” said Risa, because she didn’t know what else to do.
Tears welled in the witch’s eyes again. “I don’t know where my teakettle is!” she cried, burying her face in the crinkling garbage settee.
Risa did a careful half turn and refused to look down whensomething crunched beneath her foot, the sound like tiny bones being crushed.
Everywhere she looked, there was junk. Collected over centuries, from different parts of the world. She could see no stream that might have brought half a pirate ship to the witch’s shores, nor could she understand where the crumbled remains of a stone tower might have come from. It must have all gotten here through magic, though Risa could not for the life of herfeelany of its heat prickling her skin or making her shiver.
The witch howled again and flopped over onto the other end of the settee.
Brunie’s tail twitched with exasperation, a slow, annoyed growl working in his throat.
“That’s not a problem,” Javi assured the witch. He remained rooted beside Risa. “I, myself, abhor tea.”
After a few more sorrowful sniffles, the witch focused her bleary silver eyes on the cat around Risa’s neck. “I hate cats,” she said, the words firm.
“Me too,” Javi said, though Risa caught his quick guilty glance at Brunie that suggested he did not, in fact, hate cats.
And just like that, the witch’s tantrum was over.
The witch turned to the Wolf. “I love your cloak,” she said, eyeing the swishy gray fabric with an appreciative nod. “Did you put the spell on it yourself?”
The Wolf startled and picked up one end of the cape with two fingers. “It has a spell?”
The witch’s eyes widened. She laughed nervously and began her version of tidying up. “I’m not good at conversation; I don’t get many visitors,” she admitted.
The Wolf shook her head in warning when both Javi and Risa opened their mouths. Risa’s mind was reeling from the leaps between conversation topics.
Not that the witch noticed. She grabbed a knitted blanket—or sweater, who could say—from a crate filled with more deformed knitted monstrosities. “Oh, she loved this one.” She chucked it over her shoulder, and it landed on a pile of unused mousetraps.
“Who?” the Wolf asked, having somehow made her way across several trash piles to a collection of mismatched cabinets standing in the middle of the cavern. All were broken somehow: Some were missing doors, others the glass that kept dust at bay. The Wolf was opening each to investigate the contents, finding mostly stacks of chipped saucers.
