He had made himself a sort of garment out of the petticoat, wrapping it around his torso and between his legs, but it barely reached the middle of his thighs. The rest of his legs were bare, as well as his feet, and his shoulders and arms poked out above the swathe of fabric. It looked rather like a diaper you would pin on a baby.
His head, perched on top of the whole concoction, looked both embarrassed and disgruntled, and he was altogether about as comfortable as a wet cat.
“What was I supposed to do?” he huffed. “There’s no way not to look ridiculous.”
“I like you looking ridiculous,” I said. “Just don’t bruise your pretty white feet on these pebbles.”
We picked our way down the stony path. Sylvester was green-faced and struggling in the magic-less air, and, for a change, it was I who seemed the stronger of the two of us.
I was enjoying the new lightness of my body and spirit without the weight of the spell, and so I was practically skipping along. I slowed my pace to match his, though, and he leaned on my shoulder when he needed to.
It was odd, touching him without that overwhelming mess of emotions. I didn’t feelnothing. I felt a warmth and some fluttering in my belly, but they were normal feelings that I would expect to have, being so close to someone who looked like him.
He let out a long breath of air—not quite a sigh, but not quite a normal breath either.
“What’s wrong?”
“You will laugh,” he said, “after what happened to my clothes.”
“I won’t,” I said. “Well, I might. But tell me anyway.”
“I was wondering, maybe hoping, even,” he said, “that this place would leech all the magic out of me and perhaps ... return me to my original state.”
I stared at him, but he kept his face turned resolutely ahead.
“Back to being ... human? Fully human?”
“Yes. As I said, it was just a curiosity.”
“A hope.”
“Perhaps.”
“Maybe you—the original you—and the magic are too entwined now,” I mused. “Like the House and the old building beneath it.”
“That seems likely,” he said. “I hoped it were not so. That there was enough left of ... the boy ... to stand when the rest of me fell.”
“Well,” I said, “I can certainly understand that feeling, but I have to say that I would miss the whole Sylvester, even if the part of him that fell away was the magic part.”
I realized to my surprise that this was true—that it had to be true, because I was temporarily released from the spell and therefore speaking truly, from my real self, and not from the ensorcelled version.
Iwouldmiss him if he were gone or changed irreparably. Ilikedhim. That was a revelation and a half, I’ll tell you.
“Thank you,” he said, sounding as startled as I was and about as embarrassed as I was, too. I kept my face set and downward-facing and trudged on ahead of him, stolid old Foss, without turning to look at him again.
I had expected a witch’s cottage, something all points and corners, with birds nesting in the nooks and spiders spinning in the crannies, and possibly even a pair of chicken legs growing out from underneath, but the house at the end of the path was instead a solid, housewifely sort of house. It had a well-swept yard that concealed no eldritch tangles of herbs, but instead a well-ordered vegetable garden and a couple of very attractive, if a little old-fashioned, flower beds.
“Is this it?” asked Sylvester.
“It must be,” I said. “There’s no one else around for miles.”
“I could be better attired,” he grumbled, picking at the threads of my petticoat he wore wrapped around him.
“From the sounds of it, this lady is none too keen on the magic-workers. I doubt she’d like you any better if you were in your fancy clobber.”
“I could at least be wearingtrousers.”
I had to stifle a chuckle. I enjoyed seeing him at a disadvantage.
