Him

Oh, I hated him. His grey face all full of whiskers and stinking of lichens and tree sap. Always collecting in my collecting spots. His crooked little walk, and his raspy boot steps, always tracking mud in the taverns and leaving behind little crumbled bits of mushrooms on the stools, and they would get hot after he left, and glow, hours after, sometimes, and burn, right down into the wood of the stool, or the floor where they had been brushed by someone else's buttocks.

Filthy man. He stank of sour berries and weird herbs. Sometime he would follow me. I always knew. I swear, somewhere, I know I knew. Skulking around, picking all the feverfew once I had walked on, so I returned to nothing. His stupid mouth, filled with ugly words, words he threw like stones. They were always stupid, simple words that he changed. Then they didn't sound right anymore, and they wriggled right into your skin, and they just kind of wormed around in there, until they made you sick. 

Spells, he called them. Spells alright. I had spells after I met him. I'll give him Spells. 

And He's still out there, I know because he sends all his horrible beastly creatures to look in my windows at night, and they frighten all my bats. The beasties, the ugly little owls. Sure, he had ideas. We both had ideas back then. Just turn the roots, turn them over and over, and turn them in your mind, into something, into something else. Like a pair of hands, held in a circle of bright lamplight. Turn your fingers into rabbit ears, turn your hands into a buck in the winter, then make the buck come running. Sure he thought of that. Sure, he had ideas.

I knew he did. I know he wanted my broomstick. I knew it then, and kept it hidden. He didn't think of that, the dirty man, he wanted it badly. 

He called me witch. It was his word. His spell. 

Which are you!  He said Which!!  and he changed it in his mouth, his twisted mouth all flanked in whiskers Witch!  he said, and he made the word a whip, and it twisted around me and it made me twisted. I wasn't like this before. I hated him before, though, I did. I hated him, I swear. 

And he wanted her. And she couldn't do anything. All her herbs did nothing. Not like mine. But he didn't call her witch. I hated him, sure I did. Even when I begged him, came to his door in the evening, with the sun at my back, illuminating him. I wanted him, I couldn't help that, he wore on me and I needed him, his hands, but he took them from me. 

He gave me my name. He took his hands, and the woman from my heart, and left behind a witch. Stupid man. Wizard. I got him back. Wizard  I said. And he twisted too.