The Hut

‘You know what? I quit!’

The nurse stormed past me just as I arrived, not even bothering to shut the old wooden door behind her, almost knocking the heavy dish out of my hands.

Oh dear. What’s she done now?

I tried to stop her, calling after her before she reached the gate, ‘But Mable, you only started Monday!’

The nurse turned on her heels, advancing back down the path towards me. ‘That woman is out of her mind!’ she cried, waving her arms, ‘She’s unhinged, she’s impossible, she’s just plain crazy!’

‘My grandma?’

‘Yes. Your grandma!’

I took a proper look at her. Mable was clammy and red cheeked, her coat buttoned up wrong, her hair flyaway, and then, peeking out from frazzled strands of her grey hair, I spotted the problem. Two problems actually. Mable had a set of fox ears.

I sighed. ‘Alright Mable. Why don’t you take the rest of the day off and have a little break? You’ll feel better.’

Mable snatched the hood of her travelling coat over her head and pulled it down tightly, her cheeks going a deeper red. ‘If you think I’m coming back here you’re as crazy as she is.’

She turned and stomped down the path.

I groaned and closed my eyes. That was number six, we were running out of nurses.

Grandma hadn’t always been like this. Sure, she had always been a little eccentric, a little different, but she had always kept to herself. Flying under the radar, she called it, keeping her head down. Only when she was pushed would she rear up and dish out just desserts. Well, I guess she was feeling pushed.

Getting old didn’t suit my Grandma, she fought it every step of the way, trying to live louder to drown out the sound of old age, moving faster to outrun it, becoming more prickly to burst it. But, as she does tend to lament sometimes in moments of quiet reflection, ‘You can’t outrun time, dear.’

It is catching her, I see it, we all do. And all I can do is stand at her doorstep with a dish of soup fighting with nurses.

Inside, everything was just as it should be. Potion books lining the walls, jars of goodness knows what stacked neatly in the kitchen, stuffed woodland animals, mounds of papers covered in illegible scribbles and diagrams, a fire crackling in the grate. The sound of the trees, the smell of the earth. Just your average witches hut in the middle of the forest.

Grandma was sitting up in bed, propped up on lumpy pillows, an ancient, tatty quilt draped over her legs. She looked small, skinny, pale. She looked like a Grandma, and it made me sad. I sat next to her on the bed.

‘Grandma, what happened?’ I asked.

‘Eh? What? When?’

‘Mable.’

‘Oh, she left,’ said Grandma.

‘I know that, Grandma, you gave her ears. She was very angry.’

‘Only small ones. She wouldn’t listen, I was trying to help.’

‘They were fury.’

‘Yes, dear, foxes ears, foxes have excellent hearing. And the fur is to keep them warm, it’s cold out. I’m not completely heartless you know.’

I did see her logic, which was worrying. But I was still left in the position of finding a replacement as I ladled out soup into her wooden bowl and brought it to her.

‘I’ll have to see if there’s anyone else that can start tomorrow,’ I said. ‘It’s short notice and we’ll be lucky if we’re not blacklisted already, but I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Nonsense, nonsense, I’m perfectly fine here by myself, have been for years. I don’t need another nurse.’

‘Grandma you need help, you can’t do these things by yourself anymore.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you aren’t as strong as you used to be, you’re not well. And you are forgetting things, you know that. You were stuck as a hedgehog for three days last week because you forgot the words.’

‘Yes well. I was meant to be a squirrel, I know the words to get back from a squirrel. I never learnt the hedgehog ones by heart, why would I want to be a hedgehog on purpose? What good is a hedgehog?’

‘What good is a squirrel?’ I asked.

She pouted and folded her arms, but I nudged the soup toward her and she relented. She always loved my soup. She took deep slurps of it, stopping to chew the soft carrots and potatoes, licking her wrinkled lips.

‘Those nurses are no good,’ said Grandma. ‘They don’t know how anything works here. Why don’t you stay, dear?’ she asked.

I blinked. ‘What, here? In this hut?’

‘What’s wrong with my hut?’

There was a crash from the kitchen where a shelf lost a bracket and swung sideways, its contents sliding off and thunking to the ground. Grandma paused with a spoon halfway to her mouth.

‘That always does that,’ she said. ‘It’s the cold air.’

‘You can turn yourself into a squirrel but you can’t fix a shelf, or that leak in your roof.’

‘Hedgehog,’ grandma corrected glumly. ‘And I need that leak.’

Sure enough, when I glanced over to the hearth where for the past two winters there had been a steady drip-drip of rainwater collecting on the ground, a pot plant had been placed under it. It was thriving.

To her merit, Grandma had always got on with life like this. The witch status wasn’t for everyone. Yes, it came with a lot of positives, a lot of secrets, some magic, but it also came with an awful stigma. You were different, outcast. Never really one of the villagers. Grandma had managed to live alongside it, she simply was what she was, and she wouldn’t try and change it for anyone. So, when she had a shelf prone to falling she used it just for books, nothing breakable, and when she had a leak she would bring in a thirsty plant. So why did she fight her ailing health so much? Why did she resist help?

‘Why are you being like this?’ I asked.

‘Because I’m not ready.,’ Grandma said. ‘I can’t go until I have someone to pass all this on to.’

She looked at me sternly. I knew she meant me.

‘The village needs a spellbinder,’ she continued, ‘every village needs one, and for this village, I’m it. I can’t go until I find some to take over.’

This woman was difficult and stubborn and at times just plain vindictive. But she was also intelligent and fiercely protective, and I loved her something chronic.

‘And what if I don’t want you to go?’

She smiled and laid a bony hand on mine. ‘Come now, we all have to go, we can’t all hang around here forever taking up space.’

I can’t imagine a life without my Grandma in it and I don’t dare try. My mind tries to yank me back to my childhood, all the times she’s been there when I needed somebody, all the things she’s said that have stuck with me, all the ways she’s shaped me. But I don’t let it, I dig my heels in. I don’t want to think about that, not now. Right now I want to watch her enjoy her soup, breathe in her pine tree smell.

She sees me watching her.

‘I could teach you,’ she said, ‘you know I could. You have it in your blood already. You just need to know the words, the motions, a couple of potion lessons. All this could be yours.’

I look around the hut.

‘Would I… would I have to take all of it?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I mean living alone in the forest, Grandma, that’s not really me. And what about Richard?’

‘What about him?’

I stared nervously at the big brass cage in the corner, unsettlingly never closed, where a huge, black, shiny-feathered bird watched me. It turned its head to the side to focus one eye more clearly on me, reminding me of the length and pointiness of its beak as it did so.

I gulped. ‘He’s always staring.’

‘Yes, well he likes you.’

She could teach me everything, I know that. I have a feeling she has been prepping me for this for a very long time. Do I want that? Do I want the responsibility, the gravity of being relied on? Being a little outcast? Being revered but also held at a distance? The truth is, I think I would love to have Grandma’s knowledge. To keep a piece of her that was only mine. But why does it have to come in a draughty, leaky hut in the middle of the forest?

‘Times have changed grandma,’ I said. ‘I could live in the village. They don’t burn witches at the stake anymore.’

Grandma pulled a face. ‘Of course you could, you could live anywhere you like. But why would you choose the village over this paradise?’

Richard ruffled his feathers ominously. Grandma drained the rest of her soup and then shrugged. ‘Of course, that decision would be yours. You live where you like.’

I took her bowl and sat with it in my lap, thinking. All the knowledge? It could come at a cost.

‘And what if I agreed to take over?’ I asked, ‘Then what? You’d just leave?’

I felt her cool hand squeeze mine. ‘My dear, I am leaving anyway.’

I laid my head in her lap, and she stroked my hair. We stayed like this for a while, listening to the sounds of the forest, the whispers and the groans, to to-ing and fro-ing, the coming and going. Life continued.

‘If I promise to take over,’ I said, ‘let you teach me everything, will you promise to stay as long as you can?’

‘I promise,’ said Grandma.

‘Then it’s a deal.’

We shake on it, her eyes water, shining with pride. Then I feel a familiar tingling sensation in my hairline. I reach up just in time to feel something shrinking, retracting back into my scalp.

‘Grandma!’

‘What.’

‘Did you give me antlers in case I said no?’

‘Only small ones.’