The Odd One

The old bat laughed wickedly, “That is not right! Do it again!”

Allen remounted the old bicycle and pedaled fast down the grassy hillside in the country. Lightning struck the kite’s tail, and electricity ran down the line to the back of his bicycle’s seat, briefly shocking him, as it jumped to the other end of the line and made its way to the old generator in the witch’s cottage. Lights in the witch’s house and television came on. “Why don’t you just use your magic to make things work?” the apprentice yelled. He did not know if she had heard him, as she did not answer him back.

The old witch with the black hat hit him on the shoulder, “Success!” and smiled, her best happy smile, even though part of her front teeth were missing.

“You could have used your wand!” Allen cried.

“More fun this way!” She grinned at him and ran down the hill.

Allen did not understand his mentor. She was a peculiar witch. The dean of the University of Magic told Allen on the phone that his teacher was a highly gifted professor. The dean asked him to be patient while learning from her. She was highly recommended by other schools that were well known in the magical world, but Allen had his doubts. Since Allen had first arrived at his assigned living quarters, a lonely stable, the witch told him to sleep on an old cot, with a blanket or two to keep himself warm. His bathroom was a crude shower/bathroom set up in another stall of the stable to clean himself and get ready for each day. Back in the room where his cot was, an old dresser was set into a corner. He was almost afraid to put his clothes in it from his suitcase, until the old witch explained, she had cast a spell on it, to keep all the rats out. Allen could not help but wonder what he had gotten himself into. He said to himself, I read one too many books on magic and it is not as glamorous as I thought. As the witch opened the door to her little cottage, she yelled back at her apprentice, “Get some sleep, I will see you in the morning!”

Allen walked to the stable. He pulled off his boots and hung his rain jacket on a hook, which was sticking out of the wall near the dresser. He went to the cot and laid down. “This a miserable way to treat me!” Allen thought, “This place is nothing like what I imagined.” He fell asleep as he heard the old witch laughing at a voice, which belonged to someone on a television set.

The next morning, a stick rudely woke the young apprentice by whacking him across the head three times. Who was on the other end of that stick? The witch of course. She smiled at him like a bright eyed and bushy tailed dog or squirrel. It did not matter which one you might ask was she, as either one would have been rabid and a little crazed in Allen’s mind. “Why are you hitting me on the head?” Allen moaned at his mentor. “Didn’t I live up to your expectations yesterday?”

“Today’s a new day!” said the old woman, “There are new lessons to learn!”

“Oh, like how to perhaps feed the animals and perhaps milk the cow?” Allen laughed at her.

“Why you are a clever young man. You have me pegged,” said the witch that had dressed in a very colorful outfit this morning. She styled an old black dress covered by a giant poncho with different colored squares on it with daisies in each square. Her booties were black, but with sparkles of silver glitter splashed all over them. “I suggest my young apprentice after you finish feeding the animals in the other part of the stable, milk the cow. Please bring the milk in the bucket to my cottage.”

“Well now, you really are a witch.” Allen retorted. “You know I did not sign up to learn how to do ordinary chores. I am here to learn real magic.” He frowned at her. He wondered if he should go to complain to the dean about her, but then thought better. It would not look good to show such weakness so early in his studies.

One of the strains of hair on his mentor’s head turned flaming red. She smiled at him but gave no other sign of contempt for her new student. “When you are with your chores, I will see you at my cottage. We will have your next lesson at my table.”

“Okay, thought Allen. He watched her back as she walked away to her cottage of comfort and security.

He rose from the uncomfortable cot and cleaned himself up and then set to taking care of the animals. He gave them food from the feed bags hanging on the wall near their stalls. He found the hose and turned it on. He put water in their troughs. He found a small wooden chair to sit on as he milked the cow. Pulling on her udders, the milk squirted into the metal bucket he had found, filling a little past halfway to the top. As Allen finished, he left the cow in her stall happily grazing on the straw on the floor of her stall and went to his room with the milk and put on his jacket. He carried the milk to the cottage slowly so as not to spill it. - He did not know any tricks to make it float there.

Allen could hear whispers inside the cottage, but when the old witch answered the door, he could not see anyone else there.

“Come in young man,” the old witch gracefully said. “Please set the milk on the kitchen counter here and then please sit down.” Allen placed the metal bucket on the counter, and as he did so he noticed the sun, up the hill from her cottage. It was bright and welcoming hanging over the lonely stall that he slept in last night. It was pleasant to look at. He sat down in the chair at the breakfast table. He stared up at the witch. She was not smiling.

“Now, I will make us eggs, bacon, and hash browns to eat. Orange juice will be good with this. Please wait while I get them ready.” The witch said. As she cooked, one of the strains on her head turned a bright yellow. Allen thought to himself, she must be happy. Indeed, his assessment was correct, soon the old woman was humming and cooking up a storm. He still thought that she could have done all the chores with one simple spell, but what did he know?

The smell in the air was delightful. As the old lady sat all the food and drink on the table, she gracefully took her chair. Allen was about to reach for the food and gobble it down, but his mentor said, “Aren’t we forgetting something?” Allen raised his eyebrow to her. “We must first thank the Creator for all this food.” Allen was surprised to see her bow her head and quietly say,” Thank you.” Suddenly she opened her eyes, and said, “That’s it!” and cried, “Dig in!” She really was odd, but he was beginning to like her.

After they ate, Allen looked at her and smiled, “Thank you,” but then leaned over and said, “When do I learn how to cast spells with a wand? When do I learn how to use a cauldron? When do I learn how to ride on a broom?”

The old witch looked her apprentice in the eye. “We use magic sparingly. We use it when it is necessary. There is magic in the ordinary. Life is magic.”

Allen looked at his mentor. He had expected magic to be glamorous, loud, and bigger than life. He wondered why she cautioned him against using it all the time, but then she spoke again.

“Magic takes energy from you and energies around you. It drains you. You must learn to use it at the right time.”

“How will I know?” Allen said.

“I will teach you,” she grinned. “Would you be so kind, and fetch my mail from the box outside my door?” She waited until the young apprentice brought in her mail. As he handed it to her, she pointed for him to take a seat on her couch. She laughed as she looked at the letters in her hand, but then frowned as she saw her couch was about to eat her young apprentice’s arm. The look of alarm on his face, his eyes bulging, and his cheeks had grown bright red, and sweat was rolling down his forehead. The old witch’s eyes grew dark, her eyebrows lower, she yelled, “No Morris! “A small bolt of lightning flew out of the end of her wand, and the couch released its grip on Allen’s arm and Allen flew out of his seat.

“What the! You did not tell me your couch was alive!”

“Ah, the next lesson of the day, my young friend… Expect the Unexpected! Oh, and protect yourself if necessary!”

“Well yes, I can see that now. I never thought your couch might want to eat me.” Allen looked at it in horror.

“Oh, yes, sometimes, Morris gets hungry too. I forgot to feed him this morning. I am sorry.” The old witch grabbed a loaf of bread and took off the plastic sack from it and sat the entire loaf on what Allen thought were mere cushions on a couch. He looked in horror, as the couch cushions crunched together, and moved downward, and a tongue came out of where a back normally would lay on, and it swiped the entire loaf into the creases, and Allen heard it swallow and say, “Yum.”

“I am glad not to be Morris’s breakfast this morning,” Allen sighed.

“Oh, yes. “I am glad you aren’t either,” his mentor laughed, “I would have no one to teach. – Speaking of which, let us go to the garden!”

The two walked outside to a lovely garden, a maze. “Now, let us see. I planned the corn this way, the witch talked to herself as she walked to the right. She stopped where Allen saw the first of fifty stalks growing up. She looked inside, and he heard her grumble a bit. “You’re not quite ready are you.” She moved on to the next stalk, and then kept checking them, and not finding what she was looking for, or so he thought. “These young ones need more time, let’s go see how the carrots are doing.” The old witch walked north and to her left. She bent down at the dead end. She pulled at the top of something green. Allen heard a scream, “Let me go!” from a carrot as big as his fist.

“My, you are a nice one. You have put on weight have you not? You will be quite nice in my stew tonight.” The witch said happily. The carrot was going to argue back, but then the witch slapped him, and it knocked him out. She looked over at Allen, “This carrot will be out for hours. He will not know what hit him when I throw him into the cauldron tonight. He will think it is just a warm bath, and then he will meet his doom.”

Allen wondered at his mentor. She seemed harmless before, but now he could see that looks were not everything and that she might make a scary enemy. He felt bad for the carrot, but then he realized people must eat, so you know… You got to eat. It is the call of the wild, he thought.

Allen and his mentor checked the rest of the garden. To his delight, all the vegetables and potatoes grown there were alive as he was, but not the same age of course. He had expected a normal garden without any personality in it, but the witch’s garden had hundreds, if not thousands of personalities in it. They were not all nice. The potatoes were grumpy and if you left them in the ground too long, they would rot. Once rotten, as shown to him by his mentor, the potatoes became dangerous. They would look for ways to kill other potatoes around them, because they no longer sought the light. They only carved the dark side. Allen wondered at the purpose of the witch’s garden, but would latter learn the things grown there, were not just merely to eat, but used for a higher purpose.

After roaming the garden for a while, the witch grew tired. She led Allen out of the maze. They were no longer near the cottage or the stable. They had traveled at least a mile or two. They looked down the hill at a village. “Where are we?” Allen asked.

His mentor sat down on a log. “We are above the university.”

“That doesn’t look like a university to me,” Allen let his inside voice slip out his mouth.

The witch looked over at her apprentice, “What did we learn earlier?”

Allen quietly replied, “Looks can be deceiving…”

“Well done, young one… That village is full of university students dressed in plain clothes, so they do not stand out to the rest of the non-magical world. They are learning lessons as you are, but different according to their wants and the talents they are meant to possess. They will learn and adapt and become who they are meant to become or shrink and become less.”

Allen swallowed and hoped his future was as bright as the sun he saw shining out the witch’s cottage that morning.

The witch arose and headed back towards the maze.

“We aren’t going to visit the village today?” Allen asked.

“No,” said the witch. She walked past the maze over the hill and down to her house. The walk was somehow shorter than Allen remembered.

“What? How is it that the walk back to where we are living is shorter then when we were inside the maze?”

His mentor laughed, “The garden maze is magical is it not?”

Allen sighed, and answered his own question, “Yes.” It was self-explanatory. He laughed at himself.

-Back at the bottom of the hill, the witch said, “Well, I am tired. I am going to rest for a while. I need a nap. You may spend the rest of the day reading this book. Tonight, at dinner, I will ask you about what you learned from it.” She went inside her cottage.

Luckily, Allen liked to read, so he sat down and leaned against an old oak tree. He read about good men and women in the world. He read that over a thousand of them sadly had met bitter ends. He had also read that over fifty thousand people had accomplished good things in life. He had learned that the university’s purpose was in teaching, those that wanted to learn it, that magic was a way of life. To appreciate the simple things, to have gratitude for them, and to defend that quiet way of living. No one should destroy others. It was not okay to just outright hurt them, it was only when they attacked you physically that you had the right to retaliate. – Even then, if you could divert the enemy to make them learn their lesson and become better people, then all the better. -Allen wondered if magic could ever be completely peaceful.

Just then, Allen heard an explosion. He looked down the hill at the cottage in the dark as it burned. He ran towards his master. He watched as her couch made it out of the house and ran on his four wooden legs into the forest behind the burning inferno. “I have failed,” he thought as his mentor was nowhere in sight.

Allen heard a quiet voice, as a gentle breeze blew by him, “It is not so. You have passed the test. You have learned life is not always as it appears, it is hard, it is sometimes heartless, but there is beauty in the world. You have learned it is magical. It is adventurous. It is compassionate. Love is a verb, and as you live your life, defend it, breathe it in.”

“But what is my purpose?” Allen whispered back. He felt alone.

“Ah, that is an easy answer,” His mentor reappeared, but now in her ghostly form, but also as a beautiful sparkly young lady dressed as a princess with a crown on her head, “You are now a mentor. Go and teach your apprentice when they appear to you. When it is time, you will join me, but for now you cannot. The princess in pale pink disappeared.

Allen walked back to his stable and fell sleep. The next morning, the new mentor began building a new cottage and finished it a month later. As Allen waited on his new apprentice to arrive, he read his old teacher’s books, that he found in a shed, that miraculously had not burned down with the old witch’s house. The books contained information on all the creature comforts of magic like flying a broom, and making spells, and potions, but of course he would mostly only use them for good. He knew he might just make one cupcake appear just once when no one was looking, so he could eat it… Just maybe.