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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1458748-Painted-Green
by Shaara
Rated: 13+ · Short Story · Fantasy · #1458748
Her mother kept needling her. A bite and five scratches later . . .
A Writer’s Cramp Story (1,000 words/ 24 hours)

Write a story or a poem about a fanciful hat, an ornery old parrot, and a house that has been painted green...The other details are up to you.



Painted Green



I stuck my favorite hat on its rightful roost, jabbed a pin to anchor it to my curly hair, and tossed on my cape, the red one, of course. Nothing else went so well with my purple and orange velvet headgear.

My broomstick was right where it always was, leaning against the side of the eggplant barrel. I hopped on old “Ben” and grabbed up a vegetable (or fruit if you’re a botanical wizard) and began to nibble as I soared through the wooden frame of the open door.

It was a lovely day. The sun was clouded over. Fog was misty as whale spume. I sped around the old avocado tree, plucked a small olive green fruit and squeezed it open, smearing the oily residue on my eggplant breakfast. The first tasty bite was almost as delicious as my mother’s Blueberry curd on spiderweb muffins.

I held my broom in midair, hovering at standstill, and munched happily for a minute or two. Finally, old Bessy came running out of the barn, where she’d probably been hunting a mouse.

She boogied one of her impatience dances, meowing a couple of quite nasty mouthings at me. Shocked, I almost turned about and sped away, but I knew that would be unwise. I wasn’t the strongest witch in witchdom without my familiar. Bessy’s contact always spiced up my spells so usefully.

“All right. Jump,” I told her, lowering my broom a foot or so.

Bessy might be old as the cobwebs in my sister’s haunted shack, but she was a good jumper. She haunched and launched and landed neatly in back of me.

She gave me a whiskered lick of greeting. Unfortunately, her breath told me she’d recently dined.

“Bessy,” I groaned as I dropped the remainder of my eggplant, my stomach no longer welcoming food.

We ascended toward the east. Bessy held on with one paw and began grooming the back of my neck.

“Stop it,” I snapped at her, but as usual she ignored me. Bessy had her own opinions about proper grooming.

I was heading that morning to my mother’s house. She’d been sending nightly visions of a black-haired, blue-eyed rather handsome fellow who kept haunting the lower corner of my bed, staring at me all night long. I knew this was only another case of my mother’s needling. She’d been trying to set me up with the young warlock who lived next door.

Grief city. What did I want with a warlock? My life was already frizzled with frog droppings.

Bessy meowed her agreement.

It was smooth flying that day. The air currents whispered and hooted a cackle of jokes. But when I arrived, I almost toppled off with shock. Mom had been playing around with her spells again. Her house was suddenly wearing the iridescent green of a lowland sand lizard.

“Mom,” I called out. “We have got to talk.”

“Squawk,” came a voice from inside. It didn’t sound in the least like my mother.

Bessy jumped down and scurried off. I descended more slowly, leaning “Ben” against the rusty old statue of Hansel and Gretel before walking inside.

There he was, the man from my nightmares -- except he had the most outrageously yellow-green parrot on his shoulder, one that perfectly matched Mom’s new house color.

Of course introductions followed. I reached out to shake the warlock’s hand, but before I realized what was happening, Fernando’s parrot had flopped down on my arm and taken a firm pinch of skin.

“Ouch,” I cried out, and the parrot let out a screech, which sounded an awful lot like a laugh.

Bessy, my familiar and supposed protector, backed into the corner and slinked neatly underneath my mother’s curio.

“I am so sorry,” said Fernando. He rushed forward, tore off his tee-shirt and wrapped up my hand before I could even peek at the damage.

Meanwhile, the ornery bird had flown over to my mother and was blithely chattering up a storm. When I turned back to the warlock, Fernando was so close his manly scent of bat fur and ginger root, almost carried me into the air. I breathed them in and watched the display of muscles in the warlock’s chest.

“Are you okay?” Fernando asked, his breath a warm fuzzy against my cheek.

“I think so,” I replied, but my knees were shaking; my whole body in fact had begun to tremble. Fernando’s eyes were like liquid water. I dived in and swam in their depths.

“Maybe I’d better bandage that,” the warlock said, glancing down at my shirt-covered wound. Then he smiled; his teeth flashed like sunshine. I looked away. Bessy was now crawling out from under the curio. I chuckled at her cowardice.

I’d thought the man was going for bandages, but at the sound of my laughter, he turned and stared.

“Ghosts and goblins, you’re the one in my dreams,” he whispered in awe.

Bessy let out a hiss. She arched her back and laid open her claws.

“Bessy, no!” I yelled as she hurled her body at Fernando. Five scratches on his shoulder and chest later, I was nursing him with ointment. As my fingers covered the wounds with sticky herb juice, the warlock brushed his lips across my forehead.

“You smell even better than you did in my dreams,” he said, “like eye of newt and claw of dragon.”

The gentleness of Fernando's voice vibrated my senses. I allowed my lips to return his gesture. The man tasted of pomegranate wine.

Somewhere at the back of the house, in the cobwebs of darkness, my mother lurked about with Fernando’s crabby old parrot and my spiteful cat. She was probably playing with her spells, changing the house from lizard green to purple, but Fernando and I didn’t notice. We were exchanging spicy cauldron recipes, comparing broomstick travels, and smiling at each other a lot.

In the days that followed, it took no spell to change nightmares into marvelously pleasant dreams.




1,000 words




© Copyright 2008 Shaara (shaara at Writing.Com). All rights reserved.
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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/view_item/item_id/1458748-Painted-Green