Aged and ageless all at once she hobbled away from the cottage. Although she could walk swiftly when it suited her, now was not one of those times. “Strix,” she cautioned the old owl perched on the low stone wall, “we have a visitor. Let’s remember to be hospitable.” The owl relaxed his stance. She reached down to stroke the little fox nibbling at the vegetables and pieces of cheese hanging from her wall. “What’s this?” Strix hopped closer to her, turning his head just so, and the woman nodded at him before declaring out loud, “It’s a message.” With one hand she removed folded paper from the makeshift strap wound around the fox as she offered berries retrieved from her pocket in the other. Cautiously the little fox accepted her gift then ran off into the woods. “Such a short note for so great a distance. They must be desperate to send me a message this way.” Leaning against the wall, she read the brief note before showing its contents to her curious companion and then tucking it away into one of her many pockets.
The request was unusual, and she pondered it as she set out on her daily chores. She dealt mostly in simple remedies for simple requests — headaches, fever, spots, a broken wing, a broken leg, a shattered bone. Potions, poultices, and charms filled with comfrey, yarrow, and thyme, cured such ailments. Carefully whispered words took care of the rest. Mix, stir, shape, mold, bake. And this? “Simply impossible,” she confided to her companion. It was one thing to fashion a bird or a cat out of bread and bake it into being, or to breathe a kind of life into a golem, or to summon a woodland troll from nothing more than a sugary incantation, but it was another matter altogether to bring forth a child. No matter how much she wanted to help, no matter how much a couple begged, this one request could never be fulfilled. Such things were forbidden and wrought with unforeseen consequences.
With a heavy sigh she returned to her home, to her baking and her poultices. At the door her attention was caught by a series of hoots and chirps. Her eyes scanned the trees and found him perched in the great oak, intent on something in the distance. “Peckish?” She chuckled and was about to tease him for his appetite when she felt it. Beyond the barriers surrounding her home, she sensed an ache, a gnawing hunger deep in her bones. The sensation had come and gone over the past three days, faintly at first but each day getting a little closer, a little stronger, a little more desperate. “Ah,” she thought, “this I can work with.”
The next day she hung sweetmeats encircled in twine from the eaves and little ginger- bread families, which swung in the breeze like wind chimes singing spices into the air. When she was finished, she took a step back to admire her home covered in tempting morsels and sugared sweets and was pleased. Around her the air shimmered. “Strix, make haste. We have visitors.” Her faithful companion spread his wings to make ready the way while she layered breadcrumbs upon the ground, and then she went inside and waited.
She didn’t have to wait long before Strix settled once again on her windowsill, and when she opened her door, two haggard children, dressed in ragged cloth, and thinner than any children she’d ever seen stood before her. “Come now, nibble on an old woman’s sweets but neglect to say hello? Where are your manners?” Their eyes grew impossibly wider, and at the sight of them, she softened. “But where are mine. Come inside to warm yourselves. I’ve baked a fresh loaf, and I have butter and plenty of berries from my garden.”
She sat the children down at her table, fed them the promised bread and butter, along with the fruits of her garden. When they had filled themselves on all she had to offer, she gently washed them then wrapped them in warm blankets. “Will not do,” she mumbled aloud. “I must plump you both up first.” The children, having been forewarned of witches in the woods, became alarmed, but she coaxed them back to the table again with warm milk and honey. Then she spellbound them with stories about the bees in her hive singing to her in the day and the stars in the sky singing to her at night. Soon enough the children tired, and she tucked them into her bed. For many weeks she kept this up — feeding them, telling them stories, and listening to theirs. As they grew stronger she tasked them with chores, and Strix kept watch when they played outside. With time they grew rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed, and remembering the note tucked into her dress so many weeks before, she announced, “Strix, it’s time for more visitors.”
Setting all other chores aside, she baked a fresh batch of gingerbread and formed a portion into a set of people — two large, two small. While they were still warm, she entwined them in ribbon and slipped a note between them. “These are for our guests.” Strix waited on the windowsill, and she presented him with the little bundle, whispering words of magic all the while. Swiftness was required now; hobbling would no longer do. “Sweep the hearth and the path. Fetch me some roses and lavender from the garden. Make haste, children. We’ve much work to do.” At the cottage door she watched Strix fly over the treetops toward his destination. “Yes,” she said, “this I can work with.”
Danielle Cormier is a writer — of both stories and letters — living in Massachusetts. Her fiction has appeared in Commuter Lit, Metastellar, Indie Author’s Advent Calendar, and the Alone in a Room with Invisible People podcast. When not writing, her interests include fairy tales, artful envelopes, and genealogical breadcrumbs. She can be found on various socials: @ctegan
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