the Witch & the Wyld

by ohHOLYmoves

Summary:

Her life is normal in the mundanity of living as a witch in the wood. She ventures into town as a wraith dressed in black to peddle tonics and act as a healer the townsfolk do not speak about. Things do not change. Until she finds a beast in the forest that does not seem like a regular wolf.

Notes:

I’m gonna keep it 100, I don’t know if this is for anyone lmao I love witches and the aesthetic of Wednesday being one has been sitting in the back of my brain. Had to get it out of my system. If you like this, great I love you.

The beast is feral. Wounded in the way that is beneath skin and bone, hidden in a place that eyes cannot see. It stalks the edge of her wards with massive paws and a head hung low. Pink foam builds on its black gums and slips off to splat against the brown dirt beneath. It lashes at trees and howls at unseen threats. It does not even notice her standing at the edge of the circle.

The beast is sick and rotting before her very eyes though she realizes the locals did not notice that. They were wise to drive it into her woods though how they managed it, she is not pleased with. The arrows that poke past the grey fur are fletched with obnoxious feathers dyed an expensive purple. She knows that means something important, that a noble is involved, and that it would be best for her to avoid the wretched thing.

She stands at the edge of a magical circle she hand crafted to catch it. Curiosity has always been a flame that burns too bright in her. The moment her ears caught the sound of villagers tromping against earth and the panting of a savage beast, she had needed to know the origin.

 The beast is not quite right. Things that are not quite right have a habit of finding her or perhaps, of her finding them. Birds of a feather and all that. There is an interesting way that it stalks around the circle, snapping long teeth at the ground and kicking things towards it like it knows the ward is keeping it trapped. Like it harbors a knowledge that scratching through what Wednesday drew in the dirt will break the spell and set it free.

Wednesday strides around the circle when it keens and stumbles onto the ground, kicking at the air.

The beast is dying. Poison makes the blood slick and rank where it hits earth and where it is crusted in the fur. Those arrows are partnered with deep gouges made by crude farming tools and one half of a spear that is drilled under the ribcage. Where the haft was snapped, the jagged end digs into the dirt when it thrashes. Wednesday can taste the exquisite rage mounting inside the well of its madness and the lavender flavored agony of a dying thing. It had called to her from miles away.

She waits until it has nothing left. Until it lays heaving in the dirt, spitting up pink foam and only having muscle spasms that cause it to whine. Once she is sure it has nothing to kill her with, she steps into the circle. Her pointed boots dig into the dirt but the crunching of pine needles beneath them only makes one of its large ears swivels backward.

“Hello, ugly thing. It would look like you’re dying.”

The beast pants and claws at the dirt weakly. One large eye trains on her, intensely dark and lupine. The body of the beast is somewhere between a wolf and a bear. Massive muscles cord the shoulders but they taper into thin, swift legs toward the wide paws with big, black claws. Yet the whole of it is sleek and long, not shaped into something natural to the woods but more of something out the Wyld in a witch’s dream. The body is colored grey with black and white socks on its feet and black tipped ears but there is also something vividly green growing on it. Weaving through fur and the pads of its feet, lichen and thin vines that have pretty pink and purple blooms on them. The wide maw has a short snout more ursine than lupine though the shape of its head is that of a wolf. She bunches the lacy bell skirt of her dress against her upper thigh before she crouches down. Instantly it thrashes and snaps at the air by her head, just missing the tip of her nose.

“If you uphold that attitude, I’ll leave you here to feed the land.”

It draws the lips over the black gums to expose rows of nasty, man-killing teeth. A weak clicking sound comes from inside its throat.

She reaches down to stroke the canine from the wet gum down to the point, “You’re impressive. It would be a waste to let you die here.”

The muscles in its neck spasm just before it tries to bite the hand by its mouth. She had been waiting for that. She grips it around the muzzle and pushes its head down against the dirt, holding it there as she leans down and whispers, “I am not your enemy but I can be. I know you understand me. I’m giving you the choice of trusting me or leaving you here for those villagers to find. They’re still hunting you. I’ve been leading them in a circle while I watched you but that can end now, if you decide to be a pest. We both know what they’ll do if they catch you. I’ve heard about a beast that has gone insane and started killing villagers. You know what they will do to you.”

That eye that watches her is not animalistic at all, actually. The iris is too round and blue like the river that cuts through the village and this wood.

The clicking stops.

“Wise choice,” Wednesday lets it go to stroke the blood crusted fur along the muzzle, “I will take care of you, don’t worry. For as cruel as I can be, my kindness is on par. You will see.”

 

The beast does not trust her. Getting it back to her home had been a challenge that left her shoulders and back aching. She had needed to drag it by the back feet because it was longer than she stands tall and hefting it has been impossible. The house—just a vein in the body that flows back to the heart of her coven, deeper in these woods—had not been welcoming to the beast. When she tried to drag it inside, all the shutters shook and the door slammed shut twice. It hit her nose and knocked her off the stoop. So she had needed to drag it into the garden and wrench the arrows free there. Twice during the process it had thrashed and caught her flesh with the claws and teeth. Twice she had admonished it and threatened to turn it to mulch for her tubers. Afterward, it pulled itself into the underground cellar with a round, black door and not come out in the days since.

Wednesday enters it occasionally to collect ingredients for meals and tinctures. When the eyes are all she sees in the dark and the lower timbered growling echoes against the stone walls, she makes haste to exit. It is not that she will be made afraid of anything in her home, it is a matter of giving it space. To test what it will do. When she walks around the woods to check other traps on land and in water, she throws it some wild hares and a bit of boar and speaks to it. Between the crunch of bone and the wet sounds of teeth tearing through flesh, she explains herself as a witch. The kind they burn for sport and often confuse for women who read or folks with a dominant left hand. Wednesday tells it about her family that has been on this land since before ships brought sickness and famine. Wednesday tells it about how vast this place can be and how, even if it runs, it will only find more of her kin in the journey outward.

Each day it seems to grow more comfortable with her to the point that, when she comes to feed it, it is no longer nestled under shelves in a shadowed corner but is sitting and waiting for her. Tail thumping against the packed earth floor. It still does not let her touch it though, does not let her treat it like a pet or even a friend. It snarls and snaps and keeps her reminded that it is feral and savage and broken.

There is something foul in it. Wednesday still smells the poison. The cellar has become rancid with the stench. Sometimes, when it shakes itself during a meal, she can hear the clank of metal striking metal and she can see the faintest edge of a collar buried under fur. Trying to inspect it closer, just once, earns her a nice bite around her forearm that bleeds for two hours afterward.

Aside from that, her life is normal in the mundanity of living as a witch in the wood. She ventures into town as a wraith dressed in black to peddle tonics and act as a healer the townsfolk do not speak about. If they acknowledge that she can mended young Craig’s broken arm with some chalk, pigs blood, and whispered words then the church will cleanse the town in holy fire. Fire she will survive and fire that will sunder their bones to ash. They all know it and would rather have her help than burn in damnation. Wednesday likes to watch them squirm when she is around. It is something she knows amuses her Grandmother when she visits and tells tales of the common folk in the piss soaked, uneducated hovel bordering her woods. Outside, she patrols the forest to check for trespass and poachers and slaughters anyone who has not entered with her permission. That is another unspoken rule the people of the village know. They learned it when she strolled into town with a wagon of wet parts and dumped them onto the street.

“You may enter when I say so. Or if you pay the toll.” Was all she said and they had understood.

She gardens to feed herself. Tubers and fruits, vegetables and berries and bee hives that she uses to make mead in her cellar and wheat for making an assortment of breads and beer. This year she may not make as many spirits because there is a hulking beast down there that only tolerates her presence if she comes with fresh meat for it. That makes keeping and making brews or flours a difficult task.

Wednesday is content and only bored sometimes. Nothing really happens outside of the normal day to day events and that works well for her. Except when it does not. Except for when she feels the cage of an unseen force closing in around her, sucking the air from her lungs and pushing her into the dirt. Wednesday is so bored.

That is what bored feels like, certainly.

A month in and things change. Not because Wednesday allows them to but because an outside force comes calling.

She steps out of her home, donning a work dress with a bell skirt tattered and stained at the bottom, and looks into her front yard. There are bodies collected there waiting for her to make her presence known. Standing there are between ten and fifteen of them, ranging in age and height. All of them collected behind a man with a long beard and beady eyes.

She tilts her head back so the wide brim of her hat can blot out the morning sun and stares at them placidly in way of greeting.

“Good morrow, Miss Addams,” The mans voice scrapes like a straight razor against stubble on a bobbing throat, “the light greats you kindly.”

She gazes emotionlessly back at him and flatly inquires, “Why have you come?”

A few flinch at the thunder crack hidden in the soft tone of her voice. One of them eyes the tattoos on the top side of her hands and clutches their cross necklace before whispering a hedonic prayer for safety.

“A fortnight ago, we were made aware of a beast. One that rages and rages and never seems to stop. Apparently, the goodly minister Virtue—“

“His name is Virtue? That is a bit on the nose. Wishful thinking perhaps?”

Those beady eyes narrow slightly, “The Minster said they had been having…issues with a local family. They rebelled against God and in their zealotry, they consulted with a known witch. One of theirs was targeted with magic to make them…powerful beyond normal means and they set this creature on the town. We now believe that same creature has migrated here and that is the thing we drove into your wood.” 

She folds her arms across her chest as an answer and continues to stare. The prayer picks up in pitch accompanied with the clacking of prayer beads.

“Miss Addams, we have come for two reasons. We wonder to ask a question and to ask a favor.”

A black cat emerges from the flowers hedging against the side of her house and jumps up to flop across the points of her boots. Many of the onlookers flinch away.

She gestures for him to continue.

“Did it die?”

“It did not.” She answers simply.

The man does not seem phased by this answer as she suspected he would not be. Much as the heathens of God claim themselves to be just and kind, their mouths are more bloody than hers could ever be. They hunger for the righteous slaughter of anyone or anything unlike them.

He seeks his favor boldly and swiftly, “Will you kill it?”

“I will not.”

“It will come for us next! All it knows how to do is kill! And when it has finished us, where do you think it will go next?”

She takes the two steps down to even ground and approaches the man. All his flock take measured steps back like the receding of a tide.

“Is that why you drove it into my woods?”

The man towers above her. Wide shoulders on a reedy frame that is barley held in his stained, too-loose clothes. His beard looks waxy in the early morning light and smells like some kind of animal fat. His face speaks of a man raised in the stale waters of pride, steeped in it so long he has lost a good bit of common sense. If he thinks he can stand in front of her and make demands without being afraid then surly he has lost his way and his wits.

He looks down at her the way a man looks upon an ant just before he steps on it, “We had no way of knowing what it was before. It was not meant as a display of disrespect, Miss Addams.”  

When she says nothing, just stares up at him, he has the resolve to stare back. A rare thing amongst mortal men.

Until there is a sudden clicking growl that fills the air from behind her. Everyone present, except her, go wide in the eyes and jump from the noise. They cast their heads around in wild arcs to search for the origin of the sound. The clicking of nails against her stone walkway comes from behind her just before she feels the cool brush of fur against her hip.

“Th-the beast! You—“

It nudges the massive head against her so she reacts by setting a hand between its ears. This time it does not bite her for trying to touch it.

“I think your welcome here has run dry. Leave, immediately and with haste.”  

Those beady eyes flicker like the dying flame on a candle, flashing from her down to the beast and back again. He begins to speak but the beast takes a bounding leap forward, gnashing its teeth and snarling so loud it makes Wednesday’s bones tickle.

Wisely, this time, he has nothing to say. He turns with his flock and they run back the way they came. When they disappear into the trees, the beast turns and comes to sit by her feet.

“Are you not going to chase them?”

It turns its big head upward and pins its ears back. The loud chuff it gives is an answer, she thinks, but not one she can understand. It must mean no because it stays sitting by her, watching the trees where they fled. The tail thumps against the back of her calf.

“Very well. Does that mean you’ve finished sulking in my cellar?”

It snips at her fingertips, catching them just in the smaller front teeth between those hulking canines. She draws them out with a hiss and slaps at the muzzle of the beast in reprimand. The little welling of blood makes her click her tongue against her teeth.

“You’re an animal. If you behave this way, you can stay outside,” She spins on her heel to return up those two steps and waits for the door to open itself, “you may come in once you retire that attitude.”

After entering, she strips off the outer layer of her work clothes and hangs it back on a wooden peg. Today was too busy for her clouded mind anyway, she will take this as a day of rest. With a flick of her wrist, the wood stacked in the hearth springs to life with new flame and bathes the room in warm light. A little chirp of acknowledgement comes from the black cat lounging on the seat of her reading chair.

“Move.” She flings a few fingers at the cat, shooing it harder when it curls up and hisses at her. She keeps an ear on his paws thundering up the stairs towards her sleeping quarters when she settles in the seat.

The door is nudged open by the beast’s stout nose, wedged just enough to wiggle its long body inside. She smirks a bit when the door slams behind it.

“Come over here.” 

It pads across the wooden floor, head low and ears pinned back. On a constant scout for danger that can come from any corner of the room. When it reaches her, it huddles the big body against her knees and growls in the direction the cat went.

“Stop that. He won’t bother you. The only person he bothers is me and I am certain that was why my brother gave him to me.”

It huffs at the stairs once to let her know it is not pleased but will allow it. The big head lowers into her lap, shaking slightly and heavy.

She sets her hand between the ears and begins combing through the fur gently, “That man frightened you?”

It wiggles to press its head against her abdomen, tucking its front paws between her calves and the chair. The ears are stilled pinned back. She runs her fingertip along one to the black tip.

“You’re not much of a killer. You just wanted to get away, didn’t you? You seem scared of people. Is it because they put this ugly collar on you?”

When she tries to touch it, the beast pulls away from her with a snap of its jaws and fierce snarl. Something crosses the eyes that erases any shred of humanity she can see in them. There is nothing but feral savagery. At just the barest flinch of her finger, it lashes out. This bite that encircles her leg is harsh and hard and unyielding. She can feel the bone protest underneath the force. It uses the link to drag her out of the chair onto the floor and, once she is down, lunges for her neck.

“It’s alright,” She lifts an arm to protect herself and turns her head away when blood spills from the bite delivered there, splashing hot against her cheek, “I’m not angry with you. It’s alright.”

Some the pressure lessons against her arm. It stops thrashing so hard and just hovers above her, still digging those teeth in but frozen there.

“Are you back in your own mind?”

The blue in those eyes are stark. A sliver of azurite that gleams in the firelight. The teeth slowly rescind from the divots they were making in her skin.

“Good. Get off of me. Now.”

It does. It wheels away and turns for the door where it charges and runs off into the wild outside. She listens for the heavy sounds of those enormous paws ripping over grass and root fading away. Her arms flop out to her sides on the floor, spread close enough her knuckles brush against the warm hearth.  

The collar is a sore subject. She will approach it with more care next time. If it comes back.

 

The wounds heal slowly but for her that only takes a week and some days. Limping around her own home is embarrassing and frustrating especially when the wolf does not return. It is frustrating that each night she sits on her porch waiting for the thing to come back and it continues day after day to make her look like a fool. Because Wednesday had grown use to visiting it in the cellar and talking. She had come enjoy the solid presence it had in her life.

She misses it.

 

The rain is unrelenting when she bundles herself in a black cloak and decides to visit her parents. As ever, the path is long and winding and an utter slog. Her boots squelch in the mud building up between the rock formations her path takes her through. One a great, towering boulder that lightning split down the middle and was forever made to support the split pieces for a hundred years since the fall. Gold glitters in all the cracks from where she and Pugsley pushed in coins they stole from passing nobles as children. The rain makes them brilliant and attracts the eye when she passes beneath the array of light.

The golden coloring as she passes under them reminds her painfully of home and how bored she has been since the beast left. Home is stiflingly quiet.

By the time she approaches the low fence encircling the Addams homestead, she is soaked to the bone. The wards swirl against her ankles when she lifts her skirts and steps over the fence, checking her and approving of her entry. They also alert the house that shudders, makes the windows rattle in their frames and the door swing open in greeting.

“Wednesday!” Her father’s voice sounds from deep within moments before he rushes outside to envelop her. The soot color of his clothes instantly darken to a tar black beneath the downpour and washes the black weave of his hair flat against his skull. Some of his foul smelling hair wax smears against her cheek when he squeezes her tight.

“Father, that’s more than enough.” She pushes him back with the tip of her finger and he bellows with laughter that rolls across the glade.

The willowy frame of Morticia steps onto the porch and wisely stays under the eve to protect herself from the rain. Her black dress bunches around her feet, obscuring them in the folds that shimmer from the silver stitching along the hem. A mantle of raven feathers—just like the one Wednesday herself wears—is draped across her shoulders and the cape is a patchwork of brambles and cotton dyed the color of night.

“Darling,” Her mother reaches to touch one of her braids that is wound with leather strips and adorned with bone cuffs and red feathers and one little wolf charm from when she was at her most bored after the beast abandoned her, “what prompted this lovely surprise?”

She tilts her chin up and stares at her mother blankly, “I wanted to see if you two had died yet.”

Gomez Addams guffaws loud enough her ears ring, “Not yet! You can pry these heirlooms from our fingers once they’ve gone cold but not a moment before then!”

Wednesday turns focus to him and glares, “If I wanted your old trash, I’d take it.”

“Oh, is that so? Come see if you can pry lunch and a bit of conversation from us then.” Gomez winks at her and she only glares marginally meaningfully at her father. As he leads her up the steps, she notices her mother looking out into the brush with a look of concentration.

“What is it?”

Morticia squints at the horizon, “Something followed you here.”

Her heart leaps in her chest, tickling the back of her teeth, “Malevolent?”

“No…I think not. Just confused, scared. Alone.”

My beast, you return.

“Leave it be. Come, I am here for a visit, not your cryptic rambling.”

“Oh, you have been holed up in your hovel too long, my mournful mouse. You come back in a fine layer of spice. It bitters the tongue.”

“Good.”

 

When she returns home, three days later, the beast is curled up on her porch with its back against the front door. She stands at the bottom of the steps, gazing intensely from beneath the brim of her witch’s hat. It stares right back with the keen intellect of something beyond animal.

“Welcome home.” She says at last and it is all she says.

The ears swivel forward and it gives a great woof in acknowledgment.

 

After that day, the beast and she become inseparable. Even when she tries to shoo it away, the thing snaps at her or bites into the hem of her cloak and does not let go until she relents. Always it finds ways to be at her hip while walking or spread across her feet if she is sitting. While she gardens, it digs small holes for her with a single swipe of the paw and hovers at her shoulder when she fills it with new seeds and waters it. They eat meals together, much to the chagrin of the little black cat that despises their new guest. That hatred only grows when Wednesday begins leaving the door open at night for her beast and it crawls up into bed with her. The cat begins sleeping in an apple box at the foot of Wednesday’s bed and hisses at the beast when it licks along the back of his head in greeting come sunrise. It even sits stoically sentinel while Wednesday bathes in the creek. During its vigil, it encounters three foxes, two bucks, and a mountain cat that are chased away and successfully dragged back to her as a gift of devotion. Each time she commends it for the dedication and does not tell it that nothing in these woods would dare harm her. Preening its ego is worth the free supper.

The only place it will not follow her is into town. She does not go often—only when summoned or when she has a surplus of supplies to sell—but when she does, it wails and warbles all the way to the edge of the woods. On the town line, it nips her fingers and licks her face and keens loudly but no matter how much she bids it to follow, it will not. Retreating, she can hear it whine and pace the line and when she returns, it is sitting exactly where she left it. The long ears with their black tips poke up when she approaches and its sleek, fey-like body wiggles in excitement. When water hits the petals of the flowers growing on it, they ripple and change color to a deep lilac and bitter blue.

“It is raining.” She says as greeting when she returns. Water beads against the oil treated fur cloak and the black raven feathers of her mantle. It pours in rivulets off the brim of her hat, plinking against the muzzle of her beast when it crowds against her shins.

“You could have gone home.”

It shivers against her, tail tucked under its paws and ears pinned flat against its skull. She pushes her fingers through the matted, wet fur to scratch under the collar that is still anchored tightly on. It gives a soft woof that is feeble and pushes itself harder against Wednesday.

She sighs, “Next time, do not follow me. Pathetic thing.”

She steps around it with a basket hung off her arm that is overflowing with greens and different items that did not sell today. Another hangs off her shoulder that has bundles of fabrics, woven ropes, and perishables that she bartered work for. Her beast trots along beside her, huddling against her legs to shield itself with the wide brim of her hat as much as possible.

“Do not jostle me.”  

It makes a loud sound of blowing air through its teeth to display displeasure. Rivers of water run off its wide head when it strains upward to take the basket handle between its teeth and carefully slides it off her arm. Leeks and onion tails brush against its jaw like a green beard as it trots along, splashing through puddles. She squints at it.

“If you drop that, I’ll turn you into a rug.”

It yips around the handle, tail wagging behind it.

“Fine then,” As they begin walking together, she sets her hand between its long, sharp ears, “stay close to me.”  

Dutifully it obeys her only command, walking so close to her the haunch of its mighty front leg steps in tandem with her and brushes her upper thigh. Without words needed or her guidance, they take the easiest path home and the beast never strays. When they arrive back in the clearing her home is built in, the beast clamors up the steps and sits by the door. The spongy black nose nudges the door handle impatiently.

She takes the basket from between its formidable jaws, “Wait here. I will be right back.”

Of course, it diligently obeys. She putters around the house putting things away, disrobing to change into dry clothes, and returns to her beast with a bundle of linens.

“Come.” She calls after she settles on the cool wood of the front porch. It approaches slowly, tottering up between her spread knees and sitting in a way that makes itself smaller for Wednesday to reach around. She rubs the linens along its flank and spine to collect some of the rain that has permeated the fur. This is a practiced routine of theirs, as coordinated as a pretty dance that allows them to flow together. Without needing to be promoted, it lifts each paw so that Wednesday can rub the mud off its black pads and the curled claws. The shoulders hunker when it lowers the head for Wednesday to dry, rumbling contentedly when she rubs the ears and the underside of the chin. It flips onto its back, sandwiched between Wednesday’s knees, and shows an impressive amount of trust by doing so. Wednesday understands the gift of a Wyld Thing when she is given one.

When she rubs the mud from the belly and picks leaves from its fur, it makes happy sounds and wiggles from glee. As always, it nips at her chin and hands and licks to show affection. No more does she admonish it for the imprudence nor does she chastise it for the hindrance. Because Wednesday loves her wretched beast and her heart aches with joy. Where once she was an open field of boredom, wandering her days alone, she is fulfilled by the presence of this terror in her life.

She curls her fingers under the collar to get a strong grip and gives it a mighty tug so the beast is lifted for a kiss to be set upon the mighty crown of its head. That same head cants curiously.

She bunches the mane in her hands and shakes it playfully, “You have great honor, my insidious killer. How kind and callus of you to come here and effortlessly slay my misery and my constant wallowing. You just ate it all up, with no desire for reward or care for being credited. I am grateful to you.”

It spins against her legs, settling between them in a casual display of otherworldly ease. The head lifts slowly, moving with the grace of something great and powerful, so it can nudge her cheek with the black wet nose. It woofs low and deep, resounding as if it had bellowed at her and she feels it more than hears it. She lifts her arms to hug around its strong neck.

“I understand. We saved each other,” She winces when a thick tongue the color of moss rolls from mighty jaws and swipes at her cheek, “Will you stay?”

Another mighty, deep woof that is as powerful as the casting of a spell and as intoxicating as the pouring of a first autumnal rain.

“You will stay with me? Always?”

A third and final woof rumbles like a landslide. Birds flock from the nearby trees at the answer. The air grows hot and smells of burning ozone. The wood around them seems to loom taller and grows a deeper and brighter shade of green and brown.

“Then so it is. A witch’s deal has been made and the ending of time, the ending of green and light, the ending of life will not break this.”

She scowls when the beast licks the side of her head and pulls a feather from her hair.

 

A woman comes to the cottage. This in itself is not an odd thing because there are spells people ask for that require subterfuge. Wednesday is always most delighted by these visits. The company is sometimes exactly what she needs when she is at her most bored, dawdling in chores because they are monotonous. The private visits are always far more entertaining than her usual ones.

“Hello, Miss Addams.” Eliza, the wife of a farm hand, stands at the bottom of her porch hugging a shawl around her slim shoulders. Wednesday regards her from beneath the shade of her witching hat. There are tear tracks running through the dirt on her cheeks.

“Hello. Have you come with intent?”

Her brown eyes flicker down to the beast that lifts its mighty head and grumbles low to greet her. To Wednesday’s surprise, Eliza is not startled by the long teeth and the decidedly not normal body.

“I have, goodly witch.”

“Goodly, am I? Oh my,” Wednesday makes a sound of amusement that is lush and low, “perhaps you’ve come to the wrong witch.”

Eliza shuffles in the dirt, her lip caught between her teeth. The beast lifts its head again, azure gaze piercing when it looks long at Wednesday.

“Come on then. I’ll make tea.” Wednesday extends a hand for Eliza to take so she can lead her into the cottage. The moment her warm fingers slide across Wednesday’s palm, Eliza’s cheeks turn a rosy red.

The beast jumps to its feet and bares its teeth, head hung low. A deep clicking growl comes from it.

“Oh, your dog seems scared of me.” Eliza moves to tuck herself behind Wednesday’s smaller stature in order to put distance between them.

“Ignore it.”

The beast’s ears flick back and this time when it snarls, it does so at Wednesday. She shoos it away when she comes into the home with Eliza, welcoming her to sit at the table while she prepares the tea. In the downtime, Eliza explains her situation. The darling of her eye is a bit dense and does not pay her as much attention as she would like. She did not plan to come to the witch. Her feet took the path before her mind could command them to do anything else. A totem is all she asks for. A boon to ward off her husband’s wandering eye and maybe his hands too.

Wednesday sets her cup down in the saucer and folds her finger together on the table top.

“I can do this easily though you may find the result is not what you were hoping for.”

Eliza nods rapidly, “Of course! I understand that the workings of a witch is done sagely, not impishly.”

“Hm. Then you understand more than most. You’re willing to accept the terms?”

Fair faced, sweet Eliza who smells like baked goods and smiles sweet as pie nods again. Beneath the table, Wednesday’s beast presses itself against her shins so it can butt its head against her belly. When she pushes it back, it bites her hand.

“I accept your terms.”

“And whatever may occur that you can perceive as a consequence?”

“Yes, lady witch.”

“Lady,” Wednesday leans back in her seat and smiles, just the faintest bit, “Dear Eliza, I already agreed to help. No need to win me over with honeyed words.”

“O-oh, I would never! I respect you a great deal, Miss Addams!”

“Hm, how quaint.” Amusement tickles her belly when she rises to collect the items needed for this particular spell. A droplet of blood hits the tip of her boot when she pushes aside some jars, red sinking down into the suede.

Eliza shrieks, “Mistress Witch! You’re bleeding!”

“Hm? Oh,” She sees the smear left on a jar of lizard bones pickled in sea brine and sees the teeth marks in her hand, “yes. That happens sometimes. Love can be a bitter thing that takes its pound of flesh, as you are well aware.”

There is a moment of shock when hands circle around her wrist to draw it into the beam of light piercing a port window from above. Eliza makes a soft sound when she pressed a tablecloth against it, “Allow me to tend to it.”

Teeth snap at Eliza’s thigh and would have torn meat from bone if Wednesday was not present to shove the woman back a step. With ears flattened against the mighty skull, her beast walks with its back to Wednesday and puts itself between the two women. Growls and clicking come from its open maw, green tongue peeking between the sharp incisors.

“Beast, that is enough! She is of no danger to me!”

An ear flickers just before one blue eye turns to look at her. Something in it is deeply displeased.

Instantly she understands.

“Oh for—go upstairs, you useless mutt.”

The beast clacks its teeth together and whirls on her, tail between its legs and claws scraping against the hardwood floor. Wednesday braces her hands on her hips and glares down at the jealous creature.

“I said go.”

It shakes its head in frustration, nips at the air by Wednesday’s fingers, then turns to run past Eliza upstairs.

“Miss—“

“You be quiet too. Sit, drink your tea, and when I’m done, you may leave.”

“O-oh. Of course,” Eliza ducks her head and rushes to the table, spurned by Wednesday’s slaughtered mood, “a-and your payment?”

She does not even care. Her mind is torn between this task and the bitterness of her beast. The only thing that has mattered to her in such a long time.

A human cannot replace you, you stupid thing. Why behave that way?

Quickly and quietly, she works her magic. Braiding together hay with thread from a special loom into a small black heart. It is given unceremoniously and sent away with Eliza just as quickly. The door shuts before Eliza can even thank her.

“You craven, insolent—“ The door to their room is thrown open but the beast is not on the floor. It is on her bed, chewing into a pillow that is pulled to the point of ripping. Feathers fly in a cloud of white and grey.

“You!” She darts into the storm, swing an arm to grab at a tuft of fur or a leg if she can manage. It yips and spins away, throwing the corpse of the ruined pillow at her and darting off the bed.

“Get back here! You rotten waste of skin! You scoundrel!”

A crash form downstairs nearly makes her scream in frustration. In a swirl of feathers, she vanishes and reappears in the lower level just behind the beast that has swept the leg from the table and dashed her tea pot on the floor. It yelps when she grabs it by the tail and pulls hard.

“You—ouch! Knock it off! What is wrong with you!?” She draws her stinging hand away, sporting a second bite around the meat of her palm.

It yaps at her, feathers caught in its fur. When she tries to approach it, more bites are threatened so she huffs and throws herself onto the floor. They stare at one another for a minute and then an hour and then perhaps longer. A battle of wills with a witch and especially an Addams is never something anyone could hope to win.

The beast realizes this after the third hour and slumps to the floor whining.

“What, you beast? What is your problem?”

Big paws fold over themselves after it turns its back on Wednesday and drops its head onto them. A huff is blown out when she tries to touch it.

“Fine! Be a petulant baby!”

She rises to her feet for a thundering across the wood for the stairs. She stops only because a particularly high keening comes from the beast.

“No! You want to throw fits just because I interact with another person, then you can sleep down here!”

The intention of a witch is never construed poorly though it might be stretched a bit. When a word is given, it is meant in totality. Though perhaps, if the mind is clever, there can be a way to wiggle between the words and wisen to something deeper. Words said in anger are meant. The beast is not welcome into her room until it changes its mind.

But the witch cannot quite sleep alone anymore and her heart is sad and empty and bored. So she grabs her blanket from the bed and walks downstairs to find it. A grey ball is curled up in front of the cold fireplace, one paw poked out. At the sound of her approach, the head lifts and moonlight brightens the blue of those eyes.

“I haven’t forgiven you and your childish outburst will have reprimand. You will not enter the room until you behave.” She settles on the floor by the beast and draws her blankets over herself.

“This is not a forgiveness. I simply cannot sleep because you destroyed my pillow.” Her head lays on the warm furry haunch of the beast. The eager way it unfurls and makes itself long for Wednesday to curl closer does not endear her. She will not allow it. Neither does the lick bestowed on the top of her head.

 

Days pass into months into a year and some time beyond that. Things do not change and Wednesday is grateful every day for that. Never once is there a place the witch walks that a set of massive paw prints do not follow. Her shadow is cast with another beside it and she always marvels over this. They plant and sew seeds into the earth, they eat and live in peace, they wander never lost and meander their way back home. Together.

The Wyld Thing follows her into mysticism where she summons it from the bones of dead things and grows it on the trees around them. It watches with keen blue eyes that harbor an intellect she yearns to know. It begins to learn her hands by watching what they can do and starts lending aid by putting things in them. Not a witch’s apprentice but perhaps a familiar for her to lean on. She weaves a crown of myrtle branches and fawn horns that she sets upon its mighty head as a gift and a thanks.

She watches the beast interact with her woods and summon the Wyld to her. Despite the collar—that she has deduced is a binding curse—it can still call to the Other side it came from. Or was stolen from and shackled to this place. Where it walks, flowers bloom and the grass turns into a kaleidoscope of colors. Birds sing fluttering songs and wolves howl from all corners of the wood. The trees are the fingers of their world reaching up through a broken skin and they call to her beast, curling toward it in familiar welcome. The green knows it and loves it and wants it to be returned. During the full moon, the already hulking size of such a monster becomes a behemoth. It twists and writhes until it is the shape of a great and powerful bear. Though the bear is not totally ursine, harboring sharp wolven ears that are black at the tip and a long, sharp snout. It lumbers around the yard wearing its crown and roots through the garden for berries and tomatoes. It deals havoc on the wild. Ripping up duff logs and tearing across land, diving into streams for fat salmon and chasing down smaller game. It returns to Wednesday coated in dirt and caked with blood and brings her something freshly dead to share. She takes the knuckle bones and carves them into beads shaped like a bear’s head and braids them into her hair.

Come sunrise, it is a sleek wolf again.

Wednesday is not always a good person but she is a goodly witch so she recognizes powers when she sees them. She knows by the innate design of her that touching some wonders is forbidden and commanding them is worst. She knows better than to name a thing because doing so gives it power or, in some cases, takes power away. She knows the bitter taste of iron and the ways she can use it to repel. She knows some things are woven with songs in them, with history and stories, and that some things are simply alive. She knows what is and what is not. So Wednesday does not ever approach the collar as anything more than an anchor when she needs to push the beast around. Whatever it is still burns her lovely thing and whatever it does, still makes the beast feral. The shape of its bite when she tried to inspect it the first time is still a silvery ring of teeth remembered in her flesh. She knows that some things are not for her and the Wyld thing told her with bone and blood and she cherishes the lesson.

Things in that regard do not change and will not if not for the beast bringing it to attention.

The sun is not yet risen but its ascent is threatened by stripes of orange and pink in the clouds outside. Wednesday is sitting at her vanity in nothing but a night slip and is using the mirror to apply kohl against her eyelids and red pigments on her mouth. In its usual place of honor, the beast is curled up on their bed with its crowned head cushioned upon its front paws. She catches its eyes in the mirror, two slates of blue brighter than life. There is always a torch in them, burning hot and mysteriously far away. Beyond Wednesday’s reach. The desperation to know the name of this thing, to know its sound, taste, touch drives her mad.

When she shifts her attention back to the task at hand, her beast rumbles discordantly and rises to join her at the vanity. Its crown swatches against her bare arm not unpleasantly and is soothed by the warmth and satin of its fur.

“We will be busy today, my beast. There is much to do. The bees need to be moved and stored for the winter to come and we need to harvest the crops before the frost can get them. Go and get your breakfast now because I fear the time for such luxuries may not arise till much later tonight.”

This lithe and formidable beast that is a juxtaposition of many sensations and character, sees fit to bow its head to her. She stares down with the wonderment of a being that knows when something meaningful and powerful is being evoked.

“What are you doing ,” She turns on her stool and lifts a leg over her knee, leaning against her thigh with the sharp point of her elbow, “what is this?”

The beast restlessly shambles forward, nudging its bent head against her belly. The back of the neck is readily on view and most prominently displays the dark iron collar. Cut into the ugly metal are violent runes that pulse with memory. Hatred of the ugliest color, malevolence that supercooled the evil metal and an eon of weeping bitterly alone. Caged inside their own bones, bound in flesh that is beholden to them but not always belonging to them. To her. When she touches her fingertip to just one of those runes, she knows in the way a witch knows. Her eyes that are not in this world peel open and see.

 

The spirit is young. She is a wayward thing, a Wyld thing that was built to roam and to sleep and to play. Not something of this world but brought to it unwillingly. A changeling, they shriek because her hair is the shade of silver moonlight and her eyes are too luminous to be human. Because her ears are knife sharp at the points and her teeth are always like a dogs. Black gums and pointed canines, all. They know she is not theirs but they made a mistake and she was switched. Normally, it is a fairy this happens to but the fairy folk were playing with the girl too, the little animal spirit. So it was herself they traded and now she is stuck. Lost.

Time passes. She wanders and grows and the wild inside her rages in this awful place. The moon is unkind but still it allows her to change when she should. The body that bends and takes form is forced into resembling something of this world. So they call her a wolf first or a bear then, lastly, a werewolf. She does know what that is. It does not fit a spirit of the Wyld. It is enough to damn her. There is great power in a naming.

Many years are spent running. Running does not get her beyond the family that hates her because she is a changeling that replaced their child. She is the reason they do not have their child and that hatred is not something that can be outrun.  Whatever the thing that is a girl but grew into a woman was, is lost. A spirit does not need a name but a human does. So they name her Enid Sinclair on-top of Werewolf and then, with help from a witch, they bind her. This witch with loathsome eyes dark as the pitch and a deceptively handsome beard who looks very much of an Addams but is decidedly not one. Hers would never do this to a fey, a wyldling, a changeling seeking safe harbor. Never.

A collar of cruel iron—iron that breaks and kills things of the Wyld—is snapped around her neck and her mind goes blank.

Lost. Rage. Ruin. Damnation that sounds like weeping and screaming and echoing laughter born from a place of hatred. It follows her for many, many long years. Sometimes there is the taste of blood in the mouth and sometimes it is even her own blood. Mostly, she is an empty vessel.

Then suddenly her eyes clear and she looks at a witch. With loathsome eyes dark as the pitch and a face that looks to be carved of stone but marked like a birds egg. One that smells of loam and wet moss and the insides of split fruit and like feathers and death. One whose hands are rough around her but whose voice is the downpour of a spring rain and pleasant as a flat river rock in the sun.

“I will take care of you, don’t worry.”

 

Mist clears from her vision as the eyes in this world see again. The beast—Enid—is pressed tightly against her so its head can nuzzle against hers. She combs her fingers through the shaggy fur ringing its muscular neck. Something about what she saw upsets her stomach to the point she has to swallow against the rising bile.

Enid’s nose nudges against her ear after a long quiet to remind her of her presence.

Resolve snaps her spine straight and sends her rocketing to her feet. She snaps for her clothes that rustle in her wardrobe to slide off hanging rods and fly to her whim. She plucks them, piece-by-piece, from the air and dresses quickly. Down to the pointy hat embroidered with a brocade pattern along the brim. She steps into her short boots and flicks her cape behind her before storming for the door.

“Come, my beast. Let us make right centuries of wrong that has been done to you.”  

Enid licks her fingers and bites her thumb gently, keeping ahold as they storm from the home into the early morning.

The preparation takes four hours. Wednesday’s knees ache from sitting on hard earth and carving a runic circle with a sharpened femur. Each deep divot is filled with spiced wine, bundles of thistle and mistletoe, and a drop of her own blood. The slurry made in them, she drags her fingers through and draws runes with it on Enid’s snout then overtop the ones inscribed in the collar.

Enid rumbles contentedly and nuzzles against Wednesday’s cheek.

She clicks her tongue against her cheek, “Don’t. You’ll smear it and we’ll have to start over.”

Some time goes into chanting. An outpouring of power does not come cheap or quick. The earth and the sky answer a call that is vast and ancient, one that Wednesday shouts and whispers all at once. Rain falls that is thick and the color of stale blood, splitting the earth where it strikes and weeds spring forth. The circle begins to thrum, pulsing with the drum of the casters heartbeat and glowing the color of Enid’s inhuman eyes. It is a magnificent working. A perfect and powerful curse breaking. Iron cracks from an unseen pressure, just beneath the runes Wednesday drew on it, and the hateful collar crumbles into glittering dust.

The reaction is immediate and intense. Enid howls and rips away from her, ears flat against her skull and body shuddering. Horrible wailing noises of animal pain echo through the woods, bouncing off trees and turning her stomach sour. She drops to the ground with a solid sound and begins flailing. Bone pops and cracks in a macabre symphony, blended with the beast’s howling.  

The howls become wails. The keening becomes sobbing. The body reshapes into a young woman with pale, sun burnt skin and a mess of choppy silver-blond hair. The runes that once were in the collar are burnt into the skin of her neck, in a perfect ring, but do not hold power anymore. They are scars that will remain. Long legs curl inward, visibly trembling after years of disuse and the strangeness of returning.

She crawls forward on her knees, holding her breath. The head lifts and the deep blue in those eyes that she has known for so long now stare back at her.

Enid croaks, face pinching from the effort of finally utilizing a tongue that can speak.  

She draws the cloak with the raven feather mantle off and lays it over Enid’s nude form. One of her hands tucks a chunk of hair behind Enid’s pointed ear.

“Welcome home.”

 

Enid does not leave. No matter that a pact made with a witch is the seal of eternity, she had not expected the spirit to uphold it. That deal had been struck when she did not have a mouth that could make words nor a body that belonged entirely to her. For days proceeding the working, a witch becomes a ghost in her own home that haunts its guest. From the shadows she watches and waits for Enid to return to the Wyld. There are flowers that sprout in the myrtle and bone crown Wednesday made her, bright peonies and white woodruff that smell of honey and milk. Her eyes glow blue, cesspools of trapped ocean that harbor a hungry curiosity. Her elegance and beauty knocks the air from Wednesday’s chest. It reminds her constantly that her beast does not belong with her and she yearns to have her heart broken so that Enid can be free.

Days pass and weeks run by before Wednesday decides to approach the unspoken. It happens after the fall of the sun when they are preparing for bed and Enid, who still acts strangely animal at times, has not forgotten her place in Wednesday’s bed. She crawls overtop it then frowns when she remembers that blankets are for her to be under.

“Enid?”

Those long, sharp canines expose themselves in a sudden smile, “Wednesday.”

She likes to say Wednesday’s name. She likes to talk incessantly now that she can. Wednesday is convinced she is attempting to speak as many words as she can to make up for the many years she could not. Wednesday’s name is her favorite word to say though.

“Would you like me to strike your name from history?”

Blond brows hunker low in confusion, “Can you?”

“It will take help from my family but I’m confident we could. You would be unnamed.”

“I could go home.”

Wednesday turns onto her side, gaze unflinching while her heart shatters, “Yes. I want you to go home.”

Enid turns too, now morose and contemplative. As is the way with Wyld things, she has not yet learned the silly whims of humans and their proclivities for rules and boundaries. She does not understand the concept of personal space and Wednesday cannot begrudge her this. For nearly two years Enid has lived in this house, sleeping with her, dining with her, watching her bathe and change. She has already been welcomed into Wednesday’s most personal spaces. It should not be fair that Wednesday expects her to start over now that her body is human in appearance. She reaches her hand between them to trace the hard edges of Wednesday’s face with the blunt tip of her nail. Down over her nose, fanning across the slants of her brows and the arches of her cheekbones. Lastly she drags it across the seem of Wednesday’s lips.

“I promised not to leave you.”

“I will undo the witch’s deal too. You did not get to make it fairly.”

Enid scoots into the space between them, “I made a promise. I knew the words. I understood.”

“You should not have to stay.”

“Wednesday,” Enid drags her nose across Wednesday’s jaw, lips brushing against her throat until they find a good place for her to deliver a sharp, affectionate bite, “there is no where to go. I am home in you. Named or unnamed, bound or shackled, I am yours. I am your beast.”

Her chest heaves. She counts to three to steady the erratic breathing then sighs.

“Very well.”

 

Wednesday watches with a tickle of amusement as Enid struggles with a fork. The metal seems too slippery to be held between her thumb and forefinger and attempts at slotting it between other fingers only result in failure. Twice she flicks eyes up at Wednesday to check if she is being monitored and twice she looks down with a heat to her cheeks. The pink makes the blue in her eyes seem impossibly brighter.

“These are frustrating.”

“You’ve spent too long eating like a beast.”

Enid casts the fork aside and lifts the fried egg to her mouth with bare fingers, not even wincing from the sizzling chili oil that drips down her wrist. The teeth that pierce the yellow yolk are sharp enough that it bursts and a new trail is made down her arm. She appears content. Her legs draw onto the seat, heels hooked against the edge so she is in a crouch, and she consumes her meal this way.

Wednesday quietly sips at her tea as she ponders how to tell Enid. The clatter of porcelain proceeds her quiet, “I must enter town today.”

Enid’s entire face sours, “I hate it there.”

“I am aware. That much was obvious even while you were not wholly yourself.”

She sets down a piece of duck that she had been chewing on and leans forward on the chair. She tucks some hair behind her sharp ears, smearing egg and chili oil against her cheek. The tips are stained the color coal so they are stark against the pale bone coloration of her hair. The deep, fathomless blue of her attention levels on Wednesday.

“I will go with you.”

“You do not need to. I am being summoned by the healing man to lend aid in a birthing that he suspects will end in casualty if my magic is not involved. I only wanted to warn you because…well, my beast, these things take time.”

When Enid cants her head, Wednesday feels a strange welling of emotion rise from deep inside. She plucks her napkin from beneath her untouched breakfast and leans across the table to take Enid’s hands and dutifully begins wiping each finger clean.

“I will be gone for a week.”

Enid makes a sad sound and pokes her lower lip out, “Surely it does not take so long to produce a new human?”

“No. But it is usually asked of me to stay on hand. I find it tedious but I have a soft spot for humans when they are smaller. So it is not the worst torture I have endured.”

Enid seems to consider this, “They are so frail and weak when they are new.”

“Nothing like us, no.”

“So…what are you asking of me? To not follow you?”

“I am not asking anything of you, Enid. I am only telling you that I will not be home for a week. Well, that is not true. I ask that you do not sit on the territory line waiting for me for that entire time.”

“A week is…a long time?” Enid sets aside the napkin so that she can slide her hand into Wednesday’s and begin tracing the lines on her palm.

Her heart does a funny thing that makes her lungs seize and she knows Enid hears it because her ear flickers and her lips tick up.

“It will feel like it.”

The spirit that is now Enid Sinclair leans over the table until they are breathing the same air, “I will miss you.”

You wretched beast. How dare you.

Wednesday draws away quickly, neck hot and heart hammering.

“I’m sure you will.”

Enid watches, eyes glittering like the rarest of jewels, “Your heart makes funny tapping sounds sometimes. Are you ill?”

“Yes. I’m dreadfully sick of you. Go pester Afillius. You will be his caretaker while I’m gone and I do not want to return to corpses. It will be dreadful work in this summer sun to dig graves.”

At the mere mention of the black cat that sleuths around their home, Enid perks up and casts a wide look around the dining and conjoining sitting area, “Afillius the Mouse King! Where are you?”

From an unseen location in the sitting room, a loud hiss echoes outward. This sound utterly delights the animal spirit who seems to enjoy his sour disposition even still.

“He is just like you.”

“I resent that,” She stands from the table and whips her cloak on with a twirl of a finger, “be sure to water the garden. After sun down or you will burn the life from them.”

“I have watched you for many seasons. I remember.”

“Feed the chickens. Tend to the goats, be sure to milk them at the same time each day.”

Enid sets her chin on her fist with a tilt to her mouth that is almost childlike in how deeply dissatisfied by the prospect of work it is. This she understands too and does not begrudge Enid. A spirit does not understand the concept of chores when frolicking in an endless forest is their entire existence.

Steeling herself, she bends to kiss the top of Enid’s head and draws away with a body full of buzzing bees. The smell of flowers and burbling fresh water clings to her nose just as it constantly clings to Enid.

“Be well,” Wednesday smashes her witching hat onto her head and glares at the wall, “do not burn my home down. Or, if you do, have the decency to burn with it.”  

“Ah, wait! You’re leaving now?”

“Obviously.”

Wednesday has to shuffle back a handful of steps when Enid rises quite suddenly and crowds into her space. The backpedal does her little good when the beast that rises hunts her and haunts her every move. Enid catches her quickly around the middle and draws her into a tight hug that is still a little too tight and a little clumsy. Because Wednesday is unpracticed and Enid is still learning gentle touch, kind touch. Her fingers curl around Wednesday’s nape to bring her in, to press her face into the haven of Enid’s shoulder, and squeezes.

“I will miss you.” She says again as if Wednesday had forgotten.

“You are awful about repeating yourself.”

Enid makes the sound she has started doing whenever her mind that was a spirit and then a trapped animal but is now an almost-human grapples with those three things at once.

“Do not be gone long. I will come and collect you a week from now. Sunrise.”

Wednesday slowly brings her arms around Enid and fists the back of her shirt, “Do not boss me around. A witch’s hospitality only goes so far.”

“You will be waiting for me,” Enid noses at the sensitive skin behind her ear and breathes in, “because I will miss you and I will not wait a day longer than you promised. If you aren’t there, I will enter the town to find you.”

I do not wish you to step foot on roads. You should not cross unwelcome thresholds or know the feeling of iron again. I will protect you from this world.

“I will be waiting for you but only because I am prompt and will be ready to return home by that time.”

“No,” Enid draws away to press their foreheads together, face content and eyes happily closed, “you will be ready because I asked. What is it the humans call it? Love? That is what it is between us. Yes.”  

Yes, my beast. It is.

“Hm,” She huffs out of irritation, “you are still such a wild thing. We will teach you manners.”

“Are they fun?”

“Not in my experience but they are expected.”

“Then no.”

“No thank you.”

Enid’s nose wiggles and she nods which knocks their heads together, “You’re welcome.”

“Deplorable,” Wednesday draws away and dodges the beast that chases her best she can so the teeth that bite her scrape against her jaw instead of her throat, “and stop biting me. Your teeth are sharp.”

Enid follows her onto the porch, “What else do I do?”

Wednesday stops on the top step. Her belly twists from a rise of sensations that are saturated in yearning. Swiftly she turns and storms back to Enid so she can seize the front of her shirt and drag her into a kiss. Enid’s lips are soft and taste like rainwater and like hot oil. Wednesday cradles her perfect face between her hands that are still stained with soil from early morning chores.

“That,” She says when she pulls away, rubbing her thumb just beneath Enid’s bottom lip, “it is a bit mundane for an exchange of feelings but unfortunately, this world is not as mystical as yours. We make do with what we have. Will it suffice?”

Enid curls her fingers around Wednesday’s wrists and ducks beneath her hat to kiss her again and again, “Yes. It will work.”

“Good. I will see you again in a week, my beast. Be well in my absence. Remember that an invitation into a witch’s home is an open door to many things so do not offer it. If you receive visitors, only let the ones in who have my permission. And do not drag any dead things into our bed. What else—oh! Do not dig up the jars in the yard, not not disturb the nails I’ve put in the trees.”

“I will—“

“I know,” She taps her thumb on the seem of Enid’s lip and draws away, smiling very small just to herself when she begins to depart once more, “I will miss you too.”

 

When the week is up, Wednesday sits on a stump shaded beneath the brim of her witching hat. Merrily, Enid comes sauntering between trees—avoiding the road at all costs—with a host of swallows, foxes, badgers, and a wild horse at her side.

“My witch!”

She makes a soft tsk and shoos at the forest animals when they crowd her curiously, “What is this? You bring an army to collect me?”

“I made friends!”

“Tell them to go away. Their intentions are fractious while I am overcoming a weeks worth of time spent in a population of stinging, droning insects.”

Enid stops—barefoot and coated in mud and grape vines—at Wednesday’s reach and bends in half to tuck a flower behind her ear. She smiles like the sun.

“Aren’t you mortal?”

“Only sometimes.”

“Hm. That is a pleasant thought,” She swings forward to kiss Wednesday soundly on the mouth, “I want to live beside you for as long as I can.”

Her shoulders sink from the relief of being able to relax in creature comforts again. To relax in Enid’s presence.

“It will be a good, long while you spend with me, beast.”

“Good. Come on now, Wednesday. Your mother is waiting at our cottage.”

She snags Enid’s hand to draw her to a quick stop, “Then let’s tarry a bit here. Let me have a moment more with you before I am expected to socialize.”

Enid, blinking rapidly, simply plops onto the dirt by her feet and huddles against her shins the way she did as a beast. Wednesday careful takes off her crown so she can run her fingers through the hair splayed across her knee. Absently, she begins doing small braids and, after realizing it, starts tying them off with blades of grass. For one such braid, she undoes one of her own to secure the wolf bead she once carved at the end.

Enid regards it with wild eyes, rubbing it between her fingers, “A gift?”

“You may keep it, yes.”

She tilts her head up to meet Wednesday’s half-lidded gaze, “I accept the offering.”

“I was not intending to make a bargain with you, beast.”

“Too late. I have already accepted.”

Wednesday frowns when Enid shoots to her feet, stretching her back and rotating her ankles. One of the foxes nearby yawns and shakes itself awake to yip at her.

“Tell me what I’ve done then.”

“Ah,” Enid taps her own nose tip and winks, cherub like in its sweetness but mischievous as the cunning Fox she parties with, “it does not work like that.”

“I’ll make you tell me.”

By way of answering, Enid shimmies until her body shakes into the form of a grey and white wolf that has black tipped ears and sprints into the forest. Her company join her promptly, leaving Wednesday behind glaring at the many footprints and noises left in their wake.

 

The deal does not reveal itself for many years because it is a quiet thing. It only becomes clear when Enid goes galavanting in the woods and does not return for a number of days. As she putters around her home, making totems and tinctures and tending to chores, her heart starts to wane. It is not a metaphysical breaking but a real, awful hurt that plunges deep. She stumbles up the steps and hits the wood hard enough to scape the skin from her knees.

Enid tethered their lives. Bonded them in a way beyond marriage, beyond the understanding of humans in the mortal world. It runs deeper than mountain and rushes faster than a muddied river after a long rain. It is raw and wild and untamable.

When Enid comes limping back as a stunted wolf and crawls into bed with Wednesday, ears mangled, she does not even bother to chastise her. What she does do is venture into her woods to find the bear traps left by poachers, one of which Enid fell into, and traces them back to the ones who set them. They are broken in such a way that no trap will ever be laid again. She sunders their bloodline.

“I suppose a normal marriage would have been out of the question,” Wednesday remarks later when Enid is sliding into the cool, clear creak with her for a bath, “the ring on your finger would have been cruel.”

“A ring? Like a gift?”

“No. The opposite of a gift. It is a claim. Something of cool, unyielding metal that reminds anyone who sees it that you are beholden to another. At least, by the standards of your kin it would be cruel. A Wylding should not be banded and branded.”

Enid makes a disgusted sound, “Metal. I do not want to be collared again. What I did was kinder, better.”

Wednesday twists her hair to wring the soap from it, her back to Enid as she does so, “Is that what you think?”

Warmth blossoms along her prickling skin from the points of contact Enid’s body makes with her own. Teeth scrape against the nape of her neck.

“Now we don’t have to worry about time.”

Wednesday’s allows her eyes to slip shut and tilts her head back to rest it on Enid’s shoulder, “Have you finally grasped the concept?”

Lips drag against her newly exposed neck, “The mother witch explained some of it. I still think it sounds boring and dreadfully human but I understood the important part. You do not have forever and you will die, some day. I do not want to outlive you so I fixed it. Now we’ll share.”  

The emotions that rise with that are complicated in their wealth. When Wednesday Addams, master of the occult and a scion of true witching work, became so rich she does not know. Now she is abundant with so many feelings, well. She has not been bored in any of the years that she has known Enid, whether Enid was a beast or a human. But the cost of freedom from what she can admit now is loneliness is an overinflation of so many twisting emotions that nestle in the nooks of her framework.

She is such a helpless thing now she does not even know if she is happy or angry about this. Perhaps she is both. She does not want Enid to live a mortal life even if Wednesday will live longer than most. She is a true spirit of the Wyld who should—

“What is your hand doing?”

Enid’s fingertips flutter against the skin just above her navel, “You’re a storm cloud. Doesn’t your head get loud? Aren’t you so tired of always thinking, my witch? I can make it quiet.”

You truly are the most dangerous thing that lives in this world. You can fall even the most stout of beasts. Me, a sordid witch nestled so lonesome in these woods and all you had to do was nearly die.

She curls her fingers around Enid’s wrist and pushes the hand lower without a word.

 

Enid takes Wednesday deep into the woods. To a place so dense with life, she cannot tell the ground from the sky. Green blots out any other color that steps into this place except for the shimmering array that is Enid in full splendor. In the lush wild of a place forgotten, the heart of this forest, Enid glows.

The arm she reaches back to grab at Wednesday with is spiraled with vines that grow honeysuckle. Bees collide with the flowers, dancing around in them, and fly away back to Wednesday’s hives somewhere far off.

“Come on Wednesday! We’re almost there.”

“You said it would be a short walk.”

“It is!”

“Clearly you are still struggling with time.”

“Oh, don’t be sour,” Enid snags her by the fingers and pulls her past a cluster of roots that she would have tripped over, “this is fun.”

Sun glints off the pearly white smile Enid gives her. One so wide it makes her eyes squint a bit.

“I suppose.”

“What is the manners for I am happy you came?”

Her mouth twitches a bit, almost lifting into a smile, “Thank you for coming.”

“Yes, that. I spent all morning getting this ready.”

Enid uses her forearm to lift a branch for Wednesday to pass under unscathed. She ducks so her hat does not not hit it.

“Is that where you went? Leaving me to do all the chores by myself?”

“Oh, chores are boring, Wednesday. We’ll do them tomorrow.”

“That isn’t how it works and you know that by now.”

“Boo. Forget about chores. Come on.” She darts past Wednesday, racing toward a rocky formation that curls up into an almost perfect circle. A crack runs down the center that verdant brambles and ivy and ferns grown in and out of.

She approaches it with a healthy amount of precaution, keeping back a handful of steps when Enid begins to shimmy herself into the crack. Inside her bag, Afillius wiggles around until his yellow eyes appear and his triangle ears poke above the canvas. They flatten instantly.

“Enid! I’m not crawling through there. Aflillius does not think it is prudent.”

“Mouse King, have mercy! I brought fish for you!”

The ears bounce back up and the fluffy black cat hops from the bag to the forest floor. He languidly stretches first his front then his back legs, yawning real big to show off his sleek fangs. He chirps at her before trotting over to climb through the crack in the rock.

“Traitor. This is why you are a useless familiar, Afillius. I’m giving you back to Pugsley.”

Offensive wet seeps into her clothes from the moss and wide fern leaves as she squeezes through. On the other side, her leg is not quite long enough to reach the ground so she falls out of the crack and stumbles onto the ground. Her hat falls off and tumbles on the breeze into the small pool of the bluest water Wednesday has ever seen. It does not sink into the water, just merrily floats on top.

“Oh,” Enid folds her arms behind her back and bends at the waist to peer down at her, “you’re like a fowl.”

Wednesday glares, “I am in a foul mood, now. Typically, you’re suppose to offer a hand up.”

“You’ll just slap it away.”

“That is not the point! This is a cursed outing.”

“No, come on,” Enid’s large hands hook beneath her shoulders to seamlessly lift her onto her feet and posit her in front of the willowy fey, “look.”

Look she does, at one of her good blankets spread across wet rocks and lively moss. They are stood inside an oval shaped cave that is not very deep but exceptionally high. Fireflies buzz around in this artificial dark, lighting the gloom like stars. Water drips from above and she expects to see it pool from the crag but to her surprise there is another pool of water above them. The one below is a blue that is vast beyond the scope of what she has ever perceived. Fish swim inside it, long rainbow trout, small mouth bass, a handful of salamanders that fat catfish chase, all circling through dense algae and glittering rocks. Above them the pool is green and seems to hold a perfect reflection of the one below it. Except the fish that swim in the green one are like nothing she has seen before. They seem to be constantly feeding each in a loop of one stream of water going down and another going up.  

Wednesday steps closer with her mouth hung slack in awe, “You found a door.”

“Yes! I think I came through one like this before. Mine was made of ivy in a ring and it was around the hollow in a great, big redwood.”

Something shifts the resplendent joy into a sour ash that coats her tongue and makes it fuzzy behind her teeth. She turns to her companion who beams brighter than the light she is standing in. Her crown of myrtle and horns has thrived by the blessing of a Wyld spirit, blooming now with all kinds of flowers. Bees buzz around them and one little sparrow is perched on a horn. She is perfection and Wednesday truly abhors the idea of ever losing her. And yet the evidence that she does not belong here is more present than ever before.

Slowly, she approaches to slide her palms over Enid’s collarbones and just stands in the circle of her arms, pressed close.

“Is it time?”

Enid cocks her head sweetly, “Time for what?”

“For you to go home,” Wednesday drops her forehead against the hollow of Enid’s throat, allowing her eyes to squeeze shut as her heart breaks, “you found a door. We might not find one again.”

What she is expects is a lashing out or a crumbling of the soul before her very eyes. She expects vehement accusations or a casual acceptance and the fluttering of a coat tail where the spirit absconds through a portal into her home world. She expects to work an undoing of immense proportions and then a goodbye that will be the ruining of goodly witch Wednesday Addams.

What she does not expect is for Enid to laugh. The sound is bright in the cave, bouncing off the walls and filtering through the ponds that turn it into an airy flute sound.

“Silly witch,” Enid squeezes her around the hips, “it is not my door. Just a door.”

“We should utilize the rare opening.”

A rare look of annoyance flashes across the spirit’s exquisite face, “Why are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Enid—“

“I cannot go back. Even if you strike the name they gave me, even if you strike the names of the creatures that bind me. I’m hardly a spirit anymore. I feel. I have a conscious. I understand time and I eat food from this strange place. It has been too late for me for generations.”

The rules. She always forgets the spirits have rules unseen. To know both the human realm and the spirits rules is her duty as a witch. More than being a peddler of magic and a conjurer of wonder, she is the bridge between these worlds. A guardian. She should have known. 

“I am sorry, my love. I…forgot.”

“Oh, it’s fine. Forgetting is such fun, isn’t it?”

She snorts indelicately, “What is fun about forgetting?”

“The chance for a spectacular remembering,” Enid presses a hot kiss against her ear and breathes the words, “I wanted to show you your door.”

Wednesday reels back from her, squinting at the vivid blue that contain multitudes.

The width of Enid’s joy could wrap around the world thrice, “You’ve done such a good job protecting it, my witch. It fills me with pride! And oh! That was fascinating! I had never felt pride before. It feel fuzzy. Like a mouthful of rain cloud.”

Wednesday approaches the edge of the blue pond. Her hat gently glides across the glass surface propelled by an undercurrent until it runs into one of the streams. The hat is swiftly lifted into the green pond above and swallowed by verdant water. Once it slips under, the fabric dissolves into stars shaped like almost-toads and kind-of-salamanders. They swim through a forest of algae for the downward stream, fluttering down the tunnel and collecting back into a hat once it hits the blue top. She steps onto the water, watching the surface ripple outward from the pointed tip of her boots with each step. The fish instantly run from the movement, fleeing to the other side of the shore where Afillius is waiting to attack. His black paw strikes quick to hook a trout by the fins and snatch it from the water into his waiting mouth.

“Oh! Well done, Mouse King!” Enid claps from behind her, on the black rock shore of the pond.

The cat grumbles around the mouthful of flopping fish, ears pinned back. Wednesday knows her familiar is displeased about the work it took for the fish Enid promised.

Her hat has been changed by its short adjourn through the spirit portal. Bright orange Hen-of-the-wood has bloomed in a spiral around the cone of the hat and vivid green lichen has begun spider webbing through the fuzzy fabric from the tip downward. Around the brim a wood edging has been made that has short antlers made of moss covered wood coming around the cone shape of the hat. When she plucks it from the water and looks at the bottom, her face is awash in a dazzling array of colors. Fairy fire has suffused the pattern of the brocade so that it glows in pink, blue, green, and red. Pulsing from the heartbeat of the forest. A fish made of stitching swims around the inside of the hat, moving in fractal waves that rush and recede in time with the pulsing. The smell that waifs from it is peat moss and petrichor. A smell that reminds her powerfully of Enid.

She places the hat on her head with far more reverence than she ever has before. The feeling that accompanies it is standing beneath a thin sheet of summer rain.

Her head tips back to look up, eyes following a long segmented fish with wooden chiton and organs that glow through the skin. It swims happily through the green pond above.

“I did not know this was here.”

Ripples push around her shoes as Enid approaches, “And neither does anyone else. Because of you.”

“You act as if I intentionally protected it all these years.”

“Oh but you have,” Enid circles her arms around Wednesday from behind and sets her pointy chin on her shoulder, “we do not know anything about your world from my side. Except for the existence of witches because they have been our protectors since their time began. When spirits got restless and wanted to wander or play pranks, a door would open. When a door opens, a witch is born to protect it.”

The fish wiggles slowly through pink weeds that whistle a jaunty tune.

“And this one is mine. I remember my mother teaching me that, a long, long time ago. It has been such a long while that I had forgotten the lesson among the other more commonly used knowledge I was taught.”

Enid makes a happy hum, “An act of remembering is such fun.”

Always such a bright spot, my beast.

She turns in Enid’s arms to gaze instead at the wonder of her marvelous beauty, “What a tragic story then. You came here only because a witch was born and you were cursed to stay here by a witch’s hand.”

“Yes but don’t forget, I was also saved by a witch’s love. No tragedy. I think, ‘how lucky am I?’ when time could have swept you from the world as dust from a porch before I could have held you. Known your honeyed taste.”

Wednesday cradles that darling face in her palms, chest rising on the wings of love, “Yes, how terrible to consider.”

“What is Enid without Wednesday? A beast without its surly owner.”

“And Wednesday without Enid is a miserable, lonesome witch without her guiding spirit.”

Enid presses a kiss against her dark brow, “Now that is a tragic story.”

They meet in a collision of stars and leafy green fauna and rain soaked memories. Wednesday has become addicted to the taste of stars and the heavy presence of true, untamed wilds. The unyielding heat of Enid’s tongue against the roof of her mouth and the sharpness of her teeth have become far more than an indulgence.

When they separate, some of that wild heat has suffused Wednesday’s body and made her hungry.

Before she can suggest that Enid allow her to drop to her knees there, utterly wretched, the spirit pulls away.

“Let us drink now!”

Her lips form a deep, dissatisfied frown, “Is that what you brought me here for?”

“Yes, yes! Your father explained to me the human tradition that occurs after a union. He called it a honey moon. I admit that I stopped listening to chase a bird fairly early on in the explanation but I understood the sentiment! I have retrieved the spirits you make with honey and the kind made with the moon. Now we drink together to celebrate, yes?”

“Do you mean the lavender tea I brew in the moonlight?”

Enid nods eagerly, sharp canines exposed in a wide smile.

“That is for spell craft, you ignoramus.”

One black tipped ear flickers as Enid cants her head, “Are we not binding the moon with the honey?”

“No. But your loose grasp on this world remains deeply charming so let us have that drink, my beast.”

“Perfection! I brought a saucer for the Mouse King so he can celebrate in our marriage too.”

Water ripples in tandem from their stroll to the rocky lip of the ponds shore edge. She loops an arm through Enid’s and smiles a fond, secretive smile.

“Mead and lavender tea would likely kill Afillius if he drinks it. Be sure to pour him a healthy dose.”

Afillius’s tail bushes up and he hisses loudly at the approaching witch.

“Yes, I hate you too.”

Enid’s laughter rings like the chiming of a bell within the cave.

Notes:

Thanks for reading <3 oh and let me know if you liked it, I suppose. If you feel inclined.