Episode 7: Sascha Partin's Pitchy Witch Part Three

The story so far.

Mary-Alice, newly airborne on a broom not hers to take, has been launched upon a journey that she never meant to make.

She began the journey sooty, and was covered next in coal, then, escaping, she returned again and visited, by hole, a family shocked and rudely woken by the girl, the cat and broom.

But she staggered, faint and woozy, from the rustic little room, and so continued, under protest, on her mad, repeating flight.

Hence, we find her now approaching a despised, familiar sight.

Once again she saw the islands, and she spun above the spit, but her grip was getting better and she didn’t fall a bit.

It was now three times she’d come to this whatever, where and when, but at least it was consistent, ‘cause it all had changed again.

In the place that was a villa, then a solitary goat, stood a little wooden castle with a tower and a moat.

But the moat was just the marsh, or maybe now it was a lake.

There was nothing of the hut where she’d just been, for goodness’ sake! And of course, familiar story, she was flying, true and straight, on a line designed to smash her on the castle’s wooden gate.

But the castle gate swung wide.

A wonky trumpet played within.

Not impressive, as her fanfare, but she’d take it as a win.

Then she gaped as, from the castle - she could not believe her eyes - rode a knight in rusty armour on a horse reduced in size.

First they trotted, then they cantered, then they galloped.

At a glance, it appeared he meant to skewer Mary-Alice with a lance.

But as Mary-Alice screamed at him, the lance was passing by, and she thought he might be hampered by a helmet in his eye.

But the broom itself, on target, said,

‘Proximity alert,’ struck the knight and sent him flying and, though visibly unhurt, began to weave in such a way that Mary-Alice couldn’t stay, but fell away and bounced and rolled, with many fruity words to say.

She came to rest, a mess, and saw the broom embedded near the shore, noting happily the feline wasn’t with her anymore, and that the knight was on his back, ‘cause she’d unhorsed him - a defeat - and the cat was in the saddle and the horse was in retreat.

As the victor watched her fallen foe, she giggled in her hand, ‘cause the weight of all that armour plate ensured he couldn’t stand.

But he gave it up, at last, and simply pulled his helmet free, turned his head so he could look at her, in all her dark debris, and up his brow went; then it furrowed, with the evidence of thought, till he smiled with satisfaction as he found the word he sought and said:

‘Befana!’

In reply, she gave an eye roll and a sigh.

‘Broom, instruct him in the proper use of vowels. It’s an I.’

But the broom was busy drowning in the lake, and couldn’t hear, and the horse returned at canter as its master whistled clear, with the cat still in the saddle, looking regal and appeased.

But espying Mary-Alice, it abandoned ship and squeezed around her neck.

She stood on tiptoes by the drawbridge, in the sedge, reaching out to pull the broom in, by its bristles, to the edge.

As she scrambled up the bank and dropped, exhausted, by the night, something scratched her, and she pulled it out to see it in the light.

It was just a little horse, composed of twig and stick and string, but the knight reached out towards it.

Did he want the little thing?

Mary-Alice let him have it, and he held it near his nose.

‘Oh,’ she said, ‘you’re just a little bit short-sighted, I suppose.’

Then he smiled, and said a heap of words.

She only knew the one, and the broom began translating, even though he wasn’t done.

‘What, no call for me befa-a-a-a-a …’

Then it gurgled and was gone. Half the lake was in its speakers, and it couldn’t carry on.

But a trumpet blew beyond them, and a rider galloped out, through the gateway in the castle to the drawbridge, with a shout.

Mary-Alice tossed a leg across the broom and said: ‘Goodbye!’

And the knight looked up in wonder as she hurtled to the sky in clouds of smoke and fumes and coal dust, and the cat behind her coughed.

When she looked, the knight was grinning as he waved the toy aloft and yelled: ‘Befana!’

She ignored him. She was full up to the brim.

Then she realized … ‘But I never said Bifana, not to him.’

She was pondering the puzzle through the darkness and the light, and she barely even grumbled as the islands came in sight, but only sighed, and cursed the cat and wrapped her everything around, with her muscle memory managing her plunge towards the ground.

Mary-Alice has a lot she needs to think about, but won’t.

Like the way the people down below should stay the same, but don’t.

Why the broom remains obtuse, and why the cat has come along.

How the knight could say ‘Befana!’ so preemptively, but wrong.

Oh, she’d end this beastly cycle if she just knew what to do, but it feels a bit forever, ‘cause she doesn’t have a clue.

To be continued.