"What's this?" she asked.

"Whatever you want it to be," said the witch. The crow agreed.

Ennica nodded and took a sip. What hit her tongue was not water but hot chocolate-not the weak, powdery stuff she'd drunk as a kid but honest-to-goodness cocoa, the thick, molten creaminess that rich people had for breakfast in all those books she liked to read. See, baby? she said to her womb. This is what you deserve in life. Not too bitter; not too sweet. It tasted elegant and beautiful, and as it coursed through her veins it calmed her nerves and warmed her bones, lulling her into a sense of comfort. She closed her eyes...

...and saw Anthony and Tanya, naked, pa.s.sionately devouring one another. She mentally skewered them together with one thrust of her spear and shoved the vision aside. d.a.m.n them both. They were not going to ruin her chocolate.

Bravery reinforced, she opened her eyes. She'd doodled her fair share of witches on her notes in cla.s.s; old and wizened and warty, sultry and buxom and irresistible. The woman stroking the silky coal-black feathers of the crow didn't look anything like them. She wasn't young or old. Her features and coloring were the averagest of average. She could have been any woman on the street. She could have been the clerk at the grocer's. For that matter, she could have been kin-she looked quite a bit like her cousin Jessica. Ennica sipped her magical chocolate again. "I'm Ennica," she said finally.

The witch raised her eyebrows. "Interesting."

"I was named after my grandmother, Eunice," Ennica explained. "The nurse who filled out the birth certificate had terrible handwriting." Her words sounded stupid even as she was saying them. Nice, Ennica. Now maybe we can chat about the weather and our favorite music and try on each other's clothes. "Are you really a witch?" Oh, well done there, idiot.

The witch smiled.

"Sorry. I'm just...I mean, I meant..."

"Don't apologize," said the witch. "So few people ask the right question. For all your self-loathing, you're really quite perceptive."

Right. If she was so perceptive, she would have known that Anthony had never loved her.

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," said the witch, reading her mind. "Now cut it out and drink your chocolate."

She'd been raised to respect her elders...which she figured might as well include anybody who might have the power to turn water into chocolate. Ennica did as she was told.

"This is Mr. Hue," the witch introduced the crow, and it lowered its head to Ennica.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Hue."

"To answer your question: No. We were here before witches were witches and words were words and the world was the world. Not Mr. Hue, of course, but the rest of us. We have been called the Wild Things, the Wrong Ones, the Widdershins, the Damps. We were the afterbirth; after Chaos came Order. We are the facilitators of that utter perfection."

"Chaos," Ennica repeated. "You're talking 'beginning of the universe' type stuff."

"A never-ending series of storms in a never-ending line of teacups. Life is Chaos. So it follows that we are Death." The witch pet the crow reverently. "He was once a majestic bird with rainbow plumage, Mr. Hue was. His first taste of carrion flesh turned him black. He is much more elegant now, don't you think?" She nuzzled his sharp beak with her nose. "Even more majestic."

The chocolate in her mouth turned to dirt, and Ennica forced herself to swallow. She had already welcomed insanity, or she would have never climbed this mountain in the first place. "Are you evil?"

"We are evil to good as night is to day and the end is to the beginning. We are solace and silence and solitude. We drew blueprints in the stars and fashioned this world from the dust, and we return all that thrives here to it. We complete the circle."

"By killing people."

"By bringing order to chaos."

"So...by killing people."

The witch shrugged. "As you wish."

"What do you get out of it? Power? Joy? Vengeance?"

"Balance," said the witch. "It is the way of things. Up, down. Life, death. Action, reaction. The reason we do what we do is because the universe could not exist without us."

"If you hate life so much, you must find me revolting."

"Not in such harsh words."

"Tell me then," said Ennica. "What do you see when you look at me?"

The witch studied her with strange eyes, bright in contrast to the dark shadows in the skin that surrounded them, but still flat, like the crow's, like the deer heads mounted in Ennica's father's garage. They burned like a fire with no flame. Like the coal, deep in the heart of the mountain beneath them.

Ennica imagined herself through those dead eyes. A short, pudgy girl with stringy hair and blotchy skin. A good heart and a soft life. A mouse in a field waiting for an eagle to prey on it, waiting to be wanted somehow, by someone. Desperate and sad and stupid and too full of dreams and fairy tales to be of much use to anyone.

"I see a mess waiting to be tidied up," said the witch. "I see a life within a life, and I pity you both."

If the witch could read her mind, then her knowledge of the pregnancy was no surprise. Smile, baby. You've just met your first witch. "If you find humans so unpalatable, why look like one?"

The witch folded her arms and crossed her legs under the table. Her feet were bare beneath her ragged skirts, but there wasn't a speck of dirt on them. "You came all this way to ask my story?"

"Look," said Ennica. "It's been a long day, I imagine it will be a longer night, and I have little left to lose. My mind's full of its own misery, and to be honest I'm tired of it. I would love nothing more than-okay, than my ex's head on a platter, but second to that, I'd love to hear about some troubles that aren't my own, you know?"

"I like you," said the witch with her dead eyes.

"I might like you too, but the jury's still out," said Ennica. "So spill. Why live the life of a human?"

"It is my curse," she said. The crow murmured a consoling caw.

Ennica picked up her teacup again. "Oh, this is going to be good."

"We were young," said the witch, "mere millennia old, a blink of an eye in the yawn of the universe. We were reckless, learning our boundaries, testing their resistance."

"Not so very different from humans," said Ennica.

"Only we lived deep down under the earth, in the soul of the world, in the heart of the mountain. Our paths were never meant to cross with the humans. And so it remained, until the humans discovered an aspect of our existence they couldn't live without."

"Coal."

"In our wake, we cannot help but arrange the basic elements into their purest form. Given enough time-"

"-the earth would be a diamond." Ennica's grandfather had been a miner. He'd taught her about coal, and its varying degrees of carbon purity. The purest carbon, given time and the pressure of the world above it, was a diamond.

"Unfortunately, humans evolved before that time had come to pa.s.s. They dug tunnels into our sanctuary and brought light and noise and chaos where there had once been silence."

In a twisted way, Ennica could relate. "It's never fun to have your once peaceful existence smashed to pieces by some uncaring lout."

"Exactly so. My siblings and I try and maintain our privacy when we can, in our way."

"Siblings?"

"The imp, the angel, the twins, and I."

"You lost me," said Ennica.

"You can always tell the imp's pa.s.sage from his distinct odor. The angel has put so many birds to rest that she takes wing herself now, most days. The twins, they fight. Always fighting. They are the argument, and the cold shoulder."

"And you are the blackdamp," said Ennica. Her grandfather had told her stories of men killed by the damps in the mine. The stink damp reeked of sulfur. The whitedamp killed the canary before it killed you. The firedamp exploded. And the afterdamp got you when the dust settled, just when you thought you were safe. Then there was the mixture of everything, the queen of them all: the blackdamp.

The witch had called them the Wild Ones, the Widdershins, and the Damps. Ennica wondered what the miners would say if they knew it was vengeful fairies smothering their brothers to death in the bowels of the coal mine.

"I was always drawn to the humans; they were complicated beings, and so am I. They disgusted and repulsed me, but I was fascinated. I knew I should stay away, but I could not. " The witch c.o.c.ked her head to one side, a gesture that would have looked more natural performed by Mr. Hue. "Does this make sense to you?"

Let's see: desperately wanting something you know you shouldn't, and then later being burned by same. Oh, yeah. She'd written that scene in her diary a time or two. "Yes," said Ennica.

"We are completely different," said the witch. "There is nothing of us in you, and never should be."

"Should?" asked Ennica.

"There is one thing." The witch raised a finger. "The spark. I would never have known it had I not seen it with my own eyes, for it was something I never would have guessed on my own. The Damps, we are one or we are many. We are legion or solitude, at will. We are here, there, and everywhere, or nowhere, as we wish." She looked pointedly at Ennica's stomach and Ennica raised a hand, as if to shield her unborn child from those dead eyes. "We do not procreate as you do. We simply exist."

"But you know about human procreation?"

"Yes. A man and woman once came into the mine, back when the tunnels were first being sh.o.r.ed up. There have been many since, but this one...this one was my folly. They shed their clothes and came together and created a life."

Or ruined one, thought Ennica.

The witch's eyes glowed, and suddenly did not seem as flat and lifeless as they had before. Ennica wasn't sure it was a good thing.

"The spark," said Ennica.

"I witnessed it, that one perfect moment in the midst of all that chaos when two souls came together and merged perfectly into one. And it was..."

"...a miracle," said Ennica.

"But only for that moment," said the witch. "That one, blessed moment when your species and mine suddenly have the same goal: simplicity and beauty in one perfect unity. Not long after, that unity divided into two, and then four, and again and again, creating that thing"-she looked down at herself in her grey rags-"this thing you call a body." She touched her arms, the skin at her throat, her face. "How can you stand to be trapped in this prison, ever slowly succ.u.mbing to entropy?"

"How did you manage to become trapped in it?"

"I was caught up in the moment. Mesmerized. When the spark was created, my essence was trapped within it and I became its soul."

"You became that baby?"

"I became a spirit trapped in a messy carca.s.s." She spat out the rancid words. "I did not become human."

Ennica did not want to upset the witch before she asked her request, so she kept her talking. "What happened to the soul of the baby that would have been?"

The witch blew across her fingertip as if blowing out a tiny candle flame. Though she was no longer cold, Ennica shivered.

"I was invincible. I was immortal. I was before time and after. I was perfect. And but for that one, beautiful, d.a.m.ning spark, I would be perfect still."

"So if you're no longer human and no longer a Damp, what are you now?"

Dead or not, Ennica recognized the look in those eyes: that same look she had seen in the bathroom mirror, splattered with the vomit that had ricocheted off the sink after she'd found out that...after she'd found out. It was a look of confusion, devastation, and loss. And as soon as Ennica saw it, it was gone. That blissful innocence had been replaced by something stronger. Something deadlier. Something...else. Something with the power to grant wishes, to tame crows, to climb mountains.

"I don't know," said the witch. "We were not meant to feel. We were not meant to love or hate. We were simply meant to be, until the end of the universe and beyond."

"You loved?" It was impertinent to ask, but Ennica could not help herself. In a way, she was jealous. She wished she didn't have to feel anything. How much easier her life would be right now if she couldn't experience the pain of love and hate, humiliation and responsibility.

Mr. Hue cawed again and preened himself. Had the crow been her lover? "No," said the witch. "Mr. Hue and I connect beyond trivial emotions. But I did love a man once, a human man. I yearned to hold him in my arms, to sink my hands into his flesh and watch him crumble to ash, to free him from the prison of life."

Ennica wasn't sure if she should be more worried that the witch spoke so casually of murdering her lover, or that Ennica herself wasn't moved by it. "You didn't kill him?" she asked.

"Worse," answered the witch. "I doomed him to live. I fled into these woods, as close as I could ever be again to the heart of my home, my mountain, and here I have remained."

"I'm sorry." Ennica reached her hand across the table to pat the witch's arm, give her some comfort in knowing that, for this little while at least, she was not alone. The witch's skin was cool and smooth, like marble. Like death.

Ennica bit back a sigh. Only she would be stupid enough to comfort Death.

"It is late for you," said the being to whom time meant next to nothing. "You should rest; regain your strength." She opened the door behind her, a door that had not been there until she reached for it.

The house was like the teacup of water, then; it was whatever she wanted it to be. Nice. In the room was a bed, as simple a furnishing as the table at which they sat, but it would suffice. Beggars can't be choosers. Still far and away better than slowly dying outside on the frozen ground.

The teacup was now gone, as was the table. And when Ennica stood to follow the witch into the room, the chair beneath her disappeared as well. Would that certain memories could vanish just as easily.

"I will grant your wish," the witch told her. Mr. Hue cawed his concurrence from her shoulder.

Ennica had never voiced her desire aloud, but she apparently hadn't needed to. "Thank you."

"For once, I believe it is I who should be thanking you," said the witch. "Sleep well."

Ennica did sleep well; her exhaustion caught up with her the moment her head hit the thin feather pillow. But her dreams were not sweet.

As before, the shadows on the backs of her eyelids resolved themselves into Anthony and Tanya. Ennica clenched her fists as she watched them conspiring, laughing, carefree without so much as a pa.s.sing worry about the innocent life-lives!-they had ruined in their selfish wake.

She was not a fairy; she was no firedamp. She could not stand aside with a soul of vapor and a heart of coal and watch, indifferently, as she doomed her lover to live out his life. She walked up to the couple, her long black skirts swirling about her legs and brushing the tops of her bare feet. With one pale arm she pushed Tanya to the side, and with the other she swept Anthony up in her cold embrace and kissed him. Through that kiss she fed him all her love and all her pain and everything else she had in her that he never did-and never would-understand.

He tasted like chocolate.

She felt his heart stop, felt his body grow cold in her arms. She felt him crumble to dust beneath her lips until there was nothing in her hands but ash. She felt the rainbow colors of the baby inside her melt away into a majestic, elegant blackness. There was no noise, no mess, and the feel of the soft soot between her fingers was ecstasy. She knelt, thrust her hand in the pile of Anthony at her feet, and pulled out the one thing that would not have turned to ash: his spark. It was a diamond now, burning with a deep, pure fire, and Ennica marveled at its perfection.

The horse woke her, nuzzling her face and shoulder and nudging her into the sunshine. The house was gone; the witch was gone. She and the horse were alone at the base of the mountain. She squinted up at the sky, up the mountain path she'd have sworn she'd climbed the day before, and then she remembered how stupid she was, and how insane, and possibly how hormonal. She shrugged it off. A shame, really, that her little adventure had all been a dream.

She slowly picked her aching body up, moaning and cursing the unforgivable ground that had been her bed and wondering where the rocks had been that made her hurt so badly. She bent and stretched, trying to work enough kinks out to remount the horse; she should really get it back to the stables before her father started to worry. As for the rest of her life...she put a hand on her belly.

Odd; she felt none of her previous hatred toward Anthony anymore. She could honestly say she no longer loved him. In fact, she didn't feel anything. She closed her eyes...and thought of an abandoned watchtower, and teacups filled with chocolate, and a stove that smelled like apple pie. All those horrible memories and terrible feelings and atrocious, nonsense fantasies were gone.

"Thank you," Ennica whispered to no one, for if it had all been a dream, there was really no one to thank. As if in reply, a crow swooped down in a whirlwind of ebony feathers and dropped a shiny object in the dirt at her feet. Cawing triumphantly, it flew away, back up the mountain, into the mists from whence it came. Ennica bent down gingerly to retrieve the diamond, and the knowledge that came with it.

She would return the horse and say her goodbyes. She would not stay for the funeral or the gossip; that was some other girl's life now. That blissful innocence had been replaced by something stronger. Something deadlier. Something...else. Something with the power to grant wishes, to tame crows, to climb mountains.

She lifted her face back up to the path through the trees and the red-tinged dawn of the new day. Somewhere on that mountain, there was a cabin waiting for her.