Puddlebrain

Chapter Seven

Edna, Gemini and Puddlebrain had lived in the house since they were born. Their parents had lived in it for most of their extremely long, even by witch standards, lives before that. It hadn't changed much in all those centuries, the sisters preferring to leave it just as their parents had liked. Magic could come in very useful occasionally so they had made some of the rooms a little bigger, and had extended the kitchen to include a pantry and washroom. Otherwise it was much the same dwelling that Corinne and Colin had occupied for so long. Oh, the garden did look after itself now. Colin, the sisters' father, had been a keen gardener and liked little more than getting his hands dirty tending his plot. None of the daughters had any horticultural tendencies, so left it to magic to keep things neat. The house was simple – three bedrooms, a living room with a huge open fire, the kitchen, a bathroom and a cupboardy thing under the stairs that no one could quite figure out what to do with. Apart from a couple of hidey-holes for shoving junk and stuff in, that was your lot. It suited them right down to the ground and back again. It was home.

By an obnoxious mix of bad luck and misfortune, Puddlebrain's room was at the back, directly over where Billy the gnome was encamped. She had the displeasure of having to listen to him rant endlessly while she was struggling to invent new ways to get to sleep. Hers was the 'box' room, so called because it wasn't much larger than one and you'd be hard pushed to swing the proverbial cat, not that Puddlebrain would ever consider doing anything like that. The word 'room' was entirely misleading, as it implied that there was actually some. Room, that is. In Puddlebrain's case there was space for a bed and a wardrobe and a small cramped table.

Edna's and Gemini's rooms were palatial in contrast. Their bedrooms were twice the size of their younger sister's, and you could swing a donkey if you fancied it. Their extravagance was squandered though, as they had the same furniture as Puddlebrain. In each room lived a bed, a wardrobe and a small cramped table. Such a waste.

The living room was only a little larger than Puddlebrain's bedroom. There was a wide sofa facing the fire and a low table, stained and chipped from decades of misuse and neglect. There was no real point in having any more furniture as the fireplace dominated the entire room, making any other adornments redundant. It had an ornate oak surround, carved in a single piece by their father, and was cut from the biggest of the three oaks that pretty much owned the centre of Grimace Woods. He'd ventured in on only one occasion, with the express desire to create this fire surround, but had never braved its confines again. He declined to ever speak of what he found within the Grimace, saying only that it was 'quiet'.

The surround was sculpted with the likenesses of myriad faerie creatures, each of which grabbed your attention in turn by smiling, waving or, on occasion, even singing to you. The fireplace itself led through to the kitchen on the other side, but it was never a thoroughfare as a roaring log fire always raged in its grate, even in the hottest summer. There was no chimney leading up through the roof to swallow the smoke as the fire burned cleanly, emitting only the odd spark and crackle just to say 'Hi there! Warm enough for ya?'

In each room, windows, large and clear, looked onto the outside world, allowing no one to look back in. From that there outside world, the house looked like it was in perpetual darkness, as if the sun had forgotten to rise and the day had overslept and not got round to breaking. It was an illusion, however. Even on the most overcast and gloomy day, the inside of the witches' home was summer-bright.

The sisters had lived there all their lives and couldn't imagine living anywhere else. In fact, they couldn't imagine imagining it. It was home. They did their best to look after it, which wasn't too easy when you had lost your magic and weren't too well practiced with polishing a floor, and the house looked after them in turn.

But when the Hole belched and Gemini sneezed, when Edna hiccupped and Puddlebrain scratched her ear, a little patch of darkness started to slowly spread in the furthest corner under Puddlebrain's bed, just below where her head was gently snoring. It wasn't quite black – it was more like a vague shadow that you could only see if you looked sideways on with your eyes squinty. Even then you'd be hard pushed to convince yourself that it wasn't just your imagination playing tricks on you like Billy the gnome tried to but couldn't.