Puddlebrain

Chapter Thirty One

His old brain was obviously too befuddled to remember that Puddlebrain had already asked this question, but she simply didn't have the strength to argue with him. He hobbled over to where she was slumped, his cane taking the full weight of his frail frame with each painstaking step. She couldn't tell which creaked the loudest, the cane carrying him, or his own body. He shuffled next to her and settled down on the ground.

She could see his face clearly now, the brim of his hat no longer sufficient to hide his face. His face was a mass of wrinkles that wound around each other so tightly it looked like they might snap. It looked pinched, as if he'd been a painting and someone had grabbed his nose and pulled, the whole face ending up with a permanent squint. She couldn't quite see where the hat ended and his ears began, but before she could look too closely, the old man turned and stared at her. From that point on, all she could see were his eyes.

His eyes. They were like... like... coal. Black. Harsh. Opaque, but bristling with barely concealed fire. And they held her fast. She couldn't pull away, but then she didn't feel that she should. She didn't feel anything.

"Not every bird is an eagle, you know," he rattled.

Puddlebrain wanted to respond, but her mouth had become disconnected from the rest of her body. She could feel it hanging from her face, limp and useless as if it had been glued in place for some reason, but then that reason had been forgotten or thrown out with the old banana peels and apple cores. Her mind still ticked, but the clockwork spring had been removed.

? she thought.

"Indeed," the old man said. He was speaking quietly, but Puddlebrain realised he was only voicing part of his words. The rest were in her head. "Not every tree is an oak and not every stream you cross leads into the sea, though you'd like to think that it does."

?

"Is that the most intelligent thing I've heard you say? Methinks so." He smiled. It was a gentle smile, absent of the threat that pervaded every other aspect of him. "Not every girly is simply a girly, and not every old man is just an old man... girly."

Puddlebrain would have frowned, but her eyebrows seemed to have gone to sleep. She wondered if he knew what he was talking about. He wasn't making much sense to her, that was for sure, but that didn't mean he wasn't making any sense to himself. She'd heard Gemini, on many an occasion, waffling on about nothing and everything in a serious of conjoined sentences that had no relation to each other whatsoever. But she was a whippersnip short of a floret, so had an excuse. As far as the witch could tell, he might talk nonsense, but he did so with at least the impression of sanity.

The old man, or whatever he might be, watched her as she digested his words. He knew she was easily the apple that made the crumble in her family so she'd get it in the end. His gaze felt warm to Puddlebrain. It was soothing somehow and she was feeling less frustrated with herself. She wondered who he was. Obviously he wasn't simply an old man, just as she wasn't simply a girl. She understood that much. But for him to be here, in the centre of the Grimace, unperturbed by the menace of the forest? And then there was his reaction to her magic – it was less than an irritation to him. What sort of creature could withstand magic? She didn't know and, try as she might, she just couldn't think. Unless...

The old man broke his gaze. He was grinning broadly.

"There you go, me girly! I knew you could do it!"

"But..." Puddlebrain began.

She'd had an inkling of an idea for a second there. A stroke of a thought had brushed the back of her mind with a tantalising tickle, but it was snatched back as he broke the connection between them. She mentally grasped at it, but it was gone. His voice had broken the spell. But there was something...

"Something indeedy. Now. What would you like to ask, girly?"

"I'd like to ask you not to call me girly for one thing," she sighed. "If I stop thinking of you as just an old man."

"Of course, girly! Of course! It's a deal! Anything else?"

"Who are you?"

Turning to face the witch, his smile broadened.

"You want to know about little old me?"

His body creaked as he moved, but his movements seemed to be more fluid than they should have been. Then Puddlebrain looked down. The earth was moving beneath him. It was shifting around, helping him turn. The crumbs of mud looked like hundreds of spiders as they skittered around in a circle, taking his body with them.

"Well, of course it is, girly!" he laughed.

She noticed that the rattle was less noticeable in his cackle. It was less of an itch in her head.

"Just getting used to being like this, is all," he said. "Takes a wee bit of time and a whole lot of effort is all." He leaned forward, once again looking into her eyes. Once again, she was enraptured. "The ground, like the rain, is my friend. Thought they were yours too!"

"But..." she began again.

She was going to say that the rain was her friend. She was going to say the grass and the birds and the sky and all of it were her friends. But being trapped in the Grimace had seriously dented her resolve on pretty much everything. She just wasn't sure anymore. Were they her friends? Or did they just do as she wished because she was a witch? But she'd lost her powers! She hadn't been a witch for decades!

Oh, hold on. She hadn't lost her magic. She and her sisters had just... mislaid it... So the grass could have grown because she was a witch. The rain could have missed her because she was a witch. The birds could have spoken to her just because she was a witch!

She held her head in her hands. She just didn't know. And what if that was the case? What if it was all just because? She didn't want that! That would mean, apart from her sisters, she had nobody! The geese, who stopped by on their way to easier pickings during the winter months, only stayed for a while because they had to? Was that it? The grass in their garden only grew to a forest or shrank to a whisker on the soles or her feet because it felt forced? Was that it? Was she alone? Was her world a lie?

The old man put his arm around her. It felt hard and bony, but it was still something of a comfort.

"Is that what you believe?" he asked.

His voice was soft. The crackle had gone. He no longer sounded like his voice could break in two. Puddlebrain lifted her head.

"What?"

"Is that what you believe? That you're all alone? That you're nothing? An insignificant speck on the eyeball of life? A useless piece of..."

"OKOKOK!" Puddlebrain cried. "I get the point! So maybe I do! Maybe I do think that I'm just a tired old excuse for a witch. I was never the good one anyway. I was always the baby. I was always the one pushed back. So yes! Maybe I am just a big fat nothing and all my friends were fake and all my life is a lie!"

She was shaking, a stomach-wrenching mixture of anger, frustration and fear. She was ranting, she knew. She didn't know if any of it was true or if all of it was a facade. She couldn't focus!

"Ah yes, focus!" crooned the old man. "Focus, focus, hocus pocus! Focus is our way of saying PishPosh to the darkness and Hey-ho Daddyo to our good ol' friend normality! Focus lets us drag all our eggs into one basket, lest any of them crack. Now, girly. Have you cracked? Are you the egg, or are you the basket?"

Basketcase, more like, thought Puddlebrain, and she wasn't referring to herself.

"That's as maybe, daisy, but we've got ourselves a dilemma here, ain't we just. A dilemma of a conundrum, if you ask me, which I know you won't, but if you did, well then, we'd all be happy, wouldn't we?"

"Erm..." said Puddlebrain. Well, is was better than '?.' She shook her head. "Who are you?"