Puddlebrain

Chapter Thirty Four

There was no longer a 'me' or an 'I' in the little man's words. It was only 'we' as if not just the Grimace as a whole, but each individual tree was talking to her.

"And my father?"

"Your father felt our pain. We don't know how. Through the rain, perhaps. Or the setting of the sun. He came and he healed us. The scars still leave their marks but your father made us... as whole as he could."

Puddlebrain wiped a tear which had sneaked out of the corner of her eye and was trailing down her cheek. Her father. She felt a swelling of emotion in her chest, but pushed it back down for fear of it forcing more tears out.

Thistle watched her for a moment, letting her feel the rush of pride, love and loss. The Grimace was private. It preferred to keep itself in and others out and had remained constant for so long even it couldn't remember its own origins. It spent great lengths of time in solitude, speaking only with the wind and the rain and so was unaccustomed to people and their impatience.

Sometimes, though, necessity came a-knocking and the Grimace had to heed the call. This girl's father had helped stay the shadow's touch, and now that strength and power had been passed to his youngest daughter. If the shadow was walking again, then only she would be able to stop it. If she couldn't, then the Grimace may, again, be unable to fight it and its heart would be taken.

The Grimace was eternal. Its roots spread so far beneath the earth that it had become a part of almost every town and village, even though they didn't realise it. All trees, from sapling to great oak to weeping willow were children of the Grimace. The apple tree in the garden of the Fudge's of Armitage Avenue, Whipenstair. The elm with the tree-house in the park, way over at the back of Deringer Town. The odd little growth, a mass of twigs somehow managing to stick together in a birds' nest of branches that grew behind the school in Little Whimsy itself.

But here, in its densest, darkest centre, you could feel the Grimace's breath. You could sense that it lived. If you ever dared to enter, that was, and if it ever saw fit to allow you.

Puddlebrain, in actual real-life fact, was speaking to the Grimace, and it was responding! And wrapping her up in riddles, too, much like the bandages that Fiddle McFilip had been swathed in the time he'd fallen off his roof.

Well, he had been trying to fix some loose tiles in the pouring rain. It didn't help that he wore glasses so couldn't see where he was going because of the rain streaked lenses. He'd been in hospital for over a month and always preferred to walk backwards after that, using a mirror to see where he was going. He blamed it on an awkward twist of his hip from the fall. Others just thought it was because of the knock on his head.

But now, she had to go. She had to return and fight this shadow. Find her sisters and the rest of the villagers. Did they deserve it? They'd been happy to blame the witches and roast them like turkeys. Surely it would be better – and quieter – for Puddlebrain and her siblings to leave the villagers right where they were.

No. She couldn't do that. Edna might have done. She was the oldest of the three and had a hint of spite running down her spine that popped up every now and again to cause a little havoc. Gemini would quite possibly have just wondered when the stew was going to be ready, oblivious to anything other than the rumbling in her tumbling (as she liked to call it) and the hour's proximity to thirteen o'clock. Puddlebrain was sometimes, she thought, far too nice. She had to help them. She just couldn't help herself.

With a hefty sigh which fell out of her and plopped onto the ground, the newly-witchly-witch stood. She looked at Thistle for a moment and he stood watching her back.

"I should go," she said, finally.

"Well said," the little man replied. "Indeed you should. Time is wasting away, even for us."

Puddlebrain looked around. She had no idea which way she had entered this clearing and, equally, no idea how to get out again. She could just pick a direction and hope it would be the right one - and hope that the Grimace would clear a path for her - or she could close her eyes and see which way her feet took her.

"The way you came is the way you leave," said Thistle.

She turned to ask what this latest riddle might mean but he was nowhere to be seen. His words hung in the air like a mist on a chill autumn morning, clinging to nothing and drifting on a sigh.

Well, that was certainly her cue to leave.