Some of them Witches

Chapter 5

"Who was that guy?" Lily's voice came from above her on the landing as Marianne walked up the stairs back home. Her legs were dangling over the edge, looking much more relaxed than the tone of her question implied.

"Miller's brother, Nathan." Hopefully enough information to dissuade further interrogation.

"I thought you were supposed to be working."

The tiny tyrant was already dancing on Marianne's nerves. Better cut her off at the pass. "We're not scheduled for tutoring for another couple of hours. Am I to assume this is a social call?"

Lily's lightly tanned skin flushed. "Huckleberry got hot and this is the spot with the best shade," she indicated the beat-up red backpack she always carried the dog around in. It had a plastic window like a bubble for the captive to look out of and Huckleberry's furry little face peered up at her. Marianne was fairly certain the bag was meant for cats, but he looked happy enough.

She shut her eyes a moment to physically thwart an eye-roll. "Want to come in and just get it over with now?" A light proposal. She had plenty of unpleasant research on the interests of a five-year-old girl and her plans weren't going to draw themselves up. Better to do this now and not be interrupted in the middle later.

Lily simply walked in once the door was open and set her bag down, letting Huckleberry spring out as she spoke. "I checked out the Oedipus guy you were talking about yesterday."

Marianne was pleasantly surprised. Maybe she was getting the hang of this.

"Sounds like a real idiot," thrust her back into reality.

"If I said something like that to your aunt, she would have probably said, 'and do you have any intelligent thoughts to add?'" It was given in a mock-serious tone she wasn't sure Lily would register and at the moment did not care.

"Like why didn't the dad just wait until he was older and tell him not to fuck his mom?"

Language, cautioned the sing-song voice of a woman who's name she did not wish to remember. The memory of the painful crack of the woman's walking stick against Marianne's knuckles jolted her back into the present.

"So you think his fate could have easily been avoided because they knew about it?" She tossed some of the throw pillows from the window seat onto the rug and sat down as Lily and Huckleberry settled themselves onto some of the offered pillows as well.

Lily raised her shoulders, palms up as if the situation spoke for itself, "Well yeah."

She did not ask what Marianne thought but she assumed it was implied. "What if they didn't know?"

"His parents?" asked Lily.

Who else? "Yes."

"Then I guess the prophecy would have come true anyway?"

"You don't think they would have just raised him as a normal prince and he wouldn't have killed his dad and married his mom?"

"How should I know what would've happened?"

It's called thinking. "That's the point. Is it the act of hearing the prophecy that sets off a chain of events that results in its fulfillment? Is the prophecy itself the source of all this trouble? Is the person who told them responsible?" Marianne recalled how much she hated being asked questions like this by teachers, like all fingers were pointed at her.

"Then wouldn't that mean it's better not to use our intuition?"

"That's actually the basis of most social and religious claims against witches. Because we provide the information, we, rather than the people who act on it, are at fault."