A Flying Shame

“No, no, no. The polka dot ones, the small child ones, not these great big grey workmen’s socks.”

She flicks her tail. Stares at me. Slides a raspy tongue along a delicate paw. Burps. Leaves by the patio door.

***

It’s the children I want. Little bastards. Just like their parents when they were children. Little bastards.

***

The veins on my hands are bulging today. An aging witch down on her powers and an ageless cat that has accompanied her throughout time and place until we ended up here in Porto Villa Rise, a cul-de-sac of brick houses built in 1950s America, innovative in their day but now ugly and boring, some of them crumbling, and most of them chock full of little bastards on bicycles who go careening around the neighbourhood screaming abuse at the crumpled old lady at number 13 who dresses only in black. “Fucking old witch,” said the kid from number 9. Harrumph. Can’t argue with that.

***

The porch is peeling so bad all my broom collects are lead-lined paint flakes from the cracked concrete floor and dried up cockroach wings. What’s taking her so long? By my count when she gets back with that stupid Sandra Blue’s hairbrush I’ll only have three children to go. My back hurts. I lower myself into the swing seat and pull out my baccy pouch, stuff my pipe and savour the dried mugwort for the visions and belladonna for the vengeance.

***

Sometimes I could swear she’s analysing me. “Miaou to you, too.” I shake my broom at her and she drops the little pink hairbrush at my feet, soft blonde hair tufting from it like foam on the oceans we have crisscrossed.

***

I wasn’t always a witch. High priestess Ankh-U-Ra, I was chosen to serve Amun, King of the Gods, and, oh, how I loved being Ankh-U-Ra. Such a long time ago. Millennia ago. I can smell clear as anything the good old days of frankincense, honey, wine, gold, jewels and worship. I was near as exulted as the Pharaohs. My mentor, Hemet the 21st, selected me from rows of plump baby girls laid out on the temple floor and taught me the secrets to eternal life. Her methods were not overly palatable, but they worked. Poor Hemet. I still feel guilt, all these centuries later, about what I did to her. But no matter now. It was her eternal life or mine, and it was her eternal cat I inherited.

***

We outlasted them all, this frustrating black cat and I. Djoser, as he built his great stone pyramid; Sneferu; Khufu; Hatshepsut, a personal favourite; Thutmoses, who built Egypt up to be a superpower; sad little Tutankhamun; the great, if arrogant, Rameses II. The beginning of the end, or the end of the end, came with Cleopatra - such vanity I have never seen before, and I’ve seen plenty of vanity. We staggered on when the Romans came. They tolerated our rituals for a time but it was the Christians who labelled us pagans and sneered. Little Mau Mau here, once handfed mice dangled by the temple servants, was as unhappy as I. We knew our days were numbered.

***

We fled on a peasant felucca down the Nile as moonlight caressed the rippling, inky water. Still homesick? You might say so, for sure. Back then, I had sinned but I wasn’t nasty. Yet. I wasn’t bitter and twisted inside and resentful and hateful. No, no, that happened over time and culminated here, in this shithole. We traversed Africa, barely escaping with our lives too many times to count before washing up on the shores of Macedonia, long story, bedraggled and skinny but alive. I was still a priestess at heart, determined to make good for what I’d done.

***

But nothing worked in this strange land. Not an incantation, not a ritual of fire, not a point of the bone, not a bowing to the moon. Even my lapis lazuli scarab, hidden inside me this whole time, failed to summon any deity let alone demon. Mau Mau and I wandered as if mere mortals, sickened and heartbroken, shaky and alone. Our wary bond cemented across the snowy mountain passes where we survived on Mau Mau’s evolving hunting skills and kept each other warm those bitter cold nights. We found no relief in the Balkans, the Slovene lands or Ostarrîchi, but when we set foot in the Germanic lands our luck began to change.

***

A sorceress by the name of Elke the Terrible found us prone by the river Elbe. “Ya is kin,” she pronounced and put us beside her giant pot bubbling with herbs and spices, and unusual items – mittens, shoes, drawstring pants, and tiny leggings so small they could only have fitted infants. We grew fatted and young again. But babies died. One after the other, with eruptions on their faces and terror in their eyes. Elke winked while clamour in the village grew.

***

Little did we know the turmoil heading our way. Elke taught Mau Mau how to creep into the timber houses and remove items in the dead of night. She taught me her ancient spells and potions, and how to fly a broomstick – “nein, stick your legs against the vood and grab her here and here.” Wonky at first, I turned into a first-class aviator, ducking and diving and swooping low to frighten the village children who shrieked and ran for their lives. Just for fun, you understand. Elke was thrilled. “You are a true Vitch now.” On landing, I would see Mau Mau’s slanted eyes watching me, though I never did figure out if it was disapproval or praise being conveyed through those narrow slits. Perhaps I give her too much credit and the truth is she cares not two hoots either way.

***

One day, they came for Elke. “Run for zee voods,” she cried to us as burly men in tights jabbed their pointy weapons at her, too scared to touch her outright, instead encircling her with so many ropes she could not move then dragging her across the earth until her flesh rubbed raw. We heard her howls all night long from the trees we hid in as they stabbed question after question at her then set her on fire. When the men came for us, I tucked Mau Mau into my billowing skirts, mounted my broomstick and flew faster than the flock of geese up ahead.

***

The stench of burning witches stretched across the whole of Europe. Cats, women and thin little girls were thrown upon great pyres of flames. Innocent or guilty, it didn’t matter to the villagers. We flew and flew but could find no peace. At the port of Marseille, exhausted, we slunk aboard a ship bound for we didn't care where and ended up back in England, but we soon left again on another vessel sailing from Plymouth for somewhere called the New World, hiding among a severe group of black-clad people who spent their whole time throwing up and praying. They suited us well with no suspicion levelled our way when some of their children mysteriously fell dead. Mau Mau and I thrived on the journey. Upon landing in Massachusetts, we broke away and for a time found a home in a place called Salem. Even then, I was clinging to goodness, still convinced I could make amends for my mounting sins by selling healing balms among the necessary cruel spells that took their issue. We kept to ourselves but in under 100 years it was noticed we were not aging and when one of the village women started having fits and the witch-mania ensued, Mau Mau and I fled again, joining circuses and travelling shows before eventually arriving in Porto Villa Rise.

***

How I hate it here. Such drabness offends me. I want to go home. I have aged faster here than anywhere else. My body is not recovering as it used to. To be fair, it’s not the fault of this miserable place. It has been this way for the last few centuries, causing me to take more and more children to restore my aching bones. The last batch of children, taken from Perry’s Travelling Oddities, has lasted barely 90 years. Of course, Hemet’s familiar does not age. Mau Mau, who has passed from keeper to keeper since time began, is of pure blood; I am of common blood. Hemet was of common blood, too. She gasped her secret to me as I forced the poison down her throat. “I chose you,” she panted, writhing and jerking in great stiff spasms. It had to be so. The pharaohs were so inbred. Their progeny was too weak and deformed to be of much use, and the servants had taken to hiding their young ones in the lush green farmland by the river, far away from our reach. There were not enough children to sustain us both.

***

My face is wet. How long have I sat here sobbing? Forgive me, Hemet, I whisper. Lift this curse. Please, at long last, will you lift this curse? No reply, though the motheaten curtain by the patio door shifts uneasily causing my waiting broomstick to fall. Mau Mau saunters in and drops Alex Bond-Thwaite’s baseball glove by the pot I have prepared. He is the last. There is little point extracting the juice of only one or two anymore. To get back my toned, dusky limbs and cascading black hair I must take them all. I wipe sweat from my eyes as the white heat from the roaring fire under my pot threatens to singe my cloak. The secret to eternal youth? Simple. It’s youth, of course. I mutter the sacred words. This decaying house will soon burn to the ground. No matter, we won’t be here.