Chapter 26: Chapter 21 – We’re off to see the Witch

May hadn’t elaborated on her question about needles after I answered. We enjoyed the pancakes together, and then got dressed, with May sending a text. With my vastly increased outfit options, I went for a pink dress and black leather jacket combo, paired with a pair of short heeled black boots. May giggled slightly when she saw my outfit choice. “She was my favorite rival that generation.” Which elicited a raised eyebrow from me, with her shaking her head while smiling in a clear ‘nevermind that’ way. For her part, she summoned a t-shirt, some ripped jeans and a flannel shirt tied around her waist, boots the same stompy ones she wore yesterday.  Having a butch grandma that looked only 8 years older than me was kind of wild. “I hope it hasn’t moved.” May said as we stepped outside, still making me confused about things. She was not explaining a lot of stuff. It was somewhat worrying. 

It took us only a short walk to the nearby park for May to cuss. “Oh for fuck’s sake it hasn’t even been a proper 24 hours you cheeky shit!” She was yelling at an empty wall, before she rubbed her eyes with a sigh. 

“Um, May, why are you cursing at a wall? Oh wait, you can’t get your fix online, I killed the last channer alive.” She snorted and smiled a bit at my poor attempt at a joke, before she straightened herself out to the best of her abilities. 

“I’m taking you to see the friend of mine I mentioned. She lives in the Fae Realm. The only way to access it is through the roots of the World Tree, a path known to us as Wisteria Way.” She knocked on the wall. “The doors to it are all around the world, but they’re not static on this end, they tend to move around at their leisure. Also as a way to make people not stumble in by accident. And the one I used to get here from Prague moved.” 

“Wait, Prague? But that’s all the way across the Atlantic! How long did you walk for?” I was somewhat stunned at that. 

“Oh only for about half an hour? There’s a conspiracy theory that the Earth is hollow and you can walk through it to places. Prefer that one to the Flat Earth theory. Well, the fucker who proposed it misheard some of our people talking about Wisteria Way and misinterpreted it big time.” May looked around, until her gaze caught something. “Oh there’s the cheeky fucker!” She grabbed my hand and lead me to a wooden door, overgrown with moss, and with wisteria flowers blooming all around it. “Diagon Alley can get fucked compared to this.” Pushing the door open, she lead me in. 

I don’t think hearing ‘We’re gonna enter the Fae Realm through the roots of the World Tree known as Wisteria Way’ could have properly prepared me for the visual. Imagine a metropolis, wide streets fit for cars, with none going through, each end lined with shops and apartments. Now imagine that instead of concrete and brick and glass, it was wood and glass. Carved into storefronts, into the windows and doors and walkways, the street itself wood. And then drop the word carved from your lexicon for a second, and imagine that it had just grown that way. A modern street filled with all kinds of people going about their day, in a metropolis transmuted into living wood. And all of it baked in the warm glow of dusk, without a source of light in sight, with a roof of wisteria flowers hanging. 

As May had so elegantly put it, Diagon Alley could get fucked compared to Wisteria Way. That place was supposed to be enchanting because it was hidden and filled with magic shops. This place? Hidden, filled with presumably magic shops, but guessing by the smell also bakeries and butchers and fisheries and vegetable sellers, and it had a defining look to it. Hell, now I wanted to see what kind of farmer’s market they had. I mean, if it takes half an hour to get from the Czech Republic to the west coast of the United States, they could probably get food fresh from anywhere in the world. Did the top restaurants use these? Probably, if Fae exist then Ukobachs exist and it wouldn’t be a surprise to see them working as professional chefs. 

“I didn’t expect you to get THAT overwhelmed by it, Lily, you’ve been to Hell after all.” May spoke up, which broke me from my trance and I blushed, feeling embarrassed. 

“Well, it’s really pretty here, and my mind started racing with thoughts of food. Wait, you could use this place to go to so many film festivals!” Not just film festivals, but also museums, cons, exhibitions, screenings! Oh this place was a ticket to paradise! 

“NOW you can, back at the start of the century it was much harder to move around. Thank fuck schengen expanded to be world wide after the US got it’s shit together. Anyways, our gate is this way young lady, follow me.” May nodded her head to indicate direction and began moving, with me following closely behind her. 

Dusk turned to night as we passed through the gate, which made me turn around and see the path just standing in a field, the light from Wisteria Way clearly visible, but not passing even an inch out of bounds. I did a quick turn around the portal, finding the other side to just be a wooden circle of two intertwined wisteria trees. May was patiently waiting for me as I explored the entrance way, smiling. Right, she had described Issa as curious, so perhaps I was reminding her of more than just one daughter now. With a quick shrug, we kept moving onwards. A full moon was looming ominously over a forest, which we entered, following a set path. There were hoots of owls, and howls of wolves, and yaps of foxes around us, and I could see them on the edge of the path, watching me and May, a few of them… waving? May waved back at them if they were. Right, Fae Realm, Aisop’s Fables had to have an inspiration somewhere. That or he was just a massive furry…the dude was greek, of COURSE he was a massive furry. 

As we continued on through the woods, the moon kept glaring overhead, always in the same spot in the sky, unmoving, even if I shifted my gaze and posture, as if it was a static image projected over the forest. And then, the path lead into a clearing. A wrought iron fence surrounded the clearing, flaming skulls adorning it. They all turned to face me and May, I turned to look at her, her gaze not on the skulls nor me. She rolled her eyes. I followed where she was looking. In the middle of the clearing stood a house. A house out of wood, looking as if it had been built two hours ago. It stood still, with only windows on it, no door, as if the windows were staring us down. And from its foundation sprouted two massive chicken legs holding it up! But what was most striking was what adorned the roof of the structure. 

A figure stood there, hard to make out with the light of the moon behind them. The only things brighter than the moon were their piercing eyes and their odd halo, of three interlocked rings, one below the other two. Their gaze fell on me, and they spread their wings wide. They gave them one strong flap, and disappeared from the roof. But I had barely any time to register it, as the face of a cute girl jumped in front of me. 

“Hi!” Was all she managed to get out, before I heard a thundering whack, my vision now obscured with May’s clenched fist. “Ouch! May! You didn’t have to hit me like that! You’ve never raised your hand against me before!” The angelic girl who was now rubbing her head to soothe it while getting off the ground said, looking hurt both physically & emotionally. 

“And YOU didn’t have to jumpscare my granddaughter like that, Katka. Should have told me you were going for the theatrics route.” May shot back, annoyed somewhat at Katka’s antics. 

“Come on, I even went and dressed up all nice for you two, show at least a little gratitude!” Katka was dusting off her dress, flapping her wings a bit to get them sorted out. Once she had done so, she extended a hand to me. “Hey there Lily, I’m Katka, also known as the Witch of Wisteria Way. Somehow. Despite there being like at LEAST ten covens speaking seven languages in there. If you’re wondering about these,” She pointed to her halo and flapped her wings. “my grandma’s The Baba Yaga, she had my mom with a human woman, and my mom had me with an angel lady, making me a nephilim and a changeling.” I finally shook her hand, a bit shell shocked from the entire encounter. 

“I’m Lily Donella- hey wait a minute, how do you know my name already?” I let go, stepping back a bit, noticing that May was just watching me and Katka interact. 

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“Lucifer takes care of trans people once we’re six feet under, I cover our asses while we’re above ground. Kyblíku! Zlatíčko, pusť nás dál, buď tak hodná.” She had turned to the house on chicken legs to shout in Czech at it. I recognised it as Czech, although I only really knew the swears, and that it was heavily gendered, and that the house on chicken legs was a lady house on chicken legs. The house did a spinny and a door appeared on her where before there was none, crouching down to let us in. And as we walked in, her full sentence finally hit. 

“Wait, ‘our’?” I was expecting the place to look like a stereotypical witches’ hut, instead it looked like a pretty simple single person apartment, only somewhat bigger than mine in that it had more rooms available.

“Yeah, I’m also trans. Funny story, that, after both my moms passed, grandma decided to do the changeling myth of swapping me with a human kid. Turns out the closest one to me was a boy.” Katka walked over to a door and knocked “So for fifteen years I ran under the assumption that I was a regular human boy. And then grandma turns up in her house on chicken legs, goes ‘yeah, you’re old enough to not be a hassle, I’m taking care of you now and training you’, gives back the original kid and here we are. That was eight years ago.” She shrugged at me, as a short, drowsy, yawning young woman covered in tattoos opened the door Katka had knocked on. “Who’s got the wheel now, Pepper or Mint?” 

“Tea, too sleepy, hard to tell. Your outside fucks with our circadian rhythm.” The young… women? Yawned again, stretching somewhat. 

“I’ll brew you some coffee to clear your headspace, the other client’s here for the anti-scrying tattoo.” Katka pointed at me with her thumb, and I noticed May taking up an armchair out of the corner of my eye. Pepper and Mint nodded. 

“Knock once you have the wake up juice.” They closed the door, leaving Katka to move to the kitchen. And leaving me with a question. A couple of them. 

“Uhm, anti-scrying tattoo?” Was my first. 

“Yup, little thing, you tell Peppermint where you want it, they’ll put it there for you. Trust me, it’s better than the alternative of inserting a charm into your stomach, thanks to its subtlety.” She was grabbing a rather adorable cup with cute sharks on it. 

“Okay. What’s Peppermint’s deal?” That was a very insensitive way to ask that, but a quick one. 

“Regular human. Plural system. Great tattoo artist. Met Pepper and Mint right as Pepper was emerging, so to speak. Mint got scared thinking she was possessed by a demon or something. Looked stuff up. Encountered me. I sent her some links. The two of them thanked me afterwards.” She was doing a pour over method. “I don’t drink coffee myself, but clients do, so I keep it around. What’s your… okay no I was gonna ask extremely awkwardly what you want to drink and that would have not landed well. Tea, soda, coffee as well, juice? Chilled stuff’s in the fridge.” 

“I’ll, I guess I’ll have some water.” 

“Fridge, pick your fizziness, the white grape Mattoni is mine.” She seemed to be done with the coffee rather quickly. “May, your poison’s in the usual spot.” Katka shouted towards May, who replied with a wave and a reach over the armchair, dragging out a glass coke bottle. “Room temperature original recipe coke. I will never grasp that woman. Guess she had it back in the day.” Katka made her way over to the room, knocking again, the door opening only enough for a hand to reach out and be given the steaming cup. Retreating inside, a sigh of relief came from behind the door, sounding different from how I first heard them. 

“Thanks Katka, that hit the spot. I’m ready now.” Peppermint walked out, offering me a hand to shake. “Peppermint Tea, Mint is currently fronting, Pepper’s still taking a nap in the headspace. We both use she/her. Nice to meet you.” I shook their hand. 

“Lily Donellan, also she/her, likewise.”

“First time getting inked?”

“Yup.”

“You got pain reduction in your demonic ancestry package, lucky you.” Peppermint clapped my shoulder and walked to another room, urging me to follow. With a shrug I did so.