Chapter 1: Beginings

Dark oaks and beeches surround the hovel, buried somewhere in the middle of an ancient deciduous forest. Rays of sunlight, that should have known better, punctured the canopy sending dazzling, golden shafts pointing arrow straight, almost on to the dilapidated thatched roof. I say almost, more accurately, the shafts of light somehow refracted at about six inches from the rotted reed surface, and seemed to spray out at alarming angles that destroyed all known laws of physics concerning light and it's properties.

The laws of light, and many other accepted rules that have been taught to the blotting paper like minds of pupils over the centuries, had little in common with the area surrounding the chosen opening scene of this little tale. But, I will not bore you with a list of each, or how it doesn't apply in this instance. Some, may become apparent during the course of the telling, but, suffice it to say, some strange physics make contributions from time to time, as well as quite a few bends in the normal run of things.

It is widely accepted by most, if not all biologists, that many animals have a rudimentary command of communication. This in many cases, is made up of squeaks, shrills, barks and huffs, usually signalling alarm or calling to members of the herd to keep a contact. Speech is only associated with humans, being the only member of the fauna of Earth that has a developed voice box, and the necessary brain matter to assimilate the sounds transmitted by fellows, and make sense of them.

Call it poetic license, call it fancy, call it what you like. Here goes...

A typical day in the dusty corners of the ramshackle hovel, would find many creatures, either furred or not as the case may be. These animals are broken into two main categories, those who wandered in by accident, and those who were committed by deeds both foul, or magical.

Some of either could talk.

"Get off my bloody tail... Fat Oaf."

"Eh? Oh! sorry, got things on my mind." The cat lifted its front paw off the mouse's tail.

"Didn't see you down there."

"I may be small, but give us a break for crying out loud, you could have done some serious damage there, as it is I'm not altogether sure that it will straighten out properly any way." The mouse began to yank and pull the tail from the tufted end, by putting it in his mouth and tugging hard enough to unbalance his rear end, further adding to his indignity.

"What have you got to worry about fer Chrissakes anyway, fed every day, with enough food to feed a small army? (Cannot remember the collective name for a group of cats, if there is one) And then, sleeping the rest of the day away, curled up on the windowsill. Little bit of a cuddle now and again from the old woman. Nobody giving you a hard time, or trying to make you into a square meal every chance they get. Yeah, you got real worries." The mouse gave a good enough impression of a haughty sniff, which was quite impressive, given that he still had the wrong end of his tail hanging limply from the side of its small mouth.

"Oh." The cat sighed. "It's 'er, she's starting to worry me a bit. It's the quickening coming on and she's done bugger all about it yet. That means she'll be flying about like a lunatic for the next few weeks in a complete panic, and guess whose goner be the familiar?"

Agetha, kept the cat for the irregular jaunts into the wide world, to act as her eyes and ears. It was the cat's job to search out, and find likely victims, and report back through the peculiar mind link that had been developed over the years. Agetha saw, felt, and heard all that surrounded the cat through its senses. Handy when you're in a tight spot, or trying to avoid letting everyone know that you're well and truly in the area.

"Yeah, but how often does she use you for her little trips into the Outlands? Every seven years is it? How bad's that when you think of the benefits you get?"

"I suppose, but, when she leaves it late like this, all hell breaks loose, so that instead of a nice little jaunt into the wilds, we have to race around like headless chickens until she finds what she needs. God only knows what'll happen if she can't find a suitable donor in time." Although, he knew very well exactly what would happen if she ever allowed the time to expire.

Tom, the mouse, gave his tail another tug, and started to clean his whiskers while he thought about the cat's predicament.

"So, when are you going out again?"

"Dunno, but it's just gotta be soon."

"What's the rush?"

"Let's put it this way, if she can't find a suitable man within the next three weeks or so, she reverts to her true age."

"So."

"She's over five hundred years old, that's quite a pile of dust."

"Yeah, but don't all her magic's die with her? You'd be your old self again, and so would I."

"I've been with the old crone for half her life. That's a pile of dust too."

"Yeah, but I would only be two weeks older than I was. I could go back to my family, and be a baker again." A little selfish streak had entered into Tom's way of thinking.

Tom, the mouse, had gone to see Agetha for a potion or some such, to enhance his baking, and become the more prosperous of the two Bakers in the village. It wasn't that he was greedy, far from it, it was just that he wanted to be the best that he could be, and serve his customers to the very limit, still using the second rate materials available from the local, second rate farmers, who complained about the second rate bread and cakes. He was every bit as good as the other baker, let's face it, anybody, given the equipment and a boyhood filled to capacity with his Fathers knowledge, could bake as well as the next man. It doesn't, however, arm the prodigy with the necessary wherewithal to find a suitable wife, and prospective partner in either the business, or matrimonial senses. Unlike his rival, whose wife was ambitious with a hankering for the good things in life that money could supply, and the only way to get that was to make it. Removing the opposition from the equation would help no end. His find, Tom's, that is, and I use find in a flippant kind of way, was not exactly useful to him. It wasn't that she was lazy, no sirree. Nobody could beat her when it came to operating her mouth to either eat or nag, more that she lacked interest in whatever Tom was doing, including baking, and making advances of the nuptial type. Her only interest other than food, was her Daughter, who had made it something of a life long entreaty to be a carbon copy of her mother, and was showing exactitude beyond description. Tom had made two bad decisions. One, marrying Gertha, and two, making a baby with her. (Wedding night, extremely drunk, and mistaking her snores for the throes of passion.)(Sad bastard really.)

He last saw his wife and only daughter, two weeks ago, as he set off up the hill to Agetha's cottage, some distance of the beaten track. When he left the house, his family called him Tom Baker, (really). Now, they call him missing, presumed dead, praise the Lord, where's the insurance certificate, and come to that, the insurance man looked as if he could be beaten into submission quite quickly, into a loveless marriage, and then annihilation.

What Tom didn't, nor even could have known, was that his rival in business, had already paid Agetha a large sum of the trade coin to put a guise on Tom. Firstly to hinder Tom's business, but also that if he tried to get, even a little spell or potion to enhance his position, something horrid would be the result. Agetha, although no man's friend, was at least true to her word. Tom hadn't even had time to scratch his head, before he was scratching a very furry rump, with a long, hairless tail attached.

"Come to think of it, I could just wander off someplace, rather than go back to that fat old bitch, (meaning his wife.) and her ungrateful pig of an offspring. I'm sure she can't be mine, (meaning his daughter.) nasty little cow, any way, it would be nice to be vertical again, and go hunting, rather than being the quarry, and another thing, it would be really good to eat proper food again, instead of the bits of crap that fall from her chin."

"Messy aint she?"

The cat mused. It was so long ago that he had been tricked into Agetha's service as a familiar that his name had been forgotten and even I don't know what it is and I'm telling the story. Tom would have been a good name I suppose, seeing that he's a he, but I've already given that to the mouse so I guess the cat remains nameless. It's not really important in any case is it?

"Time for me to do the rounds." Continued Tom. "There's a nice little white mouse that's just dying to be courted, you know how it is with us mice all shagging and eating. I suppose it aint a bad life really; it must be several years since I got a legover from the wife and look what that produced. This way I don't even have to see the offspring, let alone listen to it squawking."

"But you only live for a couple of years, even if you make old age which doesn't happen very often in the rodent world does it?" His comment regarding the metabolic rate of mice was quite accurate. In Tom's case however, where he had had very little of the sexual type of excitement in his previous life, and he was making up for lost time, his prospected span was about half that of the majority of the rodent population.

"Yeah, but what a way to go." Tom tried to wink, unsuccessfully. "You try shagging ten times a day and see how long you live. See you later." Tom would have rubbed his hands together if he could have. Instead, he contented himself with a quick lick around his snout. He still wasn't quite used to the elongated nose or the over developed front teeth, but heck, who looks at the mantelpiece when stoking the fire etc.

"As long as she's alive, I'm immortal". He said more to himself. "That really pisses off the local cats when I beat the living daylights out of them. Anyway, don't wear it out with over use will you." The cat turned around three times in ever decreasing circles before crouching down in the sunlight coming through the window and closed his eyes.

He wasn't wrong about the predicament that Agetha was in. She had a lazy streak that was as wide as her rear end, which had grown to gargantuan proportions since her last quickening. Agetha had two main weaknesses; both would end in a terminal case of obesity in any normal person. Her first love was food, prodigious amounts of the stuff. Anything edible had little chance of seeing the sunrise on the morrow, in fact; a lot that wasn't edible to most people suffered the same fate. Several cardigans had tried in vain to outlast the attentions of Agetha's teeth, but usually ended their brief lives being masticated into component parts between her molars. It was Agetha's other love that could prove to be the demise of the ancient carcass. Agetha was fond of lying in bed, or sitting in her rocker pondering the mysteries of life, to the point of being professional at it. She made a living of sorts sharing her musings with the locals. Days could go past without Agetha moving any muscle other than those used to make her jaws work and her heartbeat. How did she eat or defecate I hear you ask? She's a witch, remember. They can make things move using telekinetic thought, handy if you're the worst case of slothfulness that has ever been recorded.

It was this second love that was causing the concern to her cat/familiar. If she could just get up off her fat arse and motivate her self, then everything would be all right. She could find a young man who was still innocent, (Okay, virginal), devour his heart and begin another seven years of life, starting with a figure that could knock spots off any young maiden fresh into the world. Deep, shiny red hair that cascaded over her shoulders and down her back to just above the interesting parts. Even deeper green eyes that her familiar would have killed for. Breasts, for which, any man would suffer seven kinds of horrible deaths, and a waist that his girlfriend would scratch chalk boards with her fingernails until someone's teeth fell out. I guess that's the long way of saying, she would be drop dead, heart stoppingly gorgeous.

It wouldn't last, (when does it ever). Soon, her slothful ways would return, but not until she had made just about every available and non-available man in the near vicinity. This was a third love, but had limitations in the longevity department, owing to her second love.

Many years ago, some bright spark wrote up the laws of cause and effect. (My apologies to my teachers). Agetha was the cause; the effect was devastating to the local community. Agetha hadn't got many virtues and discretion certainly wasn't listed among them along with fidelity.

Many men found themselves, suddenly family less having shared an intimacy with a stranger who looked like the creature from heaven, and turned out to be the siren from Hell. Some how, their Wives and worse, Mother-in-laws, would be fully conversant with the sordid details of the little contretemps. Vengeance is mine, sayeth all and sundry, which left the poor, misguided, recently ostracised man, either nursing several lumps and bumps and wondering what had fallen out of the sky, or legging it down a very long road as fast as his legs would work and thinking of fire arms, mostly double barrelled, mostly pointing the wrong way, as far as he was concerned.

These rural rumpuses suited Agetha's method. Everyone was trying to find lost members of the household, from the male persuasion, and not looking for the originator of the fuss. Agetha would then slip away to her hidey-hole and vegetate, gradually, to her usual condition, which bore no resemblance to her erstwhile self. The transformation from raging beauty to monstrous gargoyle, took rather longer than the transformation, after devouring some unfortunate lad's heart, but then, the gargoyle lasted longer, so there is some kind of justice there, somewhere.

In any case, the cat was right. Agetha had approximately twenty-one days to seek out, beguile, and devour some poor wretch who hadn't yet lost his cherry, (to coin a phrase). If she didn't start soon and complete the ritual, then, she would expire in something of an unseemly haste, leaving a pile of dust that would join the rest of the fallen motes and conglomeration of accumulated grime on the floor, to be assimilated to the fabric of all of us. Dust to dust, and so on.

Agetha chewed on the cuff of her favourite cardigan. She had chewed the last favourite to a sticky, multi-coloured mush, which resembled an oil slick on water, rendering it completely useless.

She was thinking.

On her mind, was the fact that she would have to venture out, perhaps tomorrow, to find the life giving nourishment of a young, nubile (can boys be nubile)? Lads heart.

Actually, it had better be today. An insidious feeling had been gnawing away at the back of her mind that time was short, it felt short, and was feeling shorter by the second.

"Buggerit". Agetha had moved. Something of a momentous occasion. Or should I say monumental occasion, given that she probably weighed the same as three Prop-forwards and a Hooker together. (Rugby. See rules and game for explanation). (Something that's always puzzled me, are Monumental Mason's very, very big fat blokes who shake hands under their left knee in a secret Masonic lodge?).

"Buggerit". Agetha had moved again, twice in as many seconds. This was beyond momentous and went straight off the Richter scale, bending the needle and breaking the glass of the dial.

Agetha, was now standing, and slowly turned around, scanning the hideous mess that served as a hovel, (Witches have hovels, everyone knows that, we live in houses, they live in hovels.), looking for the cat. She squinted her piggy eyes tight and wrinkled her nose in the effort to see more clearly.

If I haven't painted a mental picture of Agetha up to now, please forgive the Authors reticence in attempting to describe the scene of her face. My English is woefully inadequate and so is my stomach.

The cat obligingly uncurled it's body, stretched, arched his back and yawned making a slight mewing noise so that she had something, with which to aim her focus on. It was after all, in his best interests to help the creature prolong her somewhat interesting life style.

"Puss, we have a job to do". Her voice came out in a thin, tremulous and tinny whine, which always surprised the cat. He expected a deep resonance to come from such a large body of flesh. Indeed, dogs, with only a fraction of her bulk, made rather more noise with a lot less to work with.

He jumped off the window sill and brushed himself against her leg. This was a mistake of the highest magnitude. The thick woollen stockings that she insisted on wearing, had developed a life of their own * and had also developed a hunger for cat fur. He was stuck fast and completely helpless, not wanting to tear half the only coat he had out by the roots in order to get away. He didn't get to decide on the best plan of defence because Agetha reached down with that telekinesis I mentioned earlier and tore him from the ravenous clutches of the vampiritic hosiery, leaving a good chunk of precious fur to it's fate. He floated up into her podgy ham sized fists and suffered the indignity of being shucked under the chin. He purred, because of the confused condition of his nervous system and it seemed like the right thing to do, under the circumstances.

"We're going abroad cat". Agetha announced, shrilly, in his ear. Fortunately, he had been rendered deaf in that particular ear sometime before meeting Agetha. He couldn't remember how it had happened, but he thanked whatever cat God there is for the good luck in this instance.

"It's that time again, and I feel lucky. I think we will find someone very quickly". The cat, prayed to its God for the second time.

"Now, where is our transport"?

It is largely believed that Witches travel on broomsticks. Not so. Think about human anatomy, more accurately, think about the anatomy of the female of the species. A broomstick, while having the obvious phallic references, does not have the facility of comfort, if you get my drift. Besides, Agetha was a modern girl, (how loose can you get with terms.) and had acquired, from some unsuspecting patron of her talents, a bicycle. (If modern was being loose with terms, then bicycle is a complete contradiction of terms.)

The tights had developed their own ecological system. Due to the fact that Agetha's movements were limited to say the least, the only life they could actually realise was if they imported fauna from outside agencies. Many generations of lice, fleas and less well-known mites, ticks and other little creatures had lived and died within the 120-denier haven. There were one or two drawbacks to this community of micro organisms living in close proximity to Agetha's flesh (a) a chronic shortage of natural food supplies. Her flesh was completely impervious to bites and stings, turning the various venoms and anti-coagulants back to the deliverer rendering them a terminal case of dead. (b) Agetha's magic leaked a little making the little blighters invincible. It was no good trying to treat them with the usual potions that rid us of these afflictions; the chances of doing them any harm would be so slight as to make it a totally useless exercise. The only control on numbers was the open hostility and warfare waged periodically between the different factions keeping the numbers down to a reasonable level that could live within the confines of the woollen hosiery.

(I can feel a descriptive passage coming on, but I'll leave it for now).

Agetha located the rusting heap leaning in a corner, rather like some old drunk, who had not seen food for the best part of his years, and, like a drunk, the bike was down on it's uppers. The tyres had perished long before the last time her quickening had taken place. The chain resembled spaghetti, it was made up of several rusted lengths of broken links, some joined, some not, wrapped around the cogs of the rear wheel and the crank, that once had pedals on it. The wheels themselves, resembled wheels to a point. A few of the spokes remained in place, several had been used as skewers, or hat pins, on the rare occasions that Agetha wore a hat. They, the wheels, were almost round in shape, with a little elliptical sort of displacement, and buckled, to the point of rubbing gouges out of the forks that retained them. All in all; perfectly serviceable to a competent Witch. Oh! I forgot the saddle, there wasn't one. A minor point really. Same as the paint that had lost adhesion, given up, and gone to the big paint factory in the sky many years ago. But, as I said, perfectly serviceable.

(That wasn't the descriptive passage I was thinking about. I was thinking about how to describe the sight of Agetha, plus cat, on the bike, pedalling like fury, seeking her goal. I'm going to hold onto that one for the moment).

The first thing that we all do when we are going on a trip is to make plans and preparations. Agetha did all that and got on the bike. (Saved some space there didn't I?) The last thing we do after shutting the front door, is forget the gas, electric, answer phone, note to Milk Man, or notify the neighbours. Agetha, didn't have any of these, so what had she forgotten? Beats the hell out of me.

(Now for the descriptive passage, ready?)

Picture the scene if you can. A part, un-built, falling apart bicycle, with little paint, or moving parts, or even a saddle. A small wire basket, hanging by one remaining nut and bolt, which held on through sheer belligerence to the front handle bar mounting. The basket, contained a reasonably large ginger tomcat, that had been stuffed into it, head first, and then pummelled down to fit like a Japanese commuter on the underground system. The cycle, travelling approximately two feet off the ground, which avoids all the ruts in the road, but decapitates, bushes, saplings, and any animal that stands above two feet, and couldn't hear the silent running of the hover bike, with the creature from the nether world, sat astride the cross bar. Agetha, immobile, as I'm sure you've worked out by now, is a horrendous sight. Not quite on the scale of Medusa, turning people into stone, no, she, Medusa, thinking about it, was rather more kind to the unfortunate victim, their brains turned into stone, along with the rest of them. One glimpse of Agetha, would render the viewer helpless, and cabbage like, for the rest of their natural lives.