This is a short story I started around Halloween. Yeah, it took me a while to finish. Still, I think it's interesting.
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She insisted that she was a witch, and I insisted that it was just a costume.
It was Halloween, of course, and there was no shortage of children running around wearing all sorts of outrageous outfits. There was a larger proportion of superheroes this year, what with the recent explosion of films in the genre, but the old standbys were still all around me. There were a few werewolves, one or two headless horsemen of varying quality, and the ever-popular witch. Some kids had decided that green face paint was enough, while other eschewed it completely. The one I was talking to now was one of the latter variants. In fact, despite the dark clothes and crooked grin, it took me until she announced what she was until I figured out what she was.
“I’m a witch!” she announced loudly, holding up a bag for me to deposit her treat in. I gave her my customary few pieces of candy, and decided to give her a tip on how to pull off the look better.
“Don’t you think you would look more like a witch with a pointy hat?” I asked.
“Oh, but I AM a witch!” she declared. She still smiled, though, so I felt comfortable with going further.
“Of course you are, but a pointy hat would make sure no one would ever confuse your costume for anything else.”
“It isn’t a costume!” Once more, though she maintained her position vehemently, she still smiled with a barely contained hint of mischief on her face.
“If you’re a witch, then where’s you cat? ”
“Silly, not all witches use cats for familiars! And I’m still waiting for my familiar, you see, waiting to find the perfect one!”
“I see,” I said in feigned awe. “Can a witch with no familiar still do magic?”
“Of course!” she replied. Without waiting for further prompting, she reached into her ridiculously deep black cloak and pulled out a long, black feather. She rubbed it between her fingers, moving her lips silently for a few moments, then blew once across its surface. Surprisingly, the feather fell apart as she blew, the dark fibers flying through the air like a strange, black dandelion. I nodded, actually impressed.
“Well, that certainly is quite a good bit of ma—ACHOO!” The cloud of fibers had drifted into my face as I spoke, and, unsurprisingly, managed to make me sneeze as I accidentally inhaled them. “CHOO!” I sneezed again, and again, “ACHOO! ACHOO! A—A—CAAAAW!”
I felt dizzy, and the world seemed to spin around me as I staggered a bit where I stood. As my last rather peculiar, sneeze shook me one last time, my eyes flew open in surprise, even as my fingers reached for my mouth. They clumsily collided with my face, and it took me a moment to realize that there was no way that they should be touching my face where they were. I crossed my eyes to look at my hands, and stared in shock as I saw them clasping a beak!
“CAW?”
My throat spasmed as I tried to cry out, and my cry again emerged as a strangled caw, its tone distinctly inhuman. I slid my fingers along the impossible structure that had somehow replaced my mouth. It was impossible, but I somehow felt the touch in both directions. The smooth, cool feel of the beak met my fingers, while a muffled sense of pressure came from the area of my face. My mind was reeling, but no matter how I tried to reason it, I could think of no way to explain away what I was seeing.
Barely a moment later, something fell down in front of my eyes, moving too fast for me to see well. Again, another thing fell past my eyes, until finally I caught the next object in my hand and stared at it in surprise. It was hair! My hair, falling out before my eyes! I reached up, expecting to feel an increasingly balding head, but instead felt a different kind of soft feeling atop my head. Bracing myself, I pulled at whatever it was that had replaced my hair, giving a pained screech as I did, and looked at it with increasing incredulity. It was a feather! I had feathers!
I dropped the feather in surprise, only to notice that my head was not the only part of me becoming feathered. Staring at my hands, I could see more feathers growing from my skin. They seemed to bloom in a surreal way, almost unfolding from beneath my skin as they obscured my skin in a wave. First, short feathers forming a base layer, then longer feathers extended from among that first, soft layer. With even more shock, I moved my arms, only to realize they didn’t move the same way anymore. There were no recognizable hands left, only a strange, new appendage that I could only rightly describe as a wing.
It was no secret to me what was happening anymore; I was becoming a bird, and with alarming speed. I looked up at the witch, whose story I now believed more and more. She just gave me an impish smile, evidently enjoying the show as the man who had questioned her faded in a flurry of feathers. I gave one last try to choke out an intelligible phrase to ask for forgiveness, but only a harsh, corvid cry escaped my beak.
For a few moments, my chest felt like it was being crushed under an immense weight, and I coughed a few times in my new voice. When I could breathe next, my breath was noticeably faster, and not only because of the stress of the situation. My entire metabolism had been rewired to move faster, giving me the sustained energy needed for flight.
I began to feel lighter a few moments later. I can only assume that my bones were changing, altering their shapes and their positions, and gaining air pockets to make them more lightweight. At this point, my entire body began to change shape, and I stumbled on my changing legs for a few moments before spreading my wings at my sides and balancing myself with their aid. With my body altering so quickly, my clothing, which had somehow made due to this point, could no longer contain my altered form. Just as they began to strain against my body, however, they instead disintegrated, the cloth dissolving into a cloud of dust around me.
I gave a raucous cry as my body lurched forward into an entirely new stance. Only my wings kept me stable, until a flurry of growth signaled the appearance of a feathered tail behind me, fanning out to lend its own aid to my quest for balance.
My legs had been changing for a while, and they already looked nothing like what they had moments before. They bent in a completely different fashion, so that I could not even venture to guess if the joints in my leg could even present an analogue to the joints in my original, human legs. It didn’t hurt, but I had never felt anything so disorienting in my life.
Further disorientation came not long after, as I suddenly began to shrink. I flapped my wings, cawing several times as I tried to keep my balance, feathers flying as I finally reached my new size. I looked up at the impish witch that had done this to me. I couldn’t be any larger than an actual bird now, and the new perspective made the short girl seem massive. I hopped back, cawing uncertainly as she smiled mischievously at me.
“Well, as you can see, a witch with no familiar can certainly do magic.” I could present no argument there. I spread my wings and looked at their dark feathers in wonder. “However, a witch with a familiar is certainly much more powerful. You seem to be at a disadvantage, a man in the body of a bird. I may be able to change you back, but not with my current power. Here’s my idea: you become my familiar, and you work with me until next Halloween. When that period is over, we can discuss whether you want to return to humanity or not.”
I cawed raucously, demanding that she release me from the spell, but she simply shook her head.
“I’m sorry, but the only other alternative is for you to try to make a living as a bird,” she responded.
Well, that certainly was out of the question. I thought about the situation for a moment. Never had I considered what it might be like to be a bird, but now that I was one, I had to admit some measure of curiosity. I felt lighter than air, and I wanted to try flying. Still, I knew that living as a bird was out of the question, at least if I had to try to survive on my own. Looking at the witch, I realized that I could count on her to keep me safe if I were her familiar. Perhaps she would not follow through on her commitment to give me a way of returning next year, but she would at least see to my continuing safety. I cawed to her again, resigned to my new life.
“Very good!” She clapped her hands, and I felt a sudden, light weight on one of my legs. I looked down, eyes falling on the ring that circled my right leg. There was a gem in it that glinted with power.
“What’s this?” I asked. I spoke! My voice was harsh and grating like a raven’s call, but I could speak.
“It will allow us to be master and familiar in truth,” she replied. “It allows you to speak, and it allows me to use your power once I train you to aid me in magic. Don’t worry; it is perfectly safe, and necessary.”
I shrugged as well as a bird can, then flapped my wings, taking a brief flight to the witch’s shoulder. I balanced carefully on my perch, settling it to prepare for my new life.
She ran one hand along my feathers. “Don’t worry, you’ll enjoy it,” she assured me.
Although I couldn’t be certain, I certainly hoped she was right.
