Free The Witch by Mary Ann Mitchell Page B

breath and listened
.
    The furnace kicked on. A spider softly wove its web. A termite burrowed its way out of the wood into the midst of a moonbeam and immediately flipped itself over and rushed back into the wood. Otherwise nothing stirred
.
    “Don’t let her hear us arguing, or she will banish us back to hell.”
    “I don’t want to go back to hell,” said the dwarf. “I haven’t done anything wrong. I’ve been waiting like she told us.”
    “Waiting. Waiting. An eternity of waiting will not do.” The big beaked bird tried to spread his wings but couldn’t
.
    “At least we are out here and not inside the box.” said a miniature satyr
.
    The other demons turned to him with looks of curiosity
.
    “I saw the little one put the black snake inside the box. Yes. He locked him away.”
    “If more of us were inside the box we could push the lid and climb out,” said a hopeful demon
.
    “Will he grow?” said a demon pulling on his beard
.
    “Who? The boy?”
    “No, no. The black snake. Can he grow fatter and longer now that he’s not attached to the box?”
    The demons looked at each other, not knowing the answer to the question. They wished they could communicate with the black snake
.
    “I already miss the snake,” said the dwarf
.
    “How could you? You hated each other.” A malformed bird twisted his head around to face the dwarf
.
    “He misses someone to argue with,” another demon said
.
    The dwarf threw his ax from one hand to the other
.
    “We could sally forth and free him.”
    “Master dwarf, you are not in a fable. This is the real world. We are limited by the woman’s power. If she grants us the right than we will … oh, such a crude, archaic word … sally forth. Until then we are glued to this box and the black snake, although free, wanders in circles inside the box.”
    “Snake! Snake! Can you hear me!”
    “Incorrigible dwarf, your yelling isn’t going to achieve our own freedom and I’m sure the snake can’t assist us even if he hears you.”
    “But if you listen quietly you can hear the drag of his body against the wood. If I can hear that why couldn’t he hear my voice?”
    “And what would you have him do? Lift the lid, slip out, light a candle, and drop a bit of wax on you? And remember he must feel the hunger now. Once free our bodies need nourishment. Need blood and flesh. He may dry up and shrivel for all we know. The spirit animating his clay body may once again find itself homeless.”
    “Horrible fate,” whispers a demon
.

    Inside the box the black snake tumbles back to the floor of the box after crawling up to the lid. He shakes his entire body to right himself. The darkness is consoling but the freedom is futile without a way to touch the earthly world
.
    It hears the dwarf call from far away. Far away is merely the other side of a wooden wall, but the dwarf’s voice is muted by the differences in their status, for the snake truly is of the boy’s world now
.
    Foolish boy, thinks the snake, remembering the rough feel of the boy’s fingers lifting his tail. A tail without a rattler, but, hey, the fangs made the girl cringe. The snake takes comfort in playing the girl’s frightened face over and over again
.
    In a former body he had teased and provoked royalty into bringing about the death of … little dwarfs. As difficult as it was the snake managed a smile. Hundreds of thousands of dwarfs were tortured, burned, and hanged. And one dwarf in particular had a fitting end
.

Chapter
20
    Stephen sat in the darkness of his room surrounded by his ritual utensils, holding his mother’s earrings tightly in his fisted hands.
    “I’m sorry, Momma. I know you want me to make peace with the uglies, but they aren’t nice. And Dad doesn’t want me in the basement. And I couldn’t stand to bring the uglies up here to my room. I wouldn’t be able to sleep thinking of them running around.
    “Molly thinks I should throw the box in the fire, but I don’t think you’d