THE FLOWER WITCH
D
by ELLEN HUANG
cards at her windowsill? "Look," I whispered to my brother. "That one's see-through." My brother turned to me, and I noticed he was growing sharp teeth again. He whispered back, afraid, "There's a little girl in the flower." Curled up like a fetus, there was a miniature girl sleeping in the transparent flower. The flower pulsed and breathed like lungs and heart meshed together into one. "Pay her no mind," said the lady of the house, fondly. "Let my darling girl sleep." We figured fairies and witches came in all sorts of sizes, so we immediately felt bad for worrying. The lady saw my brother's scars and offered to heal them. We laughed, braying like donkeys, and said many grown-ups have tried but nothing can fix us. But the lady took my brother aside and healed the mark on his neck. Astonished, we sat there like knickknacks in the house. "I have no scars," I said quickly. (It's true, my twin brother always gets all the fun.) The lady's hair flashed in waves of white as she laughed. "Sweet child, you can't fool me. You ate from my garden. I see you as you are. Hidden away beneath the skin, in the dark of your mind, there lie scars. And I can make it better."
o you know what it's like to starve so much
you'll eat anything? My brother and I were going a long way, and we couldn't look back. Our parents said we weren't human and we'd eat them out of house and home. So we sought to find another house and home, one that would love us to death. We were so tired and hungry, we started to joke about eating each other. But we knew it was a joke. Then we saw the house with the magnificent garden. You'd have to forgive us if our voices break or growl or our ears twitch every now and then. We don't know how long spells take to wear off. And the cabbages in her yard were so good. We were so hungry, we got down on our hands and knees and gobbled the vegetables raw. We dug like rabbits and devoured like wolves, and barely looked up to see each other changing. Then the lady came out of the house. She had long, long hair you could climb a tower with, and it lifted and flowed in the air as if of its own accord. She was dressed like the spring, like her garden, in bloom in the dead of winter. She said she could see what we really were, and kindly opened her door for us to come inside. Would you believe we saw roses— roses!—there in the winter? Black as night, white as swans, and red as blood, arranged like cards at her windowsill? 22
