A Witch’s To-Do List

Sarah Weng

1. Pick apple blossoms for a brew.

2. Feed the foxes that dance around your feet whenever you prepare chicken carcasses.

3. Hatch the salamanders in the hearth.

4. When night falls, steal a girl from the village and make her your apprentice, just as your old mentor had done to you.

5. After calming her hysteria, teach her how to make a sleeping draught and then put her to sleep with it.

Tuesday:

1. Wake the girl up before sunrise and set her to work on the herb garden.

2. Wash clothes alongside your new apprentice.

3. Take her to the meadow to pick flowers; tell her to pick the deadliest ones.

4. Teach the apprentice to care for newborn salamanders.

5. Serve her dinner and put her to bed; when she starts crying herself to sleep, calm her down.

6. When she whimpers for her family, tell her you are her new family.

Wednesday:

1. Make breakfast out of crow eggs and a slain pig, for you have fed all your hens to the creatures of the forest.

2. Invite in the stray cat that keeps mewling at your doorstep every morning.

3. Have a conversation with said cat. Listen to its warnings about the bad fortune coming your way.

4. Extract the poison from yesterday’s flowers, which were left hanging from a windowsill in the moonlight.

5. Dust off some spellbooks for your apprentice. Your old mentor didn’t start teaching you spells so quickly, but your apprentice has taken a shine to witchcraft early on.

6. Tuck your apprentice into bed when she falls asleep reading about forest cryptids. In her sleep, she says something about the townspeople coming to burn down the cottage.

7. Leave out some leftovers for said cryptids.

Thursday:

1. Leave out some scraps of meat for the cat, who is now a welcome visitor.

2. Make porridge for your apprentice; ask her about the church and the town.

3. Inspired by the cat, teach your apprentice to communicate with animals.

4. Make lunch out of chicken broth and vegetables the size of overfed house cats.

5. Feed the foxes again; you have more chicken for them.

6. Go into the forest to harvest mushrooms.

7. All mushrooms are edible; some just kill you afterwards. Sauté the ones that don’t kill you and put the ones that do in a draught.

8. After your apprentice has gone to bed, research protection spells.

Friday:

1. Wake up to a black cloud of foreboding covering your vision. When it finally parts, wake your apprentice and go about your day.

2. While your apprentice studies, sprinkle ground chicken bones around the perimeter of the cottage.

3. Notice the cat is back, standing outside the perimeter of chicken bone dust. It tells you that something terrible is about to happen.

4. When night falls and they come for you with their crosses, torches, pitchforks, and blades, pray that the chicken bones keep them away.

5. When they don’t, take your pouches and vials and meet them outside your porch.

6. When your apprentice appears in the cottage doorway and one man accuses you of snatching children to cook and eat, scatter a handful of powder upon his coat and set him alight with blue fire.

7. Unleash death on the rest of the self-righteous mob with the help of your trusty draughts and spells.

8. As you collapse to your knees after a boning knife from your own kitchen is driven through your heart with dainty yet strong hands, tell your apprentice that you have so much more to teach her, but she has done well.

9. Die knowing there is still another witch in the forest to continue your legacy.

Saturday:

1. Leave your mentor’s body for the ravens to lift off into the sky by her cloak.

2. Pick apple blossoms for a brew.