McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales - Michael Chabon [36]
Small shivered. There was nothing to eat for breakfast but grass, and the grass was black and cooked.
“Are you cold?” said The Witch’s Revenge. She put the bag aside, and picked up another catskin, a fine black one. She slit a sharp claw down the middle. “We’ll make you a warm suit.”
She used the coat of a black cat, and the coat of a calico cat, and she put a trim around the paws, of gray and white striped fur.
While she did this, she said to Small, “Did you know that there was once a battle, fought on this very patch of ground?”
Small shook his head no.
“Wherever there’s a garden,” The Witch’s Revenge said, scratching with one paw at the ground, “I promise you there are people buried down under it. Look here.” She plucked up a little brown clot, put it in her mouth, and cleaned it with her tongue.
When she spat the little circle out again, Small saw it was an ivory regimental button. The Witch’s Revenge dug more buttons out of the ground—as if buttons of ivory grew in the ground—and sewed them onto the catskin. She fashioned a hood with two eyeholes and a set of fine whiskers, and sewed four fine cat tails to the back of the suit, as if the one that grew there wasn’t good enough for Small. She threaded a bell on each one. “Put this on,” she said to Small.
He does and the bells chime and The Witch’s Revenge laughs. “You make a fine-looking cat,” she says. “Any mother would be proud.”
The inside of the catsuit is soft and a little sticky against Small’s skin. When he puts the hood over his head, the world disappears. He can only see the vivid corners of it through the eyeholes—grass, gold, the cat who sits cross-legged, stitching up her sack of skins—and air seeps in, down at the loosely sewn seam, where the skin droops and sags over his chest and around the gaping buttons. Small holds his tails in his clumsy fingerless paw, like a handful of eels, and swings them back and forth to hear them ring. The sound of the bells and the sooty, cooked smell of the air, the warm stickiness of the suit, the feel of his new fur against the ground: He falls asleep and dreams that hundreds of ants come and lift him and gently carry him off to bed.
When Small tipped his hood back again, he saw that The Witch’s Revenge had finished with her needle and thread. Small helped her fill the bag with the gold pieces. The Witch’s Revenge stood up on her hind legs, took the bag between her paws, and swung it over her shoulders. The gold coins went sliding against each other, mewling and hissing. The bag dragged along the grass, picking up ash, leaving a green trail behind it. The Witch’s Revenge strode along as if she were carrying a sack of air.
Small put the hood on again, and he got down on his hands and knees. And then he trotted after The Witch’s Revenge. They left the garden gate wide open, and went into the forest, toward the house where the witch Lack lives.
The forest is smaller than it used to be. Small is growing, but the forest is shrinking. Trees have been cut down. Houses have been built. Lawns rolled, roads laid. The Witch’s Revenge and Small walked alongside one of the roads. A school bus rolled by: The children inside looked out their windows and laughed when they saw The Witch’s Revenge striding along, and at her heels, Small, in his catsuit. Small lifted his head and peered out of his eyeholes after the school bus.
“Who lives in these houses?” he asked The Witch’s Revenge.
“That’s the wrong question, Small,” said The Witch’s Revenge, looking down at him and striding along.
Miaow, the catskin bag says. Clink.
“What’s the right question then?” Small said.
“Ask me who lives under the houses,” The Witch’s Revenge said.
Obediently, Small said, “Who