Own

My mother taught me: Every good witch must keep a menagerie to feed her spells’ demands—feather and fur, bile and droppings, fang and claw. Sometimes blood, an eye, a life.

Gather your beasts, my mother said, stroking my hair, but love them. They will love you and so never flee. Yet consider their playful antics, their morning songs, their contented slumbering sighs against the magic you gain from the harm you cause. Magic is balance. Love is the scales on which it rests.

She should have warned me: Others keep their own menageries.

Theirs are not based in love.

Copyright (c) 2021 by Matt Moore