Cute Little Bottle
1
I X all the friends
who came to my house after that.
They were all eaten by the house.
But it wasn’t enough.
To begin with, I found children around my age and invited them in.
They were all deceived by the sweet smell of food and my smile.
All of these children were hungry. And on top of that, pure. They wanted to believe in a dream, that happiness would come upon them alone.
Though such a thing would never conveniently appear before them, their childish hearts easily accepted the comforting allure. Just the way I had.
The house itself used what it knew to kill my friends with ease, and it did so in a variety of ways.
I didn’t need to do anything. Only reach out an inviting hand.
Crushing them between the walls was the simplest way. From time to time a lucky child would escape and run down the hall, but a knife from nowhere would quickly take care of them. The house had always had such traps in place.
Because this was a witch’s house. A house created by demons to devour humans. It was no surprise at all that it would be filled with deadly implements.
Every time the house ate a person, it voiced its gratitude - thank you, thank you - and I was embarrassed of my past self for failing to carry out my job as a witch.
Regret? Guilt? I felt no such things.
Because I wanted to be cured.
Because I wanted someone who would love me.
By merely piling up the pebbles before me, I could have my wishes granted. Anyone given that offer would have chosen the same. I picked them up, and I stacked.
Yet they weren’t pebbles, but white bones. People’s round skulls. Perhaps the big question was whether these were on the level of pebbles, or if they had indeed been a person’s life.
Human souls, for now, were currency.
Money with which a witch can buy spells from a demon.
Just as I exchanged the souls of father and mother for the spell of this house, I needed more souls to receive things from the demon.
I had to continue working not only for the cure the demon promised, but for medicine to slow the progression of my sickness.
When I stepped outside that day, I saw my fingertips splotched with red. Even though there had never been symptoms of my sickness there before.
It was because I had stopped drinking my medicine since I came here. I trembled with fear. I didn’t want it to get any worse. I clung to the demon’s medicines. Even if I didn’t know how much they helped to slow it.
When the house ate a person, my body flushed up with heat, and I felt the soul being taken to the demon.
I didn’t know any exact numbers, but I was recompensed for feeding him humans.
With medicine to slow my sickness, for the time being.
The remainder, so to speak, went toward offerings to the demon to grant my wish.
“Not really an offering. ’s just a transaction.”
I turned to the thick voice, and a black crow settled on the open window’s sill.
“Heya,” the crow greeted, flapping open its wings.
I looked at him with arms folded and a look of disgust.
“Just leave the medicine and go.”
“Ooo, scary. Kid’s got no respect, no respect. Hey, what’s with you?”, the crow spat at the black cat down on the floor.
“Sheesh. I’d advise against trying to make her angry,” he angrily replied, but he made no implication that the crow was a nuisance. It felt as if the cat and the crow were long-time acquaintances.
“I heard ya. Good doin’ business. Smell ya!”
The crow flapped his wings a few times, then took off from the window. I shut it firmly with irritation. Though I needed not touch it directly; the things of this house moved as I willed.
“You don’t like him?”
“Nope. He’s just so noisy,” I coldly said.
The cat scratched his nose with a sigh.
I bought my medicine from another demon, distinct from the black cat.
I just called him the crow demon.
The black cat had no name, either.
Demons, having no defined form, evidently possessed animal corpses to do their work.
And just as they had different tastes in animals, they gave witches different kinds of magic. The black cat didn’t seem to know any medicinal spells, so I relied on the crow.
I asked as I put the medicine in a cupboard.
“Does that crow have a witch, too?”
“Well…”
“Well? You don’t know?”
“Nah. Because I’m only interested in you, Ellen.”
“…”
“You listening?”
I ignored the cat and went on with my work.
Did the crow have a witch of his own? If he did, that meant there was someone else living much like I was.
But that thought alone didn’t interest me. Nor did I feel any fellowship with a fellow witch.
Because she would have chosen the path of working for a demon to fulfill her desires, as well. What good would it do for me to intrude into someone else’s life, as she carried her own separate emotions?
Simply by their connection to a demon, witches lived in their own worlds. To impede upon that would cause nothing but trouble. At least in my case.
I thought about the link between demons and witches.
Did demons use witches for their own purposes? Or did witches use demons for their own purposes?
I felt both were accurate. It was a transaction, like the crow said. Because it seemed that demons couldn’t kill humans on their own power.
I visited the room of books looking for information on demons. I couldn’t find much of interest.
“Could you be hiding them?”, I asked the black cat.
“Well, I never,” he replied, walking gracefully and spinning his tail.
Whenever I picked up a book in this house, I was provided a book at about the right difficulty for me to read. Which meant that I wasn’t allowed to read books I shouldn’t be yet.
The next book I reached for was about the black cat’s magic. I sat in a random chair and read.
All of the black cat demon’s spells were twisted things.
A spell to make people see illusions, a spell to peer into a person’s heart, a spell to control someone’s body…
I would have thought that simply destroying a person’s body would be enough to eat their souls.
Yet the black cat seemed interested in instilling fear, something that was quite apparent from this house of deadly traps.
“Why do you only know spells like these?”
“Hmm. I guess I just like that kind of thing. And…”
“And?”
“They’re tastier that way.”
“Really?”
“Yep. So good luck.”
Good luck, he says.
What a layabout. Still, I trembled slightly.
Because there was no doubt. He knew that I was going to enjoy using these spells. A witch, use a demon for her own purposes? Absolutely not. That’s not the position a witch is in.
I no longer even attempted to befriend the people I invited to the house. It was simply unproductive.
Because no one loved me in my sickness. I could put up a temporary illusion, but once my true appearance came out, they ran in fear.
And everyone had homes to go back to, so they wouldn’t stay. It was easy to make them submit, but that wasn’t real.
If only I could mold their hearts, then I would gather lots of them, and I would make it real. That was all.
Every time a person died, the roses around the house seemed to multiply.
I plucked a petal and looked at it in my palm.
Perhaps these red flowers were made from blood, and not metaphorically so.
I could see patterns like blood vessels in this very petal. And they were nearly identical to the veins I could see in my hand.
My life as a witch began favorably.
Though it wasn’t too different from what I had been doing. I drank tea, read books, and gazed outside.
Only from time to time, I would invite a human who had come to the first into the house.
I wandered the house without any sense of restriction.
Every time I passed a mirror, I checked my reflection. The girl there appeared very healthy.
But I couldn’t smile from deep down.
I asked.
“Hey, how much longer?”
“Not yet. It’s not nearly enough,” the black cat answered.
2
Many days and nights passed.
As the seasons changed, so did the forest, the flowers in the garden wilting and blooming anew. The twinkling stars overhead changed not in alignment, only in position.
Time passed slowly but surely.
…And yet my body remained a seven-year-old’s.
I realized this anew this one day when I killed a human and saw their memory.
That adult human had been a child that, long ago, I let escape on a whim.
Enough time had passed for a child to become an adult. I compared my own body to the fully matured corpse at my feet.
I hadn’t grown an inch. What’s more, my hair and nails hadn’t grown either.
It was like time had stopped for me. And yet the curse of my sickness proceeded inside me.
Witches don’t die, the black cat had said. I faintly wondered if this was what it meant to live forever, smelling the aroma of a newly-bloomed rose.
I had lived here a long time and learned many things, but my seven-year-old brain forgot much.
…Perhaps I should keep a diary.
An open book full of blank pages appeared on the desk before me.
A red-bound book.
What to write? Without even thinking about it, the feather pen began moving on its own, smoothly writing things down.
Ah. So I don’t even need to write. Because it seemed the diary was already writing things I couldn’t even remember - the house knew more about me than I did.
In that way, even my current thoughts would compose words on the pages.
I left the diary behind, to be written in as the house’s magic chose, and departed.
All kinds of people came to the forest.
Playing children.
Rendezvousing lovers.
Adults passing through to hunt or do business.
And in addition, some adults came to search for their children, or to investigate the forest.
I manipulated the forest with much expertise. I looked down over the whole forest from high up in the sky with magic viewing. I cleared a path like a winding thread to lead people to my house.
Growing bored of the house’s traps, I played with the black cat’s magic. Sometimes I would involve myself.
They tilted their gaze. That was fine. Rose vines coiled around their necks. Hard as metal, they forcefully dug into their flesh. Just before their head popped off, they’d look at me and say - “Witch.”
Some people fretted, some were angry, some insulted.
I wasn’t bothered by such things. Because even the greatest events of their entire lives were, to me, a frame of my everyday life.
I gazed at them with chin in hands as if watching a play. Their curses went straight through my ears.
But suddenly, I had a thought.
About how they called me a witch.
Could it be that I was known?
“Hm? You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”, the black cat said, looking at a puddle of blood on the floor.
On purpose?
“Yeah. Sometimes you let the people who come here flee. Obviously rumor’s gonna spread then.”
Ah. Perhaps he was right.
There were times when siblings or lovers became lost here, and I killed only one of the pair, letting the other flee. And it wasn’t a one-time occurrence.
I don’t particularly know what I was thinking in those moments, but thinking back on it, it was true.
Perhaps I wanted to be known.
For my existence to be. And that I lived deep in the forest.
Perhaps I hated living unknown to anyone. I was lonely. I wanted everyone to come play.
“Really?”
The black cat smiled with a mouth dripping with red.
I replied with a smile to the same degree as his.
Yes. I wanted friends. Friends who would die for me. It was like a game of tag - though I was the only one who was it.
And I heard somewhere another rose blooming.
Whenever a child wearing expensive garments or accessories came, I would steal them and try them on myself.
I spun in front of the mirror. Well? Does it suit me? The black cat always just said I was cute, which was boring.
So I quickly grew tired of it, and stuffed the things away in a closet.
The demon’s medicine was mixed into tea or pastries so it could flow through my body.
Like a daily ritual, I sank into the red sofa and waited. When the time came, a sweet medicine appeared on the table before me.
Today, it was strawberry shortcake.
I stuck my fork through the strawberry on top and watched the juice flow out.
I should say that I didn’t exactly enjoy killing people. I killed them in brutal ways, but I didn’t like to do so.
I only did it because it pleased the demon.
Absolutely, he loved to see people suffer. He delighted eating souls soaked in despair.
No. I don’t want to die, not here, not now. Help me. Souls that died with those thoughts tasted very delicious, he said.
I couldn’t distinguish those tastes myself (I didn’t have any desire to taste them), but he complimented me for the better ones. Simply put, they were more profitable.
That was why I came to kill people in those ways.
The house knew it too. It chose the most awful methods. Had the witch who lived here before me come up with them?
I had no interest in it, myself. I grew used to the smell of guts, but that was all.
Lately I had been cutting off people’s wrists to collect, but only as ingredients to make medicine. I had no particular interest in dissecting people.
The cook assisted me in this. Though he was a bit lacking in the head department (in both senses), and sometimes nearly cut me by mistake.
I wondered why such a person was even here, but I supposed the previous witch had wanted his cooking expertise.
He could cook anything. Unfortunately, I had little interest in cuisine and only ate cake and pastries, so he may have been a little bored.
So, no. I didn’t like to kill people.
Because, look at it this way. There are humans who kill pigs, aren’t there? They do it to eat, but they don’t enjoy what they’re doing. It’s the same thing.
“Who the heck are you talking to?”, the black cat asked, sitting beside me as I ate my cake.
Who, indeed. To someone reading this diary, no doubt.
I drew letters in the air with the end of my fork.
“Are you writing a diary?”
Right. Though it’s not me who’s writing, but the house.
“Well, huh. Can I read it?”
I didn’t answer, pushing a piece of cake into my mouth.
Of course, I would be lying to say I didn’t like the sense of elation when the house ate a human.
But that was to be expected. It brought about a reaction in my body, but there was nothing I could do about it. …Hey, cat, why are you smiling?
I became very familiar with the crow demon.
I noticed him at the window, calling “Heya.” The crow’s thick, ear-piercing voice couldn’t be good for my heart.
It annoyed me how I could know everything else about the forest, but not the crow. On that thought, I couldn’t know where the black cat was either. Perhaps all demons were that way.
And when it came to the ungraspable, there was also the clocks of the house.
As much as the house changed form, the clocks remained in the same positions, faithfully carrying out time’s march regardless of my will.
It was just like a heartbeat. Invariant to the owner’s consciousness, it would not be budged from its fixed rhythm. It was the house’s pulse -
The crow poking my cheek brought me back to reality. He seemed to be done carrying in his medicines.
In order to determine the medicine I needed, the crow demon needed to look inside my body.
“You’re like a doctor,” I told him. “Eh,” he said.
“Well then, can’t you cure my illness?”, I asked, and “Only the cat can do that,” he said.
“Hmph.”
I was a little let down, and looked at the crow with suspicion.
From the way he said it, it may have been that he did have such an ability, but he was leaving the duty of curing me to the black cat.
But asking a demon further about such things wouldn’t get me anywhere.
I swallowed my suspicion and asked something else.
“Isn’t it a bit strange how you eat people, yet have the power to cure them?”
The crow laughed. “Lemme put it in your terms. You’d have a problem if a pig got sick, yeah?”
Feeling I’d hit upon something, I raised an eyebrow. “Is it a problem for demons if humans are sick?”
The crow opened his big mouth and said “Not so much. But it is if we wanna play,” then crudely laughed.
His dirty voice and speech made my face scrunch up.
“Us.” Was that the crow and the black cat?
I felt unpleasant thinking that these demons had their hands in everything.
I put my teacup up to my mouth, then realized.
…Wait. If a pig…
Wasn’t that what I’d written in my diary earlier?
“Could it be… Do you peep in people’s diaries?”
“Whoop!” The crow fled out the window in a seemingly intentional haste.
Why, you… I chased him to the window, but could go no further.
“Hey! No teasing Ellen.”
The black cat appeared from somewhere and leapt onto the roof with the crow.
The crow glared at him and spoke in an intimidating voice.
“I didn’t do nothin’. You’re so damn protective. Buzz off.”
“W-What?!”
The cat and crow began to fight on the roof, though the crow was solely on the offensive. The black cat flicked his whiskers, prompting with his eyes. Help me, Ellen, they said.
I watched for a while, and soon sighed loud enough for them to hear, then left the room.
“H-Hey, Ellen, don’t ignore me!”, the cat pathetically said behind me. I heard the crow laughing as he flew away.
The cat jumped down into the room and followed me. One of his ears had been taken off in the fight.
“Boy, you’re mean. Why didn’t you help me?”
“You can just get a new one, can’t you?”, I grinned.
Even if the black cat’s body was wounded, he had a stock of replacement cat corpses.
“But I wanted to be saved by you, Ellen.”
“…”
“You listening?”
I ignored him and walked away.
…Why had I not helped you?
Surely you knew that. I didn’t want my body to stay outside for any amount of time. If I so much as stuck my hand out the window, the magic would wear off, and the skin would start to swell.
But I didn’t say it.
I pursed my trembling lips.
Because I was a witch. A witch couldn’t say such pathetic things. If I started to whine, you would abandon me. Well, though I didn’t think he actually would.
I walked down the hall, not looking back, as the black cat followed. Soon enough, he was up on my shoulder, saying trifling things.
How foolish. It was a farce.
Muttering that to myself, I ignored what he said. Even though I was completely in the grasp of demons, I acted like I lived alone.
Because I knew he liked that. That was what the demon sought in a witch.
When I opened the door, out came the cook, carrying a knife.
His giant body ugly and patch-filled, wielding a knife dripping dark red blood, he asked in a stupid tone of voice.
“How long should I keep collecting pig hands?”
Hm.
I shrugged my shoulders.
…You’ll have to ask him.
I asked.
“Hey, how much longer?”
“Still not enough,” the black cat answered.
3
Outside the forest, the land went through many rulers.
I heard many rumors about wars starting and ending.
Perhaps decades had passed since I came to this house.
Or maybe it was centuries.
I didn’t know an exact number. As I never aged, I felt I had no need to keep track of time.
“A witch lives in the forest, and she takes away those who get lost there.”
That was the rumor that spread.
Outside the forest, secret efforts were made to try and kill me. Some who visited came explicitly to kill me.
But I did not panic. Because they would all be my friends. Because every time one came along, they could satisfy the demon’s appetite.
Their deaths instilled fear and sorrow in the ones who remained, and it summoned new humans to the house.
As the demon surely knew, I enjoyed this chain of occurrences myself.
I looked down on the garden from a second floor window.
It was fully covered with red roses in bloom.
When I first arrived here, only seasonal flowers bloomed. But with each human killed, the roses increasing in number could no longer be contained only in the house, but now went outside to encircle it, blooming in the garden.
I softly put a finger against the glass.
My beloved roses. I wanted to leap right into that red bedding. I lamented not being able to do so.
A black shadow flew across the sky, and I looked up.
That noisy black bird’s cry.
…The demon was here to sell his medicine.
I started putting the medicines from the crow in a special food storage.
As the demon’s medicines increased in number and type, they couldn’t just fit in cupboards anymore.
In addition to the medicines that stopped the advance of my sickness, there were those which did damage to the body - those were for the black cat’s interests.
I left the medicine room and stood in a long hallway.
I didn’t want people to get anywhere near. I had worked for those medicines, and it would be awful if someone were to destroy them.
Water settled in the center of the hall, flowing in a shallow river.
…I wondered where it came from. Well, perfect.
I pulled out a few hairs and dropped them in the river. The clear water suddenly turned purple, bubbling and emitting an odd heat.
“Yikes! What’re you doing?”, the black cat asked, intrigued.
I gave up on trying to drive him away.
I grabbed him under his front legs and lifted him up.
And I smiled at him, as if he were unbearably cute.
“…Ellen?”
He looked up at me, his legs dangling.
I was smiling as usual, so he returned it, but it seemed somehow awkward.
…Suddenly, my face returned to normal, and I threw the cat into the river.
“Wha?! I knew it -”
Splash.
By the time he finished yelling, or maybe before, his body dissolved in the poison water with a pleasing sound, leaving no trace.
Only bubbles came up to the surface where he had fallen in. There wasn’t even a bone left. I snorted my nose at the smell.
That should do.
I slipped away through the wall.
A purple haze, the demon’s true form, circled around my shoulder, but I pretended to ignore it.
I wandered the house.
It had gotten much bigger than when I first arrived.
I passed by the dining room. Handless residents were having a meal around the long table.
Next, I peered into the marble hall. Residents with uncertain forms were playing piano, while others pulled up chairs to listen.
They were living as they pleased
…Those residents of the witch’s house.
They seemed to have no purpose. They things they said had no meaning. I could no longer laugh among them.
I passed them by, and vanished into the darkness of the hall.
I am Ellen.
But just who is Ellen?
When was it that I wanted to claw at my sick skin?
Before I became a witch. I could remember it like it was a picture. In a dirty room, looking into smoke and crying. When I remembered that smell, it became hard to breathe.
How pitiable I was back then. But I was happy. Because I could just wallow in sorrow.
The trouble was when I thought about what would come next.
If a future of being loved, a path were set out for me, could I just not think about anything?
I wanted it at any cost. But that was no good.
The cry of my heart, the thing my soul desired, beat against my chest.
I obeyed my soul.
Just as the demon indicated I would.
I found my heartbeat slowing down, and instead, I started to hear the heartbeats of others. The people who were eaten by this house with faces of terror.
Ah. This is how it should be.
In a trance, I reached a rose vine out. Around their necks, sucking all the blood. Their hearts became my nourishment. Their death wails my lullaby, fulfilling my desires.
To be loved. That was my desire.
But just what is love?
Kind hands to wrap around me?
A carefree face to smile at me?
I wanted to cry the more I thought about it.
I had learned many things, living in this house for so long. Many things had come into my possession, I felt.
But none of it left anything inside me. It just passed through my body and vanished.
What I wanted was something warm that would always stay in my body. Something that fulfilled me. I didn’t know what it was.
Because I had yet to obtain it.
I lived to have my desire granted. I carried it in my chest with the utmost care, like a bird protecting its eggs.
I felt like, in my time living here, the entity Ellen had gradually disappeared.
…I was the witch named Ellen.
That came to feel more appropriate.
As I walked around the room of books in thought, a book titled with my name appeared.
“Ellen,” it read.
That was quick.
I took it and flipped through the pages. But nothing had yet been written in it.
“Well, what do you know,” came a low voice. I looked by my feet.
There sat a black cat with a different face from before.
Ah. So you’ve gone into a new corpse already. I lifted an eyebrow instead of greeting him.
I put the book back and asked.
“Are there any books about the witch who lived here before?”
“Hmm. Might be,” he said, playing dumb.
It wasn’t payback for dropping him in the poison water earlier. He was always vague and unwilling to answer when it came to the previous witch.
That witch must have been distant past for him. Would the time could that I would be as well? I couldn’t imagine it at the moment.
I looked up at a tall bookshelf.
I couldn’t possibly read all the books in here.
They seemed to be constantly multiplying and lessening.
Where were they stocked from? Perhaps the knowledge of the people who died here took the form of books.
Someone’s history. A telling of someone’s way of life. That was wonderful. What was tragedy for them became comedy for the reader.
But…
Since they were all people fed to the house, they all had the same ending.
“Isn’t it boring how they all end the same way?”, the black cat asked me.
“I wouldn’t say so. It’s all about how you get there. Besides…”
“Besides?”
“Everybody dies at the end.”
So I said, but after realizing that I wasn’t included in that, I cast my eyes down.
I was surprised at how much it disturbed me. I was still being dragged into the fact of never dying.
I wished he wouldn’t notice my unrest. Ahh, but of course he would. He laughed at me - I was too scared to look at him.
Tsk. I escaped through a gap in the bookshelves.
And as I wandered as if looking for another topic, I found a boy sitting in the corner of the room.
At some point, a boy had taken up residence in the room of books.
I wasn’t sure if it was entirely right to call him a boy, as his chestnut hair fully covered his face, making it impossible to see.
He would order the bookshelves, open up books on the floor, and mutter things to himself. I felt like I’d heard his voice before.
I couldn’t particularly remember the voices of everyone I’d played with, and they all seemed to blend together. But just looking at his kitten-soft hair seemed to calm my heart.
At times, I would overhear him talking to himself when I came in. I sat in a chair some distance away and gazed at him with my chin in my hands.
He didn’t seem to notice my presence. He was so focused on what he was doing, he didn’t even look my way.
Around him were encyclopedias and storybooks. Can you not read? Do you want me to teach you?
I shook my head. No, surely he didn’t care for that.
Hold on. Why did I know that?
…I couldn’t remember.
I put a hand to my forehead and thought. But my blank memories remained so, and no clues came to mind.
After thinking for a while, I gave up, got out of the chair, and left the room.
I visited the room with the big tree.
I didn’t see the red plants around anymore.
Apparently, because they had frightened me, the black cat moved the ladies somewhere else, somewhere dark.
They were hardly evil, though.
It was a bit of a pity, but with those curiously-shaped plants gone, the garden scenery seemed improved.
Instead of their feelers along the walls, there were now rose hedges.
Passing by those hedges, I proceeded to the stone passage.
The cold touch of the stone ran through my soles.
…When was it I walked along here in fear? It didn’t matter. It was just a dark hallway.
I looked down as I walked and recalled how I was always barefoot.
Why was it I had so few memories of wearing shoes? Because I had no need to wear them? In truth, I had bad memories associated with shoes, particularly red shoes - but at the time, I had forgotten.
As I walked, I saw lines of iron bars to my left.
I looked through the bars and thought about the residents of the house.
They were the remnants of souls the house had eaten.
In a sense, the demon’s leftovers. Like breadcrumbs or apple cores, they took form and stayed in the house.
So when the demon ate people, they didn’t die in the house; they came to live as its residents.
At that point in my thoughts, I stopped in front of a cell.
I turned a heavy gaze toward the bars.
In the back of the cell was a man with one arm chained.
I couldn’t quite see his face.
Because I didn’t remember father’s face very well.
Father leaned, sitting down, on the back wall. His bones were clearly visible through his sickly skin, and he looked very worn-away.
He said nothing. I didn’t want to ask him anything. He hid his breathing and sat like a statue.
I grabbed the bars with both hands. I had no desire to shake them or call for him. I just felt like I needed to do it to keep my feelings in check.
I found it hard to breathe. My chest heated up. I tightened my grip on the bars.
Suddenly, I noticed something at my feet.
…Father’s pipe.
I picked it up and stared.
The thing father had used to dream. Because he had this, he didn’t look at me. Perhaps that was how I wanted to see it.
I gently held the pipe in my palm. Gently. I didn’t think of crushing it.
And yet the pipe shattered, vanishing like bits of sand.
I stared at my empty palm for a while, finally looking back into the cell, then preparing to go back the way I’d come.
Then, before I could take a step, I stopped.
There was another cell next to father’s.
A woman’s room, with a sweet smell different from father’s
The interior of the cell was pitch black. The door was firmly shut and showed no sign of opening. I had no intention to, either.
The more I smelled that sweet aroma, the more a bitter taste spread in my heart.
Just being in front of the cell threw my heart into disarray, and I quickly took off.
Back in the room with the great tree, the black cat was sitting on the bench underneath with tea.
It was about medicine time, I suppose.
I sat down next to him without saying anything. Placing the teacup and saucer on my lap, I drank the tea.
I leaned back on the bench and looked up at the high wall.
The flames of the torches on the wall swayed. A long forelock fell into my eyes, and I knit my brows.
I really was living for a longer time than I should have been.
What was happening to my body? Even if I was drinking the medicines to still my sickness, as the crow demon told me.
To what extent was it stopped? Had the ugly swelling of my face and legs spread to my entire body?
If the magic of the house wore off, or if I went outside, I could see for myself.
I shivered at that point.
…No. I don’t want to see that. I don’t need to.
I could leave the house when I was healthy. Once the demon granted my wish, I could.
My fingers trembled waiting for the demon’s medicine.
“We have a guest.”
I turned to the black cat’s voice, but he wasn’t sitting there anymore.
It was a sign that a human had come. He would always vanish when I was with a human.
I closed my eyes and surveyed.
I didn’t need to concentrate. I could see the human coming into the house in the time it took to blink.
…Sigh. Won’t someone different come?
I was tired of the humans who came without fear.
I was seemingly an enemy that had to be defeated. I was likely the target of someone’s vengeance. Everyone came to the forest to kill me.
And to kill this witch, they brought all kinds of unique weapons as they set foot in the forest.
I didn’t need to invite them. They just came right in. The demon had his mouth open, like a great gate for them to pass into one after another.
They all had their determination, their firm resolve, but once they entered, that was the end for them. They were eaten alive. What a joke.
Why did they say they wanted to kill me?
Why was it thought that I should be killed?
I decided to ask the brain of the person coming to attack me.
And I found that yes, I was evil. I had killed innocent people, thus evil. I had killed many, thus evil. So I had to be killed.
Hmph. I thought about what I’d done. And about what I was going to do. Yes, from your point of view, perhaps it was so.
But in my eyes, you are evil. Because you’re impeding upon my wish. You won’t allow it to come true.
Evil, because I kill innocent people? Aren’t you trying to kill me? Then how are you not evil?
Hm? God told you so?
…What a pain.
I spoke as I strangled them with rose vines.
I know. Evil is just a word you say to people doing things you don’t like. That’s all it is.
And you just decide what kind of person deserves to be killed as you please.
Yet you want to give a reason for it, don’t you? You want to label everything as good or evil?
But it’s only humans who do those idiotic things.
All other creatures, when they want to kill, just kill. And not only so they can eat. Cats even kill bugs for fun.
They don’t need a reason for everything. They want to do it, so they just do it.
I’m the same as them, killing because I want to kill. What makes you any different? You only want to kill me because you want to.
Yes, go on and believe in your god.
But he’s not going to save you. If I was going to receive divine punishment for doing what you say is evil, I would have been struck by lightning long ago.
Here’s what I think. God dropped us down here to suffer. To live our lives clinging to him and begging for help. So we’d never forget to pray to him.
And thus you and I have both suffered.
Hey, are you listening? I squatted down to talk to them, but their body was already motionless.
“You’re talkative today.”
The black cat poked his head out of a rose bush.
“I guess,” I said, tilting my head.
“But you won’t talk much with me.”
“What would I need to talk to you about?”
“I dunno. Anything?”
“If anything is fine, then not talking at all must be fine, too.”
I promptly terminated the conversation and left.
“Hey, wait!”
The black cat leapt out of the bush and followed.
I visited the stone passage again.
I went down the path and stopped in front of father’s cell.
The pipe, which had broken and left no trace, was now back to normal in father’s hand.
A faint smell wafted out into the hallway. He calmly smoked, leaning against the wall. The sight made me a little sad.
From the neighboring cell, I thought I heard a woman’s laughter.
I did not visit there again.
I walked along the stone, biting my lip.
Perhaps because it was important that I treat my memories with care.
Perhaps because I had a pitiable past.
…I couldn’t remember.
Not my feelings on my parents. Nor the boy in the room of books. When I tried to remember those past feelings in detail, I felt my head hurting.
I could read my diary to remember, but by the time I’d turned the next page, I’d already forgotten.
“Can’t be that big a deal if you can’t remember, can it?”
The black cat was suddenly there coiling around my feet.
“Don’t have to think about all that stuff. You’re a witch. You eat people and have your wishes granted.”
Right.
He was right.
I nodded at the demon’s whisper and raised my head.
I am Ellen. The witch of the forest. The one who will cure her illness, and become one who is loved.
But just who was I to honestly smile saying that?
In the corner of the room of books, the book titled “Ellen” emitted a faint light and began to fill with words.
The witch asked.
“Hey, how much longer?”
“A little more,” the demon answered.
4
Until that day, I had not gone outside the house.
Of course, neither had the magic of the witch’s house left me.
Not because I wouldn’t be able to move freely.
But because I didn’t want to see my true form.
I couldn’t imagine how much it would wound my heart to see how much my sickness had advanced.
Even with the demon’s medicines, it would not be completely stopped. There was no doubt my original body was becoming uglier by the day.
I was too terrified of it to check. Just remembering the sore red skin brought me to tears.
So then why did I go outside?
I was careless, no doubt.
It was early morning, and a white mist shrouded the forest.
A man holding a long sword came to the house.
I invited the man up to my room. His sword must have been somehow special. He sliced me with it, and I went flying out the window.
…The house’s magic wears off when the witch leaves it.
As I fell, time seemed to slow down. I saw a flying crow stop. I thought I heard the black cat yelling.
I landed safely in the roses of the garden, but remained collapsed on the ground, having no energy to get back up.
The magic surrounding me vanished.
It was like having all your clothes ripped off and being thrown onto snow.
The man leapt down from the window after me.
He was flustered to see me writhing. He was watching me carefully with his sword at the ready all the while, yet he seemed surprised.
I was just as much so. The sore red skin, cracked like earth, spread all over my body. The flesh had rotten on my lower legs, and white bone showed through. A chill climbed up my back, and my throat was dry.
Impossible. Was this me?
The roses covered me as if protecting my body, but without my magic, it was pointless. Only able to crawl along the ground, I must have appeared to the man as an swollen, ugly girl indeed.
The sight of my sick self reminded me of the past.
My father who didn’t look at me. My mother who abandoned me. And the people who ran from me. My crumbling skin, the proof of my lack of love.
I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to let this man see it. I gripped the ground with red arms like twigs. Something hot rose to my eye.
The all-red girl in the man’s sights began to cry.
I didn’t expect to garner any sympathy by crying. I knew that this man would never be thrown off by such a thing.
I just cried from sheer sorrow. I cried thinking how cruel this man was.
The man brandished his sword, assured of victory.
I squinted at the bright light off the blade.
Why are you getting in my way? Why are you being cruel to me? Reminding me of painful things. All when I’m sick. When I’m suffering. You people should just exist to be eaten by me.
…You should just die for me.
The man swung his sword down, and my head flew off. My vision flipped upside down.
But even then, it was futile.
I don’t really remember what happened after that.
When I woke up, I was lying face-up in bed in my room.
The walls of the room were a faint orange, and out the open window, I saw that it was evening.
I checked my neck and found no seam. Still, I couldn’t think of what had happened as a dream.
Um. What was I doing?
Indeed, the man had cut my head off. But I had no memory of the demon reattaching it.
Though that I was sleeping here meant that I had again used the magic of the house to return to my room.
“That was rough,” I heard the black cat casually say.
I tried to get up, but my body was stiffened with pain.
Pain? Why? Like my head was splitting. And not just that. I felt a tingling pain and heat in my legs under the blankets.
I shouldn’t have felt any bodily pain under the protection of the magic.
First of all, I demanded the demon’s medicine. I was quickly given a steaming cup of tea.
I drank it down in one gulp and took a breath. But my heart was still restless. I felt very bad.
I pressed against my temples and tried to remember what I’d been doing, then the black cat spoke.
“The guy went home.”
“Went home?”
“He thought he’d killed you. Don’t you remember?”
I looked up in thought.
Right. I drove him away with some kind of spell. But what kind? I couldn’t remember. Surely I shouldn’t have been so easily forgetting a spell I’d just used.
“Now that he’s left, seems nobody’s gonna come near for a while.”
“Why?”
“Why? Didn’t you make it that way?”
“I don’t remember that.”
The black cat laughed low.
“Yeesh, how can you do anything when you don’t even think?”
Saying that wasn’t going to help me remember. I wasn’t sure if I should get angry or laugh.
Anyway, if I drove him away, then it didn’t matter.
I was exhausted. I waited for the pain to recede, lying on my side and wrapped in the blanket.
But it was strange.
As long as I waited, it wouldn’t go away. My whole body was hot, and I had a headache. I still felt like I was lying outside with my sore skin exposed.
It was odd. Why? Surely not because I had my head cut off. As much as a witch’s body is wounded, it should be able to go back to normal.
I faced up and looked at the patterns on the ceiling.
My vision blurred, and the beautiful patterns looked like dancing snakes. It amused me. Yet it didn’t inspire a smile, but rather nausea.
I felt like my tongue was being pushed from the back of my throat. I couldn’t bear it and sat up.
I curled up and started coughing. I grabbed the sheets with sweaty hands.
…Sweat? I looked at my palm.
I had no need to sweat under the effects of the magic. Why - why was my body falling apart?
For a few days afterward, I groaned in my bed.
I didn’t know if the demon’s medicines were working. The one time when I wanted him to check on me, the crow demon didn’t come.
I remembered when I saw my true self, and my swollen red skin. Remembering that made my heart go cold.
Perhaps I had lost a part of my heart then. Perhaps when I was shown my true body, the thing I’d looked away from, my spirit was shaved away, and my sickness worsened.
As much as a witch’s body is wounded, it can go back to normal.
…But what if it’s the heart that’s wounded?
I felt like this idea had an air of truth. I opened my eyes slightly.
It was afternoon, and lukewarm sunlight streamed in.
I was sweating in bed. My hair stuck to my ceramic-like forehead. As healthy as I looked, on the inside I was a rotting mess.
“Hey.”
My mouth moved before I could think. I didn’t check where the black cat was and just asked.
“Witches can’t die… was a lie, wasn’t it?”
No response came. But I thought of the silence as response enough. I was sure the cat heard me.
I went on incoherently.
“I feel like I’ve seen myself about to disappear. That time, I felt like I was being taken away. …If I go on feeling like that, I’ll be done for, I thought. It must be a lie that it could go on like that forever.”
“Well.”
I heard the cat’s voice. His shadow was on my face all of a sudden. He sat by my pillow, looking down at me.
“Is that your desire, for it to be that way?”
My desire? That I would rather die? That this suffering should just end?
Ridiculous.
I tried to snort at him, but it just came out as a strange breath.
“You won’t die because you don’t really think you want to.”
I thought a while and looked at him.
…For a witch to die, she just needs to want to?
I hadn’t known that for centuries. Perhaps now I had my hand on a secret door. I forgave the black cat for it.
“I can die?”
“You can. But there’s one requirement.”
After he said this, a small bottle appeared out of nowhere before me.
“To despair. That is what it takes for a witch to die.”
I looked at the little candy-colored glass bottle.
“What’s this?”
“Your despair.”
I slowly sat up, unable to take my eyes off the little bottle. A little bottle with a cute design, like one for perfume, sat on my bed.
This could kill me?
I took the bottle with some suspicion, and some fear.
I had a slight expectation.
I had never seen the bottle before. But the color and design suggested a certain person.
I brought it up to my nose.
When I smelled the faint sweet scent, my suspicions were confirmed.
I looked at the cat in surprise. His eyes were wide open.
I felt angry.
Anger? At what?
At the fact that this had the power to kill me? Or at the cat who saw through everything?
I let out a drawn-out breath, to calm my high-strung feelings.
I hadn’t done such an animalistic action in a long time. I felt I was acting more human lately. And that was surely a sign of weakness.
I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to give it form.
But - my gaze returned to the bottle.
The bottle contained mother’s sweet aroma.
The aroma that always surrounded my pastry-making mother. The aroma that wafted from her short-cut nails. The aroma that comforted me as she held me to her chest. The aroma of that woman who bewildered father.
Mother was the key to killing me. Don’t laugh at me. I was still reeling from the fact of my mother abandoning me. I couldn’t accept it.
I had completely buried mother away. There was no calmly smiling mother in my memories. I had torn apart the picture of my mother and smeared it with bloody paint.
So I didn’t think that this would have killed me.
But I didn’t think the black cat was lying.
My hands sweat.
I put a hand on the cap, and loosened it a little. Did it slip because of my sweaty hands? Did I wanted to test if this could really kill me?
I didn’t know. It was all done unconsciously. The cap came off slightly.
And just after -
The moment when the sweet scent may or may not have reached my nose.
I saw the reaper’s great scythe face its blade at me and come down to my neck. Literally, truly. I saw the sharp blade in the darkness come sideways at me. I could quickly imagine it taking my head off.
My blood went cold, and I hurried to tighten the lid. I tightened it as much as I could and threw it.
The bottle hit the wall, made a sound, and fell to the ground. Despite its apparent delicacy, the bottle did not break, but rolled pleasantly.
With each roll, light reflected off the design, and I thought it looked pretty - but I felt absolutely awful.
That was certainly a premonition of death. The man who had lopped my head off felt like child’s play.
That was the end of everything. My vanishing. The bottle told me that without mercy.
I didn’t want to die.
I still hadn’t had my wish granted. I still wasn’t loved by anyone. I still didn’t love anyone…
After seeing death before me, sticking to life seemed much more attractive.
My body wanted to scream, but the black cat cut it off.
“Geez, you didn’t have to throw it.”
He mumbled a complaint and got off the bed to pick the bottle up. Carrying it in his mouth, he dropped it back on my bed.
I lay collapsed in bed, devoid of energy.
Instead of screaming, I cried.
Or rather, the tears came out on their own.
They ran down my cheek and wet the pillow. Soon the water went through the bed to the floor, spreading across the house.
The house knew I was crying, and cradled my body. The house was my ally, as ever. The only part of it that wasn’t was before me: the black cat.
My heart seemed to gradually calm down by crying.
The cat looked down on me.
The candy-colored bottle shined glossy by his feet.
“Will you die?”, he asked, as if asking “Will you eat?”
“I won’t,” I smiled.
My eyes wet with tears, it might have looked like I was crying with joy. Perhaps I was actually happy.
It eased my heart considerably to know that I could die anytime.
The demon was remarkably conscientious, I felt. Because some people wouldn’t choose to die.
To him, it didn’t seem to matter if I died or not.
Because he was grinning. Drooling as he looked down on me.
Ah, yes. He was a demon, after all. Even my soul was just another meal to him.
I remembered that now.
Gripping the bottle tightly, I got out of bed.
My wounded body was heavy, but my heart was light.
I left the room and went down some flights of stairs. Down, down. I arrived at the path to the medicine room.
The poison water running down the hallway was now clear.
My feet splashed through the water which came up to my ankles. It wasn’t cold or hot, just room temperature water. Surely, the tears I’d wept washed the poison away. A silly thought.
I pushed open the heavy door and entered the medicine room.
There was an extra shelf. A shelf just for this bottle, I suppose.
I put the bottle in the shelf and closed the door. I saw myself reflected in the glass. The black cat sat on my right shoulder.
I gave him a sidelong glance.
…Despairing is the key to a witch dying.
Why hadn’t he told me before? Did he think it would break my heart? Was it because I didn’t ask? Don’t tell me we had lived together long enough that we’d actually deepened our trust.
I didn’t know. It was futile to try and understand what he was thinking. I had figured that out long ago.
I spoke with clear annoyance at how he’d kept something from me all this time.
“I hate you, you know.”
“Really? I like you.”
On the way back from the medicine room.
I walked barefoot through the river of tears that flowed down the hallway. The black cat followed a few steps behind.
I asked him without turning around.
“…Did the person who lived here before die?”
Now that I knew even witches could die, I was curious.
The witch who had lived in this house.
I’d just sort of imagined she became happy, but it was possible, even likely that she died without her wish being granted.
The cat had never spoken of the previous witch before, but now that the truth about witches dying was revealed, he seemed willing to answer.
“She’s alive,” he readily said.
I was relieved. That answer alone satisfied me, but the cat went on.
“She just, you know… quit.”
Quit what?
I turned my head around and asked with my eyes.
“Killing people with the house.”
My expression didn’t change.
But he could still tell I was interested. Leaving a gap to stress the importance, he spoke.
“She was taken by the ecstasy of killing people with the house, and couldn’t part from it. Not that she had any desire to in the first place. But maybe that was a bad thing. I didn’t hate her either, but it got out of hand. I granted her wish. Because she said she wanted to be here forever. So she was delighted you came to the house. With a witch like you here, she could be reborn too. …Haven’t you realized? She’s pretty fond of you. I was a little worried you might end up like her too, but I was wrong.”
“…She -”
I stopped and turned up to look at the tall ceiling.
I thought back on the house. The house that was my magic, a part of my body, which kindly, and sometimes with a mind of its own, watched over me.
I pursed my lips and said:
“She became the spell.”
“Yeah.”
The black cat waved his tail with satisfaction.
I thought I heard, from somewhere, the laughter of an innocent girl who was not me.
I stopped asking how much longer.
5
Peace came upon the forest.
It seemed strange to say it.
As the black cat said, fewer people came into the forest after the man who cut off my head left.
It had seemed so busy outside the forest before, but now no one told rumors of me.
Instead, the rumor that the witch had been killed spread.
No humans came into the forest who were specifically after me.
There were hunters and businessmen, playing children, and occasionally people just passing through or getting lost.
As I dozed off, I ate them on a whim. Only dozing. I couldn’t get a decent sleep.
Since my sickness worsened, I started to hear a ringing in my ears. I couldn’t sleep a wink.
Even under the protection of the witch’s house, I was sleeping in bed all the time. When I couldn’t be bothered to return to bed, I sometimes slept in the cold hallways.
Such was how I waited for prey.
The crow demon said it would be difficult to stop my sickness from advancing further.
Perhaps because my heart had been wounded.
I was effectively the patient of a doctor who had given up on me. I wasn’t particularly depressed. I’d long known I had a sickness that couldn’t be cured.
Is that right, I laughed.
The eyes the crow looked at me with then… I don’t know if they were sympathetic or tired. He had his usual bad attitude, left the medicine, and departed.
I didn’t shut the window right away, absentmindedly staring at the feathers he left dancing around the room.
When would this house have its fill?
When would the black cat give me the spell to cure my sickness?
I stopped thinking about those things.
Because it was something I would reach as long as I didn’t give up.
Someone screamed at my ear. Needles stabbed the back of my eyes. My feet looked like a beast’s fangs had bit them, my toes like they’d been chewed away at by rats.
Don’t struggle so much anymore. It’s annoying. Maybe it does hurt.
Or maybe it’s not really a pain in my body. It’s just my wounded heart showing me a dream.
I really wanted to scream. I wanted to sob.
But what point was a scream no one heard? What point were tears no one saw?
My vision blurred and doubled. The ceiling spun.
When I reached out, I felt someone pulling me into a world of dreams. But it was only an illusion, and my arm fell like a puppet whose strings were cut.
I lied there and sank into a sea of agony.
As I sank into my bed, I thought on when I first arrived.
Those eyes that wanted to sleep, enveloped in the sunlight.
The forest air hadn’t changed in all that time.
But the times had changed greatly.
People’s clothes had gotten very orderly and clean. There were hardly as many starved children as they had been long ago.
Rather than people who hunted animals with bows, there were now people who hunted with these long tubes.
Could something like that be used as a weapon?
As I thought that, a hunter aimed one at a bird, and with a loud sound, it fell to the ground.
Wow… amazing. What an interesting weapon. Show that to me.
I made some wild rabbits appear, and had them chase the hunter.
They ate him, and I felt a little better. I sat up and carefully inspected the weapon.
It was apparently called a “gun.” A small bullet flew out of the end of the pipe, destroying the body of the prey.
Hmm, I said, and pointed it at the black cat. The cat leapt up in surprise.
I giggled. Just a joke.
After laughing for the first time in a while, the room returned to silence, and I sank into bed again.
This house didn’t move. Its stomach was filled with human bones, too heavy to move.
I was the same. I felt a weight on my whole body; I wanted to sink to the bottom of the sea.
Yet this house still wanted to eat, demanding more, more, more.
Very well. I closed my eyes and surveyed.
Both now when I was stuck to my bed, and before when I’d wandered it freely, the house invariably felt like a prison.
And I was its prisoner.
My arms and legs were bound by thorny rose vines. I couldn’t move.
But I was the one who’d wanted it.
I longed to be bound by the chains of bandages instead, in some other house I felt I’d lived in.
Perhaps I preferred that. Perhaps I found it easier to give up and be bound down.
But I was different now.
While I was a prisoner, I was also a jailer. I could keep imprisoning myself, or I could escape.
The same vines that restricted my body were also my weapon against intruders.
It was all about my own intention.
I was a beast in the darkness. My eyes glowing the same color as the full moon, my fangs bared. I stood on top of a pile of corpses, my mouth and hands red.
A noose hung on my neck, prepared for my execution at any time. But the rope was loose, and upon closer inspection, it was merely a black cat’s tail.
Who knows how much time passed after that.
There came countless springs, summers, autumns, and winters.
The world of the forest was peaceful.
I mostly just slept in bed.
I opened my mouth like a carnivore, waiting for prey to come. When someone did come, I’d shut my mouth closed and gnaw on them. Once I’d gotten all the nutrients I could, I’d open my mouth again.
It was another such day I trapped my prey and closed my mouth. And then the black cat, prying it back open, spoke.
“Congratulations, Ellen. I’ll give you the spell.”
I slowly opened my eyes.
I had them closed for so long, my eyelids were stuck, and did not open quickly.
Where was I? I wasn’t using magic viewing. This was my room. And looking at my face, shining in the sunlight, was a black cat with beautiful fur.
“I’ll give you the spell to cure your sickness.”
The words reached my ears a few seconds late.
Cure my sickness.
When I understood those words, happy bells rang in my head. I saw the afternoon sunlight as gold dust falling around me.
“This spell, you see…”
The cat’s words sounded like a hymn.
The light visibly returned to my hollow eyes.
My gleaming gold eyes saw through the cat far into the distance. It took a bit of magic. I left the house, through the garden of roses, through the forest. The green trees rustled in the wind.
…And then I found her.
A lone girl with golden braids.
Cute Little Bottle
1
I X all the friends
who came to my house after that.
They were all eaten by the house.
But it wasn’t enough.
To begin with, I found children around my age and invited them in.
They were all deceived by the sweet smell of food and my smile.
All of these children were hungry. And on top of that, pure. They wanted to believe in a dream, that happiness would come upon them alone.
Though such a thing would never conveniently appear before them, their childish hearts easily accepted the comforting allure. Just the way I had.
The house itself used what it knew to kill my friends with ease, and it did so in a variety of ways.
I didn’t need to do anything. Only reach out an inviting hand.
Crushing them between the walls was the simplest way. From time to time a lucky child would escape and run down the hall, but a knife from nowhere would quickly take care of them. The house had always had such traps in place.
Because this was a witch’s house. A house created by demons to devour humans. It was no surprise at all that it would be filled with deadly implements.
Every time the house ate a person, it voiced its gratitude - thank you, thank you - and I was embarrassed of my past self for failing to carry out my job as a witch.
Regret? Guilt? I felt no such things.
Because I wanted to be cured.
Because I wanted someone who would love me.
By merely piling up the pebbles before me, I could have my wishes granted. Anyone given that offer would have chosen the same. I picked them up, and I stacked.
Yet they weren’t pebbles, but white bones. People’s round skulls. Perhaps the big question was whether these were on the level of pebbles, or if they had indeed been a person’s life.
Human souls, for now, were currency.
Money with which a witch can buy spells from a demon.
Just as I exchanged the souls of father and mother for the spell of this house, I needed more souls to receive things from the demon.
I had to continue working not only for the cure the demon promised, but for medicine to slow the progression of my sickness.
When I stepped outside that day, I saw my fingertips splotched with red. Even though there had never been symptoms of my sickness there before.
It was because I had stopped drinking my medicine since I came here. I trembled with fear. I didn’t want it to get any worse. I clung to the demon’s medicines. Even if I didn’t know how much they helped to slow it.
When the house ate a person, my body flushed up with heat, and I felt the soul being taken to the demon.
I didn’t know any exact numbers, but I was recompensed for feeding him humans.
With medicine to slow my sickness, for the time being.
The remainder, so to speak, went toward offerings to the demon to grant my wish.
“Not really an offering. ’s just a transaction.”
I turned to the thick voice, and a black crow settled on the open window’s sill.
“Heya,” the crow greeted, flapping open its wings.
I looked at him with arms folded and a look of disgust.
“Just leave the medicine and go.”
“Ooo, scary. Kid’s got no respect, no respect. Hey, what’s with you?”, the crow spat at the black cat down on the floor.
“Sheesh. I’d advise against trying to make her angry,” he angrily replied, but he made no implication that the crow was a nuisance. It felt as if the cat and the crow were long-time acquaintances.
“I heard ya. Good doin’ business. Smell ya!”
The crow flapped his wings a few times, then took off from the window. I shut it firmly with irritation. Though I needed not touch it directly; the things of this house moved as I willed.
“You don’t like him?”
“Nope. He’s just so noisy,” I coldly said.
The cat scratched his nose with a sigh.
I bought my medicine from another demon, distinct from the black cat.
I just called him the crow demon.
The black cat had no name, either.
Demons, having no defined form, evidently possessed animal corpses to do their work.
And just as they had different tastes in animals, they gave witches different kinds of magic. The black cat didn’t seem to know any medicinal spells, so I relied on the crow.
I asked as I put the medicine in a cupboard.
“Does that crow have a witch, too?”
“Well…”
“Well? You don’t know?”
“Nah. Because I’m only interested in you, Ellen.”
“…”
“You listening?”
I ignored the cat and went on with my work.
Did the crow have a witch of his own? If he did, that meant there was someone else living much like I was.
But that thought alone didn’t interest me. Nor did I feel any fellowship with a fellow witch.
Because she would have chosen the path of working for a demon to fulfill her desires, as well. What good would it do for me to intrude into someone else’s life, as she carried her own separate emotions?
Simply by their connection to a demon, witches lived in their own worlds. To impede upon that would cause nothing but trouble. At least in my case.
I thought about the link between demons and witches.
Did demons use witches for their own purposes? Or did witches use demons for their own purposes?
I felt both were accurate. It was a transaction, like the crow said. Because it seemed that demons couldn’t kill humans on their own power.
I visited the room of books looking for information on demons. I couldn’t find much of interest.
“Could you be hiding them?”, I asked the black cat.
“Well, I never,” he replied, walking gracefully and spinning his tail.
Whenever I picked up a book in this house, I was provided a book at about the right difficulty for me to read. Which meant that I wasn’t allowed to read books I shouldn’t be yet.
The next book I reached for was about the black cat’s magic. I sat in a random chair and read.
All of the black cat demon’s spells were twisted things.
A spell to make people see illusions, a spell to peer into a person’s heart, a spell to control someone’s body…
I would have thought that simply destroying a person’s body would be enough to eat their souls.
Yet the black cat seemed interested in instilling fear, something that was quite apparent from this house of deadly traps.
“Why do you only know spells like these?”
“Hmm. I guess I just like that kind of thing. And…”
“And?”
“They’re tastier that way.”
“Really?”
“Yep. So good luck.”
Good luck, he says.
What a layabout. Still, I trembled slightly.
Because there was no doubt. He knew that I was going to enjoy using these spells. A witch, use a demon for her own purposes? Absolutely not. That’s not the position a witch is in.
I no longer even attempted to befriend the people I invited to the house. It was simply unproductive.
Because no one loved me in my sickness. I could put up a temporary illusion, but once my true appearance came out, they ran in fear.
And everyone had homes to go back to, so they wouldn’t stay. It was easy to make them submit, but that wasn’t real.
If only I could mold their hearts, then I would gather lots of them, and I would make it real. That was all.
Every time a person died, the roses around the house seemed to multiply.
I plucked a petal and looked at it in my palm.
Perhaps these red flowers were made from blood, and not metaphorically so.
I could see patterns like blood vessels in this very petal. And they were nearly identical to the veins I could see in my hand.
My life as a witch began favorably.
Though it wasn’t too different from what I had been doing. I drank tea, read books, and gazed outside.
Only from time to time, I would invite a human who had come to the first into the house.
I wandered the house without any sense of restriction.
Every time I passed a mirror, I checked my reflection. The girl there appeared very healthy.
But I couldn’t smile from deep down.
I asked.
“Hey, how much longer?”
“Not yet. It’s not nearly enough,” the black cat answered.
2
Many days and nights passed.
As the seasons changed, so did the forest, the flowers in the garden wilting and blooming anew. The twinkling stars overhead changed not in alignment, only in position.
Time passed slowly but surely.
…And yet my body remained a seven-year-old’s.
I realized this anew this one day when I killed a human and saw their memory.
That adult human had been a child that, long ago, I let escape on a whim.
Enough time had passed for a child to become an adult. I compared my own body to the fully matured corpse at my feet.
I hadn’t grown an inch. What’s more, my hair and nails hadn’t grown either.
It was like time had stopped for me. And yet the curse of my sickness proceeded inside me.
Witches don’t die, the black cat had said. I faintly wondered if this was what it meant to live forever, smelling the aroma of a newly-bloomed rose.
I had lived here a long time and learned many things, but my seven-year-old brain forgot much.
…Perhaps I should keep a diary.
An open book full of blank pages appeared on the desk before me.
A red-bound book.
What to write? Without even thinking about it, the feather pen began moving on its own, smoothly writing things down.
Ah. So I don’t even need to write. Because it seemed the diary was already writing things I couldn’t even remember - the house knew more about me than I did.
In that way, even my current thoughts would compose words on the pages.
I left the diary behind, to be written in as the house’s magic chose, and departed.
All kinds of people came to the forest.
Playing children.
Rendezvousing lovers.
Adults passing through to hunt or do business.
And in addition, some adults came to search for their children, or to investigate the forest.
I manipulated the forest with much expertise. I looked down over the whole forest from high up in the sky with magic viewing. I cleared a path like a winding thread to lead people to my house.
Growing bored of the house’s traps, I played with the black cat’s magic. Sometimes I would involve myself.
They tilted their gaze. That was fine. Rose vines coiled around their necks. Hard as metal, they forcefully dug into their flesh. Just before their head popped off, they’d look at me and say - “Witch.”
Some people fretted, some were angry, some insulted.
I wasn’t bothered by such things. Because even the greatest events of their entire lives were, to me, a frame of my everyday life.
I gazed at them with chin in hands as if watching a play. Their curses went straight through my ears.
But suddenly, I had a thought.
About how they called me a witch.
Could it be that I was known?
“Hm? You did that on purpose, didn’t you?”, the black cat said, looking at a puddle of blood on the floor.
On purpose?
“Yeah. Sometimes you let the people who come here flee. Obviously rumor’s gonna spread then.”
Ah. Perhaps he was right.
There were times when siblings or lovers became lost here, and I killed only one of the pair, letting the other flee. And it wasn’t a one-time occurrence.
I don’t particularly know what I was thinking in those moments, but thinking back on it, it was true.
Perhaps I wanted to be known.
For my existence to be. And that I lived deep in the forest.
Perhaps I hated living unknown to anyone. I was lonely. I wanted everyone to come play.
“Really?”
The black cat smiled with a mouth dripping with red.
I replied with a smile to the same degree as his.
Yes. I wanted friends. Friends who would die for me. It was like a game of tag - though I was the only one who was it.
And I heard somewhere another rose blooming.
Whenever a child wearing expensive garments or accessories came, I would steal them and try them on myself.
I spun in front of the mirror. Well? Does it suit me? The black cat always just said I was cute, which was boring.
So I quickly grew tired of it, and stuffed the things away in a closet.
The demon’s medicine was mixed into tea or pastries so it could flow through my body.
Like a daily ritual, I sank into the red sofa and waited. When the time came, a sweet medicine appeared on the table before me.
Today, it was strawberry shortcake.
I stuck my fork through the strawberry on top and watched the juice flow out.
I should say that I didn’t exactly enjoy killing people. I killed them in brutal ways, but I didn’t like to do so.
I only did it because it pleased the demon.
Absolutely, he loved to see people suffer. He delighted eating souls soaked in despair.
No. I don’t want to die, not here, not now. Help me. Souls that died with those thoughts tasted very delicious, he said.
I couldn’t distinguish those tastes myself (I didn’t have any desire to taste them), but he complimented me for the better ones. Simply put, they were more profitable.
That was why I came to kill people in those ways.
The house knew it too. It chose the most awful methods. Had the witch who lived here before me come up with them?
I had no interest in it, myself. I grew used to the smell of guts, but that was all.
Lately I had been cutting off people’s wrists to collect, but only as ingredients to make medicine. I had no particular interest in dissecting people.
The cook assisted me in this. Though he was a bit lacking in the head department (in both senses), and sometimes nearly cut me by mistake.
I wondered why such a person was even here, but I supposed the previous witch had wanted his cooking expertise.
He could cook anything. Unfortunately, I had little interest in cuisine and only ate cake and pastries, so he may have been a little bored.
So, no. I didn’t like to kill people.
Because, look at it this way. There are humans who kill pigs, aren’t there? They do it to eat, but they don’t enjoy what they’re doing. It’s the same thing.
“Who the heck are you talking to?”, the black cat asked, sitting beside me as I ate my cake.
Who, indeed. To someone reading this diary, no doubt.
I drew letters in the air with the end of my fork.
“Are you writing a diary?”
Right. Though it’s not me who’s writing, but the house.
“Well, huh. Can I read it?”
I didn’t answer, pushing a piece of cake into my mouth.
Of course, I would be lying to say I didn’t like the sense of elation when the house ate a human.
But that was to be expected. It brought about a reaction in my body, but there was nothing I could do about it. …Hey, cat, why are you smiling?
I became very familiar with the crow demon.
I noticed him at the window, calling “Heya.” The crow’s thick, ear-piercing voice couldn’t be good for my heart.
It annoyed me how I could know everything else about the forest, but not the crow. On that thought, I couldn’t know where the black cat was either. Perhaps all demons were that way.
And when it came to the ungraspable, there was also the clocks of the house.
As much as the house changed form, the clocks remained in the same positions, faithfully carrying out time’s march regardless of my will.
It was just like a heartbeat. Invariant to the owner’s consciousness, it would not be budged from its fixed rhythm. It was the house’s pulse -
The crow poking my cheek brought me back to reality. He seemed to be done carrying in his medicines.
In order to determine the medicine I needed, the crow demon needed to look inside my body.
“You’re like a doctor,” I told him. “Eh,” he said.
“Well then, can’t you cure my illness?”, I asked, and “Only the cat can do that,” he said.
“Hmph.”
I was a little let down, and looked at the crow with suspicion.
From the way he said it, it may have been that he did have such an ability, but he was leaving the duty of curing me to the black cat.
But asking a demon further about such things wouldn’t get me anywhere.
I swallowed my suspicion and asked something else.
“Isn’t it a bit strange how you eat people, yet have the power to cure them?”
The crow laughed. “Lemme put it in your terms. You’d have a problem if a pig got sick, yeah?”
Feeling I’d hit upon something, I raised an eyebrow. “Is it a problem for demons if humans are sick?”
The crow opened his big mouth and said “Not so much. But it is if we wanna play,” then crudely laughed.
His dirty voice and speech made my face scrunch up.
“Us.” Was that the crow and the black cat?
I felt unpleasant thinking that these demons had their hands in everything.
I put my teacup up to my mouth, then realized.
…Wait. If a pig…
Wasn’t that what I’d written in my diary earlier?
“Could it be… Do you peep in people’s diaries?”
“Whoop!” The crow fled out the window in a seemingly intentional haste.
Why, you… I chased him to the window, but could go no further.
“Hey! No teasing Ellen.”
The black cat appeared from somewhere and leapt onto the roof with the crow.
The crow glared at him and spoke in an intimidating voice.
“I didn’t do nothin’. You’re so damn protective. Buzz off.”
“W-What?!”
The cat and crow began to fight on the roof, though the crow was solely on the offensive. The black cat flicked his whiskers, prompting with his eyes. Help me, Ellen, they said.
I watched for a while, and soon sighed loud enough for them to hear, then left the room.
“H-Hey, Ellen, don’t ignore me!”, the cat pathetically said behind me. I heard the crow laughing as he flew away.
The cat jumped down into the room and followed me. One of his ears had been taken off in the fight.
“Boy, you’re mean. Why didn’t you help me?”
“You can just get a new one, can’t you?”, I grinned.
Even if the black cat’s body was wounded, he had a stock of replacement cat corpses.
“But I wanted to be saved by you, Ellen.”
“…”
“You listening?”
I ignored him and walked away.
…Why had I not helped you?
Surely you knew that. I didn’t want my body to stay outside for any amount of time. If I so much as stuck my hand out the window, the magic would wear off, and the skin would start to swell.
But I didn’t say it.
I pursed my trembling lips.
Because I was a witch. A witch couldn’t say such pathetic things. If I started to whine, you would abandon me. Well, though I didn’t think he actually would.
I walked down the hall, not looking back, as the black cat followed. Soon enough, he was up on my shoulder, saying trifling things.
How foolish. It was a farce.
Muttering that to myself, I ignored what he said. Even though I was completely in the grasp of demons, I acted like I lived alone.
Because I knew he liked that. That was what the demon sought in a witch.
When I opened the door, out came the cook, carrying a knife.
His giant body ugly and patch-filled, wielding a knife dripping dark red blood, he asked in a stupid tone of voice.
“How long should I keep collecting pig hands?”
Hm.
I shrugged my shoulders.
…You’ll have to ask him.
I asked.
“Hey, how much longer?”
“Still not enough,” the black cat answered.
3
Outside the forest, the land went through many rulers.
I heard many rumors about wars starting and ending.
Perhaps decades had passed since I came to this house.
Or maybe it was centuries.
I didn’t know an exact number. As I never aged, I felt I had no need to keep track of time.
“A witch lives in the forest, and she takes away those who get lost there.”
That was the rumor that spread.
Outside the forest, secret efforts were made to try and kill me. Some who visited came explicitly to kill me.
But I did not panic. Because they would all be my friends. Because every time one came along, they could satisfy the demon’s appetite.
Their deaths instilled fear and sorrow in the ones who remained, and it summoned new humans to the house.
As the demon surely knew, I enjoyed this chain of occurrences myself.
I looked down on the garden from a second floor window.
It was fully covered with red roses in bloom.
When I first arrived here, only seasonal flowers bloomed. But with each human killed, the roses increasing in number could no longer be contained only in the house, but now went outside to encircle it, blooming in the garden.
I softly put a finger against the glass.
My beloved roses. I wanted to leap right into that red bedding. I lamented not being able to do so.
A black shadow flew across the sky, and I looked up.
That noisy black bird’s cry.
…The demon was here to sell his medicine.
I started putting the medicines from the crow in a special food storage.
As the demon’s medicines increased in number and type, they couldn’t just fit in cupboards anymore.
In addition to the medicines that stopped the advance of my sickness, there were those which did damage to the body - those were for the black cat’s interests.
I left the medicine room and stood in a long hallway.
I didn’t want people to get anywhere near. I had worked for those medicines, and it would be awful if someone were to destroy them.
Water settled in the center of the hall, flowing in a shallow river.
…I wondered where it came from. Well, perfect.
I pulled out a few hairs and dropped them in the river. The clear water suddenly turned purple, bubbling and emitting an odd heat.
“Yikes! What’re you doing?”, the black cat asked, intrigued.
I gave up on trying to drive him away.
I grabbed him under his front legs and lifted him up.
And I smiled at him, as if he were unbearably cute.
“…Ellen?”
He looked up at me, his legs dangling.
I was smiling as usual, so he returned it, but it seemed somehow awkward.
…Suddenly, my face returned to normal, and I threw the cat into the river.
“Wha?! I knew it -”
Splash.
By the time he finished yelling, or maybe before, his body dissolved in the poison water with a pleasing sound, leaving no trace.
Only bubbles came up to the surface where he had fallen in. There wasn’t even a bone left. I snorted my nose at the smell.
That should do.
I slipped away through the wall.
A purple haze, the demon’s true form, circled around my shoulder, but I pretended to ignore it.
I wandered the house.
It had gotten much bigger than when I first arrived.
I passed by the dining room. Handless residents were having a meal around the long table.
Next, I peered into the marble hall. Residents with uncertain forms were playing piano, while others pulled up chairs to listen.
They were living as they pleased
…Those residents of the witch’s house.
They seemed to have no purpose. They things they said had no meaning. I could no longer laugh among them.
I passed them by, and vanished into the darkness of the hall.
I am Ellen.
But just who is Ellen?
When was it that I wanted to claw at my sick skin?
Before I became a witch. I could remember it like it was a picture. In a dirty room, looking into smoke and crying. When I remembered that smell, it became hard to breathe.
How pitiable I was back then. But I was happy. Because I could just wallow in sorrow.
The trouble was when I thought about what would come next.
If a future of being loved, a path were set out for me, could I just not think about anything?
I wanted it at any cost. But that was no good.
The cry of my heart, the thing my soul desired, beat against my chest.
I obeyed my soul.
Just as the demon indicated I would.
I found my heartbeat slowing down, and instead, I started to hear the heartbeats of others. The people who were eaten by this house with faces of terror.
Ah. This is how it should be.
In a trance, I reached a rose vine out. Around their necks, sucking all the blood. Their hearts became my nourishment. Their death wails my lullaby, fulfilling my desires.
To be loved. That was my desire.
But just what is love?
Kind hands to wrap around me?
A carefree face to smile at me?
I wanted to cry the more I thought about it.
I had learned many things, living in this house for so long. Many things had come into my possession, I felt.
But none of it left anything inside me. It just passed through my body and vanished.
What I wanted was something warm that would always stay in my body. Something that fulfilled me. I didn’t know what it was.
Because I had yet to obtain it.
I lived to have my desire granted. I carried it in my chest with the utmost care, like a bird protecting its eggs.
I felt like, in my time living here, the entity Ellen had gradually disappeared.
…I was the witch named Ellen.
That came to feel more appropriate.
As I walked around the room of books in thought, a book titled with my name appeared.
“Ellen,” it read.
That was quick.
I took it and flipped through the pages. But nothing had yet been written in it.
“Well, what do you know,” came a low voice. I looked by my feet.
There sat a black cat with a different face from before.
Ah. So you’ve gone into a new corpse already. I lifted an eyebrow instead of greeting him.
I put the book back and asked.
“Are there any books about the witch who lived here before?”
“Hmm. Might be,” he said, playing dumb.
It wasn’t payback for dropping him in the poison water earlier. He was always vague and unwilling to answer when it came to the previous witch.
That witch must have been distant past for him. Would the time could that I would be as well? I couldn’t imagine it at the moment.
I looked up at a tall bookshelf.
I couldn’t possibly read all the books in here.
They seemed to be constantly multiplying and lessening.
Where were they stocked from? Perhaps the knowledge of the people who died here took the form of books.
Someone’s history. A telling of someone’s way of life. That was wonderful. What was tragedy for them became comedy for the reader.
But…
Since they were all people fed to the house, they all had the same ending.
“Isn’t it boring how they all end the same way?”, the black cat asked me.
“I wouldn’t say so. It’s all about how you get there. Besides…”
“Besides?”
“Everybody dies at the end.”
So I said, but after realizing that I wasn’t included in that, I cast my eyes down.
I was surprised at how much it disturbed me. I was still being dragged into the fact of never dying.
I wished he wouldn’t notice my unrest. Ahh, but of course he would. He laughed at me - I was too scared to look at him.
Tsk. I escaped through a gap in the bookshelves.
And as I wandered as if looking for another topic, I found a boy sitting in the corner of the room.
At some point, a boy had taken up residence in the room of books.
I wasn’t sure if it was entirely right to call him a boy, as his chestnut hair fully covered his face, making it impossible to see.
He would order the bookshelves, open up books on the floor, and mutter things to himself. I felt like I’d heard his voice before.
I couldn’t particularly remember the voices of everyone I’d played with, and they all seemed to blend together. But just looking at his kitten-soft hair seemed to calm my heart.
At times, I would overhear him talking to himself when I came in. I sat in a chair some distance away and gazed at him with my chin in my hands.
He didn’t seem to notice my presence. He was so focused on what he was doing, he didn’t even look my way.
Around him were encyclopedias and storybooks. Can you not read? Do you want me to teach you?
I shook my head. No, surely he didn’t care for that.
Hold on. Why did I know that?
…I couldn’t remember.
I put a hand to my forehead and thought. But my blank memories remained so, and no clues came to mind.
After thinking for a while, I gave up, got out of the chair, and left the room.
I visited the room with the big tree.
I didn’t see the red plants around anymore.
Apparently, because they had frightened me, the black cat moved the ladies somewhere else, somewhere dark.
They were hardly evil, though.
It was a bit of a pity, but with those curiously-shaped plants gone, the garden scenery seemed improved.
Instead of their feelers along the walls, there were now rose hedges.
Passing by those hedges, I proceeded to the stone passage.
The cold touch of the stone ran through my soles.
…When was it I walked along here in fear? It didn’t matter. It was just a dark hallway.
I looked down as I walked and recalled how I was always barefoot.
Why was it I had so few memories of wearing shoes? Because I had no need to wear them? In truth, I had bad memories associated with shoes, particularly red shoes - but at the time, I had forgotten.
As I walked, I saw lines of iron bars to my left.
I looked through the bars and thought about the residents of the house.
They were the remnants of souls the house had eaten.
In a sense, the demon’s leftovers. Like breadcrumbs or apple cores, they took form and stayed in the house.
So when the demon ate people, they didn’t die in the house; they came to live as its residents.
At that point in my thoughts, I stopped in front of a cell.
I turned a heavy gaze toward the bars.
In the back of the cell was a man with one arm chained.
I couldn’t quite see his face.
Because I didn’t remember father’s face very well.
Father leaned, sitting down, on the back wall. His bones were clearly visible through his sickly skin, and he looked very worn-away.
He said nothing. I didn’t want to ask him anything. He hid his breathing and sat like a statue.
I grabbed the bars with both hands. I had no desire to shake them or call for him. I just felt like I needed to do it to keep my feelings in check.
I found it hard to breathe. My chest heated up. I tightened my grip on the bars.
Suddenly, I noticed something at my feet.
…Father’s pipe.
I picked it up and stared.
The thing father had used to dream. Because he had this, he didn’t look at me. Perhaps that was how I wanted to see it.
I gently held the pipe in my palm. Gently. I didn’t think of crushing it.
And yet the pipe shattered, vanishing like bits of sand.
I stared at my empty palm for a while, finally looking back into the cell, then preparing to go back the way I’d come.
Then, before I could take a step, I stopped.
There was another cell next to father’s.
A woman’s room, with a sweet smell different from father’s
The interior of the cell was pitch black. The door was firmly shut and showed no sign of opening. I had no intention to, either.
The more I smelled that sweet aroma, the more a bitter taste spread in my heart.
Just being in front of the cell threw my heart into disarray, and I quickly took off.
Back in the room with the great tree, the black cat was sitting on the bench underneath with tea.
It was about medicine time, I suppose.
I sat down next to him without saying anything. Placing the teacup and saucer on my lap, I drank the tea.
I leaned back on the bench and looked up at the high wall.
The flames of the torches on the wall swayed. A long forelock fell into my eyes, and I knit my brows.
I really was living for a longer time than I should have been.
What was happening to my body? Even if I was drinking the medicines to still my sickness, as the crow demon told me.
To what extent was it stopped? Had the ugly swelling of my face and legs spread to my entire body?
If the magic of the house wore off, or if I went outside, I could see for myself.
I shivered at that point.
…No. I don’t want to see that. I don’t need to.
I could leave the house when I was healthy. Once the demon granted my wish, I could.
My fingers trembled waiting for the demon’s medicine.
“We have a guest.”
I turned to the black cat’s voice, but he wasn’t sitting there anymore.
It was a sign that a human had come. He would always vanish when I was with a human.
I closed my eyes and surveyed.
I didn’t need to concentrate. I could see the human coming into the house in the time it took to blink.
…Sigh. Won’t someone different come?
I was tired of the humans who came without fear.
I was seemingly an enemy that had to be defeated. I was likely the target of someone’s vengeance. Everyone came to the forest to kill me.
And to kill this witch, they brought all kinds of unique weapons as they set foot in the forest.
I didn’t need to invite them. They just came right in. The demon had his mouth open, like a great gate for them to pass into one after another.
They all had their determination, their firm resolve, but once they entered, that was the end for them. They were eaten alive. What a joke.
Why did they say they wanted to kill me?
Why was it thought that I should be killed?
I decided to ask the brain of the person coming to attack me.
And I found that yes, I was evil. I had killed innocent people, thus evil. I had killed many, thus evil. So I had to be killed.
Hmph. I thought about what I’d done. And about what I was going to do. Yes, from your point of view, perhaps it was so.
But in my eyes, you are evil. Because you’re impeding upon my wish. You won’t allow it to come true.
Evil, because I kill innocent people? Aren’t you trying to kill me? Then how are you not evil?
Hm? God told you so?
…What a pain.
I spoke as I strangled them with rose vines.
I know. Evil is just a word you say to people doing things you don’t like. That’s all it is.
And you just decide what kind of person deserves to be killed as you please.
Yet you want to give a reason for it, don’t you? You want to label everything as good or evil?
But it’s only humans who do those idiotic things.
All other creatures, when they want to kill, just kill. And not only so they can eat. Cats even kill bugs for fun.
They don’t need a reason for everything. They want to do it, so they just do it.
I’m the same as them, killing because I want to kill. What makes you any different? You only want to kill me because you want to.
Yes, go on and believe in your god.
But he’s not going to save you. If I was going to receive divine punishment for doing what you say is evil, I would have been struck by lightning long ago.
Here’s what I think. God dropped us down here to suffer. To live our lives clinging to him and begging for help. So we’d never forget to pray to him.
And thus you and I have both suffered.
Hey, are you listening? I squatted down to talk to them, but their body was already motionless.
“You’re talkative today.”
The black cat poked his head out of a rose bush.
“I guess,” I said, tilting my head.
“But you won’t talk much with me.”
“What would I need to talk to you about?”
“I dunno. Anything?”
“If anything is fine, then not talking at all must be fine, too.”
I promptly terminated the conversation and left.
“Hey, wait!”
The black cat leapt out of the bush and followed.
I visited the stone passage again.
I went down the path and stopped in front of father’s cell.
The pipe, which had broken and left no trace, was now back to normal in father’s hand.
A faint smell wafted out into the hallway. He calmly smoked, leaning against the wall. The sight made me a little sad.
From the neighboring cell, I thought I heard a woman’s laughter.
I did not visit there again.
I walked along the stone, biting my lip.
Perhaps because it was important that I treat my memories with care.
Perhaps because I had a pitiable past.
…I couldn’t remember.
Not my feelings on my parents. Nor the boy in the room of books. When I tried to remember those past feelings in detail, I felt my head hurting.
I could read my diary to remember, but by the time I’d turned the next page, I’d already forgotten.
“Can’t be that big a deal if you can’t remember, can it?”
The black cat was suddenly there coiling around my feet.
“Don’t have to think about all that stuff. You’re a witch. You eat people and have your wishes granted.”
Right.
He was right.
I nodded at the demon’s whisper and raised my head.
I am Ellen. The witch of the forest. The one who will cure her illness, and become one who is loved.
But just who was I to honestly smile saying that?
In the corner of the room of books, the book titled “Ellen” emitted a faint light and began to fill with words.
The witch asked.
“Hey, how much longer?”
“A little more,” the demon answered.
4
Until that day, I had not gone outside the house.
Of course, neither had the magic of the witch’s house left me.
Not because I wouldn’t be able to move freely.
But because I didn’t want to see my true form.
I couldn’t imagine how much it would wound my heart to see how much my sickness had advanced.
Even with the demon’s medicines, it would not be completely stopped. There was no doubt my original body was becoming uglier by the day.
I was too terrified of it to check. Just remembering the sore red skin brought me to tears.
So then why did I go outside?
I was careless, no doubt.
It was early morning, and a white mist shrouded the forest.
A man holding a long sword came to the house.
I invited the man up to my room. His sword must have been somehow special. He sliced me with it, and I went flying out the window.
…The house’s magic wears off when the witch leaves it.
As I fell, time seemed to slow down. I saw a flying crow stop. I thought I heard the black cat yelling.
I landed safely in the roses of the garden, but remained collapsed on the ground, having no energy to get back up.
The magic surrounding me vanished.
It was like having all your clothes ripped off and being thrown onto snow.
The man leapt down from the window after me.
He was flustered to see me writhing. He was watching me carefully with his sword at the ready all the while, yet he seemed surprised.
I was just as much so. The sore red skin, cracked like earth, spread all over my body. The flesh had rotten on my lower legs, and white bone showed through. A chill climbed up my back, and my throat was dry.
Impossible. Was this me?
The roses covered me as if protecting my body, but without my magic, it was pointless. Only able to crawl along the ground, I must have appeared to the man as an swollen, ugly girl indeed.
The sight of my sick self reminded me of the past.
My father who didn’t look at me. My mother who abandoned me. And the people who ran from me. My crumbling skin, the proof of my lack of love.
I didn’t want to see it. I didn’t want to let this man see it. I gripped the ground with red arms like twigs. Something hot rose to my eye.
The all-red girl in the man’s sights began to cry.
I didn’t expect to garner any sympathy by crying. I knew that this man would never be thrown off by such a thing.
I just cried from sheer sorrow. I cried thinking how cruel this man was.
The man brandished his sword, assured of victory.
I squinted at the bright light off the blade.
Why are you getting in my way? Why are you being cruel to me? Reminding me of painful things. All when I’m sick. When I’m suffering. You people should just exist to be eaten by me.
…You should just die for me.
The man swung his sword down, and my head flew off. My vision flipped upside down.
But even then, it was futile.
I don’t really remember what happened after that.
When I woke up, I was lying face-up in bed in my room.
The walls of the room were a faint orange, and out the open window, I saw that it was evening.
I checked my neck and found no seam. Still, I couldn’t think of what had happened as a dream.
Um. What was I doing?
Indeed, the man had cut my head off. But I had no memory of the demon reattaching it.
Though that I was sleeping here meant that I had again used the magic of the house to return to my room.
“That was rough,” I heard the black cat casually say.
I tried to get up, but my body was stiffened with pain.
Pain? Why? Like my head was splitting. And not just that. I felt a tingling pain and heat in my legs under the blankets.
I shouldn’t have felt any bodily pain under the protection of the magic.
First of all, I demanded the demon’s medicine. I was quickly given a steaming cup of tea.
I drank it down in one gulp and took a breath. But my heart was still restless. I felt very bad.
I pressed against my temples and tried to remember what I’d been doing, then the black cat spoke.
“The guy went home.”
“Went home?”
“He thought he’d killed you. Don’t you remember?”
I looked up in thought.
Right. I drove him away with some kind of spell. But what kind? I couldn’t remember. Surely I shouldn’t have been so easily forgetting a spell I’d just used.
“Now that he’s left, seems nobody’s gonna come near for a while.”
“Why?”
“Why? Didn’t you make it that way?”
“I don’t remember that.”
The black cat laughed low.
“Yeesh, how can you do anything when you don’t even think?”
Saying that wasn’t going to help me remember. I wasn’t sure if I should get angry or laugh.
Anyway, if I drove him away, then it didn’t matter.
I was exhausted. I waited for the pain to recede, lying on my side and wrapped in the blanket.
But it was strange.
As long as I waited, it wouldn’t go away. My whole body was hot, and I had a headache. I still felt like I was lying outside with my sore skin exposed.
It was odd. Why? Surely not because I had my head cut off. As much as a witch’s body is wounded, it should be able to go back to normal.
I faced up and looked at the patterns on the ceiling.
My vision blurred, and the beautiful patterns looked like dancing snakes. It amused me. Yet it didn’t inspire a smile, but rather nausea.
I felt like my tongue was being pushed from the back of my throat. I couldn’t bear it and sat up.
I curled up and started coughing. I grabbed the sheets with sweaty hands.
…Sweat? I looked at my palm.
I had no need to sweat under the effects of the magic. Why - why was my body falling apart?
For a few days afterward, I groaned in my bed.
I didn’t know if the demon’s medicines were working. The one time when I wanted him to check on me, the crow demon didn’t come.
I remembered when I saw my true self, and my swollen red skin. Remembering that made my heart go cold.
Perhaps I had lost a part of my heart then. Perhaps when I was shown my true body, the thing I’d looked away from, my spirit was shaved away, and my sickness worsened.
As much as a witch’s body is wounded, it can go back to normal.
…But what if it’s the heart that’s wounded?
I felt like this idea had an air of truth. I opened my eyes slightly.
It was afternoon, and lukewarm sunlight streamed in.
I was sweating in bed. My hair stuck to my ceramic-like forehead. As healthy as I looked, on the inside I was a rotting mess.
“Hey.”
My mouth moved before I could think. I didn’t check where the black cat was and just asked.
“Witches can’t die… was a lie, wasn’t it?”
No response came. But I thought of the silence as response enough. I was sure the cat heard me.
I went on incoherently.
“I feel like I’ve seen myself about to disappear. That time, I felt like I was being taken away. …If I go on feeling like that, I’ll be done for, I thought. It must be a lie that it could go on like that forever.”
“Well.”
I heard the cat’s voice. His shadow was on my face all of a sudden. He sat by my pillow, looking down at me.
“Is that your desire, for it to be that way?”
My desire? That I would rather die? That this suffering should just end?
Ridiculous.
I tried to snort at him, but it just came out as a strange breath.
“You won’t die because you don’t really think you want to.”
I thought a while and looked at him.
…For a witch to die, she just needs to want to?
I hadn’t known that for centuries. Perhaps now I had my hand on a secret door. I forgave the black cat for it.
“I can die?”
“You can. But there’s one requirement.”
After he said this, a small bottle appeared out of nowhere before me.
“To despair. That is what it takes for a witch to die.”
I looked at the little candy-colored glass bottle.
“What’s this?”
“Your despair.”
I slowly sat up, unable to take my eyes off the little bottle. A little bottle with a cute design, like one for perfume, sat on my bed.
This could kill me?
I took the bottle with some suspicion, and some fear.
I had a slight expectation.
I had never seen the bottle before. But the color and design suggested a certain person.
I brought it up to my nose.
When I smelled the faint sweet scent, my suspicions were confirmed.
I looked at the cat in surprise. His eyes were wide open.
I felt angry.
Anger? At what?
At the fact that this had the power to kill me? Or at the cat who saw through everything?
I let out a drawn-out breath, to calm my high-strung feelings.
I hadn’t done such an animalistic action in a long time. I felt I was acting more human lately. And that was surely a sign of weakness.
I didn’t want to say it. I didn’t want to give it form.
But - my gaze returned to the bottle.
The bottle contained mother’s sweet aroma.
The aroma that always surrounded my pastry-making mother. The aroma that wafted from her short-cut nails. The aroma that comforted me as she held me to her chest. The aroma of that woman who bewildered father.
Mother was the key to killing me. Don’t laugh at me. I was still reeling from the fact of my mother abandoning me. I couldn’t accept it.
I had completely buried mother away. There was no calmly smiling mother in my memories. I had torn apart the picture of my mother and smeared it with bloody paint.
So I didn’t think that this would have killed me.
But I didn’t think the black cat was lying.
My hands sweat.
I put a hand on the cap, and loosened it a little. Did it slip because of my sweaty hands? Did I wanted to test if this could really kill me?
I didn’t know. It was all done unconsciously. The cap came off slightly.
And just after -
The moment when the sweet scent may or may not have reached my nose.
I saw the reaper’s great scythe face its blade at me and come down to my neck. Literally, truly. I saw the sharp blade in the darkness come sideways at me. I could quickly imagine it taking my head off.
My blood went cold, and I hurried to tighten the lid. I tightened it as much as I could and threw it.
The bottle hit the wall, made a sound, and fell to the ground. Despite its apparent delicacy, the bottle did not break, but rolled pleasantly.
With each roll, light reflected off the design, and I thought it looked pretty - but I felt absolutely awful.
That was certainly a premonition of death. The man who had lopped my head off felt like child’s play.
That was the end of everything. My vanishing. The bottle told me that without mercy.
I didn’t want to die.
I still hadn’t had my wish granted. I still wasn’t loved by anyone. I still didn’t love anyone…
After seeing death before me, sticking to life seemed much more attractive.
My body wanted to scream, but the black cat cut it off.
“Geez, you didn’t have to throw it.”
He mumbled a complaint and got off the bed to pick the bottle up. Carrying it in his mouth, he dropped it back on my bed.
I lay collapsed in bed, devoid of energy.
Instead of screaming, I cried.
Or rather, the tears came out on their own.
They ran down my cheek and wet the pillow. Soon the water went through the bed to the floor, spreading across the house.
The house knew I was crying, and cradled my body. The house was my ally, as ever. The only part of it that wasn’t was before me: the black cat.
My heart seemed to gradually calm down by crying.
The cat looked down on me.
The candy-colored bottle shined glossy by his feet.
“Will you die?”, he asked, as if asking “Will you eat?”
“I won’t,” I smiled.
My eyes wet with tears, it might have looked like I was crying with joy. Perhaps I was actually happy.
It eased my heart considerably to know that I could die anytime.
The demon was remarkably conscientious, I felt. Because some people wouldn’t choose to die.
To him, it didn’t seem to matter if I died or not.
Because he was grinning. Drooling as he looked down on me.
Ah, yes. He was a demon, after all. Even my soul was just another meal to him.
I remembered that now.
Gripping the bottle tightly, I got out of bed.
My wounded body was heavy, but my heart was light.
I left the room and went down some flights of stairs. Down, down. I arrived at the path to the medicine room.
The poison water running down the hallway was now clear.
My feet splashed through the water which came up to my ankles. It wasn’t cold or hot, just room temperature water. Surely, the tears I’d wept washed the poison away. A silly thought.
I pushed open the heavy door and entered the medicine room.
There was an extra shelf. A shelf just for this bottle, I suppose.
I put the bottle in the shelf and closed the door. I saw myself reflected in the glass. The black cat sat on my right shoulder.
I gave him a sidelong glance.
…Despairing is the key to a witch dying.
Why hadn’t he told me before? Did he think it would break my heart? Was it because I didn’t ask? Don’t tell me we had lived together long enough that we’d actually deepened our trust.
I didn’t know. It was futile to try and understand what he was thinking. I had figured that out long ago.
I spoke with clear annoyance at how he’d kept something from me all this time.
“I hate you, you know.”
“Really? I like you.”
On the way back from the medicine room.
I walked barefoot through the river of tears that flowed down the hallway. The black cat followed a few steps behind.
I asked him without turning around.
“…Did the person who lived here before die?”
Now that I knew even witches could die, I was curious.
The witch who had lived in this house.
I’d just sort of imagined she became happy, but it was possible, even likely that she died without her wish being granted.
The cat had never spoken of the previous witch before, but now that the truth about witches dying was revealed, he seemed willing to answer.
“She’s alive,” he readily said.
I was relieved. That answer alone satisfied me, but the cat went on.
“She just, you know… quit.”
Quit what?
I turned my head around and asked with my eyes.
“Killing people with the house.”
My expression didn’t change.
But he could still tell I was interested. Leaving a gap to stress the importance, he spoke.
“She was taken by the ecstasy of killing people with the house, and couldn’t part from it. Not that she had any desire to in the first place. But maybe that was a bad thing. I didn’t hate her either, but it got out of hand. I granted her wish. Because she said she wanted to be here forever. So she was delighted you came to the house. With a witch like you here, she could be reborn too. …Haven’t you realized? She’s pretty fond of you. I was a little worried you might end up like her too, but I was wrong.”
“…She -”
I stopped and turned up to look at the tall ceiling.
I thought back on the house. The house that was my magic, a part of my body, which kindly, and sometimes with a mind of its own, watched over me.
I pursed my lips and said:
“She became the spell.”
“Yeah.”
The black cat waved his tail with satisfaction.
I thought I heard, from somewhere, the laughter of an innocent girl who was not me.
I stopped asking how much longer.
5
Peace came upon the forest.
It seemed strange to say it.
As the black cat said, fewer people came into the forest after the man who cut off my head left.
It had seemed so busy outside the forest before, but now no one told rumors of me.
Instead, the rumor that the witch had been killed spread.
No humans came into the forest who were specifically after me.
There were hunters and businessmen, playing children, and occasionally people just passing through or getting lost.
As I dozed off, I ate them on a whim. Only dozing. I couldn’t get a decent sleep.
Since my sickness worsened, I started to hear a ringing in my ears. I couldn’t sleep a wink.
Even under the protection of the witch’s house, I was sleeping in bed all the time. When I couldn’t be bothered to return to bed, I sometimes slept in the cold hallways.
Such was how I waited for prey.
The crow demon said it would be difficult to stop my sickness from advancing further.
Perhaps because my heart had been wounded.
I was effectively the patient of a doctor who had given up on me. I wasn’t particularly depressed. I’d long known I had a sickness that couldn’t be cured.
Is that right, I laughed.
The eyes the crow looked at me with then… I don’t know if they were sympathetic or tired. He had his usual bad attitude, left the medicine, and departed.
I didn’t shut the window right away, absentmindedly staring at the feathers he left dancing around the room.
When would this house have its fill?
When would the black cat give me the spell to cure my sickness?
I stopped thinking about those things.
Because it was something I would reach as long as I didn’t give up.
Someone screamed at my ear. Needles stabbed the back of my eyes. My feet looked like a beast’s fangs had bit them, my toes like they’d been chewed away at by rats.
Don’t struggle so much anymore. It’s annoying. Maybe it does hurt.
Or maybe it’s not really a pain in my body. It’s just my wounded heart showing me a dream.
I really wanted to scream. I wanted to sob.
But what point was a scream no one heard? What point were tears no one saw?
My vision blurred and doubled. The ceiling spun.
When I reached out, I felt someone pulling me into a world of dreams. But it was only an illusion, and my arm fell like a puppet whose strings were cut.
I lied there and sank into a sea of agony.
As I sank into my bed, I thought on when I first arrived.
Those eyes that wanted to sleep, enveloped in the sunlight.
The forest air hadn’t changed in all that time.
But the times had changed greatly.
People’s clothes had gotten very orderly and clean. There were hardly as many starved children as they had been long ago.
Rather than people who hunted animals with bows, there were now people who hunted with these long tubes.
Could something like that be used as a weapon?
As I thought that, a hunter aimed one at a bird, and with a loud sound, it fell to the ground.
Wow… amazing. What an interesting weapon. Show that to me.
I made some wild rabbits appear, and had them chase the hunter.
They ate him, and I felt a little better. I sat up and carefully inspected the weapon.
It was apparently called a “gun.” A small bullet flew out of the end of the pipe, destroying the body of the prey.
Hmm, I said, and pointed it at the black cat. The cat leapt up in surprise.
I giggled. Just a joke.
After laughing for the first time in a while, the room returned to silence, and I sank into bed again.
This house didn’t move. Its stomach was filled with human bones, too heavy to move.
I was the same. I felt a weight on my whole body; I wanted to sink to the bottom of the sea.
Yet this house still wanted to eat, demanding more, more, more.
Very well. I closed my eyes and surveyed.
Both now when I was stuck to my bed, and before when I’d wandered it freely, the house invariably felt like a prison.
And I was its prisoner.
My arms and legs were bound by thorny rose vines. I couldn’t move.
But I was the one who’d wanted it.
I longed to be bound by the chains of bandages instead, in some other house I felt I’d lived in.
Perhaps I preferred that. Perhaps I found it easier to give up and be bound down.
But I was different now.
While I was a prisoner, I was also a jailer. I could keep imprisoning myself, or I could escape.
The same vines that restricted my body were also my weapon against intruders.
It was all about my own intention.
I was a beast in the darkness. My eyes glowing the same color as the full moon, my fangs bared. I stood on top of a pile of corpses, my mouth and hands red.
A noose hung on my neck, prepared for my execution at any time. But the rope was loose, and upon closer inspection, it was merely a black cat’s tail.
Who knows how much time passed after that.
There came countless springs, summers, autumns, and winters.
The world of the forest was peaceful.
I mostly just slept in bed.
I opened my mouth like a carnivore, waiting for prey to come. When someone did come, I’d shut my mouth closed and gnaw on them. Once I’d gotten all the nutrients I could, I’d open my mouth again.
It was another such day I trapped my prey and closed my mouth. And then the black cat, prying it back open, spoke.
“Congratulations, Ellen. I’ll give you the spell.”
I slowly opened my eyes.
I had them closed for so long, my eyelids were stuck, and did not open quickly.
Where was I? I wasn’t using magic viewing. This was my room. And looking at my face, shining in the sunlight, was a black cat with beautiful fur.
“I’ll give you the spell to cure your sickness.”
The words reached my ears a few seconds late.
Cure my sickness.
When I understood those words, happy bells rang in my head. I saw the afternoon sunlight as gold dust falling around me.
“This spell, you see…”
The cat’s words sounded like a hymn.
The light visibly returned to my hollow eyes.
My gleaming gold eyes saw through the cat far into the distance. It took a bit of magic. I left the house, through the garden of roses, through the forest. The green trees rustled in the wind.
…And then I found her.
A lone girl with golden braids.
