The witch lifted her face and looked out the window, “He was a lot like your Eric, tall, strong, admired by everyone. But he loved himself more than he could anyone else.”
Jack sank to his knees next to her settling for a story, one of his hands found its way up her back and fell into the comfortable motion of smoothing her hair. She turned slowly and smiled fondly at him.
“His name was Peter.”
“Peter Peter pumpkin eater.
Had a wife and couldn’t keep her!”
Jack recited absently.
“Quite the opposite really” Marlot reached out and ruffled his hair, “I finally got up the courage to tell him how I felt after years of trying to get him to notice me.”
“Hello Peter.” Marlot was only twenty years old and she thought that she was quite pretty for a witch, her black hair fell in ringlets down her back and her eyes were a stunning shade of violet.
“You’re the witch aren’t you? Marry, Margaret, … something like that.”
“Marlot actually,” she blushed and smoothed her skirts wishing her name wasn’t quite so strange, “I was hoping you would go with me to the summer solstice festival next month, that is if you aren’t otherwise engaged?”
“Don’t witches have to go to some cult gathering or whatever then?”
“We only have to go to one out of every three, I went last year so I could stay here with you.” Marlot smiled hopefully up into his golden amber eyes.
He sneered at her, “can’t you find some little magician to swap spells with at the festival.”
Marlot tried to smile seductively up at him, “No Peter, I want you.”
“And what, you think I will realize that you are the girl of my dreams and marry you?”
“That is the general idea,” Marlot said a little more boldly than she felt.
“So if we did get married, what you expect me to have some crazed spell casting old hag with warts and wrinkles for a wife. You have what, maybe one or two more years of your good looks before you start going sour?”
Young naive Marlot should have realized then that this young man wasn’t the fairy tale prince she had imagined him to be, but instead all she took from that unforgivable speech was that he thought she was pretty, and that one thought sparked an idea. “It doesn’t have to be like that Peter, I can make sure it doesn’t happen.”
“Now we all know that I have a bad habit of acting on impulse” Marlot said to her small audience, cupping Jack’s face in one hand, “and although some of those rash decisions have led to wonderful things,” she kissed the golem on the forehead, “others would have saved me a lot of trouble and grief.”
The little witch rushed home to her small flat above the tailor shop. She spent the better part of the next week preparing for and performing the ritual that would stop her aging forever. Witches are born immortal; however they age at the same rate as humans. If they never perform the ritual they would spend eternity ancient and unable to care for themselves and can forget about performing any magic. Someone through the ages finally discovered a way to stop the aging process at any giving time, the trick being that the witch would remain that age forever, or until they were killed by some unnatural means. Just because they are immortal doesn’t mean they are invulnerable.
Most sane witches put off the ritual until they are middle aged or perhaps a little older and with a wart or two, it makes them seem more respectable and intimidating. But occasionally there is a young fool that thinks they know better and they are stuck as a child, looking young, ignorant, and impatient for the rest of their lives. This is exactly what Marlot did.
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