Well for starters, the red-gold leaf was as big as my face. Which is why it was kind of bad it stuck to my forehead, nose, mouth, chin like glue. I wrestled with it, and you’d think I’d have won easy-peasy on account of it being a tender sugar maple versus a boy, but it wouldn’t budge. I think I had a panic attack – certainly, it was hard to breathe, and I soon hated the taste of crisp bitterness and dirt mixing with saliva. I bashed into other trees in the national park (I’d gone for a picnic and wandered off), seeing blue stars behind my lids, none of which helped either. Falling in a heap, crying and a-shivering seemed the only thing to do.

That’s when the coven found me.

I should have expected something of that nature, living in New Orleans and all, but usually they’re fake new agey types rather than, you know, actual witches. These ones prodded, the wood bristles of their broom poking into my arm and chest as they whispered.

That’s when one drew my hand in hers, kissed the inside of my palm (I later learnt that meant ownership, that she’d sealed me as personal property). “What’s your name, kid?”

“Troy,” I said, “and I’m thirteen, which is old enough to fight if I have to and young enough my parents will come find me if I’m not home by dark.”

“Why is there a leaf on your face, Troy,” she snickered. “I bet you’re no crash-hot fighter with that obstructing your vision and your parents won’t want a leaf-boy for a son neither.”

She had a point. “It won’t come off,” I said, looking at my feet.

“No,” she said, way too calmly. “We’re trying a new enchantment. Good to see it worked. It’s more interesting than rats, rabbits, or a pumpkin, don’t you think?”

“If it’s all the same to you, miss, I preferred being a boy, and I’m getting mighty dizzy and sick in this darkness. I’d be much obliged if you’d help a kid out.”

She placed a cool finger to my leaf, muttered an incantation, carefully ripped the waxy cells so I had eye and mouth holes. “Will that suffice?” The other witches cackled around her.

“As I said, miss, I was really hoping to get back to straight homo sapien.”

“But you see, I need a new familiar, and you crashed right into our circle.”

That’s how I came to live in a forest looking like a freak with Betty McLean, leaving school, friends and family behind.

The Hestia

My hips wedge against the boat rim. I can taste the roughness of knotted rope at my mouth. Thick braids constrict my hands, feet, waist. With the movement of the boat, I roll into cracked and peeling painted edges.

The Hestia.

I had defined myself by him and me: Paul and grey stone pylons, pebbled sand underfoot, waves crashing, shoreline to shoreline. Back then, I imagined that our love would run free, our feet taking wing. Like Jesus we’d walk on water into sunset, coming out the other side, unscathed…

“Hestia, Hestia,” he said early in.

“Not Hestia. Ruthie, remember?”

Too dark. Too reticent to be flaming Hestia.

He stroked my cheek.“My island worshipping Hestia, darling.” His eyes burn smoke rings on my retinas as he flings liquid all over.“Sacred heart, sacred flame, burn bright for me.”

The boat lulls gentle on cresting tips. He hasn’t shared salt spray or the scaly damp of silver fishies. Rainbows reflect in slick oil.

He drops the match, leaps ashore and pushes the crackling boat into deeper sea.

Blistering skin. Obscured by smoke and flame.

Behind me, the pylons and Paul’s mad shadow. Ahead, the promise of blurry sunset.

The imbecile rights himself, spits on the wooden deck a good distance in front of me. “None of your cackles, witch!”

“Witch? And me the Captain’s wife!” My tattered crimson dress, singed at the edges, brushes my ankles. As for the soul I’d taken such finery from-

“He ain’t calling you that no more.”

Fuck’s sake. Captain Johnny Three-Hands had guessed.

It’d been our third week at sea when Capn had tired of me and gone back to his ninny wife, Selene. He’d killed me and all. On another night lit with phosphorous.

I’d marked the voodoo man’s drunken mutterings as a kid on Tortuga. Whoever looks into the flame will switch souls with the first person they behold. Only that time, there’d been no soul to switch-er-roo with for I’d bled out too fast. I’d been trapped in the green light.

Months later, I found them again; the ocean roiling something terrible as my storm hit. Capn’s soft wife had tried to get below deck, but she’d tripped on a coil of rope. The sea had gone dreadful calm. My green fire tipped down the ship’s mast and along the deck, and wifey had stared deep into the light.

Oh, thinking about it makes me so happy.

The pirate shuffles on hands and knees now, groping for his precious barrel as the ship lurches yet again. He bumps into the thick damask clumsily covering the porthole and pulls to lumber to his feet. I watch hungrily as the makeshift curtain rips in his hands. Natural light falls in front of his barrel.

Soon. Soon it shall be time. The rat stands up on its hindlegs and sniffs delicately. It’s right in front of the pirate, but the pirate hasn’t noticed.
“Why you so quiet?” The pirate licks his lips and I can practically taste his nerves. He’s stepped closer without realising it. He’s almost on the rat. The light is growing from the porthole.

Warmth spreads through me as I remember how the Capn’s wife looked deep into my electric heart and then at the ship’s cat.

“You OK?” Another step closer.

My fists clench. One more step. One more.

I feel it brewing overhead. St Elmo’s fire waiting to make a comeback.
I’d enjoyed throwing Selene, the black cat, overboard, her claws raking blood. And this one? This one’d make a good rat.