by Liliana Hart
“No. I’m not a slow learner. I’m just surprised.”
BIC’s eyes narrowed, scrunching into the folds of her cheeks. “What surprises you?”
Winnie shrugged her shoulders, twisting at the waist to relive the kink she was getting in her side from sitting on the tiny bench. “I’m surprised Baba Yaga would leave me and my shallowness with a bunch of impressionable children. Also, I’m not much of a kid person, I guess.” Leaving her with a group of children was like leaving Pee Wee Herman in charge of the Oval Office.
Baba Yaga had said it herself. She was flighty, irresponsible, selfish, and a couple of other adjectives she didn’t quite catch when she caught a glimpse of her release sheet. Choosing children as a way for Winnie to serve out the life of her sentence was a setup for failure.
And then it all made sense. Baba Yaga wanted her to fail.
She wanted her to go down in a ball of flames so she could see her face behind bars in cellblock X. Because she hadn’t just abused her magic—she’d abused it with Baba’s nephew Benjamin.
Family first.
“Well, you’re a kid person now,” BIC said, breaking into her thoughts. “So go wash your face, do something with that hair, and get back here before all hell breaks loose.” She pointed to a pink door labeled “Female Witches” with a cute black hat and festive pink wand on it.
She nodded and squeezed out of the bench, heading for the bathroom, dragging her Kotex pads with her. Pushing her way inside the door, Winnie caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and gasped.
Her cheeks were stained red, her fair skin blotchy from the heat, her long dark hair tangled and greasy. She should have cut her bangs back at the prison…
And true to Icabod’s statement, she had blotchy sweat stains under her armpits, marring the orange jumpsuit.
Zelda often called her stupidly beautiful—most witches were. But today she was stupidly going to scare a bunch of little children with the way she looked.
Speaking of children, BIC’s references to them hadn’t exactly been sparkling.
Words like whiny and self-entitled had come up. Yet, she hadn’t heard a peep out of any of them.
How bad could they be?
Flipping the taps on the faucet, she ran her hands under the cool water and made a pact with herself. It was a month. Reevaluation came up on Halloween.
She could do this. She would do this.
And she’d do it all while somehow avoiding Ben.
Splashing cool water on her face, she reached for a brown paper towel from the dispenser, readjusted her shredded Kotex slippers and squared her shoulders before pushing her way back out the door.
BIC waited for her, clipboard in hand, shiny silver whistle around her neck.
Winnie smiled the most fabulous smile she could summon on zero sleep in over twenty-four hours. “I’m ready.”
One of her crazy eyebrows rose again. “You say that now…”
Winnie gritted her teeth, determined to stay positive. “What’s the whistle for?”
BIC grabbed a handle on a set of red double doors, decorated with all sorts of gold stars and pictures of unicorns.
When she turned the handle, letting one door fly open, she said, “This.”
And then all hell broke loose.
Chapter Five
Children—what felt like a hundred wee, giggling, on-a-rampage little varmints—were everywhere in the room behind the red doors. Two hung from a world atlas suspended from the ceiling, their short legs dangling, their sneakers untied. They swung to and fro with pendulum-like motion.
Three or four more were huddled in a conspiratorial group, with finger paint from the tips of their small feet to the tops of their chubby cheeks, smeared in all colors of the rainbow.
In the corner were the obviously less-high-on-sugar group of children. Four boys sat with one girl, their eyes studiously fixed upward on three gerbils, levitating in a circle in the air.
Circling the perimeter of the room were musical instruments, with loud crashes from a pair of cymbals and a xylophone singing out random notes.
BIC gave her a plaintive look. “This is what the whistle is for,” she said, just before she used every last ounce of air in her lungs to blow into it.
Everything came to a crashing halt. Children dropped to the floor like flies, screeching their discontent in ear-piercing bellows as they fell on top of one another.
Winnie took a deep breath, rolling the sleeves of her shirt up. “But they were all so quiet.”
BIC rapped her knuckles on the door. “Sound-proofing.”
The moment the rug rats realized BIC wasn’t paying attention, they were all at it again. The screaming ensued as one little boy chased a little girl with a spider he’d created by rubbing his grubby little paws together. The child’s terrified howls made Winnie wince.
She snaked a hand out just as the little boy raced past her and snapped her fingers, turning the spider into a puff of purple smoke.
Shit. She’d used her magic to shut up the caterwauling. Her eyes slid to BIC’s in guilt and held up her hands. “A totally selfless act. I’m not even a little afraid of spiders.”
BIC’s lips pursed skeptically just as she raised the whistle again.
Winnie put a hand on her arm. “Wait. Who’s supervising these children? Who’s in charge?”
“Her,” BIC said, pointing to the corner of the room where a harried woman, her hair in a tangled ponytail, her flouncy pink skirt covered in handprints of paint, flapped her hands and tried to make an oversized iguana disappear from the top of a file cabinet.
“Miss Marjorie?” she leaned in and asked BIC.
She sighed in crystal-clear disappointment. “Yeah. She’s just not cut out for a bunch of roughnecks like this lot. She skipped in here like she was going to change the witch world, all rosy-cheeked and Mr. Rogers, but nowadays she just looks like she wants to cry.”
“Roughnecks?”
“They’ve all tested quite low on the selfless use of magic scale.”
“There’s a test for that now?”
“One you’d no doubt fail.”
Salt meet wound. “So these witches are troubled…”
“These are the hard-to-handle witches, children with all sorts of issues, from anger management, broken homes, loss of a parent. They’re our future, parolee. It’s so bright you gotta wear shades, huh?”
And there it was. The crux of this parole. Her lesson. She was a teacher’s aide to children who were just like her.
As she watched the children run roughshod over their poor exhausted teacher, as she watched them run wild, creating havoc with whatever they could touch, it was all very clear.
Oh, Baba Yaga—well played.
Checkmate, Baba whispered in her head.
Get out of my head.
Why would I do that when there’s so much room in here? It’s airy and light with plenty of room to stretch.
The hell she was going to let Baba Yaga win this round. If for nothing else than to just prove to her that she could be beaten. She’d sent Winnie in to fail, knowing she had no experience with children, knowing these children were beasts off their leashes.
Well, she knew what it was like to be out of control. She knew all the tricks, and not a chance in seven hells was she letting a bunch of five- and six-year-olds best her.
Winnie gritted her teeth before looking at BIC and thumbing her nose boxer style. “I’m going in.”
BIC slapped her on the back. “Good luck, Sugar Ray. I have some reports to file. Check back with me at the end of the day and I’ll give you the address where you’re staying.”
Winnie gave her a curt nod before striding across the room like a linebacker, scooping up children along the way and righting the toppled chairs. She dropped one little boy with blond hair and the biggest blue eyes she’d ever seen right into a pint-sized, yellow plastic chair. “Don’t move or I’ll turn you into a toad.”
Crossing the room, she gripped
Miss Marjorie’s shoulders and set her aside. “Watch my hands—it’s all in how you move your hands.”
Staring straight up into the enormous iguana’s eyes as his tongue waggled at her, she rolled her hands, making the shape of a ball, rolling the energy until it picked up speed then blowing on it before shooting it upward.
He disappeared, to a gasp of surprise from Miss Marjorie. “Oh, thank you! You must be Winnie Foster.” She stuck out her hand and smiled, youthful and beautiful, smoothing her tousled blonde hair back.
She shook Marjorie’s hand. “That’s me. Convict gone teacher’s aide.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she gushed, pulling a handkerchief from the pocket of her skirt and wiping her brow. The relief in her tone made Winnie wonder how long she’d been towing the line alone.
“So where do I start?”
Marjorie’s beautiful face wilted, her green eyes lined with exhaustion filled with tears. “It’s almost time for afternoon snack. I always do a headcount first, because you never know who’s snuck off. There are sixteen of them total. Also, I have to watch them like hawks. They’re infamous for turning their little noses up at the fruit and cheese they’re given and converting it to Peeps. They love Peeps. So, if you could help me gather them up, I’d be so grateful.”
“Done.” Climbing on top of a box of Legos, Winnie clapped her hands and waited until all eyes were on her. “Listen up, monster munchkins! I want everyone in a chair, hands folded neatly in their laps—now. If you’re not in a chair by the time I count to three, I’m going to see to it personally that you never get a magic wand. Ever. Not for your entire life.”
Wide, astonished eyes greeted her before there was the shuffle of little feet and the sound of plastic chairs finding butts. All little witches and warlocks wanted magic wands. It was the goal of all goals when you hit puberty. The unicorn of pubescence.
One little rebel tugged on the leg of her jumpsuit. “You can’t take my magic wand away forever.”
Winnie planted her hands on her hips and gazed down at the small boy with dark springy curls all over his head and a smattering of freckles across the bridge of his nose. “Care to take bets on that?”
He wrinkled his cute nose. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It means, sit. Now. Or I’m going to show you what the words volcano and lava mean.”
Marjorie stifled a gasp before tugging on the opposite leg of Winnie’s jumpsuit.
Winnie glanced down at her. “Too much?”
She held her fingers together and winced. “Maybe just a little. Lighter on the threats—make them not so…so…natural disaster-ish.”
Winnie directed her gaze back to the small boy. “Got it. Okay, volcano’s out, but if you don’t plop a squat, I’ll glue you to your seat.” She looked over her shoulder at Marjorie for approval. “Better?”
Marjorie hyperventilated a little, the exposed part of her chest and neck blotchy with red hives as she grabbed at it in a clutching-her-pearls gesture. “Close enough. I’ll do headcount.”
Hopping down off the box, she surveyed the crew of children sitting in their chairs, and smiled with satisfaction. Task one for the day—complete.
Marjorie gasped again. She did that a lot. “Now what?”
“Lola! Lola’s missing. I’ve counted twice and I only have fifteen children. Oh, that child’s going to be the death of me!”
“You stay here and give them their snacks. I’ll look for her. Any thoughts on where I should look?”
The sound of a bell clanging from outside made her pause as Marjorie raced to the large windows and groaned.
Winnie looked over her shoulder. “Lola?”
“In all her glory. She’s one of the most willful, difficult children here.”
“I know a little something about difficult. I’ll go get her. You handle snack time.”
As she made her way back out of the classroom, she shot them all a warning glance. “Not a peep. If I come back in here, and you’re all running around like you have no manners, there’ll be trouble. Big, big, wandless trouble.”
There was a hushed bunch of whispers before silence greeted her ears. Satisfied, she headed out to the front of the schoolhouse where a little girl sat atop a flagpole with a rusty bell attached to it.
Cupping her hands over her eyes, Winnie followed the line of the pole. Her breath caught in her lungs as the little girl clung to the pole, the pink bands on the cuffs of her jeans flapping in the wind.
As the sun crawled over her skin like a swarm of ants on an anthill, she called upward, “It’s snack time, Lola. Time to come down now, please.”
Lola glared at her before insolently lifting a chubby hand and yanking the rope attached to the bell and shaking it hard.
That was clearly an “I’m not interested in your stupid chunks of watermelon and string cheese” act of defiance. She knew all about those. She also knew demands and threats were what a child like this lived for.
In a complete miscommunication for attention, Lola needed to be noticed. She wanted everyone to “hear” her anguish. She didn’t know how to express whatever hurt so much—and something was hurting her.
But what? And why did she care?
One deep breath in and out before she asked again, “Lola? I’m asking nicely one last time. Please come down.”
Lola’s answer was a flick of a pudgy finger when she shot a rebellious bolt of sizzling lightning at Winnie’s feet, just missing her Kotex pad slipper and setting a patch of grass on fire.
But Winnie reacted, waving a hand in the air and creating a quick splash of water to douse the flames.
And then she shot upward, hovering in the air, eye to eye with Lola, who, even Winnie had to admit, was precious. All thick, wavy chestnut-brown hair in pigtails and coal-black eyes with a Cupid’s bow of a mouth.
Out of that darling mouth came the words, “You smell like my dad’s socks after he goes jogging.”
“Oh yeah? You smell like frog’s breath and swamp water.”
Lola’s small, rosy lips thinned. “Shut up.”
“No, I mean you really do smell like frog. I’m a witch. I know frog.”
Lola’s body language became defensive as she wrapped herself tighter around the pole. “I only put him in my mouth for a minute. I took him right back out. Swear.”
Gag. “Why would you do that?”
“Because Freddy Martin dared me to.”
“That’s unsanitary, not to mention, gross. Don’t ever put a frog in your mouth again.”
Lola’s eyes flashed, dark and full of fire. “You’re stupid. I’m going to tell on you.”
“You go right ahead. In fact, let’s go call your mom now.”
Her lower lip trembled for just a moment before it stiffened. “I don’t have a mom.”
Huh. Her either. “Me either.”
“My mom probably wouldn’t like you anyway.”
Winnie nodded. That was probably true. “So, mom-hate aside, you suppose you want to come down from there? It’s pretty hot up here.” Aka, eighty-gajillion-degrees hot.
She shrugged her shoulders with indifference, hooking her ankles together. “I like it up here.”
Bribery. She wasn’t above it at this point. Her eyeballs were going to end up singed from the ugly blare of the sun if she didn’t do something. “Did you know today’s snack is ice cream?”
Lola shook her head, her hair sticking to her forehead. “Nuh-uh. It’s always stupid fruit. Like cantarope and watermelon.”
“You don’t like cantarope and watermelon?” Winnie asked, deliberately mispronouncing the fruit and fighting a grin. “They’re good for you. They’ll make you a strong witch.”
“Adults just say that to make you eat stuff you don’t want to eat.” The two bright spots on Lola’s creamy cheeks grew brighter, worrying Winnie. It was damn hot and if she didn’t coax her down soon, her stubbornness would leave her a melting pile of rebellion and pigtails.
“So y
ou don’t know?”
Lola’s eyes grew wide, the black of them swirling. “Know what?”
Winnie crossed her arms over her chest and shook her head. “If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”
“Tell me whaaat?” she demanded.
Winnie shrugged her shoulders and began to descend. “The secret, of course.”
“Wait!” Lola yelped then clamped her lips shut.
Winnie stopped descending just under Lola’s feet and looked up. “I can’t wait. I have to go take care of the secret. If I have time, you want me to bring you back a bottle of water? Or do you know how to conjure one of those up already?”
“I said, wait!” she howled, her face scrunching up.
Winnie tamped down a giggle and put on a stern face. All little girls were the same. If there was a secret, they wanted to know. “I’ll wait down there for you. You have ten seconds to put your feet on the ground, but then I really have to beat feet, because the secret can’t wait.”
“Lola! Get down here now!” someone roared from the ground. Someone with a distinct voice. Someone who had the ability to make her knees turn into soft butter.
Winnie lost her focus and dropped to the ground, hitting it hard and knocking her shambles of a Kotex-pad slipper off. She grunted when she hit the earth, the jolt leaving her immobile for a moment.
Two sneakered feet, attached to two muscled legs, bracketed her head. “What the hell are you doing here, Winnie?”
Oh, this day. It was so shiny. “I might ask you the same thing, Yagamawitz.”
He looked down at her, blocking the sun’s harsh rays, and pointed upward.
She struggled to rise on her elbows, which only brought her closer to his man bits, so she lie back down instantly, flattening her body. “You know Lola?”
He planted his beautiful bronzed hands on his lean hips. “Yes, I know her. So wanna tell me why my niece is on top of a flagpole in this one-hundred-and-five-degree heat and what you have to do with it, Winnie?”
