Willa and Agatha planned to enjoy the fall in their usual manner, gathering and drying herbs and lizard tails; making preserves from apples, currants, and newt’s eyes; baking pies and exchanging them for yarn from brownies and cobweb fabric from flower fairies; knitting houses for the small magic folk and developing new potions. Those plans took a different shape when a steady stream of deer, hares, foxes, badgers, and even bears appeared in direct view from the tree house porch, where Willa and Agatha were having poppyseed scones with chamomile tea.

“What’s with the exodus?” asked Agatha while putting a spoonful of thistle jam on a small piece of scone. Agatha’s hair still had more red than gray, and her sleeves suffered from an overabundance of orange lace. 

“They must be fleeing from predators,” said Willa. She closed the book she was reading and looked at the mass migration with her bushy brows traveling closer to each other. She already had her fill of scones, and the last piece lingered on her plate, still covered with a generous smear of yellow butter with a couple of water droplets. Willa’s black and grey braids reached the middle of her back, and her purply black dress was covered with embroidered crows, cranes, swallows, and other birds. Agatha made it for her birthday two years ago. Willa folded her lips and whistled a complex melody that sounded like a message. A small murmuration of starlings swiftly rose from the group of trees just across the pond and flew to where the hurrying deer were fleeing from. Whistling made her throat go dry, and she refilled her cup with cooled golden tea, spreading the smell of mint and chamomile. 

“I don’t want her eaten or stomped over by the fleeing hordes,” said Willa. She whispered a few words that sounded like poetry over her tea, blew over it twice and downed the whole cup. That was a spell that made the house and the island it stood on visible to the girl. Agatha took her knitting basket and pulled out a ball of thick leaf green yarn. She quickly made three intricate knots, murmured her spell over them, and looked up. The round logs that were peacefully lying in a neat pile near the water went up and formed a stepping bridge so the girl could come to the house. The girl was shivering. 

“Come in dear,” said Agatha. “You look like you could use some tea. Willa, get a few of those meat pies I made yesterday.” Willa nodded and disappeared inside the house. When she came back, she was followed by the trail of warmth and a symphony of smells coming from both the kitchen and the plate with pies. The meat aroma danced with the hints of garlic, leeks and mushrooms over the pile of half-moon shaped hand pies. 

The girl went up the ladder to the porch when she halted, looking at the pointed purple hat lying on a bench.

Still uneasy, the girl sat on the edge of a chair. Two pies and scones without count and hot tea helped to thaw her out, and soon Gwendolyn was telling Agatha and Willa why she had to run away. 

“Fenna was not an evil woman. She raised me since I was a baby and only slapped me when I could not learn embroidery. See, my palms would get sweaty, and the needle would not go through and fabric would get all crimpled…” She wiped her nose with a sleeve and gulped more tea. Her ruffled braids were chestnut under all the dust and cobwebs, and she hunched a bit as if to hide her recently sprouted breasts. 

“Fenna made good money for her embroideries, and I cleaned and cooked for her, mostly bean soup and oatmeal, but then her eyes went. I asked if she had any women friends to help out and she laughed. She said women can’t be friends, they only scheme to steal one’s husband or secrets. One day, she went to a client’s wedding and came back with an idea. She decided to marry me off to Bram, the fabric trader. She kept saying I needed a man to look after me. But I think he promised to pay her. He was old, and his breath smelled like trolls’ armpits. I pretended to go for fresh rolls to the bakery, and then I just ran.”

“Oh dear,” said Agatha, and gave the girl a hug. 

“What was your plan?” asked Willa, looking over the treetops.

“I thought I’d walk to another town, but I must have taken the wrong turn somewhere. Thought I’d just look for work.”

With the rustle of wings, the murmuration of starlings returned. They formed a compact black cloud in front of the house while Willa exchanged short and long high-pitched whistles with one of the birds. 

“It’s the stone wyverns. They hunt below the clouds, which they never have done before. Something must have driven them from their usual digs,” said Willa, translating from starling language. 

“Wait, the starling told you that?” said Gwendolyn. 

“Yes, he did, and we can’t lose any time. We don’t want the wyverns to eat everything that lives in this forest.” Willa snapped her fingers, and the broom appeared in her hand in a blink.

“I could use some help,” said Agatha. “Are you up for it?”

If Gwendolyn hesitated, it was only for a moment. Her eyes had a sparkle that wasn’t there just an hour ago. She threw the last piece of scone in her mouth, gulped the leftover amber liquid from her cup, and wiped crumbs from her mouth. 

“I am ready!” 

“We need to do some spells. You said you could cook. That is a good start for making potions,” said Agatha.

“What would Willa do?”

“I need to see for myself what is going on in the mountains,” said Willa. She put on a bulky silvery hooded coat that seemed weightless and mittens with snowflakes on them. 

“Let me do the invisibility spell for you. Mine lasts a bit longer than yours,” said Agatha. Willa nodded, and Agatha started singing a short funny verse that seemed familiar, but no matter how hard you listened, you could not catch any regular words. Then she poured some yellow dry petals from a tiny bottle in her palm and blew so they swooshed into Willa’s face. She smiled and disappeared.

“Back in an hour!” shouted Willa’s voice from away. 

“From here, they don’t look much bigger than geese,” said Gwendolyn.

“Yes, it is hard to believe, but they are the size of a horse. Ugh, their needle teeth give me shivers,” said Agatha, while skimming through the pages of a leather-clad book with golden claws on the spine.

The wyverns split, three of them flying in the same direction as the deer and the two going to where the deer were coming from.

“They are setting a trap, let’s hurry,” said Agatha, leading Gwendolyn to the kitchen.

“Hey, keep it down!” said Agatha, giving a stink eye to the jars. The eyes quickly turned away from Gwendolyn and those that had the lashes batted them, feigning innocence. 

Agatha put a small cauldron on fire and walked around the kitchen, picking bottles and vials. She opened a pantry, revealing multiple ropes filled with dried herb bouquets. A bomb of flavors hit Gwendolyn’s nostrils: mint, rosemary, tarragon, bay leaf, and some things that she didn’t know the names of. Most of the dry herbs were just hanging, but a couple of vines swayed and coiled, as if they did not mean to stay on the rope in the closet. 

“Are these dangerous?” asked Gwendolyn, pointing at the wriggling branches. 

“Oh, no, dear,” said Agatha, “They are just making their juices run, well, what’s left of them. It is good for the potions when herbs are happy.”

Under Agatha’s strict eye, Gwendolyn measured dried nettles, tears of mermaid, hollyhock root, and many more. At first, her movements were slow and indecisive, but soon enough, she got into it. She stirred till the potion started to resemble molasses. It smelled, however, like pickle juice gone bad. Gwendolyn wrinkled her nose and tried to cover it with her sleeve, yet she stalwartly stayed at her post. Agatha showed her a tiny vial with black powder. 

“Dried were-goat blood. Can’t be done without it.” She measured with the tiniest measuring spoon, the eighth of a little finger’s nail. When the dark particles were completely absorbed, the potion let out a cloud of steam that was shaped exactly like a mountain were-goat, with dirty gray curly hair, four rounded horns, and a long snout. 

“Now, we go make some fake were-goats. They will look and even taste like the real thing. The wyverns will smell them and come down here. They will not be able to resist an easy dinner. And while the wyverns rest after feeding, we solve the rest of the problem.”

Gwendolyn marveled at how fast Agatha moved despite being soft and round. They ran across the pond over the stepping logs to the clearing between the pond and the forest. Agatha pulled her wand from her black boot and made circular motions over her head. A huge heap of hay flew from somewhere behind the witches’ house and flopped in front of Gwendolyn, making her sneeze. Another wand movement produced a pile of various sticks. 

“I will make big hay tubes for bodies and small ones for the heads. You need to tuck in the sticks for the legs, neck, and horns. Remember, were-goats have four horns!” said Agatha. 

It took a couple of badly misshapen figures to get the hang of it, but in an hour, eight were-goat dummies were placed around the clearing. A sweating Gwendolyn was in charge of splashing the dummies with the potion. Agatha went after her with her wand. That was why when Gwendolyn was already in the safety of a cloaked island, Agatha was still busy charming the last dummy. 

The wyvern appeared silently and clearly preferred Agatha to the charmed dummies that looked so remarkably like the real thing that they even produced believable bleating sounds. Agatha stopped in the middle of the sentence of the were-goat spell and ran for the stepping logs while trying to make herself invisible. She frantically wiggled her hand in her pocket, trying to grasp the vial with yellow petals, but alas, the vial was not there to be found.

She could hear the wyvern’s wings flapping almost on top of her head when the wyvern squealed in pain and got thrown back as if it bumped into something sharp. It was Willa’s broomstick handle as she drove into the beast’s belly at full speed. 

Willa’s invisibility lasted long enough for her to do that. Still semitransparent, she dashed to Agatha, landed for a second, enough for Agatha to throw her leg over the broom, and carried them both to the porch where Gwendolyn stood with her mouth open. 

“You saved her!” said Gwendolyn when the words came back to her. 

“She saved me before,” said Willa. “This is what we do, keep each other alive and have fun.”

“But that’s not how it works. Men are supposed to save women. That’s what Fenna kept telling me. This is what I have seen. A woman is supposed to go through life with a man. Are you telling me you are happy and safe here, in the forest, together?”

Willa and Agatha burst into laughter. Willa’s was hearty and loud, Agatha’s came in distinct chortles. Both were wiping tears. 

“I am dying for some tea,” finally said Willa. “I am gonna tell you what we are going to do about the six-winged wyrm that spooked the wyverns and about the disappeared grass that were-goats love to eat.”

“You did not answer my question,” said Gwendolyn. 

“I don’t think I need to,” said Willa.