TBT! Brenda Carre’s ‘Gret’: A Wonderful Witch You Cannot Miss!

My mam always told me there’s three ways to prosper best and all begin with L. 

Location’s one. No prospering’s ever done by thief or witch if the job begins in the wrong place or time. Lissom tongue is next. No matter how much wisdom a gal has to her, good learning don’t go far if she can’t talk her way out of a bad deal. And last is Lightning Touch. That means the effortless sliding of nimble fingers in and out of pockets without bein’ cotched.

My mam knew these L’s right better than any I’ve met. She could charm the gold (and other things) right out of any feller’s britches. We’d a Red Lamp and Physic House just outside the palace gates of the Grand Corsair of Roon. Back then us Red Lamp girls was good for much more than pleasure to bodies in need. We were spies, healers, and counsellors. We had the ear of high folks on Roon. And witchery. Mam passed hers on to me. No brag, just fact. She could fix the dying so they might live again. She could deal with those what needed killing. She called it her laying-on-of-hands.

My da was one who lived and loved, so she said. Word was he’d been a Corsair, like so many were on Roon in my younger day, his gull-grey Xebec as swift and trim as any true seaman’s craft could be. I guess I got his beak of a nose and his uncompromising temper. Handsome, mebbe. I can’t say. ‘Easy on the eye’ got him nowhere in the end. My da was hanged after a fierce battle in a little town called Skyhaven upon the rugged Isle of Inach. Hanged from their Raiders Gate along with the rest of his crew. The villagers torched his ship, the fools. No good sense of true thievery among the lot of ’em. 

Rank, lubberly fisher folk. Heads so far up their arses they needed to shout to be heard. 

Don’t guess Mam grieved at his loss. Not for long. She was a cool witch. For her it was business first and womanhood second. Most like, I’d be just like her, save for my ’nuncle Vongy. 

The day Mam died, that sodding bag of dead man’s piss knocked me over my tender young pate and threw me into the orlop of a pirate ship. I’d just turned thirteen.

So there I was, cotched and away out there on blue water. 

Now, that was a real bad location. No silver-tongued happiness was gonna save my cherry. A little maid no more, I’d begun on the road to the witch I am.