An old woman in a gray hat

      I had heard many different things about her. Some people said she was a dark witch who cursed entire families; others revered her as a herb-wife, a healer who had helped many to recover from different ailments. Yet no one living in Direville would venture to visit her old cottage that stood on the edge of the town, by the forest, without a good reason.

      At any time of the year, the old woman wore a large gray hat with shabby brims, her messy gray-haired curls sticking from under it. Her gaze that sometimes showed was heavy, her brown eyes were always tearing, perhaps from old age; her skinny body and face were covered in wrinkles that gathered on her cheeks, around the thin lips, and on the arms. The old woman’s dresses were always dark; her stretched knitted jackets and woolen shawls, rather worn. Little twigs, leaves and even burdock thistles hung on her clothes and hair. She could rarely be seen smiling, but people said that her teeth were crooked, yellow and ugly.

      She led an unremarkable life, spending most of her time in the forest with a wicker basket, gathering stems, leaves and roots of plants, berries and mushroom, picking up bird feathers, and, it was rumoured, corpses of small animals, too, – or worked in the garden and brewed new potions in her kitchen.

      She rarely attended public places, and only if she had a need to. I often saw her at Saturday food markets, where my parents sold the best goat cheese and milk in the county. She’d buy those from us, meat, from old Albert, and then, went to the other rows, where she also bought something – always from the same merchants. I ran away from our stall and followed her, as if hypnotized, but always kept at a distance, or acted as if I was going my own course, knowing how important it was to remain unnoticed. Loading her shopping on the back of a clunky bicycle, she always hurried to leave the market before it got filled with people.

      ***

      The story I want to share with you happened in mid-September, after a long rainy summer. Having returned after a vacation at my aunt’s at Blisshill that I had spent mostly reading in her cosy living room, I realized how much I had missed my gloomy hometown – and the old woman in a gray hat… I wasn’t sure if she had survived the summer – according to my calculations, she was supposed to be extremely old. But early on Saturday morning, on my way to the market, I saw the familiar shabby figure rolling the screeching bike in the direction of the bridge that led to the forest road. I was glad. At once I wanted to learn more about her. Perhaps, because, like her, I was lonely, and had no friends who would be glad that I was back. I was curious to know how she cast spells and worked her dark magic.

      I wasn’t popular at school, and, perhaps, by that very reason, as I planned my visit to the old woman, I decided to ask her upfront to teach me how to cast different spells. I was sick of being strange and uninteresting to everyone. What if magic could help me seem completely normal to others – and even be liked? Or, perhaps, the old woman knew something I was completely unaware of… something that could make my life easier?

      My parents worked hard at the small farm our family had owned for centuries, and had no time to follow what I was doing between school and house chores. They knew that Oscar – that’s me – could spend hours walking around Direville when not at the farm helping them. I knew everything about my hometown and its neighbourhood. The only place I wasn’t allowed to go to was the seashore on the other side of the forest. But I went there too, especially on weekends. I liked to leave the house very early and watch the sunrise there.

      My life was all about learning. I remembered every bush, every house, every tombstone in the churchyard, the concrete ties on the railroad, all the cracks and chips on the intricate ornament of the school facade, the austere contours of the factory building, the jewellers’ house that looked like a castle to me… I even walked inside the hospital, where I watched the discharge of patients. I went to many different places…

      But my favourite pastime was being by the pond, where I felt completely at peace. There I relaxed, looking at the tranquil water surface, ducks swimming by, and the reed that I would sometimes break, and, rubbing the dark brown cocoon between the palms of my hands, throw the white floss into the air.

      ***

      In the evening, with a simple travel backpack of thick material on my shoulders containing the chocolate bar my aunt had given me, an old flashlight and a folding pocket knife inside, I headed towards the forest.

      The cold ground was covered with autumn leaves, and their musty smell filled me with hope of good change ahead. I wanted to stop and kick the leaves about, or find a stick and look for funny worms and snails in the muddy puddles. But my plan possessed me, not letting anything side-track me.

      On those days it started getting dark earlier than in summer, so I had to hurry. In about an hour, an entire horizon of yellow leaves spread out before me.

      I wondered to myself if I would have the guts to start talking to the old woman at all – or she’d perhaps cast some spell over me before I had the time to say anything.

      I felt a little uncanny. But Direville is a somewhat unusual place, and I am just one of many in it who were afraid or ill at their ease every now and then.

      The hedge around the old woman’s house was rickety, so I easily climbed onto the witch’s territory, and, having hid myself behind an apple tree, started watching the kitchen garden with baited breath. Time passed, but nobody came. The harvest was abundant – heavy cabbage heads, large orange pumpkins and other season vegetables filled every bed. Lit by the evening September sun, it all looked like a picture. I squatted, and started thinking. Do pumpkins – or cabbages – have a soul? If so, perhaps, it is contained in the stalk? I bent down to take a closer look at a cabbage head, as if I had never seen one before. At that instant, something soft touched my foot – so gently that it wasn’t even frightening. A cat was rubbing its side at my ankle – most likely, the very one that lived with the old woman in a gray hat. People talked a lot of it, too. I found the cat very beautiful. I was charmed by the sandy shade of its fur. The neck and the stomach were white, and the face, the paws and the tail had a golden tint. Above the pink nose sat a dark ginger spot that looked like a large freckle, and the ends of the ears were dark too, like those of a bobcat.

      The feline looked at me with round blue eyes, and I suddenly realized that it was the most adorable cat I had ever seen. I patted it, and, as if in response, it touched my forearm with its gorgeous fluffy tail. This made me very happy.

      Feeling braver now, I picked the cat up, and, together, we