Apple County

First draft, unfinished, and still in need of major editing!

         The television blared with sound and color. Upon its screen, a man stood before a large map, a computer-generated map, detailing the weather forecast for the day.
         “…it seems there will be no cloud cover today—well, except for the ring of clouds around Apple County, of course. But other than that, we won’t be getting any clouds or rain until Sunday, when a small but powerful…”
         A woman walked into the room, flustered, a large bin resting on her hip, the forecaster’s voice fading away. Her hair was a tangled hive upon her head and she could smell lunch burning in the kitchen as she bent over numerous times, picking up toys from the living room floor. A boy sat in slight awe, watching the screen, curious and concocting a question.
         “Mommy?” he asked, still gazing at the screen.
         “Yes, hon?” his mother asked, grumbling slightly as she tripped over a plastic truck, but plastering a false smile on her face.
         “Why is there always a ring of clouds around Apple County? Why does it never go away?” asked the small boy.
         The woman dropped the toy bin, fluffy animals rolling along the floor, being crushed by plastic contraptions that bounced off of their stuffed softness. She gulped, her eyes wide. She knew the day would come, but she didn’t think it would be this soon. What would she say? She hadn’t come up with a good excuse yet. How would she explain it?
         “Well, Tommy—” she gulped again. “—Apple County is…well…it’s kind of…it’s not a good place to—GULP!”
         Every mother in the northeastern state had to tell their child at some point, when the Question was asked. The ever-feared Question. Her mind raced and searched desperately for a believable answer, a palpable lie. But nothing came to her.
         “Apple County is populated by Witches, Tommy! WITCHES!” she blurted out without thinking. Everything seemed to double and waver and shake and then, darkness and a loud thud.
         Tommy looked down to see his pale mother on the floor. He tried to conceive of what these Witches were, who they were, and, when realizing he had no idea what a Witch was, he continued to watch the television and play with his toys, innocent and unknowing.

         “RATTIE!” shrieked a plump woman dressed in a faded, black dress with buttons, buckled, high-heeled boots, and an old sun bonnet caked in cobwebs (which looked tired and weakened from trying to tame the mass of jet-black frizz that was the woman’s hair). “RATTIE, DEAR! I’M GOING OUT TO WORK IN THE GARDEN! COME EAT YOUR BREAKFEST BEFORE IT HIP-HOPS AWAY! AND WE’RE GOING INTO FLIPPERY TODAY WITH UNCLE CARCASSWOOD AFTER NOON!”
         “OKAY!” shouted Rattie, whose real name was Ratliver, her eardrums practically bursting from the volume of her mother’s voice. Her mother, Moonmortina (called Mortina by her friends), could throw her voice, even up stairs, and had done so without realizing it again—it was as if she had her mouth in Rattie’s ear, screaming.
         Rattie yawned and stretched and rubbed her ears, her pale flesh warming in the thick sheets of autumn light filtering in through the round, second floor window of the quaint cottage she resided in with her mother. Her miniscule room was perfectly fitted to her, possessing only her bed, a crude thing made of wood and a straw mattress (which was fitted with a feather-filled comforter and numerous white sheets), a dresser with only three drawers, and a broom propped in the corner.
         Rattie quickly dressed, her stomach rumbling with hunger, in a clean cotton undergown and in one of her nicest garments: a black, robe-like dress, slightly-faded in color and embroidered with a white crescent moon on the right corner of the collar. She slipped on her brown, spiral-toed moccasins and her off-white pointed hat, which was faintly stained on the brim by some spider venom she had the pleasure of drinking over the summer at her cousin’s wedding.
         After checking her homemade wall calendar, Rattie noticed that two days from today was the first day of Autumn. To celebrate, she snatched some cloth ribbon from the top drawer of her dresser, one red, one orange, and one yellow, and tied them around the base of the cone of her hat. She dexterously unfolded her owlfeather mantle, which was tucked in the second drawer of her dresser, and neatly adorned it, making sure her crescent moon was not covered by the high, feathery collar of the dressy shoulder garment.
         Rattie stumbled down the stairs swiftly, not forgetting to bring her broom with her. In the small, cottage kitchen, she gobbled down a few grasshoppers, one of which had made its way into the water bucket. She rushed outside and stopped, in awe of the beauty of the dawn.
         The sky was painted with long strips of pink-tinged clouds, the beautiful orange-magenta sun peeking its fiery self over the large mass of clouds that was the Apple County Ring. The hillside below her was blanketed with flowers and herbs and plants and low fences, all her mother’s garden. The well sat a few paces away from the door, on the only level spot around their home, and a cobblestone path curved down the hill. Her mother was near the base of the hill, pruning plants and harvesting herbs, the low-lying mists making her look like a hazy spirit, a faint, forgotten memory.
         The cool and crisp air felt amazing on Rattie’s skin, although the tip of her nose was numb and cold. Her black hair was gently played with by the wind as she descended the path. She wiggled her fingers at a brown and withered plant, only to see it jump back to life, green and blooming with yellow buds. She hopped onto her broom and slowly glided downward, landing next to her mother, who had two warts on her face (one from flying over Flippery when she was a teenager without using her power to transform into a raven and another from lighting a whole basket of dried snakes on fire at a shop in Humpfrog).
         As she placed her feet onto the ground and began picking up stray clippings off the ground, she spoke to her mother, but not with her voice.
         <Where is the festival going to be held this year, Mother?> she asked telepathically, her voice sounding like a soft bell within her mother’s mind.
         Mortina giggled as if it tickled, for it did, and replied via voice, for she was no telepathic.
         “I heard from Lily Gravebucket the other day—you know, your old babysitter? She told me it’s going to be a merger and with HUMPFROG! Of all the towns!” she cackled, her yellow eyes glowing as she turned from her work to look at her daughter.
         <That’s odd,> Rattie replied. <You’d think Flippery would have a combined festival with Soonsorrow, not Humpfrog!>
         “That’s what I said! Mayor Pog hasn’t let a Humpfroggian in town since his son ran off with that girl. You know, Humpfrog’s mayor’s daughter.”
         <Maybe they’ve resolved their problems.>
         “Could be, dearest, but Mayor Pog is not one to forgive!”
         A small frog hopped into the basket of herbs and spices Mortina had collected and was quickly fried with a wave of her hand, smoking and rigid from a blast of handmade fire. Mortina cackled, throwing her head back.
         “Sorry, little guy!” she giggled, grabbed the basket, and started up the winding walkway, chewing voraciously on the fried frog. “Grab some worms and grasshoppers, will you, Dearest? For when Uncle Carcasswood comes!”
         Rattie nodded and set down her broom, swiftly jumping into a dense mass of plants and herbs. She scuttled low along the ground, searching every inch of the hill (which was surrounding by tall trees and a white picket fence near the base, however not on the top, where the house ground was level with the road). When she had glided back to the side door and entered the house, she had two baskets of grasshoppers and a handful of wriggling worms, which she set in large jars in the pantry.
         Two cups of frothy, mothwing tea sat steaming on the kitchen table, her mother sipping from one of them. Rattie sat down and began to drink. Her cheeks went red and Mortina chuckled.
         “I put some rattler venom in it! I got it from my old friend who lives in the desert in a place called…hmmm, I can’t say I remember the name. Arid-zona or was it You-tall, or maybe it was Color-waldo?”
         “It tastes like stinkbug juice! ICK!” she coughed a few times but drank the rest of the cup gladly. And at the bottom of the cup was stuck a very slimy and very dead slug. Rattie’s eyes burst wide open, as round and yellow as a hungry owl’s.          “There’s a slug at the bottom!”
Mortina shrieked a mighty cackle, her eyes hidden in the squished creases of her face. “I found it this morning and kept it a secret. Surprise!”
         “But why? What’s the occasion?” Rattie asked excitedly, peeling the slug from the inside of the teacup.
         “Oh, no reason in particular,” she said, a faint blush on her cheek as she took a sip of tea. Rattie slurped the slug through her lips and down her throat, not caring or listening to the answer, savoring the slimy deliciousness that was the slug.
         “Now, why don’t you fly this over to Ebonia,” Mortina said as she set her cup down and wiggled her fingers. From the kitchen mantle hovered a glass bottle filled with a transparent, reddish liquid. It landed softly on the table in front of Rattie, who was licking every last bit of slug slime off her lips happily. She picked up the bottle, hopped on her broom, and was followed from the door by a hearty cackle from her mother (which actually did follow her).
         “Uncle Carcasswood will be here in an hour or so, so take your time. And no flying in the house, dearest!”
         Up and up she went, lifting higher and higher into the gradually lightening colors of the sky. Far in all directions could be seen many hills, some higher than others, some with dense forests, others with clumps of cottages. The northern section of the land was completely covered in foliage and trees while enormous, mostly-green, but slightly-orange-and-yellow mountains surrounded the entire countryside that was Apple County. And, of course, the Ring rose even higher above the mountains, an occasional finger of lightning slithering through the misty masses.
         Rattie followed the lane that led from her home that went both north and south and was cobble-stoned and was tree-lined, looking out upon the many hills and forests. This lane was Flippery Road until it came to a triple fork. Rattie took the rightmost prong.
         She smiled as the warmth of the sun rubbed a soft hand against her cheek, its glow painting the hills with gold, the woods with lustrous green. The third cottage on the left on Gunkpott Drive was the home of Ebonia Sweatbee. She was a short woman, old and stout, with old, frizzy hair, once black but died a horrible yellow color (making her hair a puce green). Her eyes were just as golden, though, as all the Witches of Apple County, and they possessed just as much life and umph as any thirteen-year-old’s.
         Ebonia was usually very ill because she ate more than her share of bees and she often required the homeopathic cures that Mortina was known for. And everyone knew that when you ate too many bees, your eyes would swell. So, while still licking every last bit of slime from her mouth, Rattie landed on the dying, greyish grass of Ebonia’s small lawn.
         “Oh! Ratliver!” Ebonia cried, waddling over to the landed witch, her arms open. “I haven’t seen you in ages! And I absolutely adore what you did with your hair!”
         Rattie hugged Ebonia but was curious what she had done with her hair. She quickly grabbed a strand of the long, straight, silky blackness only to find that it wasn’t black at all! It was PUCE GREEN! She let out a quick but piercing screech.
         “OH DEAR! WHAT HAPPENED?” screamed Ebonia, clutching her chest, nearly falling to the ground in shock.
         “My hair! IT’S GREEN!” Rattie shrieked.
         “My grasshoppers, girl! Of course it is! What did you expect!” she let out a sigh of relief that sounded very much like a toad’s croak and herded the girl inside, who was still violently examining each lock of hair in utter disbelief. Rattie sat at the table in the small kitchen and placed the bottle on its old, oak surface.
         “Would you like something to drink, dear?” Ebonia asked, pouring herself a cup of liquid from a very old bottle.
         “No, thank you…” Rattie said quietly, still distraught.
         “It’s only natural dearest! It’s your bir—” Ebonia stopped talking suddenly, dropped her cup, and let out a very sudden SQUAWK. Rattie looked up, pulled from her hair obsession.
         “What happened?” she asked, kneeling down on the floor to pick up pieces of broken teacup.
         “Oh, nothing, dear,” Ebonia replied with a quivering voice, a blush on her cheek. “No need to clean that up. I am perfectly able.”
         Ebonia began scooting Rattie from the cottage now.
         “Why don’t you go?” she quickly stammered. “Thank you for my medication dear and I love your hair!”
         With that, the door slammed and Rattie stood on the cottage step. Rather confused but more worried about her hair color, she gathered her puce green hair into a bun, tucked it in her offwhite witches’ hat (feeling slightly disgusted when touching it, as if it were diseased), hopped on her broom, and lifted into the slowly-warming, autumn air.

         Decked in grey and black owlfeathers and a necklace made of dried vultureheads, Uncle Carcasswood entered the cottage. He had a very humped back and eyeglasses with lenses as thick as a door. When looked at straight on, Uncle Carcasswood’s eyes were almost invisible through the thick, foggy glasses, but otherwise, they looked about ten times their normal size.
         When he closed the door behind him, his humped form waddling, his owlfeathers dragging on the floor, he turned around quickly (away from the welcoming gestures of Mortina and Rattie) and squawked an insult to the air.
         “Well, excuse me, you incoherent, ethereal mass of reeking human dung!” he turned around once more, slightly flustered, his face purple. A smile grew on his face, however, when he saw his sister and niece.
         “Welcome, Cass!” Mortina shrieked as she nearly tackled him with a hug. She was now wearing old and shriveled robinclaws in her ears. They were Rattie’s least favorite in her mother’s jewelry collection—her favorites were the black-and-white seagull talons. Mortina was also dressed in her finest owlfeather cloak now, which was composed of bluish-black feathers, almost raven-like, with a single streak of white ones on the hood.
         “Mortie!” Carcasswood shouted back in reply after spitting a ratbone out of his mouth (he was chewing on it while traveling to the house). “And Ratliver!”
         Rattie hugged her uncle and they all sat down at the kitchen table. While Uncle Carcasswood was drinking some tea, they conversed.
         “Where’s Myrtle, Uncle Carcasswood?” Ratliver asked.
         “She couldn’t come today,” he replied, his eye twitching from the strength of the tea. “She had some…um…other business to attend to today. My, what an odd color your hair is!”
         “She went for a delivery to Ebonia Sweatbee’s and when she came back, she was nearly in tears!” Mortina explained. “I don’t rightly know how it could have happened! But I assured her that we could get a mixture or formula or something in Flippery today to change it back.”
         “It just turned green! The same color as Mrs. Sweatbee’s,” Rattie now sounded worried again.
         “I actually know of just the thing, but I mustn’t talk about it now!” Carcasswood said, a slight blush to his cheek, a twinkle in his lense-covered eye. He quickly changed the topic of the conversation, pulling out a long strip of paper with a scrawled list upon it. “I have so many things I’ve been meaning to buy and I haven’t found the time lately to get into town!”
         So, they promptly left for town, Uncle Carcasswood turning into a wolf, a large, dominant grey one with black stripes connecting the ears and the eyes. Mortina jumped into the air and, followed by a POP sound, transformed into a shiny, ebony raven. And following their bestial journey was the white-hatted witch girl who didn’t even know that today was her birthday.

         There was a ring of clouds, a never-leaving ring of clouds, surrounding Apple County for a reason. And there was another reason why no intelligent human lived within twenty miles of the mountains surrounding the county. Everyone knew Witches lived there, behind the mountains, but no non-Witch had ever entered. It all began in the colonial times, when the first settlements in Massachusetts and Virginia were first settled.
         A group of Witches, who were being prosecuted and burned and hanged in the Britain, had gathered and assembled a migration squad, each traveling by air over the Atlantic, each agreeing to form a single colony where the Witches could live in peace and safety, a place where no one could bother them. They found a very nice place, a few miles north of Salem, Massachusetts, and settled it, building cottages and villages—a place very much like the Witchtowns in Old England.
         However, when the Salem Witch Trials began and many non-Witches were burned and killed in the town just south of them, the Witches began to worry and they were soon found out, by a very unsuspecting but also very prejudiced character—Goodpuppy Latherboot, a Puritan minister who enjoyed hiking. He found the settlement of Witches and brought from Salem a large band of evil Puritans, all with torches and all shouting horrible things. They eventually left after shouting numerous threats, but they returned a few nights later.
         The Witches were afraid at first but then, their fear turned into bitter hatred and malice when a young Witchgirl was kidnapped, taken to Salem, hung by her thumbs, and burned, little bits at a time, until she was entirely fried to death seven days later.
         The third night the Salemers came, the Witches were ready. Not only had they created an enormous bonfire in the center of what is now Apple County, using every piece of clothing they owned—a sign of absolute war and violence among Witches, teh Witchfire—but they had painted their brooms black and rode in great swarms, completely nude, through the sky. They stuck twigs in their hair to make it frizzy and bestial looking and threw handfuls of fire at the shouting hordes of Puritans. They cackled and screamed and made the wind rise in great torrents that blew out their torches (but not the grand bonfire that could be seen from miles and miles away, that stretched hundreds of feet into the misty, almost tangible sky that held the angry, orange-faced moon high above, glaring down, giving energy to Her daughters, gazing bitterly at the unjust settlers) and sent great sheets of icy rain upon them and their town.
         When all was settled and calm the next morning, Salem village was silent and unmoving. The women and children had fled to a small forest to the south where they still hid in the wood's dense foliage. Those men who did survive, which were only a few, hid in the houses of Salem, tending to their battle wounds. The Witches, however, had migrated north, entering the valley that was enclosed by the ring of mountains. The ashes of the previous night's Witchfire lay grey in the center of the hills and valleys. They were victorious.
         The valley that was then named Apple County, as apple trees speckled the hillsides, was more than 50 miles north of Salem. Not another sentient creature existed for many dozens of miles. Many of the Witches began building homes, some taking responsibility for the orchards, others beginning to build the cobbled roads that now run throughout the county.
         Once the Witches had built their homes, had made friends, had gathered into villages, had sown the fields with herbs and vegetables and fruits, all the Witches gathered on the tops of the mountains that surrounded the Apple County. They formed a great ring of Witches and all began to chant. Soon, clouds rolled forth, following the Witches' orders. A dense ring of clouds and mist now surrounded the valley, suspended just above the mountain peaks. The Witches empowered the ring with protection and arcing fingers of lightning licked it often. They were now safe.

NOT FINISHED