To do magic or work miracles you need strength of spirit. To become a witch the most important thing is strength of will. The power to make up your mind and do what you’ve decided to do. Until you can overcome that most difficult part, you might not get what you want. But give it a try anyway. 西の魔女が死んだ (The Witch of the West is Dead)

Whenever I go out in to the world, I see so many Kenji-sans and I cry when they cut down the trees or dig up the earth in my sanctuary. I want to stay at Grandma’s house, where time stands still and there are fields of wild strawberries for birthday presents and biscuits baked at midnight and flowers in my tea cup. I would never leave.

My sister is in love with a bear. He comes every night to our house, through the snow which he tracks in, big muddy footprints on the rug. We sit by the fireside, Maman and Snow and the Bear and I. The light flickers in her eyes and turns her cheeks sweet pink. Maman says we must be nice to the bear, and I try to see beyond his ivory teeth.
The nights are cold, and we huddle together in the one small bed, as always. Whispering secrets, telling tales, my sister and I. Now she only speaks of the bear, “Do you think he’ll come again?” she asks. I roll over and shut my eyes tight.
In the summer he will be gone, I’m sure, and we will return to the woods to pick acorns and apples and hunt for mushrooms in the loam. Just the two of us. We will find the deer grazing in the meadow and the hare, to feed him cabbage leaves. At night we will lay down on the moss and the star child will watch over us, as always.
My sister is in love with the bear, but he always looks hungry to me.

Noone ever forgives us for changing. They want us to be constant as the wind and always wear the same colours but we’re not meant to be that way. We’re supposed to be a little different each morning when we wake up and I think it’s our dreams that do it. Last night I was a sailor and woke with sand in my sheets and salt in my hair, and the night before that I was a wood nymph who rose with the dawn chorus and dewed lips. Every two years I change alltogether and become someone else wearing the same eyes. It’s a little uncomfortable, like a snake shedding skins. They never forgive me for changing but I do it with passion because you need to die a little bit now and then to feel alive.

(p.s. aren’t these the prettiest flowers? they seem to worship the sky. could you even choose a more perfect name for them than ‘cosmos’?)

“I don’t believe in coincidence.” Rose said “it’s messy and meaningless, a cosmic excuse for anything too difficult to explain.” She bit the blade of grass in half, savouring the bittergreen flavour.
“Then what do you call it,” asked the red haired boy “if it isn’t just an accident?” He liked the way the sun fringed her eyelashes, which were unusually pale and long. If he could he wanted to keep this conversation going forever, just the two of them on the bridge, but the sun would set eventually.
“Magic!” she whispered, with a frightening intensity. “I believe in Magic, and Fate and golden apples and Hades and unicorns in the glen.” She looked at him, waiting for a response. He didn’t laugh, instead he tossed his leaf in to the stream and watched it drift lazily beneath them and out of sight.

This is my shadow, she has a name but I can’t tell it to you or you could steal her away and then I would have to wear iron shoes. I keep her in a drawer most of the time, with a brass lock, as polite people do, but sometimes she gets out, usually when I’m hurt or broken or lost and she thinks terrible things. She thinks dissapointment and doubt, she thinks fear and anger and she knows how to hate. They tell me we all have shadows. Some people wear theirs like a trench coat and that makes them scary. I fold mine up, when I leave the house, and tuck her in to my shoe. That way, I can pull her out when I need her. You can’t enjoy a good moonrise without your shadow.

Sometimes I wish I were blonde, with thistle down hair that floats on the breeze and wispy brows, and lashes that are barely there. There is something so fragile about pale skin, pale hair, lilac unicorns made in to girls against their will.

Then I remember all the brave, proud brunettes. I remember Wendy and Dorothy and Sara and dearest Lucy and I tie my braids like a badge of honour. For we are the fierce, clever, plucky little maidens who save lost boys and open wardrobe doors and remember, in our dreams, how to fly.

It’s fire outside, and I’m bottled up in a glass jar, all windows. A little greenhouse. So I close the curtains and lie down on the cool, calm floor. Books flap about me on paper wings, insects in fine print, dizzying. Restless, I pace the room and my toes stick to the wood boards. The burnt light leaking through the blinds makes me melt like chocolate.

The little girl grew a bit taller and they sent her to a new school. It was then she realised that being invisible was something that was hard to stop. Each day she faded a little more in to the wallpaper until her hands became transparent, her feet translucent, and even she could no longer see herself. Once, when she looked in the mirror she saw nothing at all, just the bare green wall behind her. Now as girls are wont to do, when they grow a bit taller, she fell in love. The problem was that by now she was so invisible she could not get his attention. She tried everything, she wrote letters, drew pictures, sang songs, and he could see all of these but he could not see her, she was too good at being invisible and she didn’t know how to stop.

Eventually, she lost him, and her little heart hurt so bad that she ran away. She ran away from everyone and everything and she cut off her long long hair. She learned to write stories, her story, a thousand times over, recorded on paper, in print, that it might never be forgotten or fade away. She threw out her clothes and changed her name and carved herself a new identity and after a while, bit by bit, she began to be seen again. Not just seen, but noticed. They told her she was interesting, they told her she was clever, they told her she was beautiful and she didn’t believe them for a moment but she was so happy to be visible again that it didn’t matter what she looked like.

From then on she wore different clothes and said different things and played her own games and ate her own lunch and sometimes she got told off and bullied, but even that was worth it. One day, years later, she met him again. He called out her name, her new name, from the other side of a crowded room. She did not see him, or hear him at first and when she did she simply smiled and walked away.