the air witch


"I'm kind of amazed, truth be told," said Gormglaith as she and Bairrfhionn walked through the airy, paned hall.

"Rathyen said it might be in the weave."

"...Huh?"

"Oh, thou knowst, how Geileis went stark for a twin of Raoghnailt's back in '71..."

Gormglaith cast her a sharp look.

"...and how the three of them, Seosaimhthin Fen with Giorsal and Geileis Grendel were the it girls of Kin Dails. Knit at the hips, they say!"

Gormglaith's face had gone red, jaw set.

"Thou didstn't know?" Bairrfhionn gasped. "Oh Gormglaith it's all anyone can talk about! Geileis jilted Seosaimhthin to crush with the Sparkenbanes at Glas knoll and after she hello lizzied them over some ticklish slight to Giorsal her life in Kin Dails was chavel. Enid swept up the shards and by all tellings was thrilled to do it but the whispers never dwindled and later they fled to Elmthorpe."

Bairrfhionn glanced sidelong at Gormglaith's empty forward stare as they came to a frosted door opening into a lair of wintry glowing granite lit by an overlappish skylight. Inlaid flush on the back wall was a fat red apple skeinishly crafted from tiny red corundum wafers. An elfen shee with big wide set blue eyes and neck length flaxen hair, clad in but snowy white longstockings folded snugly below her chest, rose from a white quartz desk strewn with bright goblins.

"Hey!" she greeted with a big toothed smile.

"Hey Mab!" said Bairrfhionn, "...Gormglaith, Mab here's an air witch! She hangs out in pine, mostly!"

"I'm thrilled to meet thee Gormglaith. How art thou?"

"Hi. Oh... ducky."

"I'm off," said Bairrfhionn. "If thou needst me, ask, but thou shaltn't!"

The banshee spun and ran out with a tight smile. Mab watched the blaze of maple red hair stream through the door.

"Ok Gormglaith," she said, smiling broadly. "What's up?"

Gormglaith gazed at the air witch.

"Thou lookst kind of like Raoghnailt. Th'art not her twin but couldst be her twain."

"Ta! That's not too startling to hear, I guess. We're close kin about a thousand sundry ways."

"Hast thou run a tree on thy kynn?"

"Raoghnailt told me is all... thou knowst how she is," said Mab, grinning.

"Thou'st never run thy clannin tree...?"

"Once I guess, back in root."

"Anyway I have. Forty-three waves of afliae going back seven thousand years, a few hundred quintillion slots," said Gormglaith. "By any pinch the same few thousand girls show up time and again in billions of buckets but even so it's got all the clannin names I've ever heard of. So if y'all are close kin you likely share tonnes of shenn a few waves back but go further and we're all kin a billion times over."

"Try a trillion..." put Mab.

"Yeah," said Gormglaith, smirking.

"Hey, speaking of which, how're thou and Raoghnailt getting on?"

"...Wickedly."

"Then I can gull myself it's flattery."

"As if!"

"So how're things going?"

"It's harsh, thou knowst, but I saw that coming," Gormglaith sighed, nodding.

"Peel 'em, scoot up here and tell me about harsh!"

"I only mean," she said, hooking thumbs under pleated wrap, shimmying out of her longstockings and hopping up to sit on the edge of the lightly bolstered, thick granite board where a dark green sprig of mistletoe with waxen berries dangled from a cotton string nigh over her thatchen head, "a lot's been happening altogether too fast and I miss my kynn and Findabair, rather awfully."

"How'dst thou sleep last night?" Mab asked, grasping Gormglaith's wrist.

"Like a stone..." Gormglaith answered with a Frisian spin.

"...and trees. There're no trees here! I like trees."

Mab smiled, put two fingers on Gormglaith's chest and listened.

"Any nags?"

"Nope. How's thumper?"

"Gormglaith... I flip for the sound of a fettle S-two!"

Mab winked, tapping about on Gormglaith's chest and upper back, asking her to breathe, hold her breath and so on. She felt her neck, breasts and swivels, sniffing her skin here and there. With sundry tools the witch peered into her eyes, ears, nose and throat. A twittering chirp sounded and Mab glanced at a goblin.

"The bath in the Heathering," she said, scratching her flaxen head, "has such utterly slan things to say about thee... so how dost thou feel about needles? I'd like to do a bit of blood craft whilst we're at it."

"Spog," sighed Gormglaith, grimacing and holding out her right forearm.

"I guess I should tell thee," said the witch as she fixed a jabber twig with clicksome speed, "I like stickin' girls and I don't know why!"

That got a thin smile.

Mab twirled a band about Gormglaith's upper arm and whilst this slowly curled and wrapped itself snug she found a vein. As a springy red robot the size of a puffin hopped up and beamed light into the soft underside of a scaanish forearm, the witch warded a looming titanium needle, long, thick and gleaming, then deftly slid it under sheer skin. Gormglaith shuddered as the twig sucked an ounce of her blood with one smooth and steady pull. She seemed withdrawn when Mab popped a dark, purplish crimson noggin into a slot on the desk.

Next Gormglaith sprawled back on the board, gathering lanky, gangled limbs as the air witch stepped between her legs and grazed an inner thigh with the back of a hand. The banshee reckoned frosty panes in the skylight whilst Mab gabbishly made way into her womb.

"That's wholesome... yeah, I miss 'em too, tell me if anything hurts... hey, like back in Beek where I grew up, black spruces 'n white pines everywhere, aye, that's fallain... wee afternoon strolls through the woods, crushin' on pine needles, skippin' over roots threaded every which way, this is weavish... sunlight tricklin' by skeins of boughs and branches, so slan... ok," she put with a shrug, "...looks fettle as frike to me!"

"Thou canst get up," said Mab, waving at a glassy black tile on the deck, "and stand in the scanner so we can get a pink in on this too."

Gormglaith swung big feet to the floor, slid off and lit over to the now icily glowing swatch.

"'k... ready?"

Gormglaith nodded and was steeped in waggling blue and green beams which made bouncing shelves of light.

"Put thy things back on if thou like'st, then come over for a gander!"

With Gormglaith hovering at her shoulder the witch zoomed, panned and layered. Gormglaith frowned as Mab watched her heart pound robustly, then with a wave of her right hand sliced off the top making a cutaway to see the blood go through in gulps, crimson red on one side, dark blue on the other, valves opening and closing in a steady lubb dubb beat.

"Thumper looks wet! I'll have a closer look at all this later, but so far it's..."

With a low beep, a blobish purple goblin popped up nearby.

"Blood craft's in," said Mab, swinging about to see.

"Ooh... pinky likes thy rindle! Stern gobblers... ha! Thou'st been drinkin' lots of ginger crush!"

"Oops. I'm sorry..."

"I'm only ribbin' ya... hey, hold on a sec... what the..."

"What?"

Gormglaith craned her neck to read the floating runes.

"Gob... smacks!" said Mab. "No worries but I've never seen... here, let's take a look at this."

She whisked a hand over the goblin.

"Wow."

"Where? What is it?"

"It's thy tag... looky!"

"Everybody," said Mab, "has a tag, that itty bitty weave of ash gobblers lurkin' along the billions of hooked yokes on their thread, braided on a shred that hasn't brewed since, like, our afliae had gills and swam in the sea."

"Geileis!" whispered Gormglaith, gaping at Mab. "My twin kynn must have put that there."

"Thou'st never seen it?"

"No and she never told me. I mean I've seen the tag but I never saw that before!" said Gormglaith, casting a forefinger.

"It's row eleven, which most pinks wouldn't bring up. This one does though since it's the same kind blood witches have in a braiding lair..."

Mab glanced at Gormglaith who now stood straight and stiff, staring up at the skylight, teeth gnashed, eyes rundled halfway back into her forehead.

"...I've seen a few of these," the witch chatted airily, "but only for brews and braids... don't know about the bounds but they're stern. 'As she kisses this is my pog...' hey Gormglaith, didn't I hear thou saidst something like that at Loch henge?"

"...Yeah," she said, gazing down again at the hovering green runes. "It's Eachdraidh, from a song Geileis taught me when I was little. Our namesake wrote it."

Mab nodded, rising from her chair.

"I'm not in any fix or whatever," Gormglaith blurted out, "with like fifty billion casts of this fussy spell runnin' throughout my body..."

"Naw. Besides, if thou'dst like to know, I think it's kewl. Speaking of which, besides stickin' girls, I like ringin' 'em too."

Mab tilted her head.

"How 'bout it?"

Seconds later Gormglaith was back under the mistletoe, shins swinging from the granite board's edge. Smirking, the air witch grasped Gormglaith's bony knees, swiftly spread them, stepped in between and faced her. She nudged the tip of Gormglaith's nose with her thumb and peeked inside.

"A new nose ring might make thee lisp for a night or three."

"Yeah... pledge lisp."

"Truth be told I think lispin' pledges are fetching... Ok, so this crayon's meant to numb the weepy creeps out of thy snooty. It'll feel cold... and it's thrash on lurkin' bugs."

"Wretched things," said Gormglaith as Mab dabbed the insides of her nose with icy little taps.

"See the loop," she said. "The afliae's platinum, no hue, quite true, pulled to the wonted seventeen gauge, bent from a wire nigh two and three-fourths inches long so the closed ring'll be a dash under seven-eighths across..."

Mab warded a hollow, bowed needle with its glitteringly sharp and slanted side grind.

"...I'll be tuggin' on thy sniffy a bit and tha mightst think th'art gonna sneeze but otherwise thou shouldstn't feel a thing... lean forward... a bit more then and chin up... up... there, now hold still..."

"...and hold thy breath a tick..."

With starkly heedful, brightening keen blue eyes the witch smoothly twirled the needle and stabbed Gormglaith's faal.

"Spot on! Th'art bleedin' a beck but that's wonted, no fret so keep forward, chill and let it drip..." said Mab, fixing an end of the shining, silvery loop to a trailing nib of the bowed needle still hanging from the banshee's nose as plump drops of blood splattered steadily crimson onto the hard white granite floor and Gormglaith softly gasped.

"...Hey! We're almost done!"

With another quick spin the wire was threaded and the bloodied quill bearing its mite of flesh rattled onto a tray. Mab stopped the bleeding and then, warding handheld grippers, swiftly melded the blunt ends into a seamless, gleaming ring which sent up a short and bitter whiff of air. After daubs with linen swatches, under mistletoe and gazing through big cheery eyes the witch gave Gormglaith a smunchy dry kiss on the mouth (and felt her up). She giggled as Mab pulled her to a looking glass.

"Have a glom!"

She gaped, stared, flashed a smile at the air witch and put eyes back on her cast.

"It may sting a bit for a few hours, no worries. Nor should I want to let slip anything for thy pain since it's meant to be sweet and meed for thee, so do try to forget my weak knees for beseeching! Mind, if it still nettles after supper that's likely another tale and I'll want to hear about it, even if th'art having a weepy kick for thyself as some are wonted. Either way, spin it thrice in the tick of night and day for a moon 'n drop by every other so I can have a peek, ok?"

With a clanninish tap on Gormglaith's bottom Mab called out, "...and don't thou be shy about comin' to see me!"

She walked back to the Heathering grinning from ear to ear.