Pixel and the Witch

by Andrea Tillmanns

Admittedly, it could have been worse. An ant, for example, would have been worse. Or a plant. Although—could plants even think about being plants? But insects would have been worse. A bird of prey, however, would have been better… at least the flying part. Everything else—the constant and mostly futile hunt for something edible, while running the risk of being taken down from the sky by a hunting party—not so much. Actually, I couldn’t complain. And strictly speaking, I had no choice anyway.

When I first woke up in this body, saw the white fur on my shrunken arms and hands, meowed in fright, and clumsily extended my claws so that I got stuck in the forest floor, I thought it was all a nightmare. Now, almost a month later, I was slowly beginning to accept that I was a tomcat. I still didn’t understand the process—had the witch I was about to imprison turned me directly into a tomcat? Or had she killed me, and my soul had accidentally slipped into a black-and-white tomcat? Or had something completely different happened?

I didn’t know, and I probably never would find out. At the police station, which I walked to along familiar paths, there was rarely any talk about me, or rather about the person I had once been. Apparently, I had been missing since an operation, without a body ever being found—which could mean anything or nothing. It would have been easy for the witch to make my body disappear. Soon after beginning my life as a cat, I had returned to the place where her hut stood, in the middle of a clearing in the forest, surrounded by strange plants that she surely needed for her magic potions… but then I decided not to enter the hut. As I said, it could have been worse. Better a tomcat than dead. Or an ant.

Since then, I had been living at the police station. My former colleagues now knew me in my new form, and even though it was sometimes strange that they tried to pet me, I could live with it as long as they regularly gave me some of their food. I had tried mice, after all, there were plenty of them in all the alleys, and they were terribly clumsy in their attempts to escape. But after I accidentally bit into the gallbladder of my first mouse, I decided to resort to that only in an emergency. Conveniently, my former colleagues were satisfied when I presented them with a dead mouse every now and then, and rewarded me with much tastier things. And with a new name: instead of Egbert, they now called me Pixel, which was the local goblin name for elves. I didn’t think I looked like an elf, but I knew from many years of experience as a human police officer that animals with a name had the right to a roof over their heads and food. And in my current situation, that was more important than a name befitting my status.

But now all four colleagues were too busy with their current cases to feed me. I immediately realized that they lacked my knowledge and experience; I would certainly have found out much more quickly who was responsible for the strange incidents that were currently occurring around Everwalden and also in the middle of the city: A healer was called to a seriously ill child—and suddenly rushed out of his sickroom in a state of agitation because the child had allegedly simply disappeared. The duke’s starlings suddenly began singing drinking songs and even worse obscenities, whereupon his wife grabbed all five children and moved back to her mother’s house in Kottenbruke. For a good week, the Manheim Forest had been glowing in such an intense pink that all the dyers were trying to extract this new dye from the leaves of the trees. And it didn’t just affect humans: the bridge troll in the south had lost his bridge, and he couldn’t find a single stone. Two young elves—young by elven standards—stuck their hands together so tightly that neither elven nor human doctors could find a way to separate them. And the next time the dragon flew over the city, he seemed much smaller and reportedly sang as beautifully as a nightingale, whereupon the duke immediately stopped paying the monthly protection fee in the form of three goats.

In short: someone had just caused quite a bit of chaos here, and my former colleagues had no idea who could be responsible. And that, in turn, was a situation I didn’t like—did I mention the lack of food?

I had always acted on the principle that things that needed to be done right were best done by myself. Admittedly, that hadn’t quite worked out when it came to arresting the witch, but none of my colleagues would have done any better. As a normal human being, it was impossible to stand up to such powerful evil forces. In any case, I decided it was better to take care of the mysterious incidents myself than to hope that my human colleagues would succeed in solving these puzzles. The thought of mouse bile was motivation enough.

First, I followed Eberhard, who wanted to question the parents of the missing child again. He probably didn’t notice anything, as Eberhard was never particularly observant. And even if he had, he certainly wouldn’t have suspected that I was no ordinary cat. The family lived in the southern part of town, near the Holler Brook, in a small two-room house, one of which was actually used to accommodate the older children at night. Only when someone was very ill, as little Bertolf had been recently, were they allowed to sleep alone in the bed, while everyone else slept on the stove bench and on furs in front of the stove. As expected, the questioning didn’t reveal much—the healer had come, brewed herbs for him to inhale, and then rushed out of the sickroom screaming because Bertolf had suddenly disappeared. I already knew all that. At least Eberhard took a thorough look around the sickroom, and I followed him inconspicuously. A child could not have been abducted from here; there was no second door and no window, only cracks in the walls through which the smells of the street and the cool air penetrated. How could the sick boy have disappeared from this room without anyone seeing him?

The subsequent questioning of the healer, who lived in a small settlement outside the city walls, did not help me either. She insisted that she had done nothing wrong—“I was only trying to ease his suffering,” she sobbed, and when Eberhard asked further questions, she explained that the boy had been so weakened by hunger and fever that she had expected him to leave this world at any moment. “I wanted so much for him to go to a better place,” she added, wiping the tears from her eyes with her sleeve. “But I would never have hurt him!”

Well, that wasn’t very helpful either. No wonder Eberhard wasn’t getting anywhere with this case. On the way back, he made a little detour to visit the bridge troll, but he had disappeared just like his bridge. “Haven’t you heard?” remarked one of the mermaids who were sunbathing on the banks of the rather wide mill stream. “The troll was upset for a few days, and then he decided without further ado to see the missing bridge as a sign that he should finally treat himself to a few months’ vacation. After all, he couldn’t leave here for a single day as long as he was guarding the bridge. And he really looked like he needed a vacation after all these years here.”

I refrained from pointing out that he could have left the bridge at any time. Guarding it—and charging coins for crossing it—had been his own decision. Besides, I suspected that neither the mermaids nor Eberhard would have understood me.

After we returned to the police station, I joined Enolf, who wanted to talk to the duke about his starlings and the dragon. There I learned that the tame starlings in the large open-air cage were currently calm. “They only start their dreadful singing, cawing, and cursing in the evening,” reported the duke. Obviously, this story was too important to him to let one of his servants speak to us. “And as if that weren’t bad enough, they start their noise even earlier on holidays,” he added, shaking his head sadly. “If only I knew where my poor starlings heard all that filth…”

“Have you ever taken them to a tavern?” Enolf asked, and I shook my head with a soft meow. Who would come up with such an idea?

“Of course not,” replied the duke indignantly. “A man of my standing cannot afford to go to a tavern where such songs and chatter can be heard.” He shrugged his shoulders. “It would be interesting, of course, to eavesdrop on the people there unrecognized, but that’s probably not possible.”

Suddenly, I had the feeling that this visit was not as pointless as I had first assumed. What would the duke say about the dragon?

“Oh, that’s a strange new-fashioned dragon who has taken over his uncle’s cave here,” he said. “At first, he didn’t want any monthly offerings; he even claimed that he wouldn’t attack us or burn down the city without them. But as the conscientious leader of this city, I naturally consider it important to satisfy even such strange dragons.” He cleared his throat and then continued in a lower voice, as if he didn’t want any of his servants to hear him.“ I have heard that the dragon does not eat the goats at all, but lets them graze around his cave.” He looked around hastily and then stuck out his chin. “In any case, I immediately stopped further deliveries when he suddenly turned into a songbird—albeit a very large one.”

Unfortunately, Enolf did not want to speak directly to the dragon, regardless of whether it was a normal dragon or rather a rather large bird. On the way back to the police station, we met a painter at the market who was selling large-format paintings of pink trees and forests between fruit and vegetable stalls. Many of the market visitors in expensive clothes looked at them with interest, and occasionally someone bought one. I weaved my way through the crowd around his stall and listened to a conversation he was having with a customer. “Oh, it takes many days to create a painting like this,” the painter explained importantly. “I can only do three or four a month at most, so you’ll understand that I can’t sell you the painting any cheaper.”

I looked at the pictures hanging on the stand, slipped between two loose boards into the wooden hut, and looked at the other paintings that were still covered under the sales area. Unless the man had greatly exaggerated, when had he started painting to be able to offer dozens of pictures here? How long had the Manheim Forest been pink?

When Ensfried made his way to the elven couple after our return to the police station, I did not follow him. I was quite certain what the young people would say. The only question was—how could I prove that all these cases were connected and that I had truly solved the mystery that my colleagues were still struggling with?

Without thinking about it, my paws carried me to the hut in the forest where the witch lived, to whom I owed my current condition. Even though I never wanted to set foot in that hut again, deep down I was still the successful police officer who had solved every case so far. And somehow I couldn’t imagine her killing me – now that I thought I knew what she had to do with all the strange incidents.

I jumped onto the woodpile next to the hut, glanced through the open window, and then made an elegant leap inside, so quietly that no human would have heard me.

The witch noticed me anyway. “Ah, there you are,” she said kindly. “I’m glad you came back. Would you like some fish?” Without waiting for my answer, she fetched a dried fish from outside, cut it up, and placed it on a plate, which she set on the floor. Next to it, she placed a bowl of water, which she also fetched from outside. “There’s a well behind the house,” she explained. “Enjoy your meal.”

I didn’t need to be told twice. One more fish later, I was full and licked my paws with relish. Anyone who spoiled a cat like that couldn’t be a bad person.

“Can you actually talk?” asked the witch, looking at me curiously.

I meowed no.

“That’s a shame,” she said. “I would have liked to talk to you about what happened… May I read your thoughts so we can talk?”

This time I nodded cautiously to make sure she understood me. “Can you just do that?” I asked.

“I’ve always been quite good at reading minds,” she replied. “Less so at other things…”

“In any case, you make interesting potions,” I claimed, and was glad when she blushed. Strictly speaking, it could have been any other witch; I had just tried it first with the only one I knew. “They work pretty well,” I continued. “I’m just afraid your potions take some wishes too literally.”

Now the witch looked very contrite. “I know, but some people are just too unreasonable,” she muttered.

“Like that healer?” I asked.

She nodded. “She wanted the child to be in a better place. It is now in Hondarribia, about forty days’ journey south of here, and is recovering splendidly. Only the language is a problem. But it will learn to communicate with its new family.”

“And the duke?” I continued. “Let me guess, he wished to eavesdrop on his people in a moment of exuberance.”

She nodded. “A little too exuberant for his ears,” she admitted.

“And the dragon?”

“He wished that people wouldn’t see him as a threat. He’s actually very lonely… but maybe now he can make friends.”

“The bridge troll wished for a vacation, the elven lovers didn’t want anything or anyone to separate them, and the painter desperately wanted to sell his pink paintings, which he’s been painting for months for reasons unknown to me?” I speculated.

“Color blind,” she explained. “But otherwise very talented.”

I was silent for a while. That solved all the mysteries—except for one. “I never wished to be a cat,” I thought. “Why am I one now?”

This time, the witch’s cheeks turned deep red. “Of course, I tried the wish potion myself,” she murmured. “And when you came here in that fancy black and white uniform… for a moment, I accidentally wished we could spend the rest of our lives together.”

I didn’t quite understand, and she seemed to notice. “Have you ever seen a witch with a husband?” she asked, shaking her head. “Witches don’t live with men. Witches have cats.”

I had thought of many reasons why I was now a tomcat—I hadn’t thought of that one. I glanced at the plate, which was still shiny from the fish. It really could have been worse. “Can you wish me back?” I asked anyway, even though I thought I knew the answer. And actually, I wasn’t sure that my former life as Egbert had really been better than my new life as Pixel.

She shook her head. “I’ve already tried that, it doesn’t work,” she said quietly.

“Then you should go to the police station and make a statement,” I suggested. “The thing with the lump on the forehead of Gerlach’s horse, which I was supposed to arrest you for, is also one of the wishes that went wrong, isn’t it?”

“His wife wanted a unicorn,” she confirmed.

I sighed quietly. A unicorn would certainly not voluntarily pull Gerlach’s plow. Didn’t anyone think about what they wanted beforehand?

“Well, let’s get on with it,” I meowed and padded to the door, which the witch opened. “Let’s get this over with so we can have some peace and quiet again. And next time, you’ll sell your wish potions with a big warning label saying that people should think very carefully about what they wish for.”

So now I had two places where I was fed and could occupy myself with the most interesting cases while my colleagues dealt with the boring problems in the city. And with my new ally, I also had a translator for people who couldn’t see even the most obvious solutions to puzzles. It really could have been worse.