When he climbed over the wall around the witch’s garden he still thought he had done so unseen. Even when he snuck up to the neat little rows of rapunzel he was convinced he was completely undetected.
It was not until the very last moment, when the furious form of the garden’s mistress was baring down on him, that he realised his mistake.
“How dare you,” spat the witch, her indignation raising her up to far more than her usual height. “To steal into my garden like a thief to plunder my vegetable beds. I will make you regret your insolence.”
“Please have mercy,” the terrified husband stammered. “I came only because-”
“Only because of me!” a strained voice panted behind them.
Both witch and thief whirled round, staring at the woman leaning heavily against the stone arch in the garden wall. She was very round around the waist and rather green in the face, but she was making a great effort to compose herself.
“Please don’t be angry,” she pleaded. “He only did it for me. I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“You asked him to sneak into my garden?” the witch asked, confused, but not enough to lose all her indignation.
“She didn’t!” the anxious husband cried, but his wife protested:
“I might as well have.” She looked up at the witch with pleading eyes in her pale face. “All your vegetables grow so lush and green,” she explained with a sigh. “And I just keep thinking…if I could only find something fresh enough, it would fix my mouth.”
The witch blinked at her, perplexed. “Fix your mouth?” She had seen her neighbour often enough as she passed by her windows, with dimpling cheeks and curving lips, and it had never seemed to her that her mouth needed any fixing at all.
“Everything tastes wrong,” she sighed. “And no matter how much I drink, I can’t wash this…mustiness out of my mouth. It’s only on account of the baby, it will pass, or so they tell me.”
“On account of the baby?” the witch spoke in dismay. “But surely that isn’t the normal way of things?”
“Quite normal,” her neighbour said resignedly, but the husband made a pitiful sound.
It seemed now to the witch that his broad shoulders were unusually slumped. Not with any fear of her, but with fatigue and worry.
“He can’t stand to see me upset,” the pregnant wife said softly. “I’m very sorry he broke into your garden.”
The witch faltered for a long moment. She had never before met her cheerful neighbours, no matter how many times she had seen them, and now she had felt so mistreated and had gotten so very angry… “I suppose I could make something?” she suggested. “Something fresh. Perhaps…a potion. Such subjective senses are not hard to bespell.”
“Can you really!” her neighbour exclaimed, and the eagerness and hope shining in her eyes were suddenly so bright that the witch felt herself sway on her feet. She glanced at the nervous man at her side.
“Is suppose I see why you snuck into my garden,” she muttered.
The impulsive, but loving husband, who now found himself beside his suddenly blushing wife and in much closer proximity to the attractive face of a stranger he had been used to only see glimpses of behind the window, managed an apologetic smile.
The witch cleared her throat. “I shall make something,” she decided. “I will bring it round as soon as it is done.”
“Oh thank you,” the woman exclaimed and her husband said:
“I’m really awful sorry.”
“We both are.”
The witch tried to wave them away, but now there was no stopping them.
“You must let me make it up to you,” the man begged, putting his arm out for his wife to lean on as if he no longer had to think on such things before doing them.
“Yes,” his wife agreed emphatically. “If you are coming over all the same, won’t you stay for dinner?”
And they both pressed her to accept their invitation with such earnest and eager hospitality that the witch heard herself agree before she knew how her tongue had ran away with her.
A little dazed, a little smiling, and a little more nervous still she watched how her neighbours made their way out of her garden. She watched them until they were out of sight and then she hastily knelt, to start plucking rapunzel.
