Chapter Text
Crowley's skirts swept the soft, sweet-decay smelling leaves, and they flirted off askitter. There seemed a certain skippety, off-the-heelness to her gait which suggested, if not mischief, something shoulder-close with it. She was humming some fanciful ditty and whistling through her teeth. A bluetit branch-hopped after, chirping back.
There were snags in her sleeves from the brambles, and Aziraphale would be picking bits of leaf from her petticoat lace for a week, but she would return with a basketful of scrumptiousness and spellish things, and her smile would be breathless and her cheeks pink with the morning’s chill, and—if she suffered them both to be kissed and herself tutted over a bit—she would soon earn what passed for forgiveness.
Eye of newt was the next on her list of things to gather or procure. Crowley liked the newts. She liked the frogs, and the toads, and the lacewings as well, for that matter. And the beetles. And the shrew. And she saw no reason whatsoever why her witchcraft should be cruel. There were ways, she had long since decided—and this was the key to the thing; she had decided, not discovered there were ways around the call for eye of, toe of, bile of, wing or wing-casing or tail of this or that thing when it came to making spells.
Take eye of newt, for example. All you really had to do was get out early in the morning, find a friendly newt or two with the goop of sleep still fresh in their eyes, and—this was the only tricky part—collect it in a tiny vial, and zhoom! Merl’s your uncle. It worked just the same, and the newts got along with their day, and Aziraphale looked at her as though she’d hung the stars while she pretended not to notice, which was lovely in a squirmy sort of way.
A couple of the others hadn’t proven so easy. Some she’d had to wait for inspiration to strike on. Like the time she’d been sprawled in a clearing come midsummer, with her skirts up round her hips, sunning her longfellow legs while Aziraphale gathered wild strawberries and berries for pies, and a lacewing had alighted on her nose. The sunlight had danced off its wings like the colours in quartz, and Crowley had known there was magic in that. Much more magic than you’d find in a plucked away wing.
And so, all their spells in Aziraphale’s handwritten book read things like: ‘Eye goop of newt’, or: ‘Sunlight filtered through left wing of lacewing’. ‘Dipped toe of frog’, or: ‘swirled tail of shrew’, or: ‘moonlight (first or last quarter, sometimes crescent, depending) reflected off wing casings of jarful of beetles’ (shortened to ‘moon beetle jar’ with the moonphase drawn beside to save ink and Aziraphale’s sanity), or: ‘burp of toad.’
Crowley was close upon the river where the newts lived, where it curved round the foot of the mountains which bordered their forest to the north, forming small, dabbling pools amidst the tumblestones and crags, when she heard a low, mean cackle.
There weren’t a lot of witches in these parts anymore, but unfortunately Metrona was one. And Metrona had no care for keeping cruelty from her magic. Nor for doing any kindness with it.
Crowley crouched behind a gooseberry bush and gathered her skirts for the creeping.
It was too late for the poor newt being jarred up and stowed in Metrona’s satchel to heed her shrill warning whistle, but Crowley sensed a most definite fwoomph in the ether as various other creatures took collective flight and flee.
Crowley drew her writhen ivy wand from its strapping at her ankle and palmed its rough-bark haft, her pinkie curling in at the fork where two branches embraced into one, and the magic flowed strongest. Metrona was well renowned for her duelling skills, and Crowley knew she stood no more than a fleet trickster’s chance should it come to that, so she kept very still and hoped that her whistle might pass as a starling’s.
Metrona stood with her head cocked aside for, what felt to Crowley, an unnatural while. Her heart bumped so hard she felt certain the ill-met witch would hear and fire a rogue spell at the bushes—
But Crowley’s heart beat truer than Metrona’s spiteful ear could hope to hearken to, and she fastened the tie of her satchel with a cheerful, scraping laugh, consulting an old bit of parchment which she’d tucked in the band of her hat.
“Ah, yes,” she intoned. “Tongue of nightingale.”
And swept out of sight, with a flash.