---A Memory of the Forest---

  Little Andrew, age 8, gripped tightly at his grandmother's hand. He was shivering, half from the intense cold, half from fear. "How much longer?" he asked in a hushed voice.

  "Not long now," grandma cackled loudly. Creatures in the shadows with red glowing eyes hissed at them as they walked forward, guided by the soft moonlight or by grandma's small lantern in places the moon was hidden. When they reached a clearing, they found a wounded deer bleeding out on the soft patch of grass. It had soft pinkish-brown fur dotted with white spots, sharp elegant hooves, and a horn on its forehead like a unicorn. "It's a Unideer," Andrew gasped.

  "Do you like her?" Grandma asked.

  "She's hurt!" Andrew yelled.

  As they got closer, Andrew quickly turned his face away from the gory sight. The innards of the unideer fell out from its deep wound. How it was still alive was beyond Andrew. Grandma crouched beside it. "Nurse Andrew, how will you help me if you can't even look?"

  Andrew hesitantly turned back to it, but the wound was already gone. The blood on the patch of grass soaked slowly into the earth. "Sorry darling," his grandma said to the creature, and hugged it. The unideer nuzzled its face against hers. Andrew softly petted it on the back. "What caused-"

  There was a loud, deafening screech. Suddenly the moonlight was blocked out completely and there was darkness everywhere. Andrew couldn't see his grandma or the unideer. He brought out his glowing stars, yet small and faint, but still he could not see them. The light illuminated something else in the distance.

  A humanlike creature with slimy, pale skin and large hollow eye sockets grinned at him. It was humanlike, but definitely not a human being. In fact, it was like no creature Andrew had ever seen before. It had a vicious smile and long, black, snakelike hair that moved and curled round its mangled limbs.

  Little Andrew felt his breath catch in his throat. He wanted to run but tripped as he tried moving backwards. The creature hissed and laughed, making a shrill, evil sound, and got down on all fours. Despite its disfigured arms and legs, it crawled towards him with surprising speed. A slimy red tongue slithered in and out of its mouth and eye sockets. As it neared, Andrew could see blood on its arms, its claws, its face, its teeth.

  It also had eyes on its arms and legs. So many eyes. They were all looking at him.

  There was a perpetual smile on its face.

  Andrew screamed, but no sound came out. He felt tears burning his eyes, but they didn't come out. He tried to breathe but the air he took in didn't seem to reach his lungs. He felt stuck, like someone put the inside of his body on pause. The creature was so near that he could smell it, and it smelled awful. It leapt at him.

  In the heat of the moment he chanted the only spell he knew. Though no sound came out, perhaps as a reaction to the intense fear running through every cell of his being, stars began to fly out uncontrollably from Andrew's mouth and his eyes.

  It was painful. Very painful.

  The last thing he remembered was passing out.

  Andrew could not use any magic for a month afterwards.

  -------

  Andrew complained about schoolwork and all the cleaning he was tasked with. The schoolwork bit wouldn't cut it with them as they had seen, firsthand, Andrew's attitude to his studies during their time as his cats. They assured him they would help him with the cleaning when they were back.

  Andrew told them time and again about grandma's warnings but they waved him off. "That applies to you; not us. And if you're with us, you'll be fine!" Scarlet assured him. Andrew was not very cowardly when it came to most things but the forest was an exception. He had been there once before as a child and the experience still rang in his head. He didn't divulge the scenario to the witches. Even talking about it was a self-imposed taboo for him.

  Andrew found himself begrudgingly entering the forest between Elaine and Scarlet. He recognized the path for a full ten minutes of walking before they invaded unfamiliar territory. Andrew clutched the straps of his backpack closer, more for emotional support than anything else. The early morning light vanished beyond the canopy of leaves; only the illusion of day remained.

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  They walked in silence for about an hour. He was too shaken remembering his prior experience to speak. As they approached a clearing, Elaine slowed down her pace. The clearing was rather round and spacious. There were some deer grazing in the grass near the center.

  "Deer lungs might help speed up the process," Scarlet commented.

  "Absolutely not!" Elaine hissed.

  "A thirteen leaf clover will be next to impossible to find instead," Scarlet declared and squatted down on the ground to sulk.

  Andrew sat down beside her, suddenly realizing just how exhausted he felt.

  "It's always like this with her," Scarlet explained in hushed tones.

  "What about when you really need... err, animal ingredients?" he asked.

  "Well," Scarlet sat cross-legged opposite him. "Elaine doesn't complain if the animals are already dead, and if we really really really need the ingredients. If we're really lucky, I can find some unharmed animal carcasses with the organs in usable condition. She refuses to take part in it so I have to do the uh, dismantling and concocting myself. It's not like I like hurting innocent animals, you know." She rocked back and forth as she spoke. "But then again, I do eat meat and I suppose some of what I say can sound hypocritical to people like Elaine." She shrugged and left it at that.

  Elaine was walking around, peering through an 'O' shape she made with her thumb and index finger. She looked impatiently over at the other two, watching them indignantly until they rose to aid her in the search. Scarlet made the same gesture with her fingers and asked Andrew to follow. Then she mumbled a spell and the hollow between the two fingers became something akin to a magnifying glass.

  They'd set off in different directions of the clearing. If a thirteen leaf clover were to be found, it would be there. The clovers grew in patches where light could reach them. Deer often grazed on them and spotting deer was also considered a lucky sign. Andrew had spotted clovers with up to seven, eight, even nine leaves. Scarlet requested him to pick up the seven and twelve leafed clovers as well, for a different potion she needed to make.

  After nearly an hour of pacing about the opening, no thirteen leaf clovers were spotted. Andrew, however, finally found a four leaf clover which he had been privately searching for. He thought he would show it to the witches when they were finally done with this ridiculous task. The deer were grazing in the center of the clearing and the witches initially avoided them in case they got scared and trampled over the clovers. At length, they had no choice but to approach the area nearer to them. The deer raised their heads in caution, watching the three through dark beady eyes.

  The clovers followed a circular pattern in the clearing. From the beginning all the way to the center, there were about nine circles of clover, each spanning the clearing like a border. The ones nearest to the edge were the longest, the ones nearer to the center were much smaller.

  Andrew's fingers began to hurt from holding them in that magnifying glass position for so long. After a while, he noticed a deer watching him. He thought it was just being apprehensive, but when he looked back at it, it seemed to bow its head at him. Not knowing what else to do, he bowed back. Scarlet and Elaine were busy looking through the patches and Andrew didn't want to disturb this interaction by calling out to them. The deer then trotted over to him and rubbed its head against his shirt. He patted its head and back. It sniffed one of his pockets and it took him some time to realize that was where he'd kept the four leaf clover. He took it out and showed it to the deer. It opened its mouth, indicating with its hoof to feed it to him. Andrew looked over his shoulder again at the two witches who were missing the whole exchange. The deer waited with some degree of patience, and at length Andrew fed it the clover. He wasn't a very superstitious person so it wasn't as though he especially believed it would bring him luck. And even if such a thing were to be true, he already found the clover so he should get his due luck.

  The deer munched on the clover. It sounded suspiciously crunchy. After finishing its snack, the deer bit into Andrew's shirt and pulled him towards the inner circle. It then pointed at a patch with its hoof and looked expectantly up at him. There were three clovers with thirteen leaves each.

  Andrew stared at them for a few moments and counted the leaves a few times each to be sure. Then he called Scarlet and Elaine over. Elaine picked them carefully and put them in a container. Andrew petted the deer affectionately. "I'm gonna call her Betsy," he declared.

  "Cute, but 'Betsy' is a boy-deer," Elaine said, though her entire focus was on carefully sealing the container. "Betsy did a great job! Betsy's a good boy, aren't you Betsy!" Scarlet ran her hand over Betsy's back.

  Betsy once again bowed his head to them and walked back to join the other deer.

  "I'll miss that guy," Andrew said as they headed out of the clearing and back into the darkness of the forest.

  "That was lucky," Scarlet said and stretched her arms, yawning loudly.

  "Luck, huh?" Andrew told them about the four leaf clover. The two witches were taken aback.

  "Four leaf clovers are much rarer than thirteen leaf clovers," Elaine explained. "They are very hard to find, even in other realms."

  "Should I have kept it instead?"

  Elaine shrugged. "It's fine. We got our luck from it already, I suppose. For us, the thirteen leaf clovers are a necessity and we got them. There's no point in pushing it and wanting more."

  'Good,' Andrew thought, realizing how sick he was of the word 'clover' and of clovers in general.

  "Also," Scarlet smiled, "I think you just found yourself a candidate for a familiar!"

  "What?" Andrew asked.

  "Well, witches and wizards have familiars sometimes, right? They're usually an animal, and they assist practitioners of magic."

  "Interactions like those are how one comes to meet their familiar," Elaine said.

  'A familiar, huh?' Andrew considered. "How do we know if the animal actually wants to be my familiar?"

  "You just do," Scarlet shrugged.