“A pox on you!” cackled one of the witches. Her green nose was spotted with warts, and a pointed black hat covered her stringy grey hair. She and her coven of eleven other sorceresses were rubbing their bottoms and moaning, still smarting from being smacked down. The hyenas, having now had their wicked riders removed, became calm and docile and stared blankly into space. Seeing that the situation was now under control, Slub Glub and the three raccoons came down from their hiding place among Willowmina’s branches.
“I thought you witchy women all rode on broomsticks,” Slub Glub commented.
“I’ll turn you into a toad!” cackled the hag. “By the dust of mummies and the crust in tummies, with fang and claw and tooth and awe, I call down thunder and cast you under, a spell to render you a frog, you hog!” The witch waved her torch aloft with great dramatic intent, but the fire on it had gone out, which apparently diminished her hex-casting techniques. “Um, just a moment,” she muttered embarrassedly, and she reached over to one of the hyenas’ hindquarters.
Slub Glub discreetly moved away from the witch and sidled up to one of the hyenas, who was sitting somewhat distant from the rest of the group. “Hyena, tell me, what is that crazy crone doing?”
“Oh, she’s getting some butter from under that hyena. These witches have been using our butter to light their torches.”
“I didn’t know hyenas made butter. Are you related to cows?”
“No, any creature can make butter if they try hard enough. We use it to mark our territory, or at least we did, until these loathsome ladies started stealing it all from us. Then they light their torches and ride around on top of us all night, using their fiendish sorcery to make us hysterical and mean.”
“Why would they want to do that?”
“You’d have to ask them.”
To be continued.
Table of Contents: “Slub Glub in the Weird World of the Weeping Willows”
Get the graphic novel from Eraserhead Press.
Illustration & text copyright (c) Andrew Goldfarb