Mother threw a fit when we took away her cauldron and animal bits from her apothecary. She had blood oozing out of my ears, which I let drip into the cauldron. She swore about all the things she'd do to someone who crossed a witch, and the ways she'd find new rats and bats, and ewe guts. If Puddles wasn't her familiar, I'm sure she'd have cannibalized her for ingredients too. But the nurse , Angela, who keeps calling me a good boy instead of Marko, comes by once a week to reapply the bandages to mother's legs, and my mother still manages to keep some curses in store. It's odd. She can't read a clock anymore, but she still can utter, word-perfect, a flesh-eating curse faster than most people these days can... well, read a clock.

Angela is the only nurse who's stayed. She drops by my office to be uncursed, on the days where I'm too busy to supervise mother. Sometimes when Angela shows up to the house, just as tough, cheery, and uncursed as the last time she came to help my mother, my mother will remember. From a note, perhaps that she scrawled somewhere in her calendar. I've found these kinds of notes. She'll read it and astral project till she finds me and put a minor curse on me, for uncursing Angela. Those are good days, when she's mostly clear, and getting up to mischief. But she's gotten lost in the astral plain before, and it is not easy to track someone down there.

I do it, because I moved in with her and she's my mother, but it was no simple task. Angela had called, panicked for the first time. She's familiar with witches, coming from the old country and all, but usually mother gets back from astral projection fairly quickly. We got her back, but that day hurt. It was a nice, good day, the next time I felt her reach from the astral realm, and dump cold water over my astral head. My own patient was shocked by the way I froze up suddenly. I excused myself, hoping I wouldn't have to hunt her down again and saw her astral form gleefully swooping away, following a trail of cut hair she had left for herself, just in case.

A few months later Angela called again. Concerned in that stern, inconvenienced manner of hers.

"Two weeks now, in a row, no curses. Docile like sheep."

"Thanks, Angela, I'll look into it."

"Witches, they don't like this. It's not good for her. She will do something herself."

"Thanks, Angela."

"Okay, I know you are good boy, you will do something."

"Take care of yourself, Angela."

There was nothing I could do. The corridors of her mind were falling apart, and she was doing her best to leap between them, but the moments of lucidity were coming less and less frequently. She was upset a lot of the time, not angry or mischevious but lost. Like a child, in a way. I never thought I'd miss the curses, the frustration of having to undo another one, untangle the web of them before. But I did. Because they were a part of her.

"Marko," she said, on one of her lucid days.

"Yes, mama?"

"Don't make me do it myself. I'll curse you worse than anything I've done if you do."

"Are you ready?"

"No," she said. "But I never will be. Make it peaceful. When I lose myself in there again, I don't want to wake up."

"I love you, mama," I said.

"Mmmm." she said. "A witch's love never dies."

She opened her arms to me.

When I nodded off watching her favourite TV show, puddles on my lap, she made hair grow out of every part of my body until I looked like a Sasquatch. And for my part, when I woke before her, I soothed every ache in her body, felt her breathing easy, and invited her soul to move on. She did feel ready to go. I think it was a relief for both of us.