'Witches are as witches do,' her mother once told her when she was very young.

At the time, Puddlebrain had no idea what her mother had been waffling on about. Way back then it hadn't mattered – her mother was very sweet, but had a tendency to be eccentric sometimes. Puddlebrain, indeed the three sisters together, listened to their mother's words and just nodded their collective heads, even if it didn't make any sense. The phrase still didn't entirely mean anything, but Puddlebrain had a idea of what her mother was trying to say. She was a witch. Act like one.

Of course, that depended on what sort of witch you were. Edna was used to people doing as she said so she would simply blunder in. She wouldn't bother to ask questions as she often believed she already knew the answers. Gemini, bless her, was a meat pie short of a Sunday dinner, so she blundered in too, but really because she didn't think about things properly. For her, there were no questions and who cared about answers? It was almost thirteen o'clock and she was hungry!

Puddlebrain was like neither of these. She couldn't help but think of the consequences of her actions. If she was forced into doing something she didn't like, as in the case of Billy, she felt guilty afterwards. On many occasions Edna had told her not to be so wet. Puddlebrain couldn't help it. She was wet, although she didn't think of it that way. As far as she was concerned, she was considerate. If that made her wet, or even a bit damp, then that was who she was.

So.

Witches are as witches do.

OK, mother.

The forest ignored her. She was nothing and it was mighty. She had been thoughtful and asked nicely. She had done her best to be reasonable in an unreasonable situation.

Puddlebrain raised her hand before her. She wrinkled her brow in concentration. One last chance? Any takers?

The witch knew it was time to be a witch. She extended her finger and slowly swirled it around, pointing all the while at the trees that kept her a prisoner. At first there was no reaction. The Grimace, stalwart and resolute, thought as little of her magic as it did of her.

She stretched her hand out further, the spinning finger rotating faster. A whirlpool of light, all sparkles and dust, drifted in the wake of her fingertip. It spiralled, looking like one of the fireworks let off during the Grand Festival of Summer, which, for some strange reason, was always held in autumn. The wisps of light began to extend forward from her hand, the whirl straightening into a stretched coil. Like tendrils of electricity, a phenomenon yet to reach the village of Little Whimsy (although some of the larger towns and cities apparently used it), the magic that Puddlebrain was conjuring danced from branch to trunk to leaf to root, an almost passionate waltz of enchantment that belied the motives beneath. Pausing to dip only past the fossilised gnome, she turned about, casting a wide circle of light in the otherwise darkened forest. She clenched her teeth. Sweat popped onto her face and ran down her cheeks like juice from a freshly bitten apple. Still there was nothing.

Wait...

A low groaning sound seemed to rumble from the floor of the Grimace. It vibrated up through Puddlebrain's legs, making her clenched teeth feel like they were being pulsed out of her head. The Grimace was waking up to the fact that, this time, they could not ignore the intruder in their midst. Puddlebrain raised her other hand and splayed all her fingers out wide. She had never done anything like this before, but was tearing a page from her sisters' book. She wasn't thinking. Until then, a simple hand movement and a little concentration had been all that was needed to cast a spell. Now, however, Puddlebrain was using her entire body. The Grimace was, truly, mighty, but they hadn't counted on a little witch with a big attitude.

With both arms outspread, still turning, the witch began to move her lips, chanting a spell that went unheard through the steadily growing growl of the forest. Her voice may have been unheard, but the effects certainly were not. With a languor that seemed as if the forest was moving in slow motion, the trees began to straighten. The intertwined branches moved upwards, away from each other, separating the trees from being a mass, almost a single body, to being individuals. Twigs and leaves flattened against the larger branches. Some snapped when the force of being bent, with the tree itself fighting the transformation, was too much for the lesser boughs. Snaps and cracks echoed around her, the cries of the forest, sounding like some massive beast stampeding towards her. Still the trees bent upwards, reaching for the sky, desperate for the sunlight, or at this time of night, moonlight, that had been denied them for so long. As they reached, so the blanket of leaves above Puddlebrain thinned.

The moon was a sliver away from being full. The sky was cloudless and the stars shone almost as bright as the moon. The way forward, until now barred from the witch, had been opened. A small, tight pathway led further into the forest, a little too invitingly. Puddlebrain stopped turning and lowered her arms. She wiped the sweat from her brow with her sleeve. She frowned. How? Where?

"What do you...?" Puddlebrain paused.

She had been about to ask Billy what he thought about the path. Naturally, being a tree himself (or unnaturally in this case), he couldn't answer. She wondered suddenly if he could still hear her.

"Billy, I'm sorry. It had to be done. I don't know if you can hear me, or if you believe me, but it was for the best. I didn't know what else to do. I needed help, not..." She searched for a word other than whinging, but couldn't think of one. "I've got to go," she said finally. "Wish me luck."

Puddlebrain turned to face the path. Careful, she told herself. She wasn't entirely sure how the pathway had appeared. She was sure she had simply caused an opening – made the trees part to allow her to pass. Her spell had been more of a show of strength to the Grimace than anything else. She wanted it to know her. She wanted it to understand that she had to get though with or without its help.

But how, exactly?

She was a witch, but she was a simple one at best. Neither her nor her sisters had ever conjured the sort of power that had been needed to bend a forest – a mean, dark and menacing forest – to their will. They could do almost anything they wanted, indeed, but the Grimace had power of its own. Not magic, perhaps, but it had an indomitable force of will if nothing else. She knew that, if she had thought about how to conquer that will, she probably wouldn't have managed to do so.

She could turn a gnome into a tree. She could dance in the rain and not get wet. She could do so many things, but this was beyond her experience. That frightened her. All of a sudden it seemed she was more than she should be. She had to keep that under control, but wasn't sure she could do so. She had intended on pushing the trees aside. That was it. Instead she had forced them to embrace the sky. That wasn't in their nature. The Grimace was shadowy. It was brooding. It embraced nothing except the night. She had changed that.

Had it changed her?

This was getting her nowhere. Time and again she found herself worrying about what had and what might happen. She was dwelling too much and doing too little. Thoughts swept over her without warning, carrying the witch away on their currents. She had to fight to keep her feet and her focus.

But she was only a girl! She was the baby! She was...

Puddlebrain slapped her forehead. It was the Grimace! It was stealing her away from herself. The Grimace was the current that swept her along, not her own thoughts. She smiled bitterly.

Thought you had me there. I'll show you.

Still unsure of the pathway – had she created it or was it the Grimace's doing? – Puddlebrain knew she had no choice. If she stayed, she would achieve nothing except be seduced by the forest into either forgetting herself or wallowing in her unnecessary feelings of guilt. She walked to the start of the path. Tall, thick oaks lined its edges. She could feel them staring down at her, waiting for their chance. Well they could wait!

Boldly, Puddlebrain slapped her hand onto the trunk of the nearest one. It was rough and cold, but she could instantly feel the energy rumbling within. She was aware of the creeping sensation that seemed to crawl up her arm from her fingertips, but ignored it. She was telling the forest, not the other way around. She furrowed her brow, pursed her lips and pushed. She held her hand there, hard against the trunk, for a few long seconds while sparks of her magic spat at the wood. When she finally pulled her hand away, there was a print on the tree like the shadow of her hand that had forgotten it was meant to move with her, or had maybe fallen asleep and needed to be woken, an afterimage left behind to say 'Hey! This is ME! Don't you forget it!"

Puddlebrain nodded, satisfied. She hadn't needed to do much, just enough to leave her mark. She stepped onto the pathway and started along it.