The plan didn’t materialize in her head instantly. Red had to think through a lot first.

Great ma was gone, and Red knew perfectly well where she was at that time. The stone house. Taking over her duties as the half-goblin, half-Crone from the one who had taunted Red. Leaving Red behind for good.

I will always be by your side.

Red was tempted to call Great ma a liar, but that was her frustration talking. Great ma had left her the note. Great ma had left her this hut, and everything within it too. All of it was infused with the presence of her beloved ancestor. Great ma was with Red no matter where she looked.

The note. Reading it was what alerted Red to what she had to do. She knew her next plan of action. Now, if only her plan worked…

Red pulled out the tincture Great ma had given her. The small thimble of white liquid glimmered faintly. As Great ma had said, this was supposed to make one feel younger, healthier. Improve the bodily functions and what not.

Outside the hut, Red pulled out her wand and planted it in the soft earth of the garden. She felt odd. Exposed, almost.

The only weapon she had, the only means of exercising power, was now a proper plant.

Red shook herself. If her idea worked, then she would be solving the entire issue with the Great Trees and the Crones and Great ma needing to leave her like that. So, with great care, Red tipped the contents of the small vial she was supposed to give to her mother on her planted wand.

Not all of it, of course. Great ma had asked Red to take the vial to her mother. She reserved the majority of the contents for that purpose.

But hopefully, she had used enough to let the plant flourish.

Nothing truly happened. Well, aside from the shimmer within the vial shifting from the liquid to the wand. The length of wood seemed to glow now. It made a nice light in the deepening dusk.

But that wasn’t what Red was seeking. She needed proof that it was growing, that it was now suffused with the same vitality that her Great ma had boasted about.

Perhaps she was expecting too much. This was a plant. A little would-be sapling under the influence of a tincture that didn’t take root immediately, as far as Red knew. After all, wasn’t her mother supposed to be using this for ages and ages? It wasn’t a folk magick that would show its effect instantly.

Sighing, yet holding onto hope at the same time, Red went back inside the hut. She was once again assaulted with the need to do something, to perhaps run all the way to the stone house and somehow drag Great ma back to where she truly belonged.

But aside from that being a silly idea, it wasn’t going to stop the transformation. Great ma would still be, slowly but surely, turned into a Crone.

That was what Red needed to stop.

And to do that, she would need to be a bit more patient. So, she busied herself inside the hut. A little bit of cooking, a little bit of cleaning, a little bit of living.

As time went by, Red felt normal. She belonged here. Things were as she had always known them to be, and she could do all the things she took small pleasures in. Tasting a bit of the stew until the salt level was just right. Making progress on another little drawing for Great ma. Rearranging the vials and glass bottles on the shelf so that they looked more uniform.

Little domestic pleasures that took her mind off the insanity awaiting her beyond the hut’s borders.

Despite the growing darkness, Red wasn’t very sleepy, thanks to having slept through much of the day. As such, she couldn’t simply go to bed and wake up next morning to see if the plant had grown. If her idea with the tincture had worked.

Nevertheless, she kept away from the garden, refusing to entertain any notions of peeking at her former wand. If it was growing, then the growth might be so incremental that looking at it too intermittently could fool her into thinking there was no growth at all. Perhaps she ought to have stuck a stick beside it, something to measure its potential growth with.

But Red stayed away for now. She would find her answer in a few hours’ time.

She wondered what her mother was thinking. Ideally, Red would have been back at the clan grounds by now. She would be reporting her findings, her experiences at Great ma’s hut, to her mother around this time. Well, a little earlier. Right now, they would be having dinner and getting ready to sleep.

Hours later, Red finally went to check on her plant. She gasped when she went outside. It worked.

The wand was no longer a wand. No longer a small length of a branch torn from the end of a tree. It was an actual, growing plant now.

Where it had been the length of Red’s forearm before, the plant was now almost as tall as she was. More branches had sprouted all over the top half of its still-thin trunk. Most importantly, the branches had started growing the deep red leaves. They were small, tiny growths no bigger than her teeth. But they were there.

Red was successful.

Well, Great ma was. All Red had done was apply Great ma’s crafted tincture to an offshoot of the Great Tree.

But now what? Had Red actually solved the problem of the Great Tree needing to grow from Crones? Was that going to lift this curse that transformed old goblins into the hags?

There was only one way to tell, she supposed. She would need to return to the stone house.

If only Great ma hadn’t left already.

There were other concerns plaguing Red’s mind. Would she need to constantly apply the tincture to keep the Great Tree growing? There was just no way to tell unless she spent more time with it. She had used a pinch, and for now, it appeared to be enough. Red would need to check again later.

It made her worry that she would be too late to help Great ma. That the curse would already have taken root and prevented Great ma from returning to her original form.

Stolen story; please report.

Well, fine. Red would just get to the stone house and see Great ma for herself.

She went back inside the hut to prepare. With no wand, Red had no defences against the Crones any longer. That meant she would need to find alternatives.

Alternatives… or the old wand that Great ma herself used to carry.

Red pored through the entire hut. She took more care than the Crones who had ransacked the place obviously had done. But no matter where she looked, she couldn’t find it. It wasn’t behind the cupboards, it wasn’t on any shelf, it wasn’t under the pillows.

It was just not there at all. Vexing. Had Great ma taken it with her for some reason?

Red’s ponderings were cut short when she noticed that she had a visitor. The last visitor she wanted to see.

She hurried outside. “Get away!”

The half-Crone turned to face her. “Well… hello, little gob—” Her words were broken, slightly slurred. With a start, Red realized the former goblin looked a lot more Crone-like than she had done the last time they had spoken. “What a wonder… sight. A Great Tree… proud and tall.” An evil grin slowly crept onto her face. “Till I chop.”

“No.”

Red caught sight of a rolling pin and a rake in the half-Crone’s hands. Neither implement was exactly great for tree-chopping, but then, they didn’t need to be. Not against this sapling. If the half-Crone wanted, she could crush it with her bare hands.

“Why?” Red yelled. “Why do you want to destroy the Tree? You were growing some at your stone house. This doesn’t make any sense.”

The half-Crone turned to her on slow feet. “Look… at me. Do you see… wrong?”

Red looked. Stared. All she saw was what she had noted before. The half-Crone was a lot more like an evil hag than the last time Red had seen her. “You’re…?” Then she blinked. She understood what was going on. What was wrong. “You’re frozen.”

The widening of the hag’s grin confirmed that she was correct.

When the half-Crone had mentioned something being wrong, Red had naturally latched onto what she saw as wrong. The fact that the old goblins had to become Crones in the first place was what was so wrong to her. But that was normal. Natural way, as Great ma had called it, no matter how awful and unnatural it seemed to Red.

Point was, what Red considered wrong was normal to the half-Crone. Which meant there was something else she was supposed to have noticed.

And it took only a moment of thinking before she found the answer.

“The Great Tree has stopped itself from cursing you any further.” The words burbled out of Red, helping her make sense of the situation. “But it didn’t lift the curse. It simply stopped it from working. So now you’re stuck between your forms…”

The way the half-Crone stared at her made her think she was right.

“I… want to be free,” the half-Crone said. “So I must… end this…”

Red’s mind whirled. How could she stop this? What could she do to prevent everything she had just worked to achieve from going up in smoke?

“Is your freedom more important than the very thing you want to protect?” Red asked, almost desperate.

The half-Crone froze. She had turned back to face the small Great Tree, but now she turned back to Red with a frown that highlighted all the wrinkles she had gained. “What?”

“Don’t you see?” Red walked closer with slow caution, like she was approaching a skittish deer. “Everything you’ve been protecting, everything you’ve been doing so far, has all been to protect and nurture the Great Trees, right?” She pointed at the sapling with glimmering bark. “This is a Great Tree too! You can’t harm it.”

Amazingly, impossibly, the half-Crone face her again. “This… Tree is breaking… cycle.”

“Yes. Yes it is. But think for a moment. Isn’t that worth it? All this time, older goblins like you have just been taken away and turned against your will into these creatures.” She could feel tears prickling her eyes then. “My Great ma is no longer with me.”

“But…”

Red was now close enough. Close enough to the Tree to reach out and place her hand on its bark. She might not have access to her old wand or the one that Great ma always used, but she had a magical tree to make use of all the same. “I call upon the olde land that mine forefathers and foremothers claimed. Lawn!”

It wasn’t just a patch of grass that erupted around Red. A veritable sea of gently-swaying green blades materialized around the entire area, overtaking the garden and making the hut look like it had been displaced there.

The half-Crone cried out and fell back, immediately beginning to swipe at the grass with her rake.

Just as Red thought. The spells hadn’t worked before, when the half-Crone had still been too much of an actual goblin. But now, having progressed further into the transformation, she was susceptible to the spells the rest of her kind were weak to.

Then the half-Crone froze. With obvious effort, she looked up, staring straight at Red. “You… tricked me.”

“You wanted to be a proper Crone, yes? Then you should be familiar with all this.” Red raised her voice. “I call upon the olde delights that mine forefathers and foremothers enjoyed. Dough!”

Instead of the claylike clumps materializing everywhere, they formed little fruits on the Tree’s branches before shooting outwards to cover the entire area. Red had to actually duck.

Several of the clumps fell to where the half-Crone was standing. She fell to her knees before one of the blobs of dough, immediately attacking it with her rolling pin. There. If the lawn alone couldn’t hold her attention, then the dough should add another layer of distraction to keep her busy.

But what was Red’s next move going to be? Maybe she could lead the half-Crone away. Take up one of the doughy clumps and lure her back towards the stone house somehow. Or…

Or find a way to end her for good.

She could do that, couldn’t she? The prospect made her swallow. Would she do that?

Maybe she had no choice but to do so.

For the half-Crone was rising again. Her rake and her rolling pin were both raised high, her glare fixed on Red and nothing else. “Enough. This… must end. You… end!”

She rushed at Red.

Despite being a literal hag, the half-Crone was impossibly fast. She reached Red in a heartbeat. With a yelp, Red tried to get away, to throw herself back. The rake slammed down too fast. It caught her on the shoulder, sending her flying back as a vicious pain clawed out a scream of fear, shock, and building agony.

Red blinked, eyes wide, breathing hard. Blood. Her blood. It melded with her hood on her body, but besides her, it had splattered everywhere. The soil, the bark of the Great Tree, the newly formed grass. Everywhere.

The half-Crone advanced. This time, she had every intent of using her rolling pin instead.

But she tripped and fell.

For the Great Tree had come alive.

Roots burst out of the ground. They struck everywhere, spiking into the earth twisting through and crushing everything within reach. Red had already begun running. She pulled herself to her feet and hurtled backwards.

The Tree. It was taking in blood.

Red had no other explanation. For whatever reason, her blood had given it a sort of sentient life that was impossible to fathom.

She didn’t stop running until she had thrown herself into the hut, locking the door behind her. The roots didn’t stop there. They kept on coming, overtaking the new grass and strangling the life out of it, scrabbling against the door and the besieging the walls.

Red had no idea what to do. How was she going to stop a sentient tree? Why was the tree alive?

She looked down at the vial of the tincture from Great ma. What in the world did this mixture even contain? How could it have turned a tree into a ravenous, demonic monster?

The walls of the hut weren’t going to last long. Time passed with a heart-lurching crawl. The hut continued to shake and quake under the tree’s assault. All Red could think of was binding her wound so that it stopped spilling so much blood.

At some point, she took a peek out through the window, only to find that the half-Crone’s body had been swallowed by the roots. Bile climbed up her throat. The hag’s body had been mangled. Red quickly looked away, feeling the contents of her stomach rising in rebellion at the sight.

More questions plagued her mind, but all she could think of was a way to survive. The roots were starting to climb through the window. Her injury was drawing them closer and closer.

Could she run? She could run. The roots weren’t too fast. She could make it.

Red didn’t know what had caused the Great Tree to suddenly come alive and start devouring everything with its roots. But she knew safety wasn’t beyond her reach.

She was about to rush to the door and get herself away from everything, but then the roots changed direction. Red’s breath caught in her throat as all the roots that had invaded the hut now retreated.

With great care, she looked out through the window, and was barely able to believe what she was seeing. The Crones were here. All of them. And they were all allowing the roots of the Great Tree to consume them.