[crow]

"Is everyone here?"

Gathered in a hut in the swamp were three old women in cloaks. They stood around a giant cauldron, which took up nearly half the room. Along the walls were shelves filled with jars of various things, powders and dried amphibians and pickled eyes and things. Herbs hung from the ceiling in twists and bouquets tied up with old twine. The entire place smelled of damp, and of something acrid and unpleasant, which refused to be named no matter how long one thought on it.

[crow]

The woman in the center stood on a wooden crate, presiding over the other two, and presumably also to give her a better vantage point from which to take in the cauldron's contents. She looked around at the other two now, as they glanced at each other. "Are we including Julian in this?" said the one on the left, whose cloak was a muddy brown.

"Julian's been sent to gather herbs," said the black-cloaked one in the middle. "We'll save some for him when he gets back."

[crow]

"Aye, we'd better," said the one on the right, dressed in blue. "Might give him a shot at finding himself a nice girl before he becomes a geezer, like us!" She sent up a cackle, which was taken up by the other two. The resultant chorus was not unlike the noise of a gathering of crows.

Eventually they stopped, and the woman in the center pushed back the sleeves of her cloak. "Well, first we ought to make the stuff. There won't be anything to save if we don't get started."

[crow]

Having said that, however, the three women made preparatory motions, but after that, they seemed to be at a loss. "Ye've got a recipe then, have you?" said the brown-cloaked one. There was a silence from the other two, and the three of them looked around at one another again.

At length, the black-cloaked woman said, "Ah, who needs one anyway? It's just sweets. We've brewed moonlight in a jar, my loves. How hard could it be?" She began grabbing things off the shelves as she spoke, her movements brisk.

[crow]

"Aye, I s'pose you're right," said the blue-cloaked woman, who joined her in her efforts. "Ye put in enough sugar and it'll be sweet as anything, won't it?"

"Have we got sugar?" said the brown-cloaked woman, who was perusing a different wall of shelves. "I don't see any in this lot."

"I've got it here," said another. "Have you got the cocoa?"

"Aye. Had to send my boy down to the market to fetch it. Could you imagine? Store-bought? How the times have changed."

[crow]

Tutting and shaking her head, the blue-cloaked woman handed over a box labelled 'Cocoa Powder'. The colorful packaging and thoroughly modern look of the box seemed a poor fit for its surroundings, which were more in line with the set of a historical fantasy film. The woman in black inspected it, squinting at the contents. "Bah," she said. "I haven't the likeliest clue what to do with this. We'll just toss the whole thing in." She added it to the growing pile of ingredients.

[crow]

The woman in brown plucked it up out of the pile almost as soon as the woman in black had set it down. "Now now! It might have better uses than you think, you know," she said. Removing a pair of spectacles from within her sleeves, she set them upon her nose and squinted at the box. "Let's see here... Ah, I was right! There's a recipe!" Crowing with satisfaction, she waved the box under the noses of her companions with a distinctly smug air. "Here, I'll read it out loud."

[crow]

"Three-ingredient chocolate truffles," said the brown-haired woman. "A quick and easy recipe guaranteed to make your Valentine melt."

The woman in blue raised her brows in surprised approval. "Oooh. A powerful spell indeed. These modern cooks must be getting real clever."

"Says here we need butter and 'condensed milk'," said the woman in brown. "Have we got any of that?"

"We've got lard," said the woman in blue. "Good ol' grease from a pig fattened on nothin' but the finest mushrooms and frog guts."

[crow]

The woman in black nodded approvingly. "It'll be a good deal better than butter, I reckon," she said. "And as for milk, we've got goat's milk, curdled nice and thick. I'll fetch it from the cellar." She bustled off to another corner of the hut as the other two women took their ingredients and approached the cauldron.

"Might as well start," said the woman in brown. She glanced at the stack of wood under the cauldron, muttered a few words to herself, then grinned as a fire lit up beneath the heavy iron bowl of it.

[crow]

By the time the woman in black returned with a jar of curdled goat's milk, the cauldron had gotten nice and hot. "Pour it in," said the woman in brown, fluttering her hands. "I've got the powder ready."

"Don't rush me," said the woman in black. She unscrewed the jar lid and poured its entire contents into the cauldron, which soon brought it to a bubbling boil.

The woman in blue took a sniff. "Ahhh, that's it. Nothin' like the sour smell of curdled milk," she said appreciatively.