By Devan Barlow
I should have known better the moment the chicken lumbered into my office.
The bird, who had to crouch to fit underneath the ceiling, didn’t bother disguising her distaste for the state of my office. Is it my fault people refuse to pay me when they don’t like the answers I find for them?
The chicken’s awkward pose somehow only made her seem bigger, more menacing, like her cream-and-brown feathers might puff out until they smothered me and burst through the broken window she sneered at.
“I have a job for you.” The chicken said. “You know the witch?”
“Who doesn’t?” At least by reputation. Every so often someone strikes out into the forest to slay her. They never come back.
“The witch killed one of us,” the chicken continued, “and took their legs to support her home. We want the rest of the chicken back.”
“You want the rest of the chicken.” I repeated, then peered closer. “Is that you in there, Anton? Miriam?” This must be several people in a chicken costume, hoaxing me, though admittedly the costume was worlds better than the one used every year in the village’s spring festival.
In our village, you only ask after “the rest of the chicken” when you’re trying not to outright tell someone they’re on your last nerve.
“And where’s the rest of the chicken?” asks the shopkeeper when I complain about the quality of the potatoes he sold me, before he shoos me away in favor of the next customer.
“Where’s the rest of the chicken?” asks my sister when I remind her that I can’t eat the soup she’s made, and ask if there’s anything else.
It’s the response to the sort of question whose very asking should tell you you’ve already got bigger problems.
The chicken drew back, affronted, then lowered her head. But instead of the head detaching to reveal other villagers inside, the chicken’s beak rose, this time holding a sack.
The sack clanged as she dropped it on my desk, but she pulled it away before I could grab for it.
This was not Anton and Miriam. This was a real chicken, as large as the stories said, and this chicken had coin. Enough coin, I hoped, that I could afford to move to a different village, where no one mockingly offers me soup.
“The rest of the chicken, you said?”
The chicken nodded solemnly. “Our treaty with the witch prohibits us from entering the woods. But we need you to find the remains so we may lay them to rest.”
“And if the witch has, uh, already disposed of them?” I wasn’t sure how delicate to be when speaking to a chicken taller than I was.
A gust of wind hurled itself through the window, slamming the shutters against the walls and blowing everything off the top of my desk.
“Just a minute.” I knelt to gather the papers now strewn on the floor.
“Let me help!” the chicken stomped one clawed foot on the flame of the toppled candlestick before it could ignite anything else, which quenched the room’s only light.
As I struggled to find the matches I barked my hand on something sharp and hissed in pain.
“Find them, and the coin is yours.”
I relit the candle in time to see the chicken turn away. Her beak gleamed slightly red, but by the time I saw the matching line of red on my hand, she was already out the door.
* * *
I took the long way toward the forest, to avoid the scents of village dinners simmering. There was always someone making soup.
I love soup, but I haven’t had any since I was a child.
I’d snuck into the kitchen, lured by the aroma of the meal being prepared for the family gathering taking place later that night. Finding the kitchen curiously empty, I’d dipped a spoon into a bubbling pot and savored the tastes of pepper and tarragon, like all of my relatives’ embraces condensed into hot broth.
Until the spoon was batted out of my hand. “It’s not ready yet!” A woman I’d never seen before, about the age of my great-aunts, scolded me. “May all soups be too hot for you, until you’ve learned some patience!”
Covering the soup pot again, she marched out of the kitchen. She was not among all the far-flung family members I met for the first time that night. Yet from then on, I could eat no soup.
* * *
Everyone knew the path through the forest eventually led to the witch’s hut. What everyone seemed not to know, I realized as the trees shrouded the village from my sight, was how to get back once you’d found her.
I paused, hearing a rustling in the distance. Perhaps the witch had spotted me.
Soon thereafter, a new smell layered itself atop the fragrances of pine and rot. I stilled, reveling in a combination of ingredients I couldn’t place, but that indubitably combined into a fragrant soup.
So transfixed was I, I didn’t notice the dead body until my foot collided with it.
I didn’t know his name, but I remembered days ago when he’d declared to the whole village that he’d be the one to storm the woods and end the witch. Now here he was, his blood having fled his body from a number of deep wounds.
* * *
The skulls were certainly a distinctive decorating choice.
Now, if I had most of the corpse of the enormous chicken who had once rested atop those legs, where would I keep it? Surely it would smell, though, and the wonderful soup scent had only gotten stronger as I’d reached the hut.
I didn’t relish telling the chicken the remains hadn’t been here to find. Maybe I should give up. I’d eventually make enough to move, if people finally started paying me for solving their little mysteries even when they didn’t like the answers…
I went into the hut, and nearly swooned at the smell coming from the enormous cauldron in the center of the room. My mouth watered.
A furious clucking sound issued from outside. I cracked the door open again, and was startled to see the chicken who’d hired me.
Her plumage looked starker here, as if the feathers refused to be dimmed by the murky forest light. The reddish brown feathers were distinctly redder, and even the cream-colored feathers were scattered with red droplets. Her beak dripped red fluid, and I thought of the body I’d found earlier.
Between the chicken and the cottage stood a woman, who cackled as the chicken scraped a taloned foot along the ground.
The witch’s next cackle came with a gesture that bent the very wind to her will. The skulls rose into the air and launched furiously at the chicken. Clucking and the sound of rending flesh accompanied the flurry of feathers that billowed upward like steam from a boiling pot.
Terrified, I stumbled backward, only stalled by the lip of the cauldron. It rocked violently enough that several hot droplets shot upward toward my face, and my tongue instinctively lapped at the moisture on my lips.
I swallowed the liquid, staring at the cauldron in amazement as I forgot my earlier fear.
I could eat this soup!
I grabbed up the ladle and swallowed mouthfulls of the stuff, sweet and savory and salty all at once, the ideal of soup condensed into a form my merely human mouth could process.
Suddenly, I understood where the rest of the chicken was.
A shadow filled the doorway, matching neither combatant, before it resolved into the witch. Her hands brushed against one another resolutely.
I swallowed my latest mouthful of soup, then asked, “The treaty?”
She scoffed, “There’s no treaty. My magic keeps the chickens from finding this place,” her expression was somewhere between amusement and disdain, “unless they follow the blood of a human.”
I recalled pain on my hand, as I scrabbled in my darkened office, and a red sheen on the chicken’s beak…
“Not that I get any thanks from your village for slaying the creatures.”
“I knew you’d be able to take care of that chicken,” I licked my lips, “while I’m here, is there anything else I can do for you?”
She smiled.
Then, with ladle in hand and soup shining on my lips, I recognized the woman from the kitchen of my family’s home, who’d batted a spoon from my hand.
I said, “This, truly, is the most marvelous of soups!”
She took the ladle from my unresisting hand and stirred the cauldron. Suddenly the utensil seemed to be both ladle and sword, sharper than a chicken’s talons…
Beyond the cottage, the skulls’ teeth clacked together in anticipation.
* * *
So you see, newcomer who’s just sauntered up like you’re the best thing since schmaltz, think before you go into that cottage.
Or don’t, and join me. The witch never runs out of soup, and she can always make room for more skulls.
What’s that you ask me?
And where’s the rest of the chicken?
* * *
Devan Barlow is the author of the Curses & Curtains series of fairy tales-meet-musicals fantasy novels. Her short fiction and poetry have appeared in several anthologies and magazines. She can be found at her website devanbarlow.com or on Bluesky @devanbarlow.bsky.social. She reads voraciously, and can often be found hanging out with her dog, drinking tea, and thinking about sea monsters.