Once, when she had a particularly bad hair day, a young woman who passed her in the street couldn't help but giggle at her flyaway locks. She whispered a few words under her breath, and and kept on walking past the tittering girl. The next day, the girl awoke to find her hair -- all of it -- had fallen out.

Yet, when I was small, I was running down the flagstone path through her garden, and I tripped and fell, and skinned my knees. She appeared from thin air, scooped me up in her arms, and whispered soothing words that stopped my bleeding and made my pain vanish.

She's bad-tempered, and petty, and sometimes even cruel. But she can also be warm, and kind, and loving.

She's the dreaded Baba Zorah, Witch of the Southern Plains. But she's also my mother.

Now that I've grown, and she has grown older, I feel that responsibility that all good sons feel, to look after their aging mother. You might think that a powerful witch can care for herself, but a witches magic is a visceral thing, and though it oft grows stronger with age, so too does the toll it takes on the witches stamina. She couldn't hex away an entire determined mob bearing torches and pitchforks before she grew too weary to cast spells, yet she courted the danger of inciting one almost constantly.

Fortunately, I inherited some of her power, and since my father also had magic of some sort -- though she steadfastly refuses to tell me his name, much less what sort of practitioner he was -- my native strength is a match for hers.

I have therefore taken on the role of her adversary, at least in the popular imagination. When the feared Baba Zorah afflicts the people with her curses, they call upon the aid of wise Vedmak Alexei, the White Warlock of the Plains -- never suspecting the latter is the former's son.

What makes it tricky is that, as I mentioned, our magic is closely tied to our bodies. Because of this, the methods one uses to directly break a spell generally cause it to rebound upon the witch that cast it. Naturally, I wouldn't do that -- she's my mom.

So how do I help her victims? Well, there are two basic types: curses of deprivation, and curses of excess.

Take the unfortunate woman who giggled at my mother's hair, for example. Mother's curse deprived her of hair. So, I cursed her to have excessive hair. Now, though she is technically twice-accursed, the young lady is for all intents and purposes normal, because the curses cancel each other out.

Recently, however, Baba Zorah had stepped up her assaults on the villagers. Despite her age, she still gets around quickly in her flying mortar and pestle, such that even the illustrious Vedmak Alexei has trouble keeping up. It was time that I paid her a visit.

As I approached her cottage, she appeared outside it in a puff of smoke.

"Ho! Vedmak!" mother called, glowering down at me from where she floated in her mortar a few feet off the ground. "You approach the home of a Vedma without announcing yourself? Did no one ever teach you manners?"

"I approach the house of my mother, where my welcome may be presumed, I trust." I said, drily.

She made a show of squinting at me. "Oh! It's you, Alexei. I could have sworn it was this arrogant young Vedmak I've heard tell of, who keeps meddling with those I've fairly cursed."

"Fairly?" I scoffed. "Mom, you've abandoned even the pretense of having a reason to curse people! Maid Silva in Nogradan just said 'hello' to you, and you made her nose fall off!"

"The very nose that she turned up at me when she said it! As though your poor mother were a piece of trash!" she retorted, hotly.

"She has an upturned nose! Her whole family does!"

"She had an upturned nose," she said, smugly.

"Has!" I snapped. "I cursed her with an 'extra' nose, this morning."

Mother threw up her hands in consternation. "Where is your respect? Your gratitude? I raised you all by myself, have you forgotten? And even if I were not your mother, this is professional discourtesy, at least! What has gotten into you?"

"What's gotten into me?" I exclaimed. "You were always capricious and liked to cause trouble, but lately it's like you're begging for a mob to burn you at the stake!"

"I'd like to see them try!" she hissed.

"I wouldn't!" I roared, angrily, bringing her up short. "Because if they tried, I'd burn them before they got within a mile of here! I'd hate myself forever, for hurting decent people who were just trying to protect themselves, but I would do it!"

Mother stared at me, her mouth half agape. My words had stunned her, if only for a moment. But she recovered quickly, and smoothed her skirts.

"So, my son. You have developed an affection for the small folk around you, I see." she said, as she regained her usual tone and manner. "If you wish so fervently to spare them from my anger, then let us settle the matter with a bargain."

I frowned suspiciously. Mother herself had taught me how perilous such bargains could be.

"What sort of bargain?"

"I will forswear all cursing, poisoning, and any other harmful magic against the people of these lands." she said.

That wording shocked me. She'd left herself virtually no wiggle room. What could she want bad enough to give up her favorite hobby?

"And in exchange...?" I asked, cautiously.

"Your firstborn child." she said, firmly.

I paled at her words. There were some potent magics that could only be worked with an infant as the focus. All of them were monstrous, and I wouldn't have thought my mother, even at her worst, would be capable of them.

She must have seen my reaction on my face, because she quickly added "No, not for a spell, boy! I will swear to that much."

"Then why would you want my child? Do you honestly want to take care of a newborn, at your age?" I demanded.

"I am not as old as all that! And why I want it is my own concern!" she snapped. Then she looked away, seeming slightly embarrassed. "Anyway, I wasn't thinking I would take care of it all the time."

"What does that mean?" I asked, a raising an eyebrow.

"You know -- sometimes I would visit the child, and sometimes the child would visit me? Like that." Mother explained.

"What are you..." I began, and then my eyes widened, as I finally understood.

"Has this all been because you want a grandchild?" I exclaimed.

"Well, grandchildren, ideally." Mother said. "But I didn't want to rush you."

"Didn't want to rush me?" I cried. "With all the chaos you've been causing, you've kept me too busy for much more than an occasional dalliance, never mind settling down with a wife, and now you want a grandchild?"

"A miscalculation on my part -- I was trying to bring you to the table, so to speak, but by the Divine, these people are so annoying." she said, with a shrug. "Now do you want to bargain, or not?"

I scowled at her for a long moment, but she just looked back impassively, waiting for my reply.

"I get a year and a day to find a bride." I said, finally. "I'm not going to tie myself to the first woman I see just to get a child on her."

Mother scoffed, but waved her hand in assent. "Oh, fine, if you must."

"And," I added, jabbing a finger at her. "You have to tell me who my father is."

It was her turn to scowl. "I'll tell you where he lives, and what he does. Take it or leave it."

"Deal." I said

"So mote it be."

"So mote it be!"

"Your sire lives in the capitol city of Amberholm. He's a court jester." Mother said, as soon as the deal was struck.

I blinked. "A court jester? But you said he had powerful magic! What kind of Vedmak works as a court jester?"

She replied with a wicked grin. "Oh, you want to know more? Well, I will doubtless want more grandbabies. Talk to me after you've delivered on our first agreement, and perhaps we can bargain again."