| A S K I N G I been seeing it done for years. First thing, each purple morn, the Willerswitch Witch comes to that same steep knob atop Hulep Choat's Peak. She ain't much hair left; what hairs there is is white. Her skin be grey. There might be other hags. That girlytot expects so, I expect. But this hag is--now don’t you worry it--but she’s the Willerswitch Witch to that tot in the tree. My ragtag baby never leaves her tree to ask for no Christian name, mind you; she ain’t one to ask. No, she keeps secret. Her eyes be my eyes. Below, the old grey thing lifts her skirts and she spin eleven, twelve, thirteen times, eyes closed and whispering. The Witch ask where do time tell, where is the well went, where be the wind sent, how went tizzypoke? The Witch blows a French harp, jigging and clogging her pointy toes into the air, conducting them demon symphonies with her willerswitch, demon symphonies for the hollers below to echo. From the tree on Hulep Choat's Peak, one can see hollers piled upon hollers, snapdragon hillsides tumbling onto valleys, twining into murky slews. Sometimes, a twanging guitar string might be heard up from them hills, answering back at that French harp. Always, the Witch takes to circling the greenspired tree, first clockwise, then counter to the clock. The willerswitch will lead, the little tot will listen. "A thousand'n ten hunert'n one babies I done pulled from they mams. Put my mark on most ever chile I birthed. Ever family has its daemon babe, ye know, a boogified daemon. Ask me, I made em so. Ask me. I hate a impudent chile. I knows em right off. I gives em they mark. Everbody got one. I kin pick a collicky babe, a trickster, a fool, er I kin pick me a pearl from ther swine. So I kisses em with my pucker, er I kisses em with the switch. Onliest ones I ever put back into they mams is them what this world ain't ripe fer yet. That's why I be ashamed I's so fergitful. That's why I got ter ask. Do you recollect them babysteps, babysteps? When you was a chile you spake as a chile oughter do. Who chile is you? Who chile, who chile, who chile is you?" It was a very long time, many morns, and many a dizzy circle around that chestnut tree, before my tree tot got wise: the Willerswitch Witch was asking of her.
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