Merchant Crab

“There’s no one here?” said Suze with a disappointed look on her face.

Olivia looked around the room with suspicion. “The windows are all locked from the inside, so it’s not like she could have gotten out that way either.”

“I was so sure she would be here,” Balthazar said.

“Well, I see no witch,” the mayor’s niece exclaimed, throwing her arms out in exasperation. “Just a cat.”

The crab stared at the feline creature sitting on the armchair in front of the fireplace, purring and lazily cleaning its black fur. Its piercing blue eyes attentively observed Balthazar as he racked his brain for answers.

I’ve seen that cat before, haven’t I?

“Maybe we came too late, and she was never here to begin with?” the street urchin suggested.

“No, she had to be,” the merchant said. “The commander came out of this room to make sure we couldn’t get to her, remember? As out of his mind as he was, I’m still sure he wasn’t defending an empty room.”

Suze cocked an eyebrow. “I’m gonna check under the bed!”

Balthazar scanned the room as well, keeping an eyestalk on the cat the whole time.

The light of the fireplace paired with the mostly dark palette of the decoration gave the room a moody atmosphere that made the very air around them feel heavier. Thick black curtains adorned most of the windows, while dark brown rugs made of soft bear fur covered the mahogany floor. The king-size bed was made with black covers of a soft and lush material—velvet.

“So soft,” Suze said as she got up from checking the underside of the bed and placed her hands on the covers.

“This witch’s name is Velvet and she decorates her whole place with velvet stuff?” Olivia commented with a disdainful eyebrow cocked. “A bit of an egomaniac, isn’t she?”

“Also completely nuts,” Balthazar added. “When I first met her, she wanted me to sell one of my legs for her to use in one of her concoctions.”

“And you didn’t consider the offer?” asked the smaller girl as she rummaged through the drawers of the nightstand.

“Of course not!” the crab immediately exclaimed. “Alright, maybe just for a moment. But that’s not the point. This witch can’t take a no for an answer, and she can’t be trusted. The next time I saw her, she tried to cut off my leg with a sickle! I would probably be a seven-legged merchant now, if it wasn’t for Blue setting her hair on fire.”

“Wait,” said Olivia. “I thought crabs could grow back their limbs.”

“Maybe,” the crustacean responded. “But I never lost a leg before and don’t want to find out if that’s true or not. I’m very attached to my legs, thank you very much.”

Balthazar stared at the room again for a moment. He was so certain he was about to find the witch there. Hopeful, even.

Not because he felt any pleasure in encountering the wretched woman, of course.

But because it would be an opportunity to uphold the promise he made Henrietta before leaving the pond.

That he would find Velvet and get her to reverse the curse she placed on the former innkeeper, turning her into a toad under Antoine’s command.

Stumbling upon that adventurer there could have been a stroke of good luck, but now it seemed those hopes were for nothing. All they found in that room was a house cat, warming itself as it watched them search the room for clues.

The merchant still couldn’t shake the sense that the black feline felt weirdly familiar.

Something clicked from a nearby dressing table that Suze was searching and both the wooden surface and the round mirror above it flipped, revealing a set of previously hidden items.

“What did you do?!” Olivia asked the kid.

“Nothing! I just… poked around.”

They all came closer to look at the contents on the table.

“Woah. That’s a lot of hairbrushes,” the young girl said.

“And tonic ampoules,” the other said.

The assortment of beauty essentials all surrounded the central piece on the dresser: a mannequin head with a wig of long and lush black hair resting on it.

“Is your witch bald?” Suze asked.

“No?” Balthazar said. “At least I don’t think so. Maybe…”

The crab thought back to his last encounter with her. Back home, by the shore of his pond. How she had him under her hex, numbed to the fact that she was about to slice away at his leg with a scythe. It was Blue who stopped her with her fire breath, sending the witch screaming into the water with her long black hair partially on fire. It didn’t seem that bad at the time, but he hadn’t seen her again since that day.

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He glanced at the wig on the display and almost felt bad for her.

Almost.

A low and soft growl came from the other side of the room and the merchant turned to look at it.

The cat had jumped from the armchair and was now sitting on the bed, still watching them like it had just moved to get a better view of what they were doing with the things on the table.

“Oooh, what’s this?” Suze excitedly said while grabbing and twisting a small lipstick that was—unsurprisingly—black.

“Put that back!” Olivia exclaimed. “Don’t take stuff that belongs to a witch. Who knows what’s in it.”

The little girl rolled her eyes and dropped the shiny stick container back into the drawer she found it in while Balthazar eyed the strange feline creature quietly observing them.

I remember now. The alley. It was dark, but I’m pretty sure this is the same cat I saw there on the fence the night we went to the bandit hideout.

The fur ball lazily licked the back of its paw and continued its grooming, all without taking its eyes off the group—especially Balthazar.

And that night, at the inn. There was a cat outside the bedroom window too. Black and with blue eyes. That can’t be a coincidence!

With the pebbles connecting in the crab’s mind, the candles of his brain slowly lit up as he pieced together what his gut was telling him the whole time.

“Alright, this is a waste of time,” said Olivia. “She clearly slipped through our fingers. We should get out of here.”

“Maybe,” said Balthazar, looking at the crackling fireplace. “But before we go, we should make sure she won’t get the last laugh if she comes back here.”

The crab gathered a pincerful of hairbrushes from the dressing table as the two girls watched on with confused frowns.

“What are you going to—Oh.”

Balthazar walked up to the fireplace and unceremoniously dropped the brushes into the flames, which roared as they flared up, causing the cat to hiss from the bed.

Olivia crossed her arms in disapproval. “Well, that just seems immature and completely unhelp—”

“Me next! Me next!” exclaimed Suze, as she gleefully grabbed the black lipstick and ran to the mantel, tossing the small piece of makeup into the fire.

“Oh, fine!” the Marquessa heir said, uncrossing her arms and snatching a fistful of cosmetics and tonic vials.

With an expression of vindication on her face, Olivia dumped them all into the flames too. “This is for taking our city’s mangoes, you rotten witch!”

Balthazar glanced at the cat from the corner of his eye.n/ô/vel/b//in dot c//om

“Yeah, rotten, ugly witch,” he said. “Look at all this crap she has to wear to hide how ugly she is underneath.”

The metallic crustacean went back to the table.

“Imagine how mad she will be,” said the merchant as he lifted the black wig from the display head, “when she finds out her new hair burned up like the previous one too.”

As the agitated feline paced back and forth on the bed, Balthazar walked across the room, holding the long black curls up on his claws, like a procession. A procession to a cremation.

“Too bad she’s not here to stop me from destroying this expensive hairdo, right, girls?” the merchant loudly declared as he held his pincers over the fire, the flames nearly licking the tips of the long locks of hair.

“Fine!” a resounding voice shouted, making Olivia and Suze jump in place as they saw the black cat jump off the bed.

As the creature soared through the air, its shape changed in a blink, the limbs growing into human arms and legs while the fur became a black gala dress. The cat head morphed into a woman’s face, the dark fur giving way to pale white skin, leaving nothing of her previous form save for the piercing blue of the eyes.

“You certainly know how to rile a girl up, you silver-tongued crab,” the witch said with a sly grin as she landed gracefully on the bear rug.

“Velvet,” the crustacean said bitterly.

“Hello, Balthie. Missed me?”

“That’s the witch?!” exclaimed Suze. “She’s a talking cat?!”

“Oh, shush, you runt,” the black-clad adventurer said. “Of course I’m not a cat. It’s just a little shapeshifting incantation. Let the adults talk now.”

“So you’re the one who’s caused all this trouble for my aunt and our city,” Olivia said with fire in her voice and a searing glare in her eyes as she stepped forward. “I’m going to—”

“You’ll do nothing, girl,” Velvet interrupted, her smile vanishing from her face as she flicked her wrist toward the windows.

The black curtains draped over them suddenly undulated to life, ripping themselves off the rails and flying through the room like textile spirits.

Before any of them could react, the velvet drapes wrapped around the crab and girls like a snake enveloping its prey.

Suze and Olivia were pulled back against the wall, arms and legs tightly packed against their bodies like an insect trapped in a spider’s web.

Balthazar, however, would not go down so easily. While he was not much of a fighter, he was an expert at using his pincers to cut things.

Dropping the wig on the floor, the crab quickly snapped at the charging curtains with his deft scissor-like appendages, imagining pesky birds to fuel his momentum.

Against the evil drapes that the wicked hag conjured, the iron crustacean sent unto them his claws, ripping and tearing until it was done.

The shredded pieces of fabric fell to the floor, defeated and lifeless as the gleaming crab stood victorious between the woman and the two girls.

“Haha, take that, witch!” the street rascal shouted with glee from her velvet bonds.

“A little too early to be celebrating, Suze,” said Olivia as she struggled against the curtains trapping her. “We’re still not free, and the witch isn’t beaten yet.”

“Pfft,” Suze scoffed. “We’ve got an iron crab on our side. He’s got this! Kick her butt, Balthazar!”

His confidence boosted by the girl’s words, the metallic crustacean puffed himself up, pincers held up as he stepped forward.

“Damn right!” he said. “You’re done for, Velvet. I’m going to—”

A large crack appeared over the crab’s shell, splitting his iron chitin down the middle. With just enough time to look down at himself, Balthazar saw the entire metal finish crumble to pieces that vanished before reaching the floor, leaving just his regular old chitin behind.

[Iron Imbuing: 0 seconds left]

The system line disappeared as the crab stood in the middle of the bedroom, suddenly feeling strangely naked for someone who had never worn clothes in his whole life. The iron was gone, and with it all the physical bonuses as well.

“Oh, crabapples…”