As soon as Emmanuel heard the voices that cold October afternoon, he knew he was in serious trouble.

"Hey, Emma!"

"Sissy boy!"

Why had he chosen to walk home this way from school today? The bullies always hung out on this street. Why hadn't he paid attention? Damn it, damn it, damn it.

He turned around, with his heart pounding -- and he would have run for his life, but then he heard a scream.

The bullies had captured a kitten from somewhere and they were torturing it! Emmanuel felt sick to his stomach as he stood there frozen, watching the biggest bully, Hector, pulling on the tiny tail of a little black cat. It freed one little paw and scratched at its tormentor. Hector swore and dropped the kitten to the ground.

For a moment, they had forgotten Emmanuel, who had interrupted their cruel game.

"Step on it! Kick it!" his pals shouted.

"Naw," said Hector. "I'm going to throw it over the fence, into the witch's yard."

All eyes turned towards the scary old house on the other side of the fence. The grass in there was a foot high and the place hadn't been painted for years. Everybody knew that whatever went in there, never came out.

"Don't you dare!"

Had he said that? Emmanuel?

Hector shambled over and grabbed Emmanuel's ear.

"You little twerp. You think you can tell me what to do?"

He had picked up the kitten again and gave it a jab with his dirty finger. It swiped at him again.

"I'll kill it," he said.

Emmanuel didn't think. His fists lashed out and struck the bully's stomach.

Hector groaned. Then, his eyes narrowing in fury, he lashed out, sending Emmanuel crashing against the fence gate. It gave way and the little boy tumbled into the yard, landing in an icy puddle of mud. He staggered up, reaching blindly for the kitten that Hector still held.

"Aww, he wants the kitty-witty," one of the bullies said. "He can have it, after it's dead!"

"Let. It. Go." Emmanuel said. He lunged at Hector, feinting left as if to hit the boy on that side, but then swiftly reaching right to knock the animal out of the bully's right hand.

Terrified, the animal scratched wildly at him. Hector, robbed of his victim, roared and lunged like a bull at Emmanuel.

Just then, the automatic sprinklers came on.

Howling, the bullies fled the icy blast, while Emmanuel, exhausted and nauseous, slumped to the ground.

***

Warm hands were touching him, probing through the mud on his face at the cut Hector's fist had made. A soft voice was whispering, and somebody was lifting him to his feet and pushing him along. He couldn't see, through the mud and the blood and the cold that was making him shake all over.

Someone held a glass of something to his lips, a liquid that burned all the way down into his stomach.

Someone was stripping off his filthy, drenched clothes, though he struggled weakly against it. Then, suddenly, he was surrounded by blissful, wet warmth and gentle hands were caressing him, washing him from his bruised face to his toes.

Exhaustion, relief and that strange drink overcame him and he sank into sleep.

*** Emmanuel sat drowsily on the sofa, wrapped in a warm pink bathrobe that smelt of rose perfume, and looked through half-closed eyes at the woman who had saved his life.

This was the Witch of West Parker Street?

She was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. She was as slender and petite, almost, as the girls in his grade school class. Yet very much a woman. She had glossy black hair that flowed forever, over her shoulders and down to her sides. She was, he realized with his limited geographic background, Chinese or Japanese or something. Her face was small and round, with dark, pretty eyes and smooth, pale skin. She had a nubbin of a nose but soft, full lips framing teeth as creamy white as milk. She was dressed in some sort of a shiny dress. A kimono, he said to himself. That must be a kimono.

She had bathed him. He was embarrassed. He woke from his daze and sat up straight. "I gotta go!"

"Ssshh, sit, I don't bite," she said, smiling a beautiful smile at him. Her accent was mild, gentle, comforting.

"Such a beautiful boy," she said. He looked down at the floor. Why had she said that?

"Do you remember this?" she said. And she reached down beside her chair and picked up a happy ball of black fluff that had been lapping at a dish of milk.

"You saved this precious thing from those ..." she said. "Those assholes."

The word sounded so odd in her soft foreign accent, coming from her innocent looking mouth, that Emmanuel couldn't help it. He giggled.

She was startled. Then she giggled, too. "I am bad for saying such things. But they were. Assholes, as you say it. They wanted to hurt this precious little thing and you were very brave to step in. They could have hurt you."

They did hurt me, Emmanuel thought, feeling a throb of pain in his swollen earlobe.

"Come over to me," the woman said, crooking a slender, pretty finger. Stiffly, he took the five or six steps over to the couch where she sat. She patted the spot next to her. He sat in it. He was overwhelmed with the warmth of her body, as she drew him close to her and gently patted his head. She was fragrant, like roses, like this bathrobe of hers that he was wearing, and like the pleasant scent of leaves burning in the fall. She was soft and he found himself drawn into that softness, craving it like a baby would crave warm milk, so different from the abrupt, awkward, angular caresses of his own distracted, too-busy mother.

"My name is Emma," she said. He winced. That's what the boys called him, to be mean.

"I know," she said, seeming to have read his mind. "I heard the boys teasing you with that name. What is your real name?"

"Emmanuel," he said. "From the Bible."

"God with us," she said, smiling. "How about I call you Manly for short?"

He liked that.

"Is Emma Chinese?" he asked, innocently.

She laughed, a sweet little laugh that gave him a peek at her tongue and those pretty, shining teeth.

"No, it's English," she said. "I am from Japan, actually. Many people there have English names."

"Are you a witch?" he asked.

She laughed again and hugged him to her. "No, Manly, I am not a witch. I am studying at the community college to be a nurse. That is why I have rented this house. It was cheap, as you say it."

All his frustrations of the day seemed to have drained away and it felt so good to be wrapped in these arms and to feel Emma's gentle breath like a warm breeze against his face. For Emmanuel was a very lonely, unhappy boy.

"If you're not a witch, how come you gave me a magic potion when I came in?" he asked. He felt dumb, asking that question, but he had to know.

"Potion? That was sake," she said. "Rice wine. You were cold and very afraid. Sake warms and calms. You needed it."

"Oh," he said. "It tasted good. Kind of. It burned, too."

She laughed again and reached out for a glass on the table which apparently held more of the stuff. "Have a little more."

She lifted the glass to her own lips first and drank deeply. He took it, raised it up carefully. He could see the dark print of her lipstick on the edge of the glass, making a red crescent where she had sipped. Slowly, he tipped the glass to his mouth, tasting the waxy sweetness of her lipstick and then the fiery burning of the wine.

"That's probably enough," she said, taking the glass back.

He felt warm all over, drowsy and dreamy and happy. Through a haze of bliss, he watched as she freshened her lipstick, stretching her mouth to line it with crimson.

She shifted to reach for something and he slid down accidently against the round fullness of her breast and she shivered slightly but did not move away.

She had a shiny silver box in her hand. She tapped it and a long, white cylinder slid out. He knew what that was! A cigarette. He was stunned. What would she do with it? He had seen very few people in his life smoking. It was an exotic, bad sort of thing. It was bad for your lungs.

She opened her lips and balanced the cigarette there as he watched, repelled somewhat but also captivated. With a sharp scrape of her fingers, she struck a match to life and held it to the tip. Her lips were tightly closed and her eyes half shut, too. Like magic, the end of the cigarette glowed a fiery red. Her small face seemed almost lost behind the long, smoldering thing. Her cheeks caved in, showing the clear outlines of the fine bones of her face. She drew and drew and the cigarette jerked upwards and danced in her lips.

Her fingers gripped it tightly now and pulled it away. He could see the rich red of her lipstick, stained upon the satiny silver of the cigarette filter. He could see the smoke, filling up her whole mouth. Then it vanished. He was enthralled. Had she swallowed it?

Suddenly the air around him was filled with a fragrant, pungent mist. It had come from her. The smoke was spilling out of her mouth, a whole bunch of smoke, like when it was winter and you ran hard and your breath steamed around you. She was breathing it into his face -- he could feel the stream of warm, smoke-filled air tickling his nose as she exhaled.

It smelled so good but it burned his eyes like the sake had his throat.

"How come you smoke?" he said. His voice sounded funny to him, even higher than it usually did.

She had finished her exhale and tapped the cigarette in a glass ashtray.

"I started when I first came to this country. I wanted to be like the American girls. They looked so cool and free. I hated it at first. Then I had a hard semester and I found that smoking kept me going. Sometimes it gives me energy. Sometimes it relaxes me. It's who I am now."

"How could smoke do that?" he asked.

She smiled. She inhaled again, a deep, deep drag. He felt her chest rise with the effort to pull in the smoke.

"It's like candy," she said. "Sometimes you really, really want to taste it and then you get to and it's sweet in your mouth and then the sugar makes you feel all, how do you say it, 'buzzed.' Happy. Excited."

Again, she blew out a thick cloud of aromatic smoke. He leaned forward, putting his face into the stream and trying to breathe it in. She smiled and angled her lips so that the smoke aimed at his mouth. It went on forever but he didn't feel anything except the stinging in his nose and eyes and the warmth of her breath.

"Maybe you need a puff of your own," she said. She handed him the cigarette. He dropped it. She scooped it up just before the couch caught fire, and laughed.

"What am I thinking? You are way too young, little Manly."

"I can do it," he protested. So she lowered the cigarette down to his face. He could see the red of her lipstick stain looming before him, and a brown circle on the filter. He clamped his lips down, again tasting her lipstick, but also an odd bitterness that made him want to spit.

"Drink it in, like you would a soda," she said.

He obeyed. His mouth filled with stinging, burning fumes. He gagged and pulled his face away from the cigarette. His head was pounding, his heart was pounding and he felt like he was about to float away. He blew the stuff out of his mouth, coughing more than exhaling. It was awful!

"And yet, he wanted more."