I have seen many things in my long life—wars, empires rising and falling, dragons who argue about taxes, and goats who predict the weather.

But of all the oddities I have encountered, nothing—nothing—was quite as strange as the love story of a simple cobbler and a terrible witch.

They should never have met.
They should never have married.
And yet, somehow…

They were the happiest couple I have ever known.

A Love Story That Shouldn’t Have Happened

There are love stories filled with passion and poetry, where noble knights court fair maidens, and grand gestures win over the hearts of princesses.

And then there are love stories like this one.

A love story so strange, so completely ridiculous, that even after all these centuries…

I still don’t understand how it worked.

And yet, it did.

This is the tale of Gorvin the Cobbler and Morgana the Terrible, the Witch of Black Hollow.

A Cobbler with a Problem

Gorvin was a simple man.

He made shoes.
He repaired boots.
He never asked for trouble.

And yet, trouble had a habit of finding him anyway.

One day, just as he was closing his little shop, he heard the angriest voice in existence outside his door.

“WHO MADE THESE?!”

The door slammed open, nearly coming off its hinges, and in stormed a thin, crooked woman in a dark cloak, holding a pair of very nice boots… which were currently on fire.

“You Gorvin?” she snapped, shaking the burning boots in his face.

Gorvin blinked.

“Aye, that’s me. How can I help—”

“THESE BOOTS CAUGHT FIRE THE MOMENT I STEPPED OUTSIDE!” she shrieked.

He frowned. “Well, that’s odd. What were you doing?”

“Just cursing a village!” she huffed. “Like any respectable witch does on a Wednesday!”

“Ah,” Gorvin said. “That’ll be the problem, then.”

The witch narrowed her eyes. “Explain.”

“Well,” Gorvin said, scratching his head, “those boots were enchanted to keep your feet warm in winter, but if you go around cursing people, well… they get a little overenthusiastic and start warming too much.”

Morgana threw the boots at his head.

“Fix them.”

A Cobbler’s Solution

Gorvin calmly picked up the boots, patted out the flames, and inspected them.

“Right, I can fix this,” he said. “Just a small adjustment. But… if you’re going to be out cursing villages, I’ll need to adjust the spell to recognize ‘harmless’ cursing versus ‘very mean’ cursing.”

Morgana folded her arms. “All my curses are mean.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” Gorvin said with a grin. “Bet you’ve cursed someone to have ‘just a slightly itchy nose for a week’ at least once.”

Morgana glared at him.

But she did not deny it.

He smiled. “Aha! Thought so.”

Grumbling, she sat down in a chair, muttering about foolish cobblers and their irritating grins.

While Gorvin worked, he asked, “Why do you curse villages anyway?”

Morgana shrugged. “Keeps people away. I like being left alone.”

“Ah,” he said. “That makes sense.”

A pause.

“…But isn’t it lonely?”

Morgana froze mid-glare.

For the first time, she had no answer.

A Strange Arrangement

After that day, Morgana kept coming back.

Sometimes for new boots.
Sometimes for repairs.
Sometimes because she claimed “someone in the village was being too cheerful, and it made her sick.”

And somehow, in between all the bickering, all the glaring, all the ridiculous arguments over things like shoe polish and proper curse etiquette…

They fell in love.

No poetry.
No grand gestures.

Just a grumpy witch and a cheerful cobbler, meeting in a tiny shop where magic and shoes collided.

And against all logic…

It worked.

Marriage, Witch Style

When Gorvin asked Morgana to marry him, she did not cry.

She did not swoon.

She did not smile.

Instead, she squinted suspiciously. “Are you sure? You do realize I am, in fact, an evil witch?”

“Aye,” Gorvin said, grinning. “And you do realize I am, in fact, a very stubborn cobbler?”

Morgana grumbled.

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Fine. But you better not expect me to be nice.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

And that was that.

Merlin’s Final Words

I visited them many times over the years, and I can say with certainty…

They were the happiest, strangest couple I ever met.

Gorvin made sure Morgana wore shoes that didn’t catch fire when she cursed people.

Morgana kept villagers from bothering him too much by turning their laundry blue when they annoyed her.

And when Gorvin grew old, and his hands could no longer mend shoes…

Morgana made a magic spell to let him keep working anyway.

“You deserve to do what you love,” she had said, grumbling the whole time.

And for someone who claimed to be the most terrible witch alive…

That was a very kind curse indeed.