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It’s dawn, and the land breathes a sigh under morning dew, fresh from the clouds. Grass is glistening and leaves crunch under bashful footsteps; a young witch leads another by flushed hands, walking along the hilly ground, destination unknown. The land speaks a hidden whisper, wizened like the core of the earth, awake with new breath, frothing up tree roots above the molten below.
Here they are again, it says.
That’s right, says the morning, blinking with sun. Here they are again.
Who can say what they are doing? From this far up above, from feeling the aches of the earth and seeing the expanse of space, from high up in the stratosphere, these little two really should be insignificant. But they are not. Two little witches, skittering like mice across the plains now called home.
It’s nice to be a home, says the morning, and it comes out a soft sigh in the breeze, drowned out by tiny witch laughter.
The land scoffs. You’re not the one who has to actually live with them. Whippersnappers.
In response, the morning laughs, a smile of light breaking through clouds. Another day of peace, another day and the unshakeable hand of the universe hovers but never touches the inhabitants. Casual observers of humanity like an experiment with lab rats, or an aquarium.
Although aquarium fishes have rarely been known to trace the lifelines of each other’s hands, searching them like a map. The dark-haired one is doing this now, curls obscuring her face as she studies the green-haired one’s hand, it’s inseam leaf-like. Another moment and she blushes, snatches the hand away as though caught doing something inappropriate. What must it feel like, to have a body’s lines to touch, like the geographer’s pen mapping inky labels on insurmountable rivers, never being able to put an adequate name to a beauteous feeling of touched connection.
The morning sighs, they are sweet little things.
A bit voyeuristic, aren’t we? The land murmurs in a tree-branch crackle, thrumming at swirling roots of oak.
Don’t you also wish you had a body? Like theirs?
I have one, says the earth. The roll of the rocks, the crevices which give way to the streams, this is my flesh. It’s not all that it’s cracked up to be. Even if you did, you wouldn’t realise it’s importance, until it’s too late.
Flowers are blooming this morning, like a sparkle within eyes at the promise of fun, so often seen in a human’s gaze. One flower, golden at the core, bleeding outwards to white and curling when plucked from its root, is placed limply in dark hair by pale, naive hands.
How lovely is it that we can see ourselves in their fickle little forms? They are not one with us, yet they try so hard to be. Even in death they wish to feed us, yet all their troubles in life they so easily fix alone, scarcely praying these days for salvation. They end their lives giving thanks to the nature that birthed them in the spring. How humbling.
No response.
Bluebells, this year?
Yes, says the land. The hidden buds nod, windswept, seeds scattered, new nativity promised.
They are so often trampled on, comments the morning, it’s a real shame.
Maybe this time around they’ll remember the beauty in fragility, the mercy in being silent observers. Beauty may exist without being plucked.
Yes. The morning agrees.
***
Evening, now, bridging into night winking with starlight. Two figures appear. Do they often come in pairs? Something must be said about human connection here; destiny when world and sea crash together at the sewing-seam of horizon, meeting like eclipse. Trotting, two by two, trailing after each other like fabled pairs. Biblical. Only in twos will these creatures survive the coming flood. Maybe they are wiser than given credit for.
Voices are raised with argument beneath silent sky. They are not alone, but how are they to know this? Not that it would make a difference. A cruel cap forced over the eyes of a friend. Sorrow and grief hang in the sky by rising moonlight as his memories are lost to the universe.
We do not need to control them as Gods, says the land, look how they control themselves.
A gasp in the universe is wrought by such a betrayal of trust, out of love. Comets are spilling now. Why must they inhibit themselves? Is the white-haired witch not aware a garden is nigh-impossible to manage alone? Pruning is important but not always essential, for who would prune the spade they dig with? Nor would anyone with sense remove the soil which nourishes future seedlings, expecting them to grow unaccompanied.
What is he doing? The night twinkles, a flinch of unshed tears that forebode the incoming scent of wet soil. Grass soon to be dewed with fresh water, reminding Qifrey of his mistake. He is so quick to push others away from danger yet hurl himself towards it. If only he knew…if only they both knew.
That’s right, sighs the land. Such fools even with everything right in front of their eyes. Maybe that Qifrey is not just blind in the physical sense.
I guess love isn’t something that can be seen. The night sniffles.
A hush, and then the land says, softly: at the very least, his memories may stay with us for the time being. They are not gone, my dear.
I suppose you are right.
Passage stars begin crossing onto a new existing plane, to new journeys. They drop flashing, like sparklers, like crying doom while a clueless Olruggio wakes up to their tear-eyed beauty. Maybe soon, he will wake up to his love, also.
The next morning breaks dawn like an egg cracked, open like a tomb. Broken like a promise, like a soul, like earth and sun at dawn. Horizon. Early morning dew has cascaded from the sky, and nothing has changed. The sun is still blinding.
***
Something is stirring in the world as Coco is taking a walk, just like she used to. It seems like an age since she has adorned the outdoors with benefitting patronage.
Too long cooped up inside that atelier, I reckon, the land says.
Or cooped up inside her head, the morning replies.
An outdoor detox, perhaps? Much overdue in my opinion.
She walks and doesn’t care to glance back or at the daisies pushing up on the side of the path, clamouring for sun, for her attention. Something must be wrong. The flowers flicker, leaning their necks to brush her ankles. The path is long, winding, much like her own to come. Her gaze is distant.
She walks and reaches a hillside near a cliff above rocky, wave-washed depths with the face of someone who wants to stroll right off the path. Into darkness, into a blissful removal of knowledge. Back to the past, to carrying negative weight and mother’s chores where she was innocent, ignorant, stainless. You can’t turn back the clock on maturity. Plants don’t grow in reverse, only to flower or to rot. Such a shame children these days must have their guiltlessness gutted from them.
It’s always been like that, says the land. You’re just nostalgic. The past isn’t always better.
Well, the present isn’t either. Look at their sorrow.
The tall grass sways…
I can feel it, says the land. It gives way to her paperweight footsteps, anchor-like dragging in hard mud. When will she dance again by these cliffs, with fumbling feet of feather?
That shredding of innocence needn’t have happened. Just as death needn’t, or birth, though each has its purpose. One day, when she grows, she may be able to better protect the virtuous seeds that grow beyond her, just as Qifrey attempts to do for each his seedlings.
That doesn’t mean that the things lost, nor the changes suffered at the hands of others are acceptable, says the land.
No! No, of course not. I mean to say life has always provided unwilling challenges. Humans, from whatever horrific thing comes their way, tend to persevere, to find new ways to be themselves.
To fight back against what took things from them.
Exactly. It’s beautiful. They learn things about their own strength, which does not need to come from blood, but from invention, from flexibility. In spite of a natural – or human – disaster, they make something good out of it.
The land hums. Like when one ploughs soil, by hand. Cruel, hard and unnecessary work for the toiler. Backs will ache, but fertile soil may reap nutrients for better surviving the next famine. Memories of drudgery are not worthless; they imprint themselves into skin and dirt alike.
Maybe, ponders the morning, if you put it like that, everything does happen for a reason.
Coco steps away from the bank, gaze snapping back to whence she came. A new, resolute look in her eyes. She spots a soft, red flower by the bank and breathes, deeply. A lungful. Back off home.
Time to try again.
***
Voices have been trailing through the wind for weeks, excitable, shouting ‘silver festival’ the promise of which runs, echoing. It’s night again when blood spills, the stench of hot peril falling like tragedy from a plunging knife’s edge. A stain forced down grass throats, shuddering, gagging. The earth’s skin burns, salted wounds bursting with every fresh life, wrought bloody. It’s painful relief, release within grief.
The road of mortal life. The land laments for that is all they are, mortals. It is in their nature, to be violent. To wreak death and lost limb upon the soil which makes them whole.
Don’t be disrespectful, whispers the night. But its voice lacks conviction, is hushed, guilted. It knows all; that humans are not faultless creatures. The sky trembles with a black net, draining the world’s soul, dark with evil. They are trying, says the night, they are dying.
A misguided child, with dark skin and hair under a brimmed cap, to hide furious eyes. His legs are wound with the earth’s veins, trees ripped for a greater purpose. He is so conflicted. Voices and pleas and spears are raised to him. This misguided child, another one, threatening the tight-fisted rule of humankind.
The land broils under the stench of sweat born of vivacious magic-casting. They never learn, it says.
Do we not also change? The night crackles. Does not the land itself sprout new features and evolve? Nature is ever changing. So are it’s offspring.
Children are protecting other, younger children, under tents made from split grass, the buds upon which have now burst. For all that they learn in witchcraft, they have not learned a thing of compassion. The land, a sponge for contempt.
Yes, sighs the night, try not to blame them. Where there is chaos and creativity and freedom, there must also be some enforcement to mitigate it. Without the trimming of the trees, would we not also be overrun?
They do not trim, snarls the land, cracks ripping through its flesh, newborn saplings tumbling in. They devour, like leeches sucking the life force out of everything their hands touch, every gaze they use to carve this land, which ought to be their lifeblood.
Yes, I suppose you are right. Screams, panicked breath, tearing apart the night. It has been centuries. When will they find a way to use their gifts to heal?
***
Normality, finally, once again. Or an attempt at the semblance of it.
It’s everyone together now, out amongst fresh laundry. The sun is blaring discontentedly in a cool wind, too forceful to be called a breeze, the clouds an inky spread over the sky; threatening rain.
The bow-and-arrow snap of washing pegs resounds quietly as Qifrey tugs sheets from the line and hands them to Olruggio and Riche, who fold them together in shared motions like an odd little dance. Next in line, Agott curls round a wicker basket, one hand piling the folded sheets high, the other gripping a book she buries her face in and Coco reading over her shoulder. Tetia’s role? To run like the crack of a whip; there and back across the line grabbing stray pegs and runaway underpants.
The midday sky grumbles its displeasure, but no one makes a move to return indoors. Almost every piece of fabric they own needs to be washed, all muddied and some in need of careful stitching. No secret why, but no one’s mentioning it. It’s all in the eyes, something to do with them, something that’s missing. Fight, perhaps. Or will. Or hope. The loss of a familiar spark, empty glimmering.
Their bones ache and lick at a crumbled life-force, creaking through the grassroots. Tired; the skin on their cheeks nicked, memories of blood-strewn hands scabbed over. Memories not far away enough. Memories of moments which nearly cost them their lives or their morals. Time is ticking, as always, so better rinse the world of sin for a moment, before another gory purge. Clip and fold. Tug from a spindly line.
Why don’t they just use their precious magic to solve it, as always, says a voice. A voice merged, speaking gritty, light as absence, from the sticking-place between land and sky, between sea and evaporation.
Look at them, says the morning. Simple servants to the weather which gives them comfort and clean clothes. They merely wear the illusion of reliance. What happened to the oh-so-fierce witchlings? Tilting the trees to their will, warping the grass and the water, perverting it, taking it as their own. Thieves of their mother nature, forgetting to respect her and taking their birthright as if it were a gift to solder ambitions with. Look at how they trust the calm sky to blow their clothes, their pillows and bedsheets, socks. As if they couldn’t do it all themselves.
Maybe their magic, too, has been drained from them. Sunken inward, rotting with power and defeat.
Despite the moisture hanging in the air, Olruggio descends into a hacking cough as a wave of pollen rushes in a current of gale. He’s always had hay fever.
Someone’s salty today, says the land.
They are being very ungrateful, huffs the morning.
Don’t you think they might need rest? Time to grieve, accept their failures, accept that they are naught but humans for all their supernatural power.
Humans who will keep making mistakes, says the morning.
Yes. I’m sure they are as well aware of that as we are.
The sky grumbles again, in warning.
Sluggish, uninterrupted motion in a grey field. Until Tetia gasps and there’s sudden energy zipping down the tips of her toes and fingers, into the dirt beneath.
“Everyone!” She whispers, as loud as a whisper can get. “Look!”
Far in the distance a herd of deer are galloping. Migrating somewhere new for the day, maybe there’s a peace coaxing them out from the bushes. In droves, larger than life, they prance along the fields, small brown specks. Dust mites on a distanced green backdrop, beautiful.
“I’ve never seen them this close before!” She is positively buzzing, a grin like a crescent from ear to ear.
Listlessness wanes like a collective sigh of relief. The witches are looking. Looking at Tetia, looking at her amazement, contagious, like a secret. Except this secret is not hidden, it’s as open as the doors of a church. It’s due to rain, but there’s still sun on their faces and wind on their battle-worn cheeks.
“Isn’t it just amazing?” Tetia smiles. They all breathe in, then out, then start to smile with her. Coco first, then Agott. Riche and Olruggio.
Qifrey.
Took him long enough, says the land, it’s been ages since I’ve seen him crack a smile. Silly witches.
Did you do that? Asks the morning.
Perhaps. The land is smug. Or perhaps everything happens for a reason.
Rain begins pouring, a switch flipped. For a breathless moment they still stand there. Under grey blobs drooling over white washing. Crisp, fresh laundry time travelling back. It’s a slog of a workload, and now they’ll have to do it all over again. They’ll figure it out, being witches and all.
I wouldn’t know, says the morning, but I’ve heard there’s something cathartic about washing in rainwater.
Rain sinks below their skin, in their hair, removed of twigs since the battle, tugged downward with a weight, then released. Trailing down limbs, the cartograph of a body and it’s scars, pinkly clean but streaked muddy with recollection.
Well, they’re only human after all; big steps and little steps, human witchy steps all the same squelch across the field and into the doorway of their atelier. Pushing and shoving with discrepant harmony, the children they are. Complaints – “my hair only just finished drying!” – are punctuated by laughter with the promise of good, home cooking back in shelter, beyond. True peace, for now, rather than the fakery of it.
Shrubs take a well-deserved drink, nature’s family take a fresh gulp of existence and the world is trying to live, after everything.