A Little Knowledge

“You seem preoccupied. Am I not entertaining enough, or do I need to find something better to distract you with?” I look up to find myself seated at a fine restaurant. I’m in a glittering black gown, and lavishly adorned with diamonds. My tablemate is pouring me a glass of wine. The soft voice has a hint of sarcasm. But then, what else could I expect from Tony Stark?

Wait. Tony Stark? “Oh, you’re entertaining alright, Tony. I just have to wonder what I’m being set up for.” He offers the glass of wine, but I refuse to take it. He shrugs, and places it on the table. Laughing at my reluctance, he starts to drink directly from the bottle.

Enough of this bullshit. “Okay, Dream. I’m on to you. What gives?” “Tony Stark” stops drinking and wipes his mouth.

“Why, yes, I am a Dream. I’m whatever you want me to be.” The server arrives, with a plate of steak and lobster. “Your favorites, I am assured. Please. Enjoy yourself.”

I refuse, even refraining from touching the silverware. “And what is the price for such an elaborate feast? What will be expected of me later?” He looked hurt that I would dare ask such a question.

“Oh. My. How suspicious are we.” I only nodded. “Well, truth be told…” He leans in closer. “I have… a problem.” He looks around as if expecting eavesdroppers. “A particular problem. One that you are well equipped to deal with.”

“Out with it. I have a very low tolerance for bullshit today.”

He leans back and laughs, then drops into a very serious mood. “I need you to kill the Evil Witch.” Wait. WHAT?

My turn to laugh. He remained serious. “You’re truly serious. Kill the Evil Witch?” He nods. “You’re Tony Fucking Stark! What you can’t, or won’t, do yourself you can buy someone else to do it! Fuck this, I’m out.” I throw down the napkin and start to leave the table.

He grabs my hand. “Please. Weaver.”

On the name drop, I whirl to face him. “Then drop the fucking illusion and face me square. If you have the audacity to call me by than name, then put it all on the table!”

“Yes. This is an illusion. Otherwise, you won’t take us seriously. Most humans don’t.” Us? “We need your help. And this person is considered in your culture as a powerful person to listen to. So…”

“The persona you’re using is a work of hubris-soaked fiction.” I sat back down. “Now, however you want to appear to me, is okay. I’ve seen appearances that make my eyes bleed, and I still stick around. But you have to speak straight with me. Evil Witch? Sounds like a simplistic fairytale. You know what, I think the less lies and illusions between us, the better. Show me. Show me plain.”

They drop all the illusions and the world changes. I’m in an old growth forest, sitting on a log with a stump nearby where the restaurant table was. Where Tony Stark was sitting, were several dozen small beings. Sprites and pixies. Diminutive forest folk. Many of them look forlorn and thin.

Looking around the forest, I see lots of plants, but something is off. The plants have been over harvested. Stripped clean and what plants are left were mishandled and greatly damaged. Now I understand the appearance of the sprites.

“This… Evil Witch. What is he doing?” I gesture to the destroyed foliage. “He did this?”

“She comes in and just strips everything! She doesn’t leave anything behind and fouls the ground behind her! She’s destroying us! We tried to talk to her, but the more of us she saw, the more she took! You have to kill her to save us!”

“Okay. Yea. This is a problem. But, I may not have to kill her to save you. Or rather, that is my option of last resort. I don’t feel any magic residue here, it’s all mechanical damage. At the very least, maybe I can talk sense into her. Take me to the Witch.”

They give me a magic flute. (Of course.) As we go, a large boar comes out of the forest and comes with us. The sprites are afraid of it, but I know who it is. “I hope you know, the only reason I’m taking this dream seriously is because you’re here.” The boar snorts in laughter and friendship.

The Evil Witch’s cabin at the edge of the woods. As we leave the treeline, I can see a modern city in the distance. I guess the City is as ever present as implied after all. As I walk up to her door, I feel a Gate above me. Look up, yup, there’s a Gate. I know I can’t enter it. Besides, it’s in mid-air, and there is no means of climbing up into it.

Stepping up to the cabin’s door, I find no hint of warding, no signs of ownership, no shimmers of power. For a place in the Dreaming, within eyesight of the City, this has got to be the most Mundane cabin, ever! I hear someone inside. I look back at the sprites. They are quaking in fear. I knock solidly on the door.

“Coming! Oh my! I never get visitors! And you brought my forest friends!” She is dressed in great lengths of swirly glittery cloth. She’s covered from head to toe in trinkets, stones, and dud talismans. She smells of sandalwood, candle wax, and Febreze. I look at her with my Sight and find no Power, active or latent. This is the Evil Witch?

The sprites cry out and hide behind me and the boar. “Hey, Lady? Are you a witch?” Her smile freezes. “What a horrible thing to call me! I’m the Hand of the Goddess!” Oy, vey. It’s gonna be a long dream.

“Witch is bad?” I find her sentiment hilarious, considering the world we are in.

“Yes! Despicable! Witches are horrible, despised creatures! They destroy without thinking and upset the balance in the world with their negativity! Then Hands like me have to put things right!” She’s stomping in her fury. I still don’t see any power in her. I look at the sprites to ask them. They are terrified of her.

I look past her door and see many of the harvested plants in various stages of processing. Along with the plants’ associated sprites, in various stages of dying. “Lady, I see you work with plants. Do you work with their spirits, too?”

“My, aren’t you rude and impolite! If you must know, I sever the plants connection to their mother spirit with salt. This way, the mother spirit isn’t wounded when I harvest them.” Salt! Mother spirit? Uh oh.

“Lady, I’m rude and impolite because the forest called me here to have a talk with you. You’re not only over-harvesting the area, the salt you are leaving behind is killing what you didn’t rip away! While I don’t know anything about a ‘mother spirit’, I do know I can hear the wailing of dying sprites coming from your cabin. You claim not to be a witch. This is correct. You claim to be a Hand of the Goddess. If by ‘Goddess’, you mean a totes material, self-blinded, greedy, appropriating one, then you are her avatar. Otherwise, you’re more fluffy than a bag of premium cotton balls.” The quiet hum of the Gate sparked a thought. “Just what are you trying to do here, anyway?”

She stared at me in anger and indignation. “How dare you judge me! I don’t have to answer to a witch!” She turned to storm back into her cabin. The boar started laughing while I started playing on the magic flute. At once her feet started dancing a jig. With merriment, I continued playing but walked away from the cabin, back into the forest. Unable to stop herself, she shuffled and skipped her Goddess Hand happy ass away from her door and into the forest after me. The boar, now carrying a dozen sprites on his back, followed her. Boar and sprites are squealing in laughter.

I fluted her ass right back to the scene of a particularly vicious “harvesting”. The ground had grey patches where the salt had sterilized the ground. The skeletons of tall plants were stiff and brown. Pieces of shredded leaves, rejected because they were not textbook perfect specimens, scattered the area. The few plants, and sprites, that remained were ill and weak.

I allowed her to collapse, winded and tired, on the defiled ground. When she saw the carnage that surrounded her, she shrieked at me. “This is your work! Witch! This is what I work to prevent if I can, cure if I can!”

Oh really? “Hey, Forest! Who did this?” The wind blew around the woman, shrieking “Youuuuuuuuu!”, in her ear. The branches of the trees that surrounded us pointed at her. Sprites came from everywhere to pelt her with acorns, rocks, and mud. I stood back and allowed them to vent themselves in a manner the woman could easily understand.

After I felt she got the message, I stepped forward and raised a hand. “Okay! Enough! We’re not going to stone her to death with pebbles!” A collective “Aww!” surrounded me, but the deluge came to a stop. I turned to the now filthy woman sitting on the ground. She was sobbing in great heaves.

She wailed, “It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”. I nodded. “I was only following the book’s instructions!” I winced. “Humans are supposed to be nature’s friends!” I shook my head slowly. “No?”

“Humans are supposed to be part of nature. We’re not separate.” My turn to deeply sigh. “Look, the forest is losing its patience with you. I need to know, how did you wind up here. This isn’t your native land, is it.” I extended my hand to her, to help her to her feet.

Surprisingly, she took it. “No.” She sniffed. “I just want to go home!”

“How did you get here?”

“I found my daughter’s books on Wicca. I started reading them. I fell asleep. And I woke up in the cabin!” Ugh, I know that problem.

“So, why the hatred towards witches?”

“Because witches are evil! And they destroy things, with no regard for anyone else! They just take! My mother told me that!”

I struggled to keep a straight face. “So… tell me again… how you don’t fall under that definition?” I gestured at the destroyed clearing. She looked around, the realization spreading on her face, and burst into tears again.

“It wasn’t supposed to be this way.” She reached for my sleeve to wipe her nose with, but I quickly backed away. She wound up soaking her dress hem instead.

“Okay. Look. The ‘witches are evil hags’ thing is a stereotype, a particularly vicious misogynist one at that. Obviously you didn’t get very far in your daughter’s books to learn the basics.” I wondered if she managed to get past the front page, really. “I take it all the accoutrements you’re wearing are also part of what you think Goddess Hands wear?” She nods. Well, that explains why they’re all duds.

She looked at me with sudden hope in her eyes. “You… You sound like you know what you’re doing. Could you teach me?” Oh HELL naw.

“No.” Her face fell. “I’m not a teacher. I’m sorry. Besides, this isn’t the place for you to learn. Hell, this isn’t the place for you, period. I gotta get you out of here, or you’ll learn things you’re not ready for.”

She took my warning as a challenge. “I’m ready for anything!”

I stared at her with my most Serious face. “Are you ready to be ripped limb from limb, your body parts dangling from the branches, your decapitated head shoved under a tree so its roots can grow into your mouth and out your eye socket? And all the while, you’re still aware and alert and feeling every little thing?” Her face registered the horror I knew it would. “Are you ready to experience the cycle of death into life into death that comes with an intimate knowledge of ‘Nature’?” She shook her head, trembling in fear. “I didn’t think so. Now. Let’s go back to the cabin. I’ll let you walk on your own this time. And on the way, you can tell me what you are trying to accomplish with the plants.”

As we walked back to the cabin, the sprites made sure to show her their opinion of the two of us. As I approached, flowers bloomed and bees dusted me with their cache of pollen. Tree roots lowered into the ground to provide me with a smooth path. Branches moved out of my way so I wouldn’t have to dip under them. As she followed, flowers closed and turned away. Flies buzzed around her constantly. The trees kept trying to trip her and branches caught her constantly. She complained that the forest was treating her the same as it always had been, while showing me favor.

“Damn woman. You’re more dense than me. The forest has been trying to tell you to keep out all this time, and you still barged forward? No wonder the sprites asked for wetware.”

“Wetware?” “Never mind. You never did answer my question. What are you trying to accomplish with the plants?”

She didn’t answer until we were clear of the forest, with the cabin within sight. “My daughter’s book said something about a Hedge Riding Salve. You rub it on, and it transports you between worlds. I’m trying to make some to get me home, since that’s how I got here. I was making some, and I tasted it because I was curious. Next thing I know, I’m here.”

“Salve? Okay. But you’re not supposed to eat it because… Oh shit.” I came to a complete stop and turned to face her. “Shut up. Hold still. I need to take a good Look at you.” please-o-please-o-please let her be alive…

I reached out with my Sight until all the current world faded away. I saw only darkness, but I kept peering. Yes. There. A glimmer. Her thread. It’s faint. It’s frayed. It looks like it had been acid-eaten. There’s something else. A stronger thread wrapped around it. Her daughter. There’s something else. A mechanical sheath surrounding the weakened parts. A sudden scent of a hospital room. Fuck.

I return to myself, to the dreamworld I’m in. “Don’t bullshit me, Lady. What was the last things you did before waking up here?”

She looked anxiously to the side. “Your eye turned black for a moment. Did you just do something to me?”

I lost my patience. “Hel is waiting for you at the gates, woman! You’re already half dead and the forest wants you All The Way Dead! Swallow your god damned pride and let me help you! Let me guess… You made something with henbane, going off something half-cooked recipe in a shiny book, and put yourself into a coma and woke up here, right? So now, you’re trying to duplicate the recipe here, so it will send you back home!” She starts to take a breath to answer but I cut her off. “If you bullshit me one more time, I will take your head off my-fucking-self!”

She started to cry. Silent tears fell from her face. She looked down, and nodded. “Followers of the Goddess are supposed to be the good guys… why me?”

“You’re not pagan, are you.” She shook her head.

“You’re Christian, but you were curious what your daughter was up to.” She nodded.

“You woke up here, and are trying to convert here, in the hopes that the Goddess will save you, since you are so far outside what Christianity teaches.” She nodded.

I think I spent all my sighing points elsewhere. I found myself unable to do anything but facepalm. Nearby, the Gate hummed to itself, floating above the path to the cabin, just out of reach.

“Are you going to kill her now?” A sprite tugged at my pant leg. The woman looked up in alarm.

“No, I’m going to send her home.” The woman now looked at me with hope.

“But what if she comes back?”, cried the sprite. The woman started vigorously shaking her head.

“Then, it’s her problem to deal with. Not mine.” The woman started crying again.

I felt another nudge at my leg. The boar had shed his passengers and was now gently headbutting my leg. “Are you here to laugh, or to help?” He laughed, then nodded. “Say, how much weight could you hold?” The boar was of such unnatural size, his back was as high as my waist. He could almost be ridden. He looked at the woman, looked back at me, and nodded.

“Lady, I have a way to get you home. But I don’t know how much of this you’ll remember. First, you have to drop all these… things… you’ve accumulated around yourself. The trinkets and the stones and the dingly-danglies. Drop it all. Be just how you were when you came here. If you had other clothes, go put them back on. Otherwise, strip naked.”

She whimpered a little, but went into the cabin to change. While she was there, I spoke to the sprites. “When I get her through the gate, ransack the cabin. Release all your brethren and strip the place bare of anything that belongs to the forest. If you need help breaking into things, I’m sure my boarish friend will help.” He squealed in agreement.

She came out, in a simple dress. She clutched it tightly, trying to hide a stain. I moved her hand. Vomit. It confirmed what I suspected about her arrival.

“You were trying to fly up to that glowing Gate, there, right?” She nodded. “Why didn’t you try a step stool or a chair?”

“There were none.”

“No chairs in the cabin?” She shook her head. That was odd.

The boar took up position under the Gate. Yes, he’s just the right height for her to reach it. “Okay, Lady. Here’s the plan. You’re going to step on the boar’s back, while he’s kneeling. I’ll help steady you. As he stands, you’ll be able to reach the Gate and pass partway through it. You’ll have to pull yourself through, but I’ll give you a boost from below.”

It took a few tries, but she managed to stand on his back. The Gate was just above her head. As he stood, however, the Gate rose with her. She never touched it.

She jumped down, and started crying again.

Well, fuck. I sat down on the ground, and tried to think of Plan B. Absentmindedly, I played around with the magic flute. The boar came to me, and nudged it upwards towards my mouth. “Making her dance isn’t going to help.” He shook his head and nudged it towards me again. “The flute can do other things?” He nodded.

I looked at the crying woman, looked at the Gate, and considered how I saw things. Her thread was far too frayed to manipulate. But her daughter’s…

“You know your daughter loves you, right?” The woman stopped crying and wrinkled her face at me.

“No, she doesn’t. She wouldn’t have left the Church if she did.”

“No, Lady. That’s your guilt talking. She loves you, loves you dearly, and is with you at the hospital.” A realization slaps me. “In fact, she is with you, right now!” I jump to my feet and pull the woman back under the Gate.

I start playing the magic flute again, but not at the woman. I’m calling on her daughter. on her daughter’s thread, on her daughter’s love for her mother. A green tendril starts to descend from the Gate. It coils and curls and swings around like an ambulatory vine of ivy.

“Hey, that looks like the ivy my daughter grows!” I stop playing to say something, and the ivy pulls back up into the Gate. Shit. I start playing again, pouring my focus into calling the daughter’s connection back through. The woman is going to have to put two and two together without my input.

The boar helps, he shoves her towards the emerging vine. “Is that the way home?” He shoves her again. She grabs the vine and it coils around her arm at once. She starts shrieking as the vine explodes into growth and surrounds her arms and torso with thick foliage!

“Ah! It has me! Ah! Help!” She struggles for a moment, then relaxes. “Wait. This smells like my daughter. I get it, this is my daughter’s magic! You were right, she does love me! I can feel it! It’s like she’s hugging me.” She starts crying again. “I want to go home. I want to be with my daughter again.” The vine, having hold of her completely, starts to recede into the Gate, pulling the woman up with it.

I know I don’t have to play the magic flute anymore, and cease. I wave goodbye to the ascending woman. “No more playing with henbane! Or any other concoction!”

“I won’t! Thank you!” The woman disappears into the Gate, and the Gate fades out of existence. At once an army of sprites flood into the cabin, followed by the boar. There is much destruction wrought within. Soon, the survivors are brought out, along with many caches of seeds.

“All are free that could be freed. Now what do we do?” Good question. I want to tell the sprites to allow the forest to destroy the cabin. But the cabin is not in the forest proper. Far off in the distance, I can see the City. No stools. No chairs. This cabin was built for a purpose, and not for the woman. She just happened to arrive here.

“Now, you take care of you and yours. Leave the cabin. Take back your magic flute, it’s not mine to keep.” The sprite looked at me oddly when I returned the magic flute. It smiled strangely. I felt like I had just passed a secret test. “I dunno what to tell you about the salted ground though. Well, I wouldn’t know what to tell you if this were the Waking. Somehow, I think the forest will heal that place just fine, now that she isn’t here to tear it all back up.” The sprite smiled and laughed again.

Last nerve, they have snapped it. “Tell me the truth. You didn’t need me here to deal with her, at all. You guys were perfectly able to deal with her and the ‘threat’ she represented.” The sprites are all laughing now. “Then what the hell did you want me for?”

“Because. If we ‘dealt’ with her, she may not have survived the experience. You were nearby, and well, it was fun to watch you at work!” Sprites. For fucks sake. Every damn time. It all comes down to the lulz. “Besides, we heard you write stories, so maybe you’ll write ours!”

Okay. My ego has been sufficiently stroked. “Yea, I write stories. And yes, I’ll be writing this one.” A collective cry of “Yay!” surrounded me. “Anything else y’all little monsters be needing from me?” Chuckles and giggles abound. After enjoying being called ‘little monsters’, they all replied in the negative. “Okay, time for me to go.”

I left the forest’s edge, and in doing so, left the dream.

Make of that, what you may.