Another walk in the woods this week. Since visiting the Wild Food Festival in September we’ve been noticing far more mushrooms when we’re out and about. A clear case of observational bias — it’s not as if fungus populations have exploded in response. So I saw this bracket fungus in the woods and grabbed a photo of it for later identification. Not that I’ve actually looked it up yet, of course.
It wasn’t until I went back to look at the photo that I saw the face in the tree trunk immediately below the ‘witch’s hat’ shaped mushroom. Now I can’t un-see it. I am forced to wonder why the witch is in there. Was it magic gone awry? Was she trapped there for some reason? By who? What would happen if she got out?
Josie’s skin prickled as she walked past the Witchtree. Sensing a tingle of energy there was normal. Long ago the high-faeries had deployed powerful wild magics to entrap the witch-queen. Traces of that sorcery still left the air feeling thick and muggy. Today was different. A livid undercurrent spiked through the ancient fog of the high-faery entanglement spell.
Goosebumps tightened her skin as Josie stopped to regard the tree where the witch’s face, held in its aeons long scream, left an impression on the bark that was as much psychological as it was physical. She had skipped past the tree hundreds of times without ever really stopping to look. Even now, she felt a deep seated urge to move on that didn’t seem to come entirely from within her.
Josie closed her eyes and breathed slowly. As one of her village’s ambassadors to the faery folk she had been trained in sensing and understanding magic. She could even use some. Just a little. Nothing as grand as a spell, she could merely tug at the weave of magical energy that infused the world. Her mother had joked that they had high-fae in their ancestry. At least, Josie had always thought it a joke.
Now that she looked, the strands of power which formed the Witchtree stood out bold and strong against the background energies. She could see the subtle crafting that had gone into warping and weaving the magics. Most weavings that Josie had encountered lasted mere minutes. These had persisted for millennia and their beauty was still breath-taking. But there was something more.
Josie peered deeper, leaning in to sense the magic better. There! A twist that looked… wrong. A bunching of the fibres of power which defied the pattern around it. And a taste. Something bitter as wax and so desperately sad it brought Josie to her knees.
Reaching out she touched the lines of power. Not to interfere. She’d never do that! She’d never dream of tampering with another’s casting. Just to understand it better. The flaw was clear to her now. A green filament, almost invisible it was so thin, wrapped around the main skein of magic. She could tell it wasn’t supposed to be there. Most likely it was a stray thread of some dissipating spell that had snagged on the Witchtree weaving. Unbidden, her fingers found the thread and plucked.
The foreign filament broke and the Witchtree weaving relaxed back to its normal shape. Josie sighed in relief as the prickle settled to its normal feel. In the heartbeat when she shifted out of her Weaver’s Trance it happened. The weaving began to unravel.
Josie dived back in, trying to shove the strands of magic back together in a panicked rush. But she was no weaver. And to match the skill required for the Witchtree weaving would take centuries of careful study. But Josie was human. Even if she’d wanted to, and young though she was, she hadn’t the time to learn a fraction of what was needed.
A hand rested softly on her shoulder.
“Thank you, Josie,” said a young woman’s voice.
The Weaver’s Trance fell away and Josie looked up to see a girl. 16 perhaps? Maybe younger. Barely older than Josie, certainly. Her dark hair was greasy and unkempt and framed a face so pale it was almost transparent. Her grubby green dress was covered in patches of lichen and torn where ivy suckers had been pulled away. Magic sparkled in her eyes. Not the steady, even, yellow glow that filled the eyes of the high-fae. Pinprick green lights filled the girl’s pupils and danced and swirled to a lilting rhythm.
Josie threw herself backward. Her feet slipped and she fell, autumn mud staining her bright red cotton tunic.
“Peace, Josie,” said the girl. “I mean you no harm. You’ve freed me from my prison and, unlike the high-fae, I don’t turn on my friends.”
“Are you the witch?” was all Josie could manage. Pathetic, really. She knew the answer already.
The girl nodded.
“What are you going to do?”
The witch smiled as warmly as a summer sun. “That,” she said, “is the best question I’ve heard in over three thousand years.”
Brandon Lim 