The Woods Outside Pashat
31 Autumn, after leaving Pashat
Athelia
The whole group is quiet. The woods are dense this far from town, and the further north they walk the tension begins to lessen in her shoulders. When they left the Briarbirds hideout, they began with the utmost stealth, taking their time to disguise their passage. Was it overly cautious, maybe, but with an Inquisitor on his way… she would do everything in her power to get her crew to safety.
All of them.
She watches the others pick their way through the brush, along some deer trail the briarbird knew led north. Warbler keeps pace with them all, but at the back of the group where the swing of his stiff leg won’t get in anyone’s way. The meekest of them all had done the most and she can still feel his magic singing around her. It hushes their footsteps and encourages the plant life to spring back in place as they move past. Softly she hums, easily hearing the beauty in his magic and the harmony.
“When you were dead … playing dead … could you hear me?” She asks, softly even though they are well out of danger. “I trusted you, but it was hard not to worry. It was very real.”
Warbler
At the back of the group Warbler is lost in his own thoughts as they travel with their new allies from Pashat through the woods. They’ll hopefully rendezvous with the Tide’s Song soon.
Spiders, I really, really, really don’t like spiders, he thinks. I just HAD to imagine the scariest thing I could think of … his skin crawls as he remembers what the swarms of them did to that poor guard. Why didn’t they run … I would have run; anyone in their right mind would run from that …
“I, yes … I could hear you. I’m sorry if I made you worry. I needed them to believe it … You, you were quite the smooth talker back there,” he says quickly as he stammers back to the moment at hand.
Athelia
She keeps pace with him, the silence between her words and his, punctuated by birdsong. Nodding she considers all she did with all she couldn’t do. And that which she left undone.
“I’m usually better at keeping us out of trouble,” she says and then laughs a bit, surprised at herself.
“Okay, so usually I’m the one finding it. But truly, talking is often good enough. Without putting everyone at risk with obvious magic, and mine is rarely subtle… I have only what comes naturally,” She says, knowing she used a magic she hasn’t tasted since she was a child. The song still clings to her, she can feel the vibration of its melody if she focuses. Perhaps she’d made a nightmare of her past, that she was like a young snake with no control over the dose of its venom. She was smarter now. And what wouldn’t she do for her people?
Briefly she rests her hand on Warbler’s shoulder, gently squeezing. “Thank you. For finding a way that kept our crew safe.”
The woods wind onward, the hike almost enjoyable if she doesn’t worry about every thread left undone behind them. And the now impossible task before them.
“I felt silly, you know, inventing funerary rites and reasons to keep the swans from burning you. Are there actually any special customs among your people, your family, should you fall?
“Ah, that’s rather dark. It’s just that I can feel it at the back of my neck. The Inquisition and we are headed to the heart of it…”
Warbler
Warbler instinctively flinches at Athelia’s touch. He knows he’s safe, but old habits die hard. He hears the wind whip through the canopy above them. It’s getting colder, spring has given way to autumn, which will fall to winter in the blink of an eye. The world is at its worst in winter …
He calms himself, rests his hand on Athelia’s and looks up at her with a smile. The same cool wind tossing her wild white hair to and fro, as she hums softly between moments of conversation. A song in the storm …
“I want to … I mean, I keep forgetting about the torch. I’ll never understand why they would burn …” he says in a lowered tone, as close to anger as his voice gets these days.
His mind momentarily drifts, like a falling leaf, fleeting … before hitting the ground …
In his memory he’s taking his first steps. Stubby, clumsy little legs stumbling through the fallen spring blossoms in the pear grove. He trips and tumbles head over heels down a small hill, the momentum kicking the chunky little boy’s body back up to his feet, and for a moment one would be forgiven for thinking that this infant was running. The tiny boy slams into a tree, but fortunately, at this age boys are mostly made of rubber.
Ringo’s arms and legs wrap as far as they can reach around the tree trunk in an embrace, but not for long … his tiny hands and feet are unable to maintain a grip … he flops onto his back in the grass. He blinks tears from his eyes, and stares up at the sky through the branches. He can hear his family’s cheers all around him.
“Under my tree, I was supposed to be … at, at the end we’re buried under our tree,” he says as he looks down at his cane, and blinks a tear from his eye, and then quickly wipes it away so that no one can see.
Athelia
It’s familiar, watching him struggle with some memory, sparked by the idea of the Swans burning their dead. She is quiet as he wrestles with it, her hand in his is a steadying presence. And for that moment, with the wind through the trees, there is a bite in the air. Summer is long past, and with it their opportunity to pretend at a life they aren’t allowed to have.
When the ship became hers, in that briefest season, she was allowed to be herself and create a place where the others were too. Was that just a glimpse at a future they might make for all of Isendel? She hopes. It is why she is here at all; why she is risking herself and her crew for this insane chance.
After Warbler composes himself, she feels him straighten under her touch. Letting her hand fall away she starts walking again, the rest of the crew close enough to be seen, but far enough away that the conversation is private.
“Your tree,” she says as she nods. “It’s odd how many sorts of people are a part of the barony and yet only one way of doing anything is observed. Kill what isn’t human, decide witches aren’t human so you hunt them. In such a land, what would have been next? This god or that perspective, a different faith, a different face… This hate and fear consumes them. Do you think they’ll change if we cut the head off the snake?”
Warbler
“No … the Swans are nothing like a snake,” Warbler states matter of factly, curtly … clearly, as he emphatically shakes his head from side to side. “They’re more like a fungal root rot, or a swarm of bark beetles.”
He can clearly picture how the leaves turn from green to an orange-gold after the rot sets in, but they change too early, before their season. It’s beautiful, if you don’t know what you’re looking at. A golden chosen tree amidst a sea of green, but what’s happening beneath the surface as the rot grows from the roots to the crown … it kills it from the inside. Then spreads through the soil … if you let it.
“What do you think?” he says as he looks up at Athelia with a wide grin. “Head off the snake, it does seem like a good start,” Warbler states with a shrug.
Athelia
“Hmm,” she considers while finding her footing over the stones in their path. “There is corruption too, they hate magic but use magic. Stirring up people’s fears for their own purpose whether or not they believe in it. I worry that, as witches, should we tear down the baroness… it will only make some people’s hate more justified.
“But what do I know of politics, and power,” Athelia sighs heavily. “I just want them to stop hunting us. And destroying the leader of the Inquisition. Cutting off their source of power and control. Maybe in time the regular people will see the good in their wise woman neighbor and her herbs, their traveling tinker who can fix things.
“I just don’t think they will ever not fear us if we do this,” she says, an admission she feels is true. “So we might fight and still not be welcome here.”
Warbler
“I’m still not very fond of that word to be honest … witches. Witches are monsters, bedtime stories, tales meant to frighten children. I … we, we’re not that.”
“I’ve thought about it a little … how this all ends for us; for the folk they call witches. I didn’t believe or … understand that I was the cause of the magic around me for … well, until embarrassingly recently,” he says with a slight chuckle as he kicks some leaves, sending them fluttering up and around them as they’re caught by the breeze.
“What I want, what I think other people want, isn’t just an end to Tyr Isendel; it’s an end to this war, this violence. If we could take that word … witches, and make it magic … make it mean peace not fear. Maybe then … I don’t know … more than likely we all lose … I mean, how do you change an idea folks have had their whole lives.”
Athelia
“Maybe we will have to find mercy for the Swans, if we intend to make a meaningful sort of peace after this,” she says, her face serious but thoughtful. “We’ll see if they let us. For all of my time in Isendel, I wasn’t the one who attacked first. But I don’t know how most will see us if we manage to usurp the baroness.”
She walks, keeping pace with Warbler, seemingly both lost in their thoughts. Hers spiraling darker with worry at all the potential outcomes, and the grim task they must do if anyone like them is meant to survive here.
Warbler
“How they’ll see us … huh …” he says as he scans himself and the figures walking alongside them. Scarred, ragged, strange … several of them freshly escaped from jail cells … A motley crew of outcasts, pirates, and rebels that have spent years hiding, running, or killing to survive.
“May, maybe we should be the ones that talk to folks after the deed is done,” he says in a lowered voice wearing his most endearing grin as he nudges Athelia with his elbow. “I mean who could stay mad at these faces?”
Athelia
Athelia looks over at Warbler and laughs. “Can you imagine sending Sylas to get people to empathize with us? I think some of our magics are a bit more palatable than others.”
Warbler
Warbler scrunches his face into his best impression of Sylas. Lowers his voice, drops his shoulders and says with a blank stare, “We saved you. You’re fuckin’ welcome.” Warbler says flatly.
He pulls a handful of sun dried kelp and mushrooms out of his pack, and speaks with his mouth full. “I’m sure it’ll all work out . . and somehow we’ll change their minds …” he states as he offers Athelia the same dried mixture of green and brown river plants and foraged fungus with his other hand.
Athelia
She laughs a bit, imagining such a thing, but the humor drains away.
“Change is hard, sometimes impossible,” she says. “And we will be the ones risking everything hoping Isendel can change. But we can’t survive either way, so it’s worth it to try.”
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