The Tide’s Song, sometime in Autumn 219
Carter
Carter sits on the deck of the Tide’s Song. She’s positioned herself to the side of the forecastle, tucked in a corner made by the stairway, where she hopes she will be in no one’s way. Carter sits with her legs folded beneath her and a small bowl in her lap. There is a neatly-bound book, open in front of her, and Carter writes a few notes before retrieving an item from the bowl.
A berry. Carter doesn’t particularly know what kind it is - she’s no herbalist - but it is dark and plump and she’s eaten them before. She eats one now, focusing on the taste. Barely anything at first, but when the skin of the berry is broken it releases rich purple juice.
The taste reminds Carter of the port her father used to drink, raising his glass each evening to their portrait of Tyr Isendel and mumbling blessings of the harvest. She and her brother would often join him.
Carter is hit by a wave of melancholy and affection for her father - the old Baric Blackwood. He had been long-lived, but by the end, he’d taken to watering down Carter’s glass of port, as he had used to do when she was a child; and once, after the toast, Carter’s father had turned to her and called her Ellis. Said how she would make an excellent Baric, one day. Holland had needed to gently remind their father that Ellis, their half-sister, had been dead those 15 years. That Carter had never even known her.
Carter shakes her head, trying to clear the memory so strongly brought on by the taste of the berry. After a moment, Carter brings a handkerchief to her mouth and spits the remains of the berry into it. She sets it aside, along with one more berry from the bowl. She writes a few more lines in the book.
Seeming satisfied, she nods, looks down at the bowl, and carefully selects another small purple berry. Carter tries to imagine the Stuff - the world’s energy that surrounded and infused the berry and that could be manipulated by a clever witch. She focuses on the taste of that first berry. That rich juice, already more port than berry. A little heady and overripe and somehow filled with the memory of her father.
Focus on that.
Manipulate that.
Change the flavor.
Carter narrows her eyes and moves her hand through the air. It is a practiced, stiff movement, but Carter can feel the Stuff…or whatever it was…the magic…suspended in the air like droplets of humidity. She imagines her hand collecting the droplets of magic, pulling the droplets into threads and twisting them in her hand around the fruit.
“Abracadabra,” she says, softly, staring at the berry.
She pops it into her mouth. The berry explodes with flavor. Rich and salty and sour. The taste sucks Carter’s cheeks in, and she takes a sharp breath. She regrets it. It’s as if the air has kindled a flame - Carter’s mouth is on fire, eyes wide, face covered in a sheen of sweat. She yelps, and spits the remains of the berry across the deck.
Warbler
Warbler is snoring softly with his back against the mast of the Tide’s Song when he is abruptly awoken by flying bits of fruit colliding with his face. He falls to his left side as he attempts to jump to his feet, his mind momentarily forgetting how much differently his body moves these days.
He hears Carter cry out in pain. “Were those bits of her that struck me?!? Were we ambushed! She’s being killed!” he thinks frantically as he scrambles for his cane, and begins to stumble and tumble towards her; his brain still in a fog from his recent rest.
His eyes narrow and his shoulders fall into a slump as the image of the noble girl comes into focus. There is no attacker, no visible damage to speak of, no signs of a struggle, only … berries … a bowl of blueberries.
Warbler wipes the bits of debris from his face, quickly examines them, and realizes his mistake.
“Can … can I um, help you with something, Miss Blackwood?”
Carter
Carter holds up a hand at Warbler’s approach, trying to keep composure as she coughs several times into her sleeve.
By the time Warbler has finished his offer to help, Carter has mostly regained her poise. She fumbles for a moment, though, retrieving her handkerchief and sending the previously sampled berries onto the floor.
Carter blots her face, clearing away streaks of sweat and powder. A final swipe below her eyes - a subtle, deft move to smudge the kohl of her eyeliner elegantly upward. One last, small, cough.
“My apologies,” says Carter. She smiles at Warbler, eyes still watery, “I didn’t mean to disturb you…” Carter scans the halfling in front of her. When she notices pieces of berry, still clinging to Warbler’s beard, she laughs. She muffles the sound immediately with the back of her hand, and clears her throat.
“I’m practicing my witchcraft, or, I’m trying to.”
Carter turns her book toward Warbler - a page full of linework - some lines sweeping, confident, and some more tentative, “I’ve found I need different gestures than Sav does, in order to get similar effects, so I’m recording what I’ve tried…” she trails off for a moment, tracing one of the lines with her finger, brown eyes briefly dreamy before she snaps back.
“I could use a break, after the last one,” she says, sheepishly. Without her makeup to hide it, Carter’s face blotches red at the thought of her error. “I perhaps need to be more specific in my…intentions?” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Do you have any advice? Your witchcraft is incredible - summoning those beasts from the wood of the ship - is that something you can teach? Could you demonstrate for me, perhaps? Or explain the theory?” Carter is speaking quickly now, already preparing herself for the lesson without waiting for Warbler’s confirmation.
“And it’s Carter, please. Not Miss Blackwood.” Another small laugh, quickly snuffed, “You’re hardly my valet, Master Potts.” She drops him a wink and shifts the space around her—moving the bowl of berries aside, and the notebook to her lap.
Warbler
“You, you’re, practicing your … witchcraft?” Warbler says as he studies the young woman’s facial expressions and body language, while the tempo of her statements and questions rapidly increases. “Why would you want to do a thing like that … You have a home, and quite a fine one rumor has it, people to care for, and you could be, you could do something else. You, you know how the people of Isendel feel about magic; why choose that when you could choose anything else?”
In the back of Ringo’s mind he feels a cold wind, recalling a winter’s morning five years past. The snow he’s trudging through is up to his waist. The gnarled branch he’s using as a crutch bites into his armpit with each painful step. He’s lost. He’s been walking for weeks stopping only to sleep or eat what he can forage. He’s unsure where he’s going … why he keeps moving north … he doesn’t even know if there’s a place left for him.
Out of the corner of his eye he catches the briefest movement. A rabbit hopping across the surface of the snow. Then there’s a snap like a breaking branch, a scream, and an explosion of ice and snow where the rabbit once was. He makes his way to the scene, where the rabbit is in pieces. Torn apart by … an animal? No tracks … roots and vines? His thoughts are interrupted by a pain in his stomach and an audible grumble.
“Th … thank you …” Warbler says shivering, teeth clattering, he kneels to build a small fire and clean the kill.
“Best to stick to what you know,” he says to Carter as he reaches into his pack and hands her a few dark green leaves and some fragments of nuts. “Those should help cut down the spice.”
Carter
Carter presses one of the dark leaves between her fingers, and sniffs it once before popping it into her mouth. The effect is subtle, but immediate. Carter purses her lips, and closes her eyes for just a moment. She lets out a long breath, and the scent of spice and sweet basil fills the air.
She thanks Warbler for the leaves, but when she responds properly to his questions, it is with a voice traced by irony. “Witches aren’t supposed to be real,” says Carter, “Or at least I never thought they were. Not the sort of witches my governess described, certainly. Maneaters and necromancers and blood magicians…” She waves a dismissive hand and smiles at Warber. “I’m still not sure if that kind of witch does exist, somewhere, but it isn’t as if that’s any of you, that you all are really dangerous.”
Carter catches herself, and stumbles to correct her statement, stammering over the same words again. “Not that you all aren’t dangerous, because you can be, but you aren’t inherently bad or evil. It seems like the bare minimum you’re trying to do is just…stay alive. And that’s any person. Any sentient being. In my experience, a person will do anything to stay alive…”
She stops, takes another deep breath.
“It’s like hunting. A fox won’t attack a person, or a dog, not usually. But if that fox is afraid, if he’s cornered, he becomes dangerous. But that’s also not the fox’s fault…he’s just…trying to live.”
“Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that it doesn’t seem to me at all that your access to witchcraft makes you inherently evil or dangerous.”
Carter helps herself to another cooling leaf and waits for the flush to leave her face.
Warbler
“It doesn’t seem to you … that, that’s the key thing right there isn’t it. You can see us as all kinds of things, cornered foxes, or folk just trying to survive, but they won’t,” he says as he waves his right hand in a wide sweeping arc.
“What’s real and what isn’t only matters as far as it fits the story. It’s the story that’s real, what your mum told you, what your neighbors say, what people choose to believe, and as soon as they see you do this …” he says as a pear bursts forth from his cane, and he plucks it and takes a bite. “Well, then you’re a dangerous evil child-eating necromancy practicing blood-magic wielding monster.”
Carter
“But… it’s a pear. It’s food. The amount of people, of children in the Spindlemark Quarter alone that are suffering from lack of fresh food, to deny access to a resource like that just because of a fairy story.” A scoff of annoyance, not at Warbler himself, but at the truth of his statement.
“And they’re—” she shakes her head and looks again at Warbler, “It would be one thing if it was real fear, but now that I’ve seen Swan soldiers, Isendelian soldiers using witchcraft against Isendelian people, when, until now it’s - it’s hypocrisy.” Carter’s brows knit closely together as her voice falls, and she seems to lose confidence in her speech. “It’s…we’re at war. If our military has access to witchcraft, if those swans that destroyed the Harrington were just some of many then why are they here and not at the border? What is the point of it here? Just to… to terrify Isendelians?” She looks up at Warbler. “We could use this magic to end the war on this continent. And - and even afterward, when there’s peace in the Barony, having magic healers in large cities, and people who can send messages instantly to outposts and create temporary shelters that are warm and safe…”
She shrugs, and sits back on her heels, the notebook having vanished into a fold of skirts.
“I have a home, yes,” she says, “And I could be there now, that’s true too. My brother is often out of the Barony, and when he is, the estate is my responsibility. And until he has a child, I’m technically heir, too.” She rolls her eyes at this. “My father taught me it was my responsibility to look after the smallfolk, when my brother was gone. That a good Lord protects their people first…” she trails off, and turns her attention to her skirt, smoothing the hem flat with the palm of her hand.
“So, is it good enough?” Carter asks, sharply, “Will you try to explain your witchcraft to me now, please?”
Warbler
As Carter speaks Ringo’s mind wanders for a moment. He remembers the rustling of leaves drifting along a dirt road. The crunch of heavy boots trudging through them on a brisk fall afternoon. Three soldiers in purple and gold tabards … the sunlight filtering through the treetops and dancing across the metal plates of their armor … heroes …
“You’re a citizen of Isendel little one, and the dangers of the world are just beyond those hills. We’re here to protect you,” a kind feminine voice said from within the helmeted visage.
He snaps back to the moment before him just as Carter says the word smallfolk, which he assumes is a reference to his comparative stature, and her request to explain his witchcraft.
“I didn’t have anyone to teach me magic. I, it saved my life; I’m sure of that.” What’s left of it anyway, he thinks as he stumbles over the right words.
“What I do is almost entirely instinct to be honest. I imagine what I need or what I need to be. I pull from memories, from things I know and understand, and then roots, vines, leaves, and stems shape into it.”
“The advice I gave you earlier applies to witchcraft too I suppose … at least the way I’ve come to understand it, just stick to what you know. You can’t create something out of nothing; everything has a cost, and it’s impossible to create something that you don’t understand already. It would be like if I tried to transform you into a filferberry bush. It just wouldn’t work. One, I’ve never seen a filferberry bush I’ve only heard of it, two, I don’t know the texture, scent, or well anything about it other than words I read in one of my uncle’s old books … a small poisonous fruit bearing shrub found in eastern coastal waterways. Three, If I tried to change you into that. I would get, well who knows what. That’s probably what happened with your berry. What were you trying to change it into, anyway?”
Carter
Carter retrieves a berry from somewhere - the movement is quick and fluid - and holds it between her fingers.
“I wasn’t trying to change it into anything,” she admits. “I’ve been playing with this spell, this abracadabra that Sav taught me. And I can change some parts of things, observable parts…” Carter sweeps her opposite hand under the berry, trying to envision the fibers of Stuff that controlled the color.
In Carter’s outstretched hand, the berry shifts colors from deep purple to vibrant green and then to a pink so bright it is painful to look at. She settles on a rich yellow - the berry seeming to be sculpted from gold.
“I can change the look of things. Small things, so far, and while it doesn’t last particularly long, I started to wonder if I could change other aspects - if I could change how it appeared could I change how it tasted…” As she speaks, the berry darkens to the original violet shade. Carter shrugs and pops it into her mouth. “I was perhaps not specific enough in my aim - I wanted to make it taste ‘not like a berry’, but I didn’t think of another, different thing.”
She smiles at Warbler, “So I imagined what I needed, but didn’t have a specific memory to pull from, or at least I was thinking of the wrong one, that does make sense, thank you!” The book and ink pen appear again in Carter’s lap.
After a moment of writing, and a muttered erasure, Carter returns her full attention to Warbler. “But what you do is so much more complex. It’s one thing to change the look of a thing, to change the surface like…” she gestures to her own face, cheeks and nose again blotching despite her seeming self-confidence, “like artful makeup.”
“But you, Master Potts, you can change the nature of a thing.” A rustle as Carter flips a few pages in her book, “I saw you create living creatures from dead wood…surely that’s creating something from nothing. You’re pulling life from somewhere.”
She looks back up at Warbler, waiting for him to confirm her observation.
Warbler
“I, hmm, there’s life everywhere, in everything. Insects beneath the soil, seeds embedded in old wood, plants growing in and on everything. I can’t say I’m sure where I pull “life” from … if, I mean, if you want to call it that. I tend to think of it more as a conversion, a transaction, like when old bones rot to feed the roots of a sapling. I, I’m accelerating that … just for a little while, and then I give it back.” he states slowly at first, but the cadence of his speech begins to accelerate rapidly. He lowers his head into hand as he begins to pace back and forth.
“If what I’m creating really are living things then they are fleeting facsimiles of life that can only exist for a few candles before their flickering flame sputters out. I, I hadn’t really thought of it that way before … I hope I haven’t caused them pain. I know it hurts when I change myself … imagined! … conscious? … t, to! … f, f, from? …”
He trails off muttering to himself, speaking audibly but incoherently, while continuing to pace back and forth staring at the planks of the deck of the ship beneath him.
After about thirty seconds he stops. Looks Carter squarely in the eyes, and says “No, definitely creating something from something, life from life, then back again. When I change I break, then grow back, and when I change my surroundings it does the same.”
Carter
Carter watches as Warbler explains, but she looks away as his explanation seems to fade into the sort of speech Carter has trained herself to ignore. It was impolite to pay close attention when another was indisposed in their own thoughts. Instead, Carter remains still, only moving to wipe the tip of her pen down the spine of her book to remove the excess ink.
When Warbler looks Carter in the eye, and explains about breaking and growing back, she nods, slowly.
“So the transformation craft that you do, you’re breaking things down and repurposing them…but at the end of the…spell…it’s back to the way it was? Growing and fading like a flower going in and out of bloom- just an acceleration of a natural thing.”
“Well,” says Carter, shifting forward on her knees, “will you show me? If your theory is right then it’s impossible to do something you don’t understand already, and it would be incredible to have an idea of how it works, to maybe pull the theory from it and see if it can be learnt…”
Carter laughs, and covers her mouth with her hand. It’s a demure gesture but the laugh is loud and genuine. “Sorry I’m getting over-eager. Even with everything else that’s gone on, the most incredible was seeing you and Ethan just,” she gestures into the air, “fly away as birds. The pure magic of it was—”
“Can you do that to me, please? Can you make me a bird?”
Warbler
“No, not back to the way it was … I give it back, but it’s still changed. I, I mean you don’t unbreak a thing. It grows back, but different.” He states matter of factly, with his brow furrowed and a look of concern still painted across his face. “I, I don’t really think you know what you’re asking. When I changed Ethan it was an emergency; we had to save the friend he’d lost. I knew he’d do anything to get Danica back, that the pain would be worth it to him, but you … have you broken a bone, been cut by a blade? … changing you into a bird wouldn’t be pleasant; it … it’s agonizing, and terrifying,” he says nervously.
Well, until you’re flying, then you don’t want to change back, he thinks.
“Perhaps it would be better to start with something smaller … something simpler?”
“Hold out your hand.”
Carter
Carter holds out a hand. Her fingernails are clean but her palm is stained with violet juice.
Warbler
Warbler reaches into his pack and places a small piece of bark into Carter’s palm with his left hand and closes it with his right. A sound comes out of his mouth that isn’t words, but rather the sound of a branch bending in a strong wind. He taps each of her knuckles with his thumb then takes a small step back.
A few seconds pass and then the skin on Carter’s hand starts to crack like the earth on the parched desert ground. Between the creased lines roots wind around her hand and forearm growing together into something like a second skin, mottled and gray, coarse and tough. There’s only brief pain, and then mild discomfort like wearing an itchy sweater, as the skin from Carter’s fingertips to her shoulder is now enveloped in a layer of bark.
“There, now you’re a tree,” Warbler says with a satisfied nod.
Carter
Carter watches as the skin on her hand seems to sear and burn, and there is a brief moment where she expects pain. Carter’s mouth falls open but before she can react her skin is no longer skin at all, but dry and gray and cracking like a scab. “How can…how…” she closes her hand. She expects her fingers to snap like twigs, to watch sap bleed from her knuckles…but the bark moves with her. Stretching over her hand. Like the branch of an oak. Strong and mutable.
“That’s…” She shakes her head, “I can—but I can still…how did you—how…” Carter holds her hand out, examining it as she would a manicure. She smiles, opening the hand and flexing her fingers. The focus in her eyes shifts, from the bark covered hand, to Warbler, to her hand…
There is a thud as Carter faints, falling to the deck of the ship in a crumple of skirts.
Warbler
“Oh, oh dear …” Warbler mutters as he stumbles forward to try and prevent the girl from falling, but he catches only air as she collapses.
He leans over her tilting his head from side to side looking for any injuries, and gives her shoulder a nudge with his cane. He can hear the girl breathing at least, so it’s unlikely that she’s dead.
“I, I’ll put a kettle on Miss Carter,” Warbler says cautiously “… give you a moment to regain your senses. Just, you just let me know if you have any more questions?” he states politely as he hobbles away to make a pot of tea.
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