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Waking life is sufficiently disturbing. I’m grateful for the forgetfulness of a planting’s sleep, for those moments when I am simply a being at rest without a notion of who I am, where I’ve been, or what I’ve become.
For me, no dream could be sweeter than oblivion. To forget.
But I will not be forgotten. The world will remember my reign when men are fairytales told round the fires of whatever new monsters crawl from the fertile depths of the sea.
The sea… I’m suddenly eager to see it. If there is anything more nightmarish than a nightmare, the sea, with its fathomless depths and midnight mysteries, is it.
There’s something…interesting about that. Something dangerous, but exciting, too.
My smoky wings stretch wider. My black breast lifts and my lungs swell with cold air. The call has become a cry that ignites every cell.
It’s time.
Closing my eyes, I invite Mother’s magic in. It barely waits to be asked. It bursts through the barrier of my skin, rushing at me like a hurricane, and suddenly I’m full of holes.
“By the bell tower, by the bell tower,” Wig chirps as he flits away. “Meet you there, meet you…”
Before he can finish his round, I lose the ability to hear. I am a creature no longer. I am a net unfurled above the frozen city, stretching until every sleeping man and beast lies under my spell.
But it’s not the beasts I’ve come for…
The silk of my web vibrates with power, and the magic of the night garden falls from me like rain. It slides off the women and girls, the little boys and babies, but the grown men and young bucks with their softly whiskered chins are mine. The essence of Foxglove, the most lovely and terrible, dances across bearded cheeks, slips into sticky ears, burrows through the soft meat on the other side to plant the seeds that are mine alone to sow.
I dig deep. I cover the kernels with blood, water them with pain, wait until I feel them spark and germ before moving on to the next man and the next and the next.
I don’t know what they dream after I’ve touched them. I don’t know if they see my true face—the one Mother assured me was the loveliest any mortal would ever behold—or one of my other forms.
And I don’t care.
It doesn’t matter what they take from our meeting, only what I leave behind. After this, the men here will be gentled for life. No more violence, no more rage, no more taking their frustrations out on the women and children in their homes. From this day until their last day, no man in this city will be capable of breaking a woman’s heart or her bones.
It is my gift, and Mother’s revenge.
Sometimes I wonder about the man—the lover the Skritches whispered about long ago—who wounded Mother so deeply she felt compelled to bring her knife to my bed. Sometimes I think I would like to find him, to spread my web above him while he sleeps and unwind his mind until he can’t dream without weeping with remorse. Sometimes I imagine that, if I gave her true vengeance, Mother might let me return to the garden.
Most of the time, I know better.
Mother has a soft spot for mortal women. A number of them worship witches. Some have even been burned at the stake or drowned or worse for daring to practice the magical and healing arts. And in most human societies, they’re so pathetically powerless you can’t help but pity them.
Yet another reason I’m grateful not to be mortal.
How terrible it must be to fall in love, to ache for a man who cares more for his fellows and his horses and his ale than the woman who waits for him at home, heavy with his child, bound to his house and his kitchen and cook fire for all her days.
I wait for no one. I fly, I stretch—I am the consummate gypsy, bound not even to a single set of skin and bones.
It makes it difficult to feel too sorry for myself, even at times like these, when I am wrung out from spelling. When I scarcely have the energy to pull my thinly stretched self together and my raven’s wings are streaked with strands of purple hair and my true form calls so strongly I know I must fall into it and sleep sooner than later.
I am bound to my work, but I have liberty no mortal girl can imagine and the peace of knowing no man will ever take it from me.
There are days when that seems more than enough.
“All to pieces, all to pieces,” Wig clucks as he darts beneath my wing, keeping me airborne for the last few yards to the top of the old clock tower. We slip through the breathing holes left for the bells and glide to the dusty wood floor beneath the carillon with only seconds to spare.
