14. Chapter 14:
Chapter 14:
I did not know what to say, so I laughed. "You cannot be serious?" I asked, quickly suppressing any further laughter that I could have expressed.
"I am blind," The raven stated, as grave as ever, "but I am not stupid. I am definitely not a liar." Fa Raven looked at me with a dour expression on their beak, the crack only making what they said viscerally real. Despite all of this, I could not possibly believe any of this. I was not able to physically make myself believe it, even if I wanted to (which I quite obviously did not) and was left searching for the words to ask... or question... or accept what had just been told to me. Foxglove spoke up before I had the chance to.
"Fa Raven, what do you mean by that?" Foxglove inquired, fiercer than ever. I realised that she was trying to protect me, and I did not like it, but I knew that it was the best thing that could have happened at that moment. "My eyes allow me to see spirits. I traded my sight to Death long ago so that I could see into its realm. Your body contains both your spirit, and that of a Witch, or at least part of it. it hides inside of you, insidious and predatory. It had not manifested itself yet, but if it ever did, it would rip you apart. It seems to want something of you."
"I am sorry, Fa Raven," I said, and began to get up, "But I cannot in right mind accept or understand what you are telling me." I looked back at Foxglove, who sat transfixed by the situation, unsure of what to do or say now, just waiting to see what the outcome would be.
Suddenly, I felt something whooshing past my head, and landing on one of my boots. I looked down, and saw a large snail, with a coiled shell and lurid yellow flesh on my feet. It was the last straw. I recoiled in primal terror, crawling back towards the desk and Foxglove. I knew that this would make me look pathetic to Fa Raven, but I did not have the capacity to care anymore. I turned away from the snail, telling myself repeatedly that it could do nothing to me, and that I would be perfectly safe, but my heart had started to beat at a faster and faster pace, and I felt the fiery liquid of fear flow through my veins, and I cried out weakly for help as the snail moved closer and closer. The thing about fear is that, while it might fuel an escape or fight, the fire also burns you into a nothingness that surrounds you entirely, making you unable to do or think anything about the situation, isolating you in your own mind, your mind filled singularly with the source of the fear. Foxglove walked over and picked up the snail, plopping it into her bag, and trying to gently coax me out of the ball I had collapsed into. She stroked my back with her paws, like Sew had all those years ago, and - when I felt safe enough, and my heart rate had dropped to a slightly more normal level - I uncurled myself, and stood up, and looked at Fa Raven once again, aching for some sense of stability.
"You threw the... Snail, didn't you?" Even the word hurt to say. "Yes, I did." They said, as calm as ever. I was getting angry now - why were they playing around with my fears, my thoughts? How had they known that I was afraid of snails? I felt as If I had been infantilised, deeply embarrassed of something most people saw as harmless. "Why? How did you know?" I asked, desperate now, desperate for any answer I could get.
The raven cackled a quiet laugh, the sound was rough and brittle, the air filled by its quiet rises and falls, jerky and painful to the ear but not at all antagonistic. It sounded like someone who knew better than to just explain everything they knew in words, but understood that somebody only really understands something when they experience it for themselves. I calmed down when I heard this, my thoughts returning to their previous fullness, and I waited expectantly for what Fa Raven had to say.
"The Snails are an ancient enemy of the Witches. I do not know why, but Witches cannot stand snails." Fa raven said, a small beetle crawling out of their ear while they spoke, and into an open bone on their shoulder. "An ancient enemy stays terrifying, no matter how much you change. It is innate in the Witches, and it is as such with you, Stuvlok."
I thought about it for a moment, and decided just to hear out what Fa Raven had to say before asking any more questions.
"When I was younger, and the world was younger, I traveled all over the world, meeting every living being and seeing everything that they had made. I saw every mountain, every tree, every sea, every crevasse. There was less back then, and so It did not take very long. Back then, the Witches were far from as powerful or as terrifying as they are now, and so I talked to them. I do not remember this, as I do every other talk, because the witches soon removed it from my memory, feeding on it to help with their endless quest for immortality, I only remember that i did because I had written it down on one of my feathers before deciding to talk to them." Fa Raven paused, to mix his pot and take another sloppy sip of the broth, "I soon came to death, and asked him what I could do to stay alive, because I did not want to die. He told me that I would have to die, for everything has to die, and took my spirit away. I managed to leave a bit of it in my flesh body, asking death to take my vision and leaving me able to see only spirits. The Witches choose to keep just their spirits, not their physical flesh, and have discarded it long ago. They can longer propagate so I hesitate even to call them life, but they live forever, on the spirits of the young. I now wait for this fragment to die, I have lost it slowly as my flesh had degraded, and soon I will have none left, but this time, I will not bargain with death, but let him take my spirit freely, for I have come to find that a life with no death is a fruitless endeavour. Death provides something for all living things to hold in the back of their mind, let it lead their existences, every second meaningful in its own way, never to be had again, every moment fleeting and something to be treasured. Death leads a living being into making its life meaningful. Without death, all meaning evaporates. It becomes impossible for you to feel anything, as the mind does not only become calloused to existence - all of its splendid beauties, abhorrent horrors and mundanities - and you begin to see yourself as above all the other creatures because of it. This is a very dangerous thing. The Witches have released their physical bodies, and turned themselves into pure logic and thought, yet they are so obsessed with an eternal existence, they forget that this is not the same as an eternal life. They do not live, and can never live. Death is also too far from their grasps. They will always be insatiable in their search for something they have long since abandoned through the very definition of their chosen existence - meaning. There is no meaning in existence, and life is the only way we can make any." Fa Raven breathed heavily, scooped another ladle of soup and slopping poured it into their mouth.
"You, Stuvlok. You have had the witch fragment inside of you ever since you were taken as an infant. It has influenced your life since the second it entered your flesh. Every decision, ever movement, every thought you have ever had was subtly influenced by the Witch inside of you. You are not able to notice it because it does nto want you to. Be very careful from now on." Fa Raven stated, deathly serious now. I looked over to Foxglove, searching for some sort of counsel in her, but found nothing. She was just as taken aback as I was.
"Are you sure that It changes my thoughts?" I asked, tentatively. "Why are you, a lowly thief, in the middle of the Woods, somehow perfectly fine, when those much more prepared than you have perished on entering it?" Fa Raven said.
I thought about it for a moment. I had somehow stayed alive, somehow prevented myself dying multiple times and got lucky enough to meet and join an expedition to the Witches. This thought stimulated a question in me.
"What do the Witches want from me?" I asked Fa Raven, not really expecting a concrete answer. "I do not know. But I do know that the Witches want something. The fact they have been taking more children recently tells us that something is going on. Maybe they want you, maybe they want the fragment, maybe they want something else. The mind of a Witch inherently works differently to ours. Their very existence makes me question what it means to be a god sometimes. Whatever it is, it is something dark and dangerous for the entire Woods."
I thought about how Sew had found me in the forest on the night of the Eten dance, a dance that celebrated a moonless night, a starless night. A night of Pure darkness and nothing else. The dance, it was said, was supposed to appease Death. Sew had told me that he had been drawn to the forest as well, almost as if by some mysterious inner force, and he had found me in the woods, alone. I had always thought that he might have been hiding some part of the story from me, and I immediately began to feel a wave of regret washing over me, that I had never asked him for the full story.
"It is not the time for regret, Stuvlok." Fa Raven said, and I wondered how they had known, " Just be hopeful that you are still alive, the arrival of your father stopped you being taken to the Witches to be eaten directly by the Ghennen, their puppet familiars, but I speculate that they got a taste for your blood then, and their anger at being deprived of a meal likely manifested as a fragment of Witch they had thought up entering you through the Ghennen, so you became a sort of Ghennen as well."
"Can I get rid of it?" I asked the most obvious question that was going through my mind, I was really hoping that the answer to this question would for once be a concrete yes.
"No. As the fragment is a construct of the witches' mind, only the destruction of the witches will free you from their influence. I doubt that it will let you do that, however, as it is still able to influence you. Just be aware of this - you cannot do anything about it, but be wary that it does not try and kill you to prevent you destroying it. I have nothing more to give you." The raven stood up on its rotting legs, the bones poking through, and flapped off into the main atrium and beyond before any more questions could be asked.
Despite the fact that Foxglove had walked up to me and was trying to get my attention, I was left alone with my thoughts.
I felt a deep sense of dropping down from a great height, out of control and the air slapping me everywhere, my mind chaotic and lost, aimless yet singularly focused on a goal I was unsure if I even fully understood. My vision began to feel hazy, and I almost collapsed, but Foxglove tried to help me. I pushed her away - I did not need any help. I was going to get through this moment myself. I could not rely. I needed help but I had decided that I would rely only on myself, in a tensegrity of insecurity. I took a few heavy breaths, before standing up again, still unable to speak. I went over to Foxglove and apologised. I did not want to cause any more problems than I already had.
"I'll look out for you," Foxglove whispered. "Thank you, but I can look out for myself." I added, staunchly believing that I would be able to free myself from the influence of whatever malignant, insidious thoughts the fragment of Witch inside of me was trying to get me to follow.
My search for my past had not at all gone as I had hoped, and I did not know whether I preferred knowing the truth, or not. How much had the witches impacted me? Had they made me become a thief? Had they made me steal? Had they made me cause the death of Sew? I was angry, and I was frantically trying to piece together my mind, and my past. The anger convinced me that I needed to at least try to destroy these abhorrent things, that had ruined so many being's lives.
"I need to avenge them, for my tribe." Foxglove said, and I felt the fury rise again in her voice. I knew that I needed to get a bit of revenge myself.
"Let me help." I said.
I promised myself that I would annihilate the Witches, or at the very least die trying.