The Witch's task

Two days later John, still inhabiting the cat, wandered up to me and dropped a note on the desk I was writing lecture notes on. No one else in the class seemed to find this strange or out of the ordinary... I just played along and didn't make much of a fuss about it.

The note read as follows:

"Due to certain rules I have to abide by, to keep a certain entity bound to the college grounds I cannot actually leave for the time being. So you will go in my place to [address redacted] and retrieve the following for me:

•  sixteen ounces silver dust

•  eight beeswax candles, dyed red or blue using natural dyes

•  wool off a yearling lamb, first shear preferable but not required

• one dehydrator onion and one clove of garlic. Very important, cannot forget these.

Tell the person at the storefront that "East" sent you and he'll should have everything ready. You may need to go to a grocery store for the onion and garlic though. I also trust that your abilities as a magic user have grown enough to tell if something has artificial additions in it. Return to me with these items and I may have more work for you before you get any answers to your questions..

-Madam Patches Witch of the East Wall"

Once I was free of class, I got to ponder the meaning of "more work" as I made the brief walk to the address marked. Once there I found myself staring at the same "odds and ends" store that I'd found Sul's prison in.

"huh... never thought I'd see this place again."

"Those that come here are often fated to return here many times young-one. Come in come in."

I was startled by the voice of the owner of the store, an imp of a man, barely four feet tall in a simple smock, jeans jeans and t-shirt. Sandals and a manner of hair simmilar to a hippy, though his eyes were bright blue and youthful defying the lines of age surrounding them. despite his stature he had the presence of a giant. "and what brings you back?...I assume it is because you found the secret guest of that trinket I sold you months ago?"

"you knew about Sul?" I arched an eyebrow as I was guided into the shop quickly and brought to the counter before the man simply blinked into the chair on the opposite side.

"I know a great many things young-one. Each with a price, I did not know it had a particular name. I too did not know whether it was malevolent or benevolent, though you seem to have made out of the exchange quite like a sly fox, if I do say so myself." He paused as he procured a tea kettle and poured himself a drink, offering none to me, and I asked for none despite the sudden thirst that clawed at my throat. "So.. your tale? Or do you have.... other matters to attend to."

"..I..um.." I sat there at a loss for what to say before remembering why I was here and what to say. "East sent me."

"Ah, say no more, I am well aware of the details of what...and why she needs such items. Payment has already been made, allow me to gather them. Look around if you will while I do so, if anything catches your eye you need only ask and I will name the price."

As he busied himself with collecting the things "east" had asked for I peered about the store, my eyes eventually settling on a stack of books several feet deep, though nothing immediately collected my attention this time, as I extracted myself from the labyrinth of books I found the shopkeeper had collected everything and laid it all out on the counter top for me. "....No.. nothing calls to me this time."

"Hmmm..perhaps some other time. Here, examine the goods if you will."

I poked at the candles and materials, not sure what to really look for to see if it was.. or wasn't actual beeswax. It certainly smelled like beeswax, and the other items seemed right the silver felt right, at least as best I could tell as it was in a granular form instead of coins or jewelry, and the onion and garlic was quite pungent, despite it's dried state while the fleece was soft and clean looking like a cloud on a midsummer day.  I shrugged and wrapped everything up in a bag before heading back to campus, not sure when it had gone from, mid-day to dark of night. "Hope I didn't take too long..."

The Witch.

John must be rather prophetic, as nearly a week later I did in fact meet his master, or rather mistress, barely a week later. Sul says I collapsed due to overexposure to dirty energy. I think I know what he was talking about though, as it was weird em frequencies coming off electronics.

 I suppose I should back up to the beginning first. The day started off like any other, I was sitting in the back row of one of the classes, not one I was taking but one I work as a TA in for credits. Because of renovation we were in a different lecture hall than usual, this one the overhead projector was damaged apparently since it was giving off an annoying whining noise to everyone else, while to me I was getting a terrible headache, and eventually collapsed, managing to knock over a lamp which did get someone's attention. One of the football team had apparently got some training in first aid and directed two of his other team-mates to roll me onto my back before sliding me onto a folding table and using that as an impromptu stretcher before taking me to the school medic.

And so I awoke to a familiar ceiling. Familiar being that it wasn't the first time I had passed out in a class and been taken to the school nurse, though the other times had been from over-stressing with an overloaded class schedule and not exposure to wild and unrefined electromagnetic fields.

"Welcome back to the waking world again Ser Bookworm." My unofficial moniker on campus was the Library Knight Sir Bookworm due to my penchant for spending so much time there. I sat up and rubbed my forehead.

"I bite my thumb in thy general direction Madam Patches."

The nurse laughed as she looked up from her desk, barely a bit older than I was, her hair was a gold tinted coffee color tied back professionally with a sharp hawkish face and dark sea blue eyes. The school nurse, a student like myself but fully qualified medically due to her tour in Afghanistan probably had enough credits in medicine to graduate with a masters by now. She had a simple black T-shirt that didn't cover up the scars from her previous job and olive paratroopers pants with an inordinate amount of pockets, which she probably carried any and all medical tools she might need on a given day.

"So... of all the people John could have been describing I never actually thought it would be you to wind up stumbling into magic....You always seemed rather boring."

"That was rather straight to the point."

She shrugged, "My mother did say I was subtle as a blind mallet at times. So what was it? Did I miss one of the occult books in the library? Did you go off hunting for stuff of lore and legends with no preparation?...Or did you just pick up on the arts yourself on your own? A freak accident?"

I sat there confused trying to sort out things. "So you're John's Witch?"

"I prefer Wicce, but yes, he's bound to my service until I either find a different spirit to make a contract with, or he gets bored and asks to be released from it., anyway I'm the one asking the questions here."

I tried to move into a more comfortable position but found that I couldn't move much more than sitting up. It didn't take long to make sense of it as there were shadowy purple "chains" holding me down on the bed.

"Ah, so you can see and feel them? A precaution, I wasn't sure if you were going to be hostile once I realized you had some magic to you, had a run-in with a priest a few years back, he tried to take my head off with a bayonet." she tilted her head some showing a silvery white scar just barely visible above the neckline of her shirt.

With that revelation I decided to play it safe from that point on and choose my words carefully. "Um..right so anyway...it was an accident to say the least, I found a trinket in a pawn shop and bought it, when I brought it home I accidentally broke it..stepped on it, and after a while found myself to be changed some, I could see and manipulate electromagnetic currents a little, and so a bit of research later at a used books store I figured it was magic."

She sat there quietly for a bit before shrugging. "seems to be the case with most people I've met. Accidents mostly, though some of them do in fact have the sight and gift from birth, but the vast majority of people don't.... you're not going to try and attack me are you?"

"No. Should I?"

"Just making sure." With a flick of her hand the chains holding me down vanished.. melted really, and I was able to sit up properly with my legs folded. "So, now what?"

"Mmmm....tell me your story, how did you become a witch? If it's not troublesome."

"See that's a private story that you won't be getting even if you are one of my most regular patients... You'll have to work for it."

I sat there quietly before shrugging. "Ok, what's the cost?"

"You've got to got to collect some materials for me. I don't have the time since my full time job is school nurse now, and John has taken off somewhere in the body of a cat and might not be back for a month or two. I'll have the list ready tomorrow."

"Sounds good. I'll be back."

And so, after an actual check of my health, no fever, just a little dehydrated and a bruise from where I landed on the lamp, I wandered off questioning the world even more.

Filler fluff

Not much actually happened in the interim between my previous encounter with John and  the next "fae" I truly got to speak with.  I noticed a few will'o'whisps off near the park but they don't seem to have the capability for talking... I think. Maybe I'm the dumb one to them.

Other than that I continued to learn from Sul about various kinds of magic and consequences of using them and such. It's pretty similar to most physics reactions. For every action there is an equal but opposite reaction. Say you cool a particular area magically, the energy of the heat has to go somewhere. Well in the most basic sense that's how it works anyway.

Interview with the Scottsman Part IV

It was a few days before I saw John once again. He was still possessing the cat from before and lazing about in the oak tree we had sat under. It was about as foggy a day and once I had gotten his attention he dropped down beside me and pawed at my knapsack, apparently smelling the whiskey. "Care for some more stories?"

"Eh a little, however I'm more interested in something a bit more recent... let's say...200 years..Early American colonial. What were you doing during that point in time?"

"Hmmm...the colonies. Let's see... Iff'n I remember right, I rode across on one of the ships that came across in... 1537...I believe it was the Red Lion, and the sister ships were the Roebuck, Dorothy, Elizabeth and Tiger, the last two got lost in a storm...or maybe we did.....some of us got lost I think.."

"Rode across?...Couldn't you have made the trip yourself?"

"In theory, but well I didn't know the way and it's easier to hitch a ride on a moving ship, and sort of act like a protective spirit of sorts. 200 years of poking around and doing things I'd gotten pretty good at it."

"So where did you end up?"

"Some islands off the coast of what's North Carolina now. The colonists were dropped off, I stuck with the ship and we sailed north to Newfoundland to ship things between there and England, and harass the Spanish a bit, and then the french started paying the captain to harass the english, and then the English and the Spanish paid them to harass the french for a year or so, and then the Red lion met it's end off the coast of Virginia running rum for tobacco after a surprise broadside by one of the fastest frigates we'd ever seen." he paused for a time before continuing. "It was a two masted ship, a bit larger than a sloop but smaller than a brigatine with two gundecks, a dark gray wood that I'd never seen before and was flying under some Mediterranean flag. They stopped to collect survivors and sift through the cargo that was left. Picked out certain members of the crew and, questioned them and threw them to the sharks then offered the remaining survivors safe passage to port in Newfoundland. I wandered there for a while before catching a ship back to the colonies in 1700 and poked around down there till the revolution."

"And then what?"

"I fell asleep."

"So.. you're saying you slept through the revolution?"

"Aye."

"How?"

"well in life I was always a bit of a heavy sleeper, and without a body...it sort of builds up till you just need to get a bit of shuteye and recharge. the next thing I remember was waking up to find a wee lass poking me with a stick an' saying that of all the spirits she'd seen I was by far the laziest."

"when was this?"

"1893. To be honest I fell asleep in a hole and I guess they put a building over it or something cause I didn't wake up till it was being torn down to be replaced, and like I said, physical structures be a pain in the ass to move through."

"So where did you wind up next?"

"I travelled west, watched some of the last bits of the idian wars, and the mexican american war. Some of the spirits out west are interesting. Old old old elders from before europe even thought of comeing this way. They were surprised I'd made my way here, an they taught me a bit of tricks, like how to move a bit easier and even to posses stuff. mostly animals though, that's what they do to talk to their kinfolk. Rather than waiting for the special ones they simply borrow a crow, or a coyote and talk to their tribesmen when they do their spirit walking fires. Couple'a bad eggs though, they abuse it and mess with the tribes."

"What else did you experience?"

"Well I'm getting to that, ya'see.. right before the first great war, A witch found me and bound me to the material plane as a servant Took a sacrifice of her blood and a few other things to make a body for me to knock around in, and for the run of both great wars and most of the coldwar I worked as basically a deliveryboy for her shop in Baton Rouge, she bound herself to a single place, warped time around her allowing for her powers to magnify like sunlight through a handglass. Granted she couldn't leave the shop itself otherwise the spells would rebound and rapidly age her."

"wait a witch?"

"Considering your story kid'jinn you're really doubting the existence of witches?"

"A fair point. So what happened to her?"

"All she did was slow time, she still aged, and eventually died. She had no apprentice, and so when she died the magic binding the body I had failed and it turned to dust. That was about... 40 years ago."

"And the last forty years?"

"I slept for ten of them then wandered the world thinking no one could see me anymore. sure some could kinda hear me, and some of the priests could fear me and bar my passage...but I thought I was nothing again till I found a new witch to serve."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I serve a new witch now, she's not nearly as powerful as the one I previously knew so no body for me, but she has power. You'll probably find her on accident."


"I suppose I'll need to think on that, and try and come up with some more questions."

"Eh, I think I've spilled moren' enough for now. Can't let your nogging get so full of mush and tales of me the rest of the world disinterests you."

"Thanks for your time I guess."

Without much more to be said John wandered off, apparently having decided to keep the cat as his body for now, and left me with more questions than answers really. and so I sat and finished off the bottle of whiskey before, on a whim, magicking the glass to sand. In my excitement at this discover I completely ignored that I did have a night class to go to and spent the rest of the day attempting to reconstruct the bottle.

Interview with the Scottsman Part III

So now that things have settled down enough for me to focus on writing I'm going to attempt to start doing weekly posts now.... We'll...just see about that...

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"So... you're stating that the sheriff of Lanark shirked his duties and didn't get killed by Wallace?"

"That's right." The scottish possessed cat absentmindedly licked its paws before continuing, "The sheriff of Lanark ran off became a cooper, the word just spread like wildfire that Wallace cut him down."

"So after that what happened?"

"Eh, generally everything else in the history books is right, more or less.  He had victories and defeats, more or less as they said....mmm.... there were more English archers at Falkirk making the number of English closer to 4000 than 3000, and that was a rout for the scotts. Other than that, Wallace was captured and executed by being turned over a turncoat in Scotland soon after his return from Rome, and to his...rather brutal death swore no oath to Edward."

"So he did go to Rome?"

"Aye. He did. I followed along because he was one of the more interesting folks at the time and place and I had nothing better to do. He couldn't see me, some people thought I was the shadow o' death though."

"And what were the results?"

"Well Rome didn't want anything to do with the war and chaos, so they kindly apologized and he stormed out and back home after visiting the french one last time to ask for aid again."

John yawned and finished off the cup of whiskey before stretching. "An that's all for tonight. If you want more stories come back in a few days." With that he wandered off into the fog, purring drunkenly and swaying a little, leaving me to think about my next sets of questions.