The Wicc of the Flame

Rebe

Not long after Sato rushed out, Taff wandered in. He jumped up into the empty rocking chair and went back to sleep. Rebe had somehow wandered right up to the grove. She was so close she could...

"You feel it, don't you, Rebe dear?" Gran looked knowingly at the all too quiet girl.

"Yes, I... I don't know what it is, but I feel it." Rebe traced her hands through the air, seeking the invisible source. "What is it, Gran?" Rebe inquired.

Every single time Rebe approached the Chaff Sea, she felt odd. She first felt it when they arrived in this place, but she had convinced herself it was just nerves. She next felt it when they visited Samuel and his family, but then she had told herself it was something in the food.

It had been the Darkwood that had convinced her it wasn't just nerves or sickness. It was always most intense when she looked at the Darkwoods. She had told herself it was just the eeriness of the place, how it contrasted all that surrounded it. But after the second or third time, she was sure there was something about that place. It was calling to her. It was drawing her in. She didn't know what to do. Who to talk to. She had asked Adelaide, but she had gone stiff and said they shouldn't talk about things like that. It was very out of character. Rebe had listened.

This time, in this terrarium, it was more intense than ever before. It was like she felt the Sea. The movement of the chaff. The creatures rustling within. She felt the giant mice and the wildcats and the other beings, even those deep in the soil. Sato had commented multiple times that he heard no animals, but she felt hundreds, maybe thousands, every time she was near. It wasn't quite sound, but it was near enough. It was like she heard them. Since she entered this greenhouse, she felt the trees, the mushrooms, the heat.

"I suspected you had the gift from the moment I spotted your child." Gran got up from her chair, walked over to Rebe, who was frozen in thought, and placed her green thumb on Rebe's temple. "You can feel the Wicc in this place, in the trees, the seas, even the bees. Go ahead. Touch the tree," Gran invited. 

Rebe began moving without thought. She reached out towards the bark of the tree. She felt it, but she didn't just feel the bark. She felt up, up to the leaves on the branches that burst through the glass ceiling, desperately seeking sun's warmth. She felt down, down below the soil to the roots and the fungi that enveloped them. She felt the soil, the nutrients, the sugars, the chemicals, and the creatures living in it. She felt up to the roots of the Chaff Sea and the creatures and wind brushing through it. She felt... everything... connected. She was warm, perhaps for the first time since she came to this place; she felt warm. Was this Wicc?

"This Wicc? What is it?" Rebe knew the answer, but she needed to hear it from Gran. She was so overwhelmed that it was difficult to get the words out.

"Wicc is life. It is heat. It is energy. It starts in the heart of a star, and it reaches the trees and roots and the soil. It is everything living and everything dead. It is order and disorder. Our whole world needs the Wicc of the stars to live."

"Why do I feel it. Like this, I mean?" Rebe held up and inspected her hands as if they held the answers.

"Some in this world do. There are many names for these people: Wicked, Wicker, Wicc, Maegi, Wiccard, and druid. All these people can, in one way or another, see and feel the Wicc. Many can channel and harness it. The power of the stars."

Gran approached a dying leaf and put her thumbs to the husk. Her grey hair seemed to glow green, and her eyes surely did. folded into the form of a chrysalis. From out of the form, in a burst of light, emerged a bright green leafy butterfly. It seemed to come alive again, only this time as a butterfly. The life's chloroplast seemed to have burst back to work and forgotten the coming winter. It took to the ai,r dancing about, flapping its leafy wings elegantly about. Then the leaf began to change colour rapidly. It drained from bright green, to yellow, to orange, to red, and back to a leaf of brown. The brittle butterfly exploded in a fiery show of light. It crumbled into detritus dust and returned to the soil, leaving a shimmering sparkle rain in its wake. 

Gran returned, put her hands into the fallout, and caught some in her palms. She rubbed it about between her hands and then let it fall to the foresty floor. A small speckle of light lasted on one of her green thumbtips. 

"This power can be great, but it is also quite..." Gran began.

"Dangerous?" Rebe interrupted. "Can you teach me?"

"I can teach. That is not the question. The question is, do you want to learn?" Gran reached into her apron pocket and gently awoke the sleeping squirrel. She brought it into her green hands and knelt over and nudged the squirrel onward. After looking back at her, it skittered deep into the wood, vanishing from sight. She waited and then said, "Tell me where she is. Exactly where she is."

Rebe hesitated. There was no way for her to see the squirrel. She would have to feel it. She returned her hand to the same place on the same tree. She began to feel up. She tried to stop herself at the glass ceiling, but she could not and felt past it. She began to feel down. She tried even harder to stop herself, and this time managed to do so at the bottom of the roots. She felt for movement, noise, life. She got something. Something small, something fast, climbing up an older tree seven back and nine left of hers. She told Gran this.

"You found a squirrel, yes. But that is not my squirrel. My squirrel is silent." Gran said, her eyes tightly shut.

"What can you tell me about the Darkwood?" Rebe's mind kept returning to that forest.

"Ah, now that is a good question indeed. I'm afraid I have no good answer. That is the type of answer you can only find for yourself, my dear." Rebe shuddered at the thought. 

Sato emerged from the hut with a mountain of jars balanced on the cooking tray. He looked like he'd had some time procuring all the potions and poultices.

"We are all down for today. Sato, be a dear and put those all back, would you?"

Rebe returned to her room that night to think on what Gran had told her. She loomed over the plant in her bay window. She went to it and touched it and felt the warmth, the Wicc. She tried to channel it. Nothing. She looked out and saw the Darkwood and felt its call.