by Kevin Lawler
“It’s good to see you back,” Cal said. Winter had a purple mark forming under her right eye. “Do you need something for that eye?”
“No, I’m OK,” said Winter, avoiding the subject.
The pig had found Meadow’s bag and was nosing through it. Meadow pushed his snout away and shouldered the bag, despite it having too much stuff in it for her too comfortably hold.
“Sorry about that,” said Winter, who tried to pull the pig away, “I think this one is mine. At any rate, he’s been following me.”
“That would be surprisingly fast, for you to have found your familiar already. We’ll know for sure at the next seal.” Cal went up to the pig and inspected his ears and teeth. “This one is special indeed. Does he have a name?”
“No, not yet,” said Winter.
“He’s kind of cute,” Meadow said, “If nosy. And a little dirty.”
“I like him,” said Ipsy.
“If he is your familiar, try hard not to lose him. A witch who loses her familiar is greatly diminished. Your powers decrease, and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever find a replacement. I take it the water walk went...passably?”
Winter told them about her experience at the pool. Then she told them about her run-in with Will.
“Hmm,” said Cal. “And he said he was from ‘the guild’. A witch hunter? A bit much for all that. This Will tryhard must be new, sounds like. They’re supposed to be more cordial about things.”
“What do you mean?” asked Winter.
“Catch and release. It’s the game they play. The Hunter’s Guild, they’re basically a vestigial arm of the Mining Guild. They used to be something, a long time ago, or so we think, but that time is long past. Nowadays they’re into petty kidnapping for the guild. If you can call it that. They usually want to shake you down for what you’re carrying. That’s why we were so insistent on packing ‘essentials’ before coming here. Sometimes they don’t even bother to take you in.”
Winter frowned at this. “We should do something. We’re witches, right?” she said.
“It’s just not worth it,” Cal said, “They’re not worth the time. We bring the goods, they mostly leave us alone, that’s the understanding. It is true though that they’re likely to harass you again. They do hold witches for ransom from time to time. However, they already know us, and we have a working relationship. If you’re going to be a part of our ring we’ll have to take you to meet Oskar and the rest of his ‘guild’ at some point. I’d like to consult with Oskar about the plants Violet was gathering. We should go now before there’s any more trouble. They’ll leave you alone after this, but we’ll have to introduce you first. I think they’re still at the Key Blue mine. We should try there first.”
The others seemed to deflate, except Ipsy who looked excited by the prospect.
“I have to warn you though,” Cal said, “They’re worse than any fraternity. Most of the miners in the guild are there seasonally, and they’re all men. They are crude, and sometimes I think half the reason they come at all is for the crudeness. It’s lawless, there isn’t much corrective influence from the outside. You’ll have to watch yourself.”
Three days later they reached the site. The tree that led to the miners was housed in a large, rusting metal shed. The tree itself was growing out of the back like a chimney, and the open portal inside the tree faced them with its unchanging matte black.
“It’s not the same,” Ipsy said. Winter’s pig was sniffing around the base of the tree as if for discarded food.
“The graffiti you mean? It looks like it’s been defaced,” Winter guessed. There were lewd sayings scratched in white all over the inside and outside. On the inside were many poor drawings of private anatomy. A few parts of the ground bore black scorch marks.
“No, that was always there,” said Ipsy, “Something’s different about the tree.” The others waited on Ipsy. She stared at the tree. She walked forward into the darkness of the inside of the tree, obviously expecting to disappear on the other side. But she did not disappear into the other end. In fact, she had not moved forward from where she had started.
“Weird,” she said. Then she walked forward again with the same result. “It’s like something is pushing me back on the other end.” Ipsy thought for a bit. “ Maybe I’m not trying hard enough? Louisa, see if you can get through.”
Louisa steeled herself and forced her way through the opening. She went in but was also pushed back, harder than Ipsy, as if she had hit a wall. Some force was throwing them back.
“Of course,” said a frustrated Topple, “It’s always something.”
“They always leave without telling us where they’re going. If this isn’t working we may have to turn back. We should start figuring out an alternate way to get to Oskar’s camp. They may have even moved already,” Cal said.
“Hold on,” said Winter, “We just got here, and after all that way. Let’s at least try a few things.”
“You can try if you like, but you should know when you’ve been beat,” said Cal, “It will save you a lot of heartache in the long run.”
“Ah, you can’t give up yet,” said Winter, “We’ve got time. Let’s see if our little buddy can get in.” She turned the pig around by his front legs and started coaxing him from behind towards the tree. He responded by resisting her efforts. He had a scared look on his face. Winter gave a hard push and he ran with it but in a skew direction, missing the tree opening on purpose. He turned around by the side of the tree and opened his mouth and gave a squeal. He wasn’t going anywhere.
“Hmm,” said Winter.
Winter made several more attempts which looked like Ipsys’s and Louisa’s trying to get through the passage in the tree. She slumped down to the ground in front of the opening, defeated but actively at work on her next plan.
After an hour of this the patience of the ring was wearing thin. “You’re just going to wear yourself out,” said Louisa.
An incensed Winter stood in frustration and pulled a racquetball from her backpack and threw it through the opening in the tree, putting as much speed on it as she could. The ball disappeared into the darkness for a moment, and then it shot back out as hard as she had thrown it, nailing Winter in the meaty part of her leg.
“Ow!” she said. That might leave a welt. It was also odd, what the ball did. Cal didn’t hear it bounce off anything.
They watched Winter after she had been struck by the ball. She scrunched her face and thought hard about it. She didn’t say anything for a long time. Neither did anyone else, sensing that Winter was onto something and needed to not be interrupted.
Winter opened her mouth but she didn’t say anything. Then she opened her mouth again, “I know what this is. So stupid.”
She ran the length of the shed into the tree, faster even than Louisa had done. She was gone for a moment, and then she was tossed back out of the tree as if she had been shoved at full strength, landing on her butt in the dust.
“Hmm, I don’t think it’s working,” said Meadow.
“I can’t stop now, we’re making progress. I think I saw something that time.” Winter said.
“Don’t hurt yourself,” said Meadow. The pig trotted over to Winter to inspect.
“Here, watch out, I need to start from outside the doorway.” Winter moved the pig to the side of where she planned to go.
She walked to the outside of the shed and gave herself more than enough runway to get to top speed. Everybody cleared back farther from her flight path.
Winter steadied herself, then started at full blast from outside the shed. She crossed the sandy floor inside and entered the tree at top speed and was gone for longer than before. When she was thrown back out, it was stronger this time, and she fell on her back and rolled in the dust. She got up dust-covered, but elated.
“Mmmm,” Topple said, unsure of Winter’s apparent foolishness.
“I think she’s on to something,” Cal said.
“I almost had it, hold on,”
said Winter. She went back to the same spot, adjusted her path to enter at an angle, and took off, dust-covered, running at the same pace. She disappeared into the mouth of the tree. The same amount of time passed as before, only this time, nothing came back out, only the sound of Winter connecting with something. The pig looked around surprised at the path, waiting for Winter to come tumbling out again.
“Huh,” said Ipsy, “I guess she figured it out.”
“Hey,” a distant voice said, “I got it. It’s just like in the ambulance when the wall became the floor.”
Nobody knew what the voice was talking about.
“Send someone up. Come at top speed. I’ll help grab you. Try to grab my hand,” the voice said.
Topple was first to move. “I’ll come,” she said. Already she was making her way outside the shed. Topple was tall and lithe, and she sprinted with ease through the shed and into the tree.
There was silence and then the sound of a chain rattling. The bottom of Topple’s shoe dipped through the center of Cal’s side of the portal and then disappeared again.
“Weird,” Topple’s voice said from the other side, “There’s a chain here and you can swing over to the ledge.”
“Oh, I didn’t even see the chain,” said Winter’s voice, “I just came in at an angle and fell on the ledge. I think they tilted this tree back, so that when you come out gravity catches you” she said, “Just like a video game. Typical stupid boy stuff.” There was a scuffling sound. “Here, I’ll toss a pebble down, tell me if you see it come out sideways.” On Cal’s side a pebble shot past Ipsy’s feet.
They worked then to get everybody through. Coming out of the opening into a separate gravity was disorienting. It was also something of a challenge to communicate. Louisa and Ipsy went through next, then Meadow. As much as she hated to admit it Cal needed more help than the younger women getting through. But after several attempts, and more than one person helping to grab, Cal was through along with the rest of them.
They had changed the entrance. The ledge led around a bend to a large latched door that did a good job of shutting out the light. Opening the door, what struck the witches first, besides the very bright light, was the enveloping heat and humidity. The complaints started as soon as they opened the door. They stepped out of it and the heat and humidity wrapped around them.
“It’s frizzing my hair,” said Meadow. It was hot.
They weren’t far from the shoreline. In the distance were the cyclic sounds of waves. The water was visible on the horizon through the treeline of tropical trees, the dense green and high boughs of Spanish cedars and an occasional outcropping of palms. The soil was loose and sandy and littered everywhere with grasses and the broken debris of tiny sticks. They followed the worn path leading out from the door.
“It smells like rotten shampoo,” Winter said.
“A unique cousin of Sargassum,” Cal explained, “The seaweed rotting in the salt air. Only occurs off the shoals near this island.”
The six witches continued down the tree-lined path.
“This is making me sweaty,” Winter said forlornly.
They had walked maybe half a mile, when they saw a group of three miners making a ruckus on the ground between some trees.
“Should we try to sneak around them?” Ipsy asked.
“No. No sense in it,” said Cal, “Less trouble this way. Let’s go right up to them.”
They approached the miners while the miners continued oblivious. Whatever it was, probably gambling, they were too into it to notice them coming. They were laughably close and they still didn’t notice.
“Must be a heated contest,” said Louisa, “Looks like they’re racing...’bugs-of-paradise?’”
“It’s a game they play,” Cal explained.
The bugs were vibrantly colored, beetles, bright blue with spots, like a color inverted ladybug. Near the racetrack were piles of dull gems and paper scrip. The miners themselves wore the standard grungy uniform and needed to spend some time scrubbing the dirt off.
“C’mon, Blue-nut!” the filthiest miner shouted.
Winter seized the opportunity before they had a chance to notice them. “Hello!” she said, and the miners jumped. They scurried to their feet. The bugs kept racing to the finish, without their handlers.
“It’s a whole gaggle of them!” the skinniest miner said.
The third miner, the most agitated, nudged the bag near his foot to block the view of the gems beside him, as if they hadn’t been seen.
“How did you get in here?” the filthiest miner asked.
“You know how they got in here!” the most agitated miner said. He stood thinking for a second, and then he reached down to the pile and came up with a tiny pair of vanilla-orange-swirl colored gems. He held them threateningly at the witches. The filthiest miner noticed what he was doing and came up with his own pair of gems: dull brown, with no inner light.
Ipsy recoiled at the sight. Winter seemed puzzled. Cal did her best to remain stone-faced. Meadow gave a look of disgust. She raised her hand to cast a spell and Cal had to stop her.
“Those are harmless stones!” Meadow complained under her breath.
Cal spoke to the miners directly: “I’m Cal. Have you heard of me?”
They stared back with blank expressions.
“Cal who?” the filthiest miner asked.
Cal hung her head. “Ugh, OK... Listen, newbs, this is how this is going to down...”
The miners were now the witches’ nervous escorts. The skinniest miner brought up the rear. Now and then they would pass other miners on the way, and the escorts would brush off questions from the onlookers, as Cal had instructed them. The bystander miners seemed very interested in the group of witches they didn’t recognize, but they didn’t spend much time on them because of the miner escort.
“Looks like there’s maybe 500 people here now,” Cal said, “They’ve grown a lot since last time.”
The area still looked like a shantytown. The nicer hovels had corrugated metal roofs and sides. The cheaper ones were hammered together from a mismatched assortment of boards. It was far from the suburban living most Cal’s ring were used to.
Meadow grew excited. “Look at these,” she said, grabbing the siding, “Real tin. You can tell because no rust.” She moved further on, grabbing another piece of siding. “And these, aluminum! Because of the oxidation. Wow!”
“Hey,” a voice from inside called, “Don’t touch the real estate.”
Meadow shrugged and kept moving. Much of the rest of the metal was slowly rusting to death. Winter licked her finger and ran it along the oxidized aluminum. Where the powder had been was now a darkened stroke of saliva. She admired her work for a moment and then drew two dashes as eyes above it. Have a