Table of contents
***
one night
under the spinning moons
and planet’s rings
if she’d
ever met a witch before.
Not because I wondered about you, Clarissa;
mountain dragons
and green dragons
have fundamentally
different anatomies,
means of reproduction,
and–most importantly–come from different realms.
But I wanted to know,
if she met the witch,
did she eat them?
Where did the witch go
if she didn’t?
What could the witch do
that I couldn’t?
And had the witch lived any lives
resembling mine
full of doomed revolutions?
Sliptide licked her eyes
and said she had, once.
Maybe two thousand years ago,
she met
a seven-winged demon
in the astral realm
who knew witchery.
“What branches of witchery?” I asked,
perched on a rock
with a copper walking stick
across my lap,
a matchstick burning
blue
in my
hand,
like a landing signal to the stars.
“There are branches of witchery?” Sliptide asked.
“Yes,” I said. “There’s
summonings. Shapeshifting. Spoken spells.
Strings.
Stews. Study of realms, study of artifacts.
But they all draw from shared magical roots. Hence
why they’re called branches.”
Sliptide coiled her rocky tail around her two taloned-feet,
long neck craning down close enough to my face for her nostrils to blow fumes at my
snow hair.
“If they all belong to one tree,
why do you care which branches the demon knew?”
“Because that could give me clues about who trained them.”
The match light reached my fingers
so I crushed it out.
“I don’t think,”
Sliptide whispered, air ruffling my eyelashes,
“you would know who trained this demon two thousand years ago.”
I put the burnt match in my coat pocket. “But maybe I’ll know if the one who trained them
also trained me.
Or maybe your seven-winged demon astral projection
trained me.”
“Hmm. Then I regret to inform you, they did not tell me what branches of witchery
they knew.”
“…okay.”
“What if you tell me what your school teachers were like,
and maybe I’ll recognize one of them,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow. “You saw their astral self, not their physical self.
And I don’t think I could describe most of my teachers’ minds.”
“Alright.” Sliptide
lifted her head, swaying like one of the trees
around our clearing. “Why
is it important that you know about this witch?”
I didn’t answer that.
“What did you talk about in the astral world?”
I said instead.
Sliptide swayed, puffing clouds out her nose.
“It’s often difficult to relate astral experiences,”
she began,
“in physical terms–like you supposed.
But the witch
was experimenting
in astral projections
to find somebody lost,
more lost than a demon–
which could only mean heaven,
one of the distant realms where goblins rule,
or this mindscape
where one has no self-reflection
like a dream
you never wake from
but sometimes have control over–”
“Sorry,” I interrupted, “I don’t think that’s
making much sense.
I guess
I was just making small talk,
I guess
it’s only logical I don’t know this demon witch
like I know so many others
I guess
witches don’t take after heavenly beings, do they,
I guess
I’m a devil of secrets
and sabotage–”
And she asked,
“Is this about that place
you said I could eat,
and not about a witch
in the astral realm?”
“Yes,” I said,
cuz dragons can smell lies,
that’s the other reason she came through my portal
in the first place:
she had no suspicions of being swindled,
or being taken advantage of
without receiving advantage back.
Those are
mostly mortal things–
swindling,
advantages,
not smelling lies.
“Yes,” I said, “I think I might feel guilty
cuz I taught them magic
and hoped to set some things in balance
but instead
they destroyed each other–
or they would have,
if I hadn’t asked you to destroy them first.”
Like I was right to.
“Well,” Sliptide said, lifting her head to shroud the sky,
“mortals all die anyway. Even you, witch, though at least you live
long enough
to entertain me for a while.
It’s probably better
that they fed my belly
than feeding the flies and mold
or whatever that realm holds.”
“Yes.” I nodded. “So
I guess
I wondered if you’d ever met a witch
like me
who taught people magic
who maybe shouldn’t have had it.”
The dragon laughed,
spewing acid over the clearing,
landing some splatters
on my copper walking stick, hissing.
I wiped them off
with my coat.
“Perhaps,”
Sliptide said,
“the witch I met
was searching for someone lost
by their own hands.
Perhaps
you assume too much
in saying
anyone with magic
should’ve had it.”
“Perhaps,” I replied.
And resisted the itch
to light another match
and signal the stars
to come fight me.
Jordyn Saelor 