romantick magick

It felt like walking into a battleground. Although silent now, the echoes of artillery fire faded, still conflict, destruction, and a deep, aching sadness hung thickly in the air. The trees around us were not just pockmarked or dying but almost rended, grisly, detonated from within. The water that stood between them was black, thick, and stagnant. There was no breeze, no birdsong, and almost no light at all. The air felt like a thick blanket of ice.

“It’s really heavy here,” I murmured, pulling up my hood and feeling the goose flesh creep up my arms. 

The wizard’s eyes widened slightly and he nodded. “It was like this last time too,” he said. “To the north, it’s nothing but beautiful riverside and so much sun it blinds you. To the east, the olympians’ training ground. But like I told you, something terrible happened here.”

“Where did you see the red spy?” I asked. “I bet we’ll find some clues there.”

“Agent,” the wizard corrected me. “Red agent. And he followed me a long ways. But we can start through here, in the wasteland.”

As we walked, my companion told me all that he knew about the place. He’d heard tales of a witch that lived here—or perhaps something even more mythical, like a medusa—and had ventured south the week before to find her. The wizard kept odd hours, so he saw little sign of anyone else in the woods that day. No medusas, to be sure. Just one red shadow that followed him through the trees. The wizard had called him an “agent,” and said he felt like he was being spied on and evaluated from every angle by big, dark eyes. Whoever this agent was, he was good at his job. Now, to see if the wizard had passed his test.

When we reached the edge of the dim, suffocatingly cold forest, walking into the sunlight felt like being catapulted into another dimension. Leaves dripped with vibrant chlorophyll. Flowers were sprinkled about—the first we’d seen that day. There was the blinding sun he’d seen up north. But… something sinister too. It hung in the air like the sadness had back in the woods, but this was gruesome. Death. Rot. Emptiness. And it hit even harder being surrounded by sun-drenched beauty.

“Oof,” I said with a shudder. “What is this place?”

“This is the wasteland,” he said, shielding his eyes and scanning the tree line. “Somehow, even though all you can see is life everywhere around you, there is absolutely nothing here but death and decay.”

(I may be the bard, but there are often times when the wizard has the finer words.)

Our boots crunched along the crushed-stone path, loud in the air around us but deadened immediately by the thick woods on either side. It felt like we were in no-man’s land, sandwiched between a forest of icy sorrow and… well, we weren’t yet sure what lay on the other side.

Soon, we reached a dry river bed that bent this way and that through the trees.

“You think we can get through there?” I asked.

The wizard looked skeptical. “I think I’m too big,” he said. “My hat and robes and everything…”

I’d never seen the wizard hold back before. “Are you scared?” I asked him with a teasing smile. “I didn’t think it was possible.”

He cocked his brow at me. “I am never scared, milady,” he replied sternly. “But there’s a lot going on in there, so we need to stay on our toes.”

“Always,” I replied, squeezing his arms with a wink and a grin before crouching under the first of many low-hanging branches. 

I heard the wizard groan and grumble behind me before he followed suit. I giggled quietly.

What lay down the long-forgotten river stopped my laughter short, however. A thousand voices swirled around us, strange tongues, punctuated by coughs and moans. Rasping shrieks pulled at my hackles and I gazed around at all the trees. Unlike the cold, silent blanket of the other woods, this was like an electric cacophony, a humming city, like the night where you light a fire under a full moon and raise all your ancestors. It deafened me. The wizard’s hand grabbing mine was all I could sense in the din, and I followed him through the brush.

As our footsteps slowed, so did the voices. In the ensuing silence, there remained just one speaking. We knelt as his voice faded in and out, straining to hear. It was a story. Then ten stories. Then hundreds.

“It’s her,” the wizard whispered to my left.

Wrinkling my brow, I said, “I thought you said the red agent was a male.”

“He was. This isn’t the red agent—this is the witch.”

—

“Who are you?” the wizard said, his eyes closed, his hand pressed to the earth.

“I am the mistress of this land,” she replied. “Some call me a hag, a witch, just a fairy story. But I was once their benevolent Queen Engris.”

“Your highness,” we both said quickly, bowing our heads.

We heard a shrill laugh, almost a wail, that lasted so long I felt like my heart might break.

“I haven’t been called that in many years,” she replied. “It doesn’t even sound right anymore. And I understand—I haven’t done my best by these lands lately, but if you’d seen it back then… oh, it was breathtaking. And then they came and stole it all away.”

A crack followed. Then a long, deep groan.

“Who came? What did they do?” I asked.

Silence. I was worried I’d offended her with my eager questions. I held my breath. 

“Hmm,” she finally said. “Normally I wouldn’t say a word, but Henry told me of your last journey here, wizard. He said you pose no threat to us. Does that go for your friend as well?”

“Of course, but who is Henry?” the wizard said. “The red agent?”

Queen Engris let out another shrill, scraping laugh. “Yes, I suppose you could call him that,” she said. “He keeps watch over the very few that still come here to do magick. There are some regulars, but you were new, so he made sure to keep an eye on you. I guess you noticed?”

“How could I not?” the wizard said with a laugh. It seemed to put her at ease, and we settled in to hear her tale.

—

The river kingdom had always been a place of safety, filled with magick, romance, beauty, and peace. The pages of her history told of bards lacing the warm, earthy air with their story and song. Lovers hiding behind trees to steal a kiss. Wizards practicing spells and finding solace in the energy of this sacred place. The queen’s lands were once a safe haven for refugees as well. The grand trees of her forest provided cover, shelter, and warmth for these endangered people from other lands as they passed through to freedom. They wore the lightest paths they could in her soil, took care not to crush the tender saplings underfoot, and curled up to rest in the cradle of her intricate roots. She tended to the wounds they bore with salves, ointments, and other remedies she’d prepared. Her brow was lined with worry at these poor souls. Where had they come from? And would they be safe where they were going? She asked them to stay, but they refused—if they lingered, they said, she too would be in danger. They needed to keep moving north, and she would release them after a few hours’ rest among the dark green leaves and still wetlands, waking them with dappled sunlight, toasted nuts, and tart berries.

When all the refugees had gone, the woods were quiet for a time. But after years of tending the land faithfully on her own, Queen Engris began to see people return. More every day wandered beneath her leafy canopy. She was surprised one morning to wake to the sounds of activity outside her window. The sun was barely up and she hadn’t been around yet to clear away the evening’s cobwebs. As she emerged from her home, nestled between the marshes, she saw a large group of men high above her on the ridge. They held large paper maps and wore strange helmets. They made marks on her trees and spoke loudly of zigzagging paths and just how many of her sweet, towering friends to leave behind.

The queen rushed to the top of the steeply sloping embankment as she heard the men’s voices begin to fade. She had to know what was happening to her kingdom. But before she could crest the hill, they were gone. 

—

As she paused to breathe and reflect on that fateful day, I thought back to the paths we’d used to get here. How they cut back and forth so sharply, you could see from one section to the next for what felt like miles in every direction. This had once been a lush, dense wonderland and they’d carved it up like butchers.

“How awful,” I said. “Is that what happened to the trees and water too?”

A sharp rasp sounded as Queen Engris drew in her breath. A line of harsh, unintelligible words followed, biting at my ears. I’d hit a nerve. As I opened my mouth to apologize, a second voice spoke up from behind us, slightly quieter than hers. It was calm and even, softening the edges of her tone. They spoke back and forth for a time before she addressed us again.

“I’m afraid that was my doing,” the queen said with a heavy, shaking sigh.

—

Once the pathways were cut, it was almost no time at all before the machines came. Not the rending, crushing, awful beasts that had ripped the queen’s beloved trees from the ground, and cut a long, unyielding scar along the belly of her land, but smaller, faster-moving monsters made of gears, rods, gaskets, and tubes. High atop each one was perched a man in a sort of cockpit, surrounded by levers and dials. The men twisted and flipped the controls, leaning their machines this way and that. And they were never quiet.

“The noise those things make,” Queen Engris groaned. “Always shouting, grunting, hollering, and cursing—it’s like torture when they rumble through.”

As the “things” came to the woods in greater numbers, the queen began trying to fight them off. She threw sticks and rocks, pulled up tree roots to tangle their machines. Then one day she turned to the greatest power she knew—the same power that had brought peace to this place for so long—magick.

The queen’s powers were strong, tapping into centuries of energy and a vast network of roots that stretched well beyond the boundaries of her kingdom. She began hurling curses at the things, knocking them from their machines, breaking bolts, and shattering wheels. Even though they too had been harmed in all this, her subjects begged her to stop. Someone could get really hurt, and then what would happen to them all? The queen assured them that only then would they be left alone. 

But the trees couldn’t let the queen exact her revenge on these poor beings. Even atop their monstrous devices, they were still simply humans with soft bodies and feeble, fallible minds. They needed to be protected. So the trees shielded the men from her wrath, blocking them with their limbs, parting their leaves to the blinding sun just as she finished a spell, and quickly opening up new paths as she blew up others. 

—

“That’s why the trees look so battle worn,” the wizard said in a voice that revealed deep sadness.

“Yes,” the queen replied. “And why my waters are black as night. Why keep the magick alive here when they have not a bit of interest in it?” A long groan sounded in the dim light and then soft, thin words. “I used to be enough for them. They would walk my paths, climb my stones like steps. They would hide among my trees’ roots, lean against the trunks, and swing from the vines. The magick here used to be all they needed. Now they need machines to bring them joy. They rush past without noticing any of the beauty. Very few stop. Fewer still listen. You are the first in many months. It—” Her voice caught slightly in her throat. “It has been very difficult.”

After a long pause, the wizard asked, “Why didn’t I see any of them the day that Henry tailed me? I thought I heard a shout, but it was way off in the distance.”

“They mostly come out in the evening,” the queen replied. “And there are times where the weather makes the woods impassable for their rusted heaps.” I could hear smirking derision in her voice for a moment before she softened. “When it’s quiet over there”—she gestured to the chilled woods on the other side of the clearing—“I come here to rest. Just over that rise is the river, where I take holiday among the fairies. But it never lasts long. Even in the coldest times I hear one whir through and I must return to my post. Who else is going to defend this place from them?”

—

Queen Engris went on to tell us countless tales of her beautiful land, each one tinged with the sorrow of what she’d lost. As her voice grew hoarse, she asked if we’d return, if we’d tell others of this place.

“Of course we will, your highness,” the wizard said.

The queen let out a dull, skeptical creak.

“Here, you can make sure of it.” He opened his pack and extracted a leather pouch. Inside it were a handful of stones, all dark and shadowy like the marshes that surrounded the queen’s home. 

“These are our treasures, and we want to leave them here with you to hear more of your stories and become one with your kingdom.”

“A bold gesture, dear wizard. But these gems are sure to come away with too much grief upon them.”

“That’s why we brought our own magick,” the wizard replied with a smile, smoothing down the hair of a small doll stitched to the back of the pouch. 

The wizard lifted a large piece of tree bark from the ground and nestled Margaret and her bag underneath. “She’ll see to it that the stones are protected. We’ll be back for them in a few days’ time.”

—

As we prepared to step back into the wasteland, I spotted a path laden with tiny blue forget-me-nots leading southwest. 

“The fairy lands,” I whispered, pointing toward the distant ridge that promised a riverside hideaway.

“Next time,” the wizard replied, guiding me out into the sun. “It’s nearly six, and if the queen is telling us the truth, we’ll have to be careful on our way out.”

He was right. Just a few steps into the cold, damp woods, I heard shouting off in the distance. A few steps later, an awful whizzing, whirring, chunking sound that ground its way closer at a terrifying rate. The wizard grabbed my elbow and yanked me aside just in time for us to gawk at the machine as it flew past, its pilot wearing a strange hat and glasses, hand raised in a tremulous salute as he sped away. The gears on his machine looked stiff with disuse and he paused well ahead of us and stepped out to examine his sagging heap. As we walked past, I said a silent prayer for the man to repair his machine quickly and be on his way. Even in her sadness, the queen’s wrath burned hot. And she wouldn’t be far behind us.

As we walked, the clanking, popping, and yelling began to rise up on all sides. They would take over these woods until the last rays of sun faded, raising the dead with their shrill, rude voices, zooming through a blur of gloomy greens and grays. 

Even as we grimaced at the noise and hastened our steps toward home, I couldn’t wait to return. The sadness was heavy, but the history was so rich. Maybe we’d see the red agent again. Or perhaps another magical sentry would show itself, in this land where the river bends.