THE OLD MADE NEW

The Witch

WITCH

(Wednesday, June 25th, 2012 CE)

If love isn’t enough for love to last, then what is?

Isn’t love the point of love?  Does not love birth love?  Does not love love feed upon?  Does not in and with love love grow?  Love is a powerful emotion, correct?  Then why cannot love be sustained by love?  If love is love’s goal, if love is love’s purpose, if love is love’s environment, then why is love not love sustenance?  This just does not make sense.

Why cannot love obstacles conquer?  Why cannot love endure?  If love thrives upon souls and not soul-containers, why does love sometimes leave a beautiful soul for a beautiful body?  Is it not the gift that’s important, not the wrapping paper?  Then why does love flit to another with a blacker soul but a golden body?

Love.  The most powerful emotion, eh?  If that were so would not love endure?  Correction:  Love is the most powerful.  It can heal or harm, make or break, create or destroy.  But its power is its weakness, it cannot endure itself.  And when it dies it kills its bearer—slowly, painfully, from the inside out—if it still lives within him.  If love falls on one side and lives on the other, then it slowly destroys the one it lives within.  The feeling of despair and longing slowly drive him nuts.  And if the ex-receiver of his love finds another, he will surely go mad.  In this love is the most powerful, for it can make or break.  And in breaking it doles out the worst pain one can e’er experience.

So why then love?  Love can bring a joy untold, but love is a fragile and fickle creature.  But love brings hardship and heartache, so why love?  Because love can bring happiness and strength and a million fuzzies.  These cannot sustain love, though.  And can they repair a broken heart?  This is not to say, “Do not love.”  Ah, but love raises one’s hopes, and “If you don’t get your hopes up you won’t have to watch them come crashing down.”  Love is life’s greatest risk, for the treasure it holds is the greatest, but its penalty for failure is the gravest.

One should take this most audacious risk only if one can cope with the consequences of failure and is prepared to help sustain love when it is returned.  Love is something one cannot care for oneself, but must with the other’s help nurture and protect.  If both do this, and are unfailing in their love even when struck with fights or bad times, the love can blossom into the most glorious flower.  But if one goes awry, love folds in on itself.  Take care, for love can only love sustain if both want the love to be there.

They say that to love and lose is better than to never love at all, but are the memories worth the cost?  The answer lies in the heart of the hurt, and is different for us all.  For me, the price is right.

The paper that bore the words was thick, sepia-colored, with linen—the sort of paper reserved for resumés and other more important things than the teenage ramblings of a woman.  The typewriter that had transformed the paper was a rusty antique in the corner, held at the proper level by a stack of encyclopedias.  The hand now holding the paper trembled slightly.  The flesh was an almost iridescent shade of green, and the carefully manicured nails were as pearls.

“Thank you.  To read this to make me to feel…better,” the voice was delicious, feminine, and soft.  It was the sort of voice that one could get lost in for hours, like holding a conch to one’s ear on a warm summer’s day.

“Well, now, I don’t know how you managed to get all the way out here, it is beyond me, but don’t you worry.  Granny will take care of you.”

“Howfor are you to being a grandmama?”

“Well, sure! It’s as good as any other name, now, isn’t it?”  Granny said.  Granny was very much the opposite of what her name might suggest.  She was young and her build was athletic, the unfortunate fit build that robs a woman of nearly every girlish curve.  She had frizzy brown hair restrained in a floor-length, thick braid.  Her clothing was antiquated, like something out of a Renaissance faire, and she completed the ensemble with a very serious black witch hat.

Granny moved about the cramped room with agility but not grace.  Her home was an underground shelter, one large room with a closet that functioned as the restroom.  The only light came from some old incandescent bulbs planted in the ceiling.  The electric kettle boiled.  The toaster popped.  Granny provided simple fare to her patient.

“Thanks and thanks.  I not to have any eats in many days!” complained the green-hued patient.

“I can imagine,” Granny muttered.

“I was to coming to see a man whom I was to thinking is my love.  He was always to tell me how we could to be together forevers.  Then he…he was seeing me…and to lock me up in his shed! Granny, it was too terrible!” the girl’s face played host to a stream of tears.  Judging by her facial features she could be no more than sixteen.

“Granny, to how did you to finding my me?”

“Well, I’ll tell you, but you won’t believe me.  That little thing I had you read?  It’s about me, and it’s about him.  We were so deeply in love you’d need a hundred shovels to even get the dirt off o’ our heads.  Well, things went the way they did, and he up and died.  Up and died!  We still keep in contact, though.”

“You are to what?”

“Don’t interrupt Granny,” Granny scolded.  “I hold regular séances so I can speak to him.  You know, that Baron Lyttelton’s book really helped me find a way to talk to my love again.  I have…quite a knack for it, truth be told.  One of my many ‘talents.’  That’s how I found you,” Granny concluded, sitting down on a comically-small stool to sip her tea.

“But Granny, I am not to being dead!” the woman was worried.

“Is the tub warm enough, dearie?  Good.  I was communicating with spirits and I heard yours.  No, you’re not dead, but you were in pain, fearful, and in need.  So I rescued you and brought you here.  And now, you and I come to the bad news,” Granny finished with a sigh.

“Uh-oh, whatfor is being this bad news?” asked the woman in the tub.  Granny set her teacup down on the floor and took off her hat, suddenly looking very serious, as if all the mirth she had ever felt just drained out of her, leaking out through her toes and hiding under the dresser.

“I am going to be dead?” asked the young woman in the tub.

“Yes.  I can’t get you back where you belong in time.  That kind of magic is not at my disposal.  It’s not on the path I walk,” Granny’s voice was sad yet hopeful.

“For what are you to saying, Granny?”

“My magic is for healing, and also for…transformations,” Granny said.  “Simply put, I can change you so that you won’t die.”

“But…then I am not to being a mermaid any no longer,” the girl said.  Her voice was sorrow incarnate, and Granny shed a single tear.

“Child, you will live.  This is not a choice I will make for you—I’m not that kind of a witch.  You have to decide if you want to be a dead mermaid or a living…something else.”

“To then what would I to being?” asked the mermaid.

“Alive.”