I have two more likely short stories for you folks, and then it’s back to the grind. One of the curses of being a Seer to the Council and a magical consultant to boot means I am almost constantly in demand. Not a bad problem to have, but at the same time, being my own boss in it all stinks.
I think my next client involves a trip to another plane. Some kind of disruption that they need a Seer to help with.
I feel more like a tool than a consultant, since I do little more than turn up, look at something and tell them what I’m seeing. Which I suppose is a useful skill unto itself, given that I’m able to see parts of magic and essentia and all that is more or less invisible, but still…
Anyway, so hopefully you remember my story of having sort of met the local witch. Three story house on the way to the pub, somewhat overgrown looking yard that isn’t really a yard but a kind of garden. All being tended over by a terrifying woman who tended to put everyone in mind of a kind of head mistress at a private school.
As it turns out, my guess of her being about 50ish wasn’t entirely wrong, but her actual age isn’t really relevant other than to give you an idea.
Given my first interaction with her was on my way to the pub and involved her whispering in my ear despite being physically 80 some feet away, I wasn’t entirely certain what to make of her.
She normally makes various herbal tinctures, rubs, oils, and similar mixtures in a kind of old-world style health and wellness way. Similar to the over the top way you see some of the super overdone ‘x for focus, z for longevity’, except that she did actually infuse a bit of magic into her non-baseline stock to actually give it some additional potency.
Even so, her baseline stock was still pretty potent and most of it actually validated by modern science. Nothing on the order of ‘take this and it’ll cure your cancer/infection’, but more like natural remedies to simpler life things - like poison oak, reducing allergy symptoms, or even just a basic supplement for hair/skin treatments. Imperfect, but still having more impact than nothing. And while I don’t exactly buy into that kind of thing as a cureall, I’m not above giving it a try.
Instead of melatonin pills or gummies, she recommends grapes and even has some that she’s grown specifically for that purpose. As someone who has a bad habit of waking up at 3am and tossing and turning for an hour until falling back asleep, anything to help sleeping and isn’t addictive I can get behind.
So placebo or not, I’ve become a regular customer to her in the time following the Prism expedition.
And I’ll still say she is still just as scary as when I first pseudo met her.
She won’t hear of someone badmouthing her products, but she also won’t hear of someone claiming obvious medical falsehoods (e.g. claiming that a ‘special tea’ of peppermint and ginger will cure a throat infection). So even the more unruly of baseline tourists either avoid her shop or end up staring at the floor, mumbling ‘Yes, miss’ in more ashamed voices than most have used in years.
Anyway, a few months ago, after the Prism expedition and before my breakdown, as I was picking up a few herbs and ingredients (it is hard to be locally grown herbs in cooking after all, especially magically enhanced ones), I heard her clear her throat in my direction. How I managed to discern this, I’ll never know, but since I was the only one of three customers she had at the moment, I opted to not keep her waiting.
Oh right… her name… well, she doesn’t give out her actual name. Not 100% certain why, but it has something to do with her witching. As far as I’ve been able to tell in my time since ‘becoming’ a Seer, there doesn’t appear to be a particular power in a person’s name, but as I’m still more or less a kind of baseline, I shouldn’t be surprised if there is.
Anyway - she goes by Miss Skuld and true to the baseline name’s origin, she keeps a cat by the name of Grimalkin.
I didn’t catch this once we’d actually been introduced until Warren had insisted we go see a show by the local Shakespearean troupe. I’d like to say that it was a good show, but it was all I could do to keep from laughing.
So in stepping up to Miss Skuld, it was akin to being called before the teacher or even the principal, as you can well imagine. Your mind automatically races through all the things you might have done, have done, or were thinking of doing at some point and wondering if you accidentally did do some of them.
She seemed to observe me for a long moment before she spoke in that quiet, but commanding voice of hers.
“Sam, I have a project that could use your assistance,” Miss Skuld said in a way that was something of both a request and kind of command.
Let me start by saying that I’m not exactly anti-authority, but I definitely buck when given orders instead of requests. It’s a kind of reflex feeling that I get which means that if I’d ever thought about joining the military, I’d have been thrown out within a month for getting mouth or being outright disobedient.
So to hear this and not immediately snap back at the command part of her statement, my will was definitely put to the test.
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“In what capacity, Miss Skuld?” I prompted, since it wasn’t unheard of for me to be asked for not as a Seer, but just as a friendly baseline.
“As a Seer. There’s something that worries me about my garden and I think foul play may be in effect,” she replied and for the first and only time, she seemed nervous or perhaps even furtive at even mentioning it.
“What would I be looking for?” I asked, trying to think of what she could be referring to, since I was clearly no horticulturalist and regularly managed to kill potted mint.
“Just… something unusual. Hold on a moment please,” she said, as one of the other patrons came up to the counter, an herbal tea of some flavor and a bottle of herbal oils intended for perfumery and colognes being purchased.
The other customer seemed to take this moment to leave, having not found whatever it was they were looking for. Given the haircut on them, I presumed it was some manner of Karen, looking for Oil of the Manager or Essential Pyramid herbs.
Once the purchasing customer had left, Miss Skuld went to the door and locked it, turning around a sign that indicated she would be back in 20 minutes.
Naturally I was slightly confused by this, since she indicated that this was about her garden, but when she gestured for me to follow her into the back of her shop, I followed along.
It was an older house, with a shop front on the front and main floor and the residence split between the back and the top floor. So you can further imagine my surprise as she opened the door to her basement and a stunning array of light seemed to spill out.
Knowing more about what I do now, I should have been substantially more cautious, but I didn’t, so I simply followed her into the mass of light.
Once my eyes adjusted, I found myself in a field, seeming transported ala Howl’s Moving Castle door style to an almost ridiculously sized garden of all manner of plants, some of which looked familiar, others of which looked utterly foreign.
The world beyond the garden seemed to be naught but trees. Where-ever this garden existed, it seemed to only be connected to the regular world via that portal in Miss Skuld’s backroom.
“Welcome to my garden. Few have ever been here. Even fewer have walked away from it,” she said, gesturing and seemingly less threatening, despite the hidden threat in her words.
“Why even fewer?” I asked, it being important to my ongoing survival, which at the end of the day, is worth a lot more than good relations with the local witch.
“Because not everyone who comes here has proper intentions or even an invitation. You have both, so you need not fear this garden. Or at least not normally,” she pointed at a few piles of greenery that started moving.
It was a few moments, but the greenery piles rearranged themselves into a kind of golem, the likes of which I’d never heard of and probably would never have seen if not for this visit. They were not overly large, but they were not lithe either. Underneath the leaves, I could see vines and branches that bent and shifted as they moved, most of them moving to care for the vast garden around us.
There was a slight aura of magic around them, but from the little I’d come to know about golems, that was most likely normal. Except for one. One seemed different from the others.
Where the others seemed to move with calm purpose, a silvery flicker of magic around them, this odd one seemed to have a kind of irregular stuttering movement.
By some means that I didn’t catch, Miss Skuld called the errant golem over to us. It started to, but then it stopped, as though it were being given other ideas.
“Come here!” she commanded in such a tone that every golem halted what they were doing and turned toward her. “Just this one.”
She pointed at the golem in particular and the rest of the golems stood still, waiting for something.
The errant golem remained frozen in place, its vines and greenery twitching as though conducting some kind of internal battle.
In a motion that I barely caught, Miss Skuld cast some kind of liquid from a phial that she’d apparently had on her on the golem.
The aura seemed to resolve and the golem’s internal battle seemed to die away and it moved to her and knelt before her.
“As I said, there’s something wrong with my garden and I need to know what. I cannot simply keep resorting to stabilizer,” she said, examining the golem for something.
“From what I could see, it was as though something were disrupting the magic of the golem, making it incapable of acting as commanded,” I said, trying to think back on my consulting days with robotic assembly lines.
“Is this the work of another being?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t even know about the magics involved to try to give you any kind of answer,” I admitted.
“Are there any others that appear affected at least?” she didn’t seem pleased by this answer, but was willing to accept it for now.
I looked at each of the other golems that I could see. None of the currently very still golems seemed to have the same issue.
“I don’t think so. It’s definitely something magical though. What else could disrupt it like that?” I decided on.
“Not much. This place is… disconnected from most of the more obvious impacts,” she rose from the golem and I knelt down to look over the golem myself.
It took several minutes before I found anything, but I did find something.
“What’s this?” I asked, pointing to what looked like the mark of a lightning strike, albeit on what would have been either a oak trunk or a femur.
“A lightning scar. That’s… unlikely,” she inspected it more closely now that I had pointed it out.
“Why? That’s how I came to be a seer,” I suggested.
“That’s not what I mean. There shouldn’t be any extreme weather here,” she said, pulling out a small tool and scraping at the mark.
The golem shrieked as though in pain at her ministrations and collapsed, seeming to dissolve from a being into just a collection of wood, vines, and miscellaneous leaves, almost no two alike.
“Hmmm… well, whatever it is, it isn’t welcome here and I’ll have to deal with it,” her voice resolute.
“How do you deal with something that can corrupt your own magic?” I asked.
“I don’t know, but I’m open to suggestions,” she rose and placed her hands on her hips.
“Well, you’ve got me here. Can’t exactly corrupt magic or essentia if there’s nothing there to corrupt,” I said.
“Your price?” she prompted, knowing that for as good a customer as I was, I wasn’t free or even cheap.
“Saffron. 10 lbs worth. As potent as you can grow it and separated into 5 gram vials,” it taking me several moments to arrive at that price in my head.
She hesitated. Such a price was hefty, even in the baseline world, making it that much higher in the here and now.
“Done, but I will have to grow it first, you understand,” Miss Skuld extended a hand.
“Of course. Now let’s see about solving this mystery,” I shook her hand, sealing the bargain.
The rest of the story… well, that can wait until next time.