On the dangers of caring
The Tin Witch's Heart
Even in the dawn glimmer, the Schwarzwald was dark.
Ariadne Caligari noticed this, standing wrapped in her torn and bloodstained blacks, dewish grass wet up to her calves. The darkness didn’t bother her; she had lived her life in the darkness, one way or another, after all, yet she noticed it nonetheless, and made careful note. The Fate Witch had never left her grandfather’s castle before this voyage and everything was new, everything worth marking and understanding.
Perhaps the brightness of the ocean had been an aberration?
“We move,” Don Sebastian said firmly, slinging his guitar across his shoulder. Yesterday walking had been relatively painless; confusing perhaps, and involving slightly more stumbling than had ever been the case when patrolling the corridors of Castel Caligari. Tree roots were tricksy things. But it hadn’t been hard. Today every part of Ariadne’s body stung or ached. Her back was a mess of lash marks, where she’d ripped herself apart tearing at the strands, and it hurt to breathe. She suspected the sword she’d been stabbed with had impaled her lung. She did not say anything, however, but simply twitched her veil firmly into place.
Sometimes it was best not to speak. Sometimes it was better to think instead. She needed to think. Her world had been changing, more than she had expected it would, more than had seen possible when she had left Caligari Island and every day seemed to make less and less sense.
“Count,” Ariadne murmured to herself. The great Ussuran walking just behind her threw the little witch a questioning look. She ignored him entirely, impossible to read behind the veil.
She would count. She could count. Fate Witches were allowed numbers and she could count in the hundreds. Numbers made sense. Numbers were clear and concise and would turn the swirling cloud of confusion into something she could manage, something she could control.
And Ariadne liked control.
At the edge of the clearing, she bent down by the small mound of Earth where the Eisen woman had buried her brother. She dropped a paper flower there. She wished she could have given more, but it had seemed unwise to look for real flowers in this place. The little scrap of twisted paper was all she could offer.
The Fate Witch bit her lip.
She didn’t want to think about the ghost white child. She would think about the paper. Paper, sketches, science and books. That was better - safer - cleaner.
She would steal a book from the Vodacce Captain when they returned to his ship. Another stray thought, uncomfortable and inexplicable, flickered through her mind. She remembered the Captain, stripped to the waist, bloodied and scarred, pacing in the cabin last night. Perhaps she was interested in anatomy? That was a heretical art, and one that she should know nothing of, but she had been known to wonder about such things before. As long as she only looked at pictures and not the words, that might be safe?
Ariadne pulled her cloak into place. Yes. That would be acceptable. And she was sure she had wanted to know more about the human body last night; muscle and bone, the line of a shoulder. She stared at the grass, and tried not to think about it too much. She’d acquire a book. She’d learn more. And try not to let such images into her mind until then.
Up ahead, the great hulk of the treeline loomed.
“Two,” Ariadne whispered to herself, moving firmly on from anatomy to trees. She had never seen anything, she thought, so large as the trees. How could something grow to be so tall? Even the walls of her grandfather’s house now seemed small in comparison. She’d never been outside anywhere beyond those walls; the only things she knew which grew were flowers, neat trimmed bushes, herbs laid out in careful patterns. This wildness was utterly alien, utterly terrifying. And the monsters didn’t help. No one had explained whether this level of constant life threatening danger was normal for a forest, but she could only presume it was. First aggressive ghoulish warriors, then demon possessed wolves, and then hungry ghosts. This was probably why Vodacce men liked to keep the Striga safe behind stone walls where nothing could get them.
She acknowledged that the Porte throwing Montaigne musket men were probably not a normal part of the local botany, but hadn’t much liked them either. Being stabbed by teleporting weaponry was high on her mental list of things that respectable Fate Witches shouldn’t be expected to endure.
Her Captain (she ignored the fact that she’d started mentally marking him as hers entirely. It was totally appropriate that she lay a claim. It would only be until he presented her to her husband, anyway) had come for her once she’d been stabbed of course. There had been rescuing involved, as there frequently was right now. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that.
She had noticed (and this was her third mental note as they walked) that being rescued involved more bruising that she had expected. She’d been rescued twice yesterday alone; once by her Captain (which had featured a back handed slap in response to her perfectly reasonable comment that bleeding out untouched was really more appropriate than being bound up by an unrelated man) and once by the Ussuran (who had thrown her across a room as if she were a recalcitrant kitten).
She’d tried to protest loudly to both of them but both had ignored her complaints absolutely. Well, the Ussuran had ignored her. Her Captain had simply informed her it had never happened, which, to be fair, was probably the wiser approach to take. Some things should not be remembered. Well, not publicly remembered. The Fate Witch never forgot, but stored the blow in a box in her mind with each and every moment that skin had touched skin.
“Four,” she whispered, and did not look at anyone in the party.
The Fate Witch had never delivered Fate’s Kiss before. It had been explained to her, in detail. A Fate Witch’s Blessing was the greatest gift she could deliver. A Fate Witch’s Curse was the thing that each Vodacce man and woman feared. It was the source of their power, the reason for their chains. No one meets the gaze of a Fate Witch, she’d been told, for that is the first step. You look into the eyes of a Fate Witch, you give them power over you.
Her captain, she remembered, had known that. When he’d been bleeding, his hand cut open by the knife he’d stopped from hitting her, she had stepped forward and pulled away her veil. He’d closed his eyes - winced - tried to turn away. He had been afraid. As had all men. So she’d slapped him to make him meet her gaze.
(Which made it fair, she supposed, that he’d slapped her. They were equal there, at least. Not that it worked that way. It never worked that way)
He had met her gaze.
The second step was to say his name. That second step is why the Vodacce courtesans all wear masks, so no Fate Witch can identify the women who hold Vodacce husbands’ hearts.
But she knew her Captain’s name.
The third step was the Kiss. Her lips on his skin - hand, cheek, mouth, it didn’t matter. It sealed her control, her right to bestow Fate’s favour or displeasure.
That is why no Vodacce man ever really wants to kiss a Fate Witch, unless she is his mother. Even a husband may tread cautiously before he lays a hand on his wife. And rightfully so. Her mother had explained these matters to her; the unpleasant duties a wife must perform, the discomfort of being so close to another, even one’s own husband. A good Fate Witch encourages her husband to fear her, to keep away from her, unless his need is great and the matter of significance, simply for the sake of her own comfort.
Ariadne hadn’t found it so unkind. The pain of Fate’s Lash had been as expected, tearing apart her back as her lips met his. But there had been more; an odd rush of exultation, a weird giddying brightness somewhere inside. She’d felt…good. Free. Warm. Right.
Which really just showed the seductive power of magic. No wonder Fate Witches were taught to use it sparingly. Really, it could be quite addictive and that would be terrible, when one considered how dangerous the entire thing could be.
Thankfully, the Captain had not mentioned it. It had become like his blow, something that could not happen. It would be wrong for it to have happened. No Fate Witch has the right to give that gift to any who does not possess her properly and lawfully. And Ariadne was a good Fate Witch. She would not do that kind of thing. So she clearly hadn’t.
Ariadne slowly let out a long breath.
It had been a strange day. At least, she told herself, it had not been as difficult for her as it had been for the others. Each one of her companions had seemed in pain that day, and the kind of pain that cut to the heart, rather than just skimmed across the skin like hers.
She had seen the Castillian, cold and implacable, drawn by the empty aching hole inside him where she thought his wife must once have been. His wife was dead. She was sure his wife was dead. But the thing that had been Katrina was drawing him on.
She had seen the Ussuran, who had told her “you are my compass now,” and his expression whenever his brother was mentioned; blood of his blood, lost in the forest. Fate pulling and pushing, dragging the Ussuran on, tearing his brother further away. And there was more hurt to come.
She had seen the Avalonian duelling the empty shell of his brother in the dark, seen the Vodacce man white with anger at the memory of his stolen ship.
She had seen the Eisen woman kneeling over the corpse of her little brother. The corpse that walked and talked and wept. The corpse of the little boy who had died in the woods.
Ariadne shivered and blinked more times than she should.
“I was lost in the woods, Lena, and I couldn’t find mother or father. Have you come to take me home?”
She had seem them all hurt. She had seem them all care. And, in that moment, it seemed to Ariadne that it must be the most terrible Curse - far more cruel than anything she could devise - to live in this great, dark, savage unpredictable world and to leave yourself so raw because you had learned to care.
For that moment Ariadne was very thankful that she was Sorte Strega, that she had been born for something else; power, insight, control, and fate. She was glad that these candle bright emotions were beneath her, that she had been born to live in the dark.
Beside her, she sensed, rather than felt, the presence of another and the cuff of his jacket against the edge of her cloak, just checking she could still walk. She turned and inclined her head politely to the Captain and he nodded brusquely in return before picking up pace. He had been in a godawful mood since last night. Probably the memory of his ship.
Ariadne sighed.
She disliked her Captain being in this mood. She managed to pick up pace herself, so she could catch up with him. She had a spare paper flower that might make him smile, even if only for a minute. Everyone likes flowers.
The girl slowly exhaled. All this emotion was really quite exhausting. She was beginning to develop a dull ache in her heart herself, interspersed with strange moments of peculiar joy, just by being near these people. How much worse would this be if she were a normal girl? How much hurt would she feel?
But she was not. Ariadne was a Fate Witch, for which she gave thanks. She was glad she was not able to care.
Even in the dawn glimmer, the Schwarzwald was dark.
Ariadne Caligari noticed this, standing wrapped in her torn and bloodstained blacks, dewish grass wet up to her calves. The darkness didn’t bother her; she had lived her life in the darkness, one way or another, after all, yet she noticed it nonetheless, and made careful note. The Fate Witch had never left her grandfather’s castle before this voyage and everything was new, everything worth marking and understanding.
Perhaps the brightness of the ocean had been an aberration?
“We move,” Don Sebastian said firmly, slinging his guitar across his shoulder. Yesterday walking had been relatively painless; confusing perhaps, and involving slightly more stumbling than had ever been the case when patrolling the corridors of Castel Caligari. Tree roots were tricksy things. But it hadn’t been hard. Today every part of Ariadne’s body stung or ached. Her back was a mess of lash marks, where she’d ripped herself apart tearing at the strands, and it hurt to breathe. She suspected the sword she’d been stabbed with had impaled her lung. She did not say anything, however, but simply twitched her veil firmly into place.
Sometimes it was best not to speak. Sometimes it was better to think instead. She needed to think. Her world had been changing, more than she had expected it would, more than had seen possible when she had left Caligari Island and every day seemed to make less and less sense.
“Count,” Ariadne murmured to herself. The great Ussuran walking just behind her threw the little witch a questioning look. She ignored him entirely, impossible to read behind the veil.
She would count. She could count. Fate Witches were allowed numbers and she could count in the hundreds. Numbers made sense. Numbers were clear and concise and would turn the swirling cloud of confusion into something she could manage, something she could control.
And Ariadne liked control.
At the edge of the clearing, she bent down by the small mound of Earth where the Eisen woman had buried her brother. She dropped a paper flower there. She wished she could have given more, but it had seemed unwise to look for real flowers in this place. The little scrap of twisted paper was all she could offer.
The Fate Witch bit her lip.
She didn’t want to think about the ghost white child. She would think about the paper. Paper, sketches, science and books. That was better - safer - cleaner.
She would steal a book from the Vodacce Captain when they returned to his ship. Another stray thought, uncomfortable and inexplicable, flickered through her mind. She remembered the Captain, stripped to the waist, bloodied and scarred, pacing in the cabin last night. Perhaps she was interested in anatomy? That was a heretical art, and one that she should know nothing of, but she had been known to wonder about such things before. As long as she only looked at pictures and not the words, that might be safe?
Ariadne pulled her cloak into place. Yes. That would be acceptable. And she was sure she had wanted to know more about the human body last night; muscle and bone, the line of a shoulder. She stared at the grass, and tried not to think about it too much. She’d acquire a book. She’d learn more. And try not to let such images into her mind until then.
Up ahead, the great hulk of the treeline loomed.
“Two,” Ariadne whispered to herself, moving firmly on from anatomy to trees. She had never seen anything, she thought, so large as the trees. How could something grow to be so tall? Even the walls of her grandfather’s house now seemed small in comparison. She’d never been outside anywhere beyond those walls; the only things she knew which grew were flowers, neat trimmed bushes, herbs laid out in careful patterns. This wildness was utterly alien, utterly terrifying. And the monsters didn’t help. No one had explained whether this level of constant life threatening danger was normal for a forest, but she could only presume it was. First aggressive ghoulish warriors, then demon possessed wolves, and then hungry ghosts. This was probably why Vodacce men liked to keep the Striga safe behind stone walls where nothing could get them.
She acknowledged that the Porte throwing Montaigne musket men were probably not a normal part of the local botany, but hadn’t much liked them either. Being stabbed by teleporting weaponry was high on her mental list of things that respectable Fate Witches shouldn’t be expected to endure.
Her Captain (she ignored the fact that she’d started mentally marking him as hers entirely. It was totally appropriate that she lay a claim. It would only be until he presented her to her husband, anyway) had come for her once she’d been stabbed of course. There had been rescuing involved, as there frequently was right now. She wasn’t entirely sure how she felt about that.
She had noticed (and this was her third mental note as they walked) that being rescued involved more bruising that she had expected. She’d been rescued twice yesterday alone; once by her Captain (which had featured a back handed slap in response to her perfectly reasonable comment that bleeding out untouched was really more appropriate than being bound up by an unrelated man) and once by the Ussuran (who had thrown her across a room as if she were a recalcitrant kitten).
She’d tried to protest loudly to both of them but both had ignored her complaints absolutely. Well, the Ussuran had ignored her. Her Captain had simply informed her it had never happened, which, to be fair, was probably the wiser approach to take. Some things should not be remembered. Well, not publicly remembered. The Fate Witch never forgot, but stored the blow in a box in her mind with each and every moment that skin had touched skin.
“Four,” she whispered, and did not look at anyone in the party.
The Fate Witch had never delivered Fate’s Kiss before. It had been explained to her, in detail. A Fate Witch’s Blessing was the greatest gift she could deliver. A Fate Witch’s Curse was the thing that each Vodacce man and woman feared. It was the source of their power, the reason for their chains. No one meets the gaze of a Fate Witch, she’d been told, for that is the first step. You look into the eyes of a Fate Witch, you give them power over you.
Her captain, she remembered, had known that. When he’d been bleeding, his hand cut open by the knife he’d stopped from hitting her, she had stepped forward and pulled away her veil. He’d closed his eyes - winced - tried to turn away. He had been afraid. As had all men. So she’d slapped him to make him meet her gaze.
(Which made it fair, she supposed, that he’d slapped her. They were equal there, at least. Not that it worked that way. It never worked that way)
He had met her gaze.
The second step was to say his name. That second step is why the Vodacce courtesans all wear masks, so no Fate Witch can identify the women who hold Vodacce husbands’ hearts.
But she knew her Captain’s name.
The third step was the Kiss. Her lips on his skin - hand, cheek, mouth, it didn’t matter. It sealed her control, her right to bestow Fate’s favour or displeasure.
That is why no Vodacce man ever really wants to kiss a Fate Witch, unless she is his mother. Even a husband may tread cautiously before he lays a hand on his wife. And rightfully so. Her mother had explained these matters to her; the unpleasant duties a wife must perform, the discomfort of being so close to another, even one’s own husband. A good Fate Witch encourages her husband to fear her, to keep away from her, unless his need is great and the matter of significance, simply for the sake of her own comfort.
Ariadne hadn’t found it so unkind. The pain of Fate’s Lash had been as expected, tearing apart her back as her lips met his. But there had been more; an odd rush of exultation, a weird giddying brightness somewhere inside. She’d felt…good. Free. Warm. Right.
Which really just showed the seductive power of magic. No wonder Fate Witches were taught to use it sparingly. Really, it could be quite addictive and that would be terrible, when one considered how dangerous the entire thing could be.
Thankfully, the Captain had not mentioned it. It had become like his blow, something that could not happen. It would be wrong for it to have happened. No Fate Witch has the right to give that gift to any who does not possess her properly and lawfully. And Ariadne was a good Fate Witch. She would not do that kind of thing. So she clearly hadn’t.
Ariadne slowly let out a long breath.
It had been a strange day. At least, she told herself, it had not been as difficult for her as it had been for the others. Each one of her companions had seemed in pain that day, and the kind of pain that cut to the heart, rather than just skimmed across the skin like hers.
She had seen the Castillian, cold and implacable, drawn by the empty aching hole inside him where she thought his wife must once have been. His wife was dead. She was sure his wife was dead. But the thing that had been Katrina was drawing him on.
She had seen the Ussuran, who had told her “you are my compass now,” and his expression whenever his brother was mentioned; blood of his blood, lost in the forest. Fate pulling and pushing, dragging the Ussuran on, tearing his brother further away. And there was more hurt to come.
She had seen the Avalonian duelling the empty shell of his brother in the dark, seen the Vodacce man white with anger at the memory of his stolen ship.
She had seen the Eisen woman kneeling over the corpse of her little brother. The corpse that walked and talked and wept. The corpse of the little boy who had died in the woods.
Ariadne shivered and blinked more times than she should.
“I was lost in the woods, Lena, and I couldn’t find mother or father. Have you come to take me home?”
She had seem them all hurt. She had seem them all care. And, in that moment, it seemed to Ariadne that it must be the most terrible Curse - far more cruel than anything she could devise - to live in this great, dark, savage unpredictable world and to leave yourself so raw because you had learned to care.
For that moment Ariadne was very thankful that she was Sorte Strega, that she had been born for something else; power, insight, control, and fate. She was glad that these candle bright emotions were beneath her, that she had been born to live in the dark.
Beside her, she sensed, rather than felt, the presence of another and the cuff of his jacket against the edge of her cloak, just checking she could still walk. She turned and inclined her head politely to the Captain and he nodded brusquely in return before picking up pace. He had been in a godawful mood since last night. Probably the memory of his ship.
Ariadne sighed.
She disliked her Captain being in this mood. She managed to pick up pace herself, so she could catch up with him. She had a spare paper flower that might make him smile, even if only for a minute. Everyone likes flowers.
The girl slowly exhaled. All this emotion was really quite exhausting. She was beginning to develop a dull ache in her heart herself, interspersed with strange moments of peculiar joy, just by being near these people. How much worse would this be if she were a normal girl? How much hurt would she feel?
But she was not. Ariadne was a Fate Witch, for which she gave thanks. She was glad she was not able to care.