The Writer And The Witch

ONCE
,
LONG
AGO
, A
YOUNG
MAN
WAS
WALKING
down an old road on
his way to the New Capital. Ancient trees leaned in on both sides and cast
shadows that dappled his way. He was very ambitious. His father was a
farmer, but he wanted to be a writer. He wanted to see everything and try
everything—and he was in a hurry to get started.

(That’s how it starts. This is a story that’s
been in my family for a long time. It gets told and retold in times of
transition—graduations and weddings, births and deaths. It’s not a story you
tell around a table; it’s a story you tell quietly,
one-on-one, maybe after everyone else has gone
to sleep.)

So, the young writer came to a short stone bridge
that crossed a narrow river. There was an old woman sitting like a heap of
gray rags at the base of the bridge.

“
A coin for an old
woman?” she asked as he passed. He said nothing and kept walking. “Just a
kind word, then?” she called. Again, he said nothing, and picked up
his pace.

“
STOP
!”
she said—her voice very different. He turned. The old woman was standing,
pointing at him with a long, pale finger. “In such a hurry? Then, in the name
of the rock and the ice, I curse you. For every step you take along your path,
you will age one year. And then you will die.”

The young writer rolled his eyes. This was not
the first time he’d been cursed by a vagabond. He turned and continued on his
way across the bridge. But the air suddenly smelled like a thunderstorm. And
with every step, he felt it: something inside of him was coarsening and
thickening. His heart was hammering in his chest.

He reached the other side of the bridge and there
he fell to his knees. Reflected in the river, he saw not the face of a young
man, but one twenty years older.

He lifted his eyes. A jet-black
crow screamed and spun above the trees. The old woman was gone.

# # #

THE
YOUNG
WRITER
’S
FIRST
INSTINCT
was to run, to outrace the old woman’s words, to
put this hallucination behind him.

But it was no hallucination.

He stared at the foreign face in the river. He
felt sick and dizzy. He thought of all the things he wanted to do, all the
places he wanted to see. It had all been laid out before him, like some magical
feast. Twenty steps ago, life had seemed like an improbable blessing. How
could something so small and stupid destroy it all? How could he have made
such a simple mistake?

He cursed the old woman—the witch—and he cursed
himself. He made little strangled sounds of pain and he wept.

He sat there. A step in any direction was
suicide.

The sun set and he curled into a fitful sleep.
In the night, cold rain fell, and it soaked him through.

# # #

IN
THE
MORNING
, he woke and ate some of the bread he’d brought
for the journey. There wasn’t much.

He stretched his arms and legs, which ached more
than they’d ever ached before. The young writer was no longer young.

A woodcutter came down the road leading an
ox-cart. He slowed in front of the sprawled writer. “Are you hurt
or sick?” he asked.

The writer began: “A witch”—and then he paused.
There was a choice to be made, and I’m not sure that he realized just how
important it was. You’ll understand soon enough. Once told, stories take on
a life of their own.

The writer glanced over to the river. The water
was running fast and dark. He made his choice. He lied:

“
I am a pilgrim from far
away,” he said, “and I have come to spend my life in prayer and meditation
here, in this spot, where the river meets the road.”

The woodcutter frowned and glanced around.
“It’s not much of a spot, is it?”

“
It is more important
than you realize!” said the writer. “Why, there is a spirit in this river that
would devour you and your ox, and having done that, it would roam the land
until it found your village, and it would eat everyone there, too.”

The woodcutter looked dubious.

“
But I have placed myself
here as sacrifice to the spirit. And as long as I sit in this spot, without
moving, it will be sated. Lend me some branches to make a shelter, will you?”

The woodcutter’s cart was piled high, and the
story was settling in. “Yes, I suppose I can spare you some cuttings,” he
said. “I’ll even nail them together for you.”

So he built the writer a simple, sloping roof.

“
Good luck to you, pilgrim,”
the woodcutter said when he started back down the road. “And thank you.”

# # #

THE
DAYS
THAT
FOLLOWED
were very
difficult.

The writer ate every scrap of edible or
nearly-edible matter in the radius of his reach. He lured a
squirrel into his lap and wrung its neck. Stretching down towards the river,
he tried, and failed, to catch a fish with his bare hands. He choked down slimy
snails.

He begged for food from passing travelers, but
there weren’t many of them, and most passed him as silently as he’d passed
the witch.

But with patience, things improved.

When a fisherman came whistling across the
bridge, first the writer begged for food. Then he thought better of it, and
asked for a hook and a line.

He honed his begging. His survival depended on
it, with so few people on the old road. The story of the
river-spirit grew more elaborate; now there were images of children
whisked away in the night, of whole towns suddenly flooded, and when the water
washed away, no one was left.

Slowly, the story was spreading. One day, two
monks from a forest temple came out of the trees, eyed him up and down, and
then—satisfied—they bowed and left two baskets full of fresh vegetables and
dried fruit. It was a feast.

# # #

WEEKS
PASSED
.
The writer’s entire body had shrunken, his legs most of all. They were in danger
of withering. He began a regimen of stretching, squatting, and running
in place. Sometimes, as he was pumping his legs, he thought of leaning forward,
of letting his feet dig in. He would race down the riverbank, grow old and
fall down and die, and it would be over. But he couldn’t. Even though its circumference
was so tiny, he had a life, and he couldn’t give it up.

He became adept not only at begging, but at trading,
too. A cart would clatter to a stop, and he would offer a tiny treasure—a
shell he’d snagged from the river, or a decorative band woven from grass and
reeds—in exchange for some material to improve his shelter. Now he had tattered
canvas flaps to keep the rain out and a tiny fire-pit, along
with a small, dented iron cooking pan.

# # #

FINALLY
,
HE
PAID
A
PASSING
MERCHANT
to take word to his father. His father, who
had warned him about his ambition. His father, who hadn’t come in from the
fields to say goodbye on the day the writer left home.

His father, who came running—running!—down the
road days later.

His father, out of breath, carrying a huge
brown sack. It was full of seeds: tomato, cucumber, potato, and kale. Mint and
rosemary, too. His father, who sat down right there beside him and used his
fingers to rake furrows in the black earth. His father, who reminded him what
he’d learned on the farm, and explained the seeds he’d brought, one by one, and
showed him how to grow a garden in that little disc of dirt.

His father, who took his face in his hands and
said, “You look just like me now.” And then, smiling, “You’re a farmer
after all!”

His father, who slept there with him, under the
stars. Who would not leave his side until the first harvest, such as it was,
had come in. Who, even as he returned to the road, because his own harvest was
long overdue, was saying: “Don’t forget to rotate your crops, or you’ll wear
out the soil. Treat it right, and it’s all you need.”

His father.

# # #

IT
WAS
MORNING
, months later.

The writer woke to find his garden ravaged, all
of his food and small treasures stolen. There were footprints in the wet
ground. His heart sank. Almost a year of work, all gone. And it had been so
easy. They’d taken everything while he slept, there where the river met the
road, out in the open, with no walls and no friends.

The writer stood up and brushed off his knees. He
crouched in a sprinter’s stance, fingers stretched down to the ground. He
flexed his muscles—and pulled up a tiny trap-door. It was his
cache: always secure, because he was always sitting on it. There wasn’t much
in the shallow pit, but it was enough to begin again. He knelt and massaged
the soil of his garden, making it ready for new seeds.

# # #

YEARS
PASSED
.

The writer was transformed utterly. He had a
thick, black beard. He had improved his regimen; now he lifted heavy
river-rocks every day, and balanced on one foot with them. He ate
a carefully-metered diet of fish, nuts, and vegetables. His
body was lean and strong. His eyes were sharp and clear.

But even more impressive than his own transformation
was the transformation of the space around him.

His shelter had become a house. It was very
small—what use did he have for space?—but it had walls, cleverly engineered
with the help of the woodcutter’s son, a carpenter. They could lift up like
awnings or shut down tight at night. The wall facing the road even had a door—not
so he could leave, of course, but so he could invite travelers into his home
and offer them shelter.

He slept not on hard ground but on a thick straw
mat that he could roll up and put aside when he woke.

The leafy trees that bowed in around his house
were festooned with banners and garlands. The monks from the forest temple
made regular visits now. People from nearby villages came, too, offering
small gifts in exchange for blessings.

The road was busier; the New Capital was growing
fast, and all of its tributaries swelled with traffic. And so benedictions
were not all that he traded in. The writer also sold information.

He was, after all, the eyes of the bridge. He
knew who came and went, carrying what, and when. Merchants paid him to tally
their rivals’ shipments. The secret police in the New Capital paid him to
watch for men with northern accents, leading covered carts, traveling
by night.

You might be wondering if he was lonely. No; he
had friends, monks and merchants alike. He had companionship from time to
time, too: liaisons arranged by those merchant friends. Women he paid
in gold.

He had carved out a strange little kingdom,
there where the river met the road, just beyond the bridge.

# # #

HIS
FATHER
CAME
EVERY
YEAR
,
sometimes several times a year, and his mother too. She brought him
fresh-baked bread from home and copies of his favorite books.
Then, one day, she came alone, and she told the writer that his father had died
in the fields.

His father.

She didn’t return after that, and soon the writer
heard that she, too, had died.

His father and mother had lived to be very old,
and in their passing, the writer had realized something very important.

His stationary life, his refusal to walk even a
step, had halted the witch’s curse. But it had done more than that: It had also
revealed the blessing inside the curse, because in all these years, the writer
had not aged a day.

The witch’s curse of rock and ice had made him
immortal.

# # #

NINETY-NINE
YEARS
RUSHED
UNDER
the short stone bridge, and the writer’s life and legend grew together.

The monks sent novices to sit beside him for days
at a time, to learn patience, discipline and stillness. Without fail, each
novice would grow bored and restless. He would rise to dip his toes in the
river. The writer would make him gather firewood, or repair his roof, or carry
messages to his merchant friends. Then, when the novice’s master returned,
the writer would report: Oh yes, your student sat beside me. His mental
endurance is astonishing for one so young.

That same master having done exactly the same
thing twenty years before.

Pilgrims arrived from far away. They brought
offerings from their homes—gems, heirlooms, spices. They were surprised when
the writer smiled and offered them tea. They expected a mossy statue of a man,
maybe even literally just a mossy statue. Instead, they found a wiry
40-year-old who gobbled handfuls of nuts and peppered
them with questions about the places they came from.

Some pilgrims brought books as offerings, and
the writer read, and read, and read. Over the years, he changed his story a
bit: This is a river of knowledge, he told travelers. Bring me your books and
tell me your stories. I will remember them and recount them to the
river-spirit when it grows hungry.

The pilgrims kept coming, so with the help of
the woodcutter’s great-grandson, who was an architect, the
writer built a library into the leafy trees that bowed in around his house. It
was a strange sight: green leaves, rainbow banners and shelves built across
the branches, piled high with books.

And finally, the writer did what writers do. He
wrote, and wrote, and wrote. He made significant contributions to the new
science of naturalism, observing in impossible detail the habits of
birds and bugs in his little world. He compiled histories of nearby villages.
He wrote fantastic tales, honed through telling after telling, there where
the river met the road, just beyond the bridge, where travelers gathered and
gasped in the light of his fire.