                                Star Wars 

                           Wizard's RPG Stories

          source : http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=starwars/newsarchive
          upload : 10.IV.2006


     Making of a Witch

     By Morrie Mullins

     A reformed member of the Wyrd speaks about  the  process  of  becoming  a
member of the group. She only knows about  one  isolated  band,  deep  in  the
jungle, but she believes her story is not  atypical.  Find  out  more  in  our
latest supplement to the Living Force campaign, which ties into  the  scenario
"Hunting the Wyrd."

     It was the summer of my twelfth year when the dark side began to  tug  at
my heart. I remember the day with  a  clarity  one  usually  experiences  upon
holding one's child for the first time, or watching as a loved one passes  out
of this life. Those moments - - instants of birth,  and  of  death  -  -  burn
themselves into our memories. This day was both of those to me. It  was  birth
and death, and it was pain that I only began to feel years later.

     The rains were not long stopped. Leaves hung heavy with water, shuddering
and dripping onto rich, leaf-shrouded firmament. Trees in  this  part  of  the
jungle only rose to heights of twenty or thirty  meters,  but  their  branches
were thick, their leaves large, and the light made  its  way  to  the  path  I
walked. The scaly trunks smelled of mist and forgetfulness. Where rocks  poked
their heads through the leaves,  between  the  blades  of  grass,  patches  of
brilliant green moss had taken hold. The moss shimmered; it was wet and dense.
It wanted to grow. I felt it so strongly that more than once  I  knelt  beside
the path and cleared some of the dirt from  around  the  base  of  a  rock.  I
scraped at the dirt with my fingers, digging in, feeling for the edges of  the
rock, following its gentle  angle  into  the  ground.  I  might  clear  a  few
centimeters, and it might be filled in by a passing kilassin  before  the  day
was out, but I found myself thinking that this was the way  things  needed  to
be. For growth, there had to be potential. I would provide  the  potential.  I
would kneel in the gray and scrape the tips of my fingers along a mossy stone.
I would give it a chance. More rock, more  moss.  More  moss,  more  luminous,
moist green.

     It is the last time I remember  thinking  about  anything  beautiful  for
many, many years.

     The wonder of the jungles of Cularin is that no matter how far you  walk,
no matter how many times you might take the same path, there are always things
that may surprise you. The jungle shifts. A tree falls, and we see the smaller
tree that once hid behind it, wrapped in vines dotted with orange  and  purple
flowers that can be mixed one way to make medicine, or another to make poison.
A bush burns, and we see that it shrouded the entrance to a deep cave,  filled
with uncounted mysteries and beckoning  the  curious,  the  foolish,  and  the
young.

     On this day, I smelled the new before I saw it. The air carried on  it  a
sharp staleness, the smell of old wood that has burned for a time,  then  been
snuffed by the rain. The rains of that  afternoon  had  been  heavy,  and  not
without lightning, but I remembered no  strike  nearby.  Still,  it  would  be
something new. It would give me something to do, to avoid  finishing  my  walk
home, to avoid the washing that awaited me on my return. So I veered  off  the
path, following the burnt smell deeper into the jungle.

     Less than forty meters from the path, I saw the Tree. I have  thought  of
it ever since as a proper noun - - it wasn't just a tree like so  many  others
in the jungle. It was the Tree, and it had stood in the jungle  for  centuries
before sending out its signal and drawing me in. The  signal,  which  I  first
took for a simple odor, turned out to be much more.

     The Tree stood no taller than any of the trees around  it,  but  it  must
have been at least three meters in diameter.  Its  bark  was  a  patchwork  of
browns and grays, splotched with dead moss and splattered with bird droppings.
The ground around the Tree was slick with those droppings  and  littered  with
the bodies of birds.  There  must  have  been  fifty  scattered  about,  their
feathers smoking, perpendicular to  their  carcasses.  Some  of  them  had  no
feathers at all, just oozing wounds covering their frail bodies. Some of  them
still twitched.

     The bodies would begin to rot, soon. For now, their burnt  odor  remained
masked by the smell of the wood, the smell of  the  Tree.  Tendrils  of  smoke
crawled out a half-dozen knotholes on the face nearest me.  I  followed  their
path skyward and saw a larger column of smoke spewing from the Tree's  topmost
levels. It had been struck by lightning and might have burned from the  inside
out if not for the rains. Or did it yet burn?

     Every day, trees are struck by lightning. I've seen  fires  before,  felt
their heat, smelled their smoke. Even then, with so few  years  behind  me,  I
could identify the type of tree that had been struck by the smell of its smoke
from a hundred meters. Which, I soon realized, was one of the  reasons  I  had
come to the Tree. While I knew there had been a fire, I did not recognize  the
smell. It was both too sharp (saying that  it  burned  my  nostrils  would  be
stating things too subtly; it stabbed them until they ached) and too sweet. It
made me, in a strange way, hungry. It called to me.

     The first bird that I stepped on almost brought  me  back  to  myself.  I
remember the feeling of the body crunching beneath my foot, and  looking  down
in dismay. Not because the bird had died (that was something over which I  had
no control, as it was cooked long before I stepped on it), but because  I  had
just fouled my foot on the creature. I  kicked  it,  and  it  skittered  wetly
across the sheen of leaves and white droppings and small rocks that surrounded
the Tree.

     I would not know for years how lost I became as I walked those few meters
to stand in front of the Tree. It is sometimes impossible to recognize oneself
as lost until someone manages to find you, after all.

     Three of the smoke-oozing knotholes were before me, then - - one  at  eye
level, one a dozen centimeters higher, and one four or five centimeters  lower
and to the right. I moved my hand past one of the holes; the smoke  was  warm.
The air inside the Tree was warm. There might still be fire, might there not?

     It should have occurred to me (and I think that it  might  have  on  some
distant, indistinct level) that if the tree were to burn from the inside  out,
I should be as far away from  it  as  possible.  Where  I  stood  could  be  a
dangerous place. More than one tree  has  burned  from  the  inside  out,  sap
boiling until the tree explodes in  a  burst  of  wood  chips  and  flame  and
scalding liquid. Tarasin have died standing much farther from such trees  than
I now stood.

     I say that I think I might have thought of this at the time not because I
remember thinking it, but because I remember being afraid. I knew the Tree was
something to fear. That, I think, is why I continued standing there. It was  a
tree, like so many others, but bigger. Stranger. Darker. I dug a  finger  into
one of the knotholes, the smoke pouring over my knuckles. I felt  flames  lick
up my claw and singe my flesh. I couldn't pull away. I twisted my  finger  and
my claw caught something - - a switch - - causing a one-meter section  of  the
Tree to slide back and in. Smoke billowed out, thick  and  black,  and  flames
licked at the Tree's bark, and I brought my hands up to shield my face.

     The Mother of our irstat - - I will not name her, since it  was  not  her
fault that I ended up as I did, and she provided me with the best guidance she
could - - had worked with me, encouraged me to learn to harness the  Force.  I
was undisciplined. That's not the word she used,  of  course.  She  called  me
"strong-willed," which I now recognize as a back-handed  compliment  at  best.
She meant that I didn't listen to her. She meant that I didn't practice as she
told me to practice. I always had to do things my own way, on my own time  and
my own terms. It was only because she sensed a gift for the Force in  me  that
she worked with me at all, I think, in the hopes  that  I  might  be  able  to
harness my own ability before it destroyed me. Even under her tutelage, I  had
begun to walk down a dark path. If she noticed then, she gave no sign.

     Five years ago, she died, and if she thought of me at all, she thought of
me as one of her failures. I did not learn to harness myself. I chose  instead
to work to harness the world around me.

     There was something about the Tree that had drawn me here, and now  there
was a door in the Tree, and I very much wanted to go through  that  door.  But
through fire? No. At the time, I could no more walk through  fire  than  could
anyone else. This was a skill that came much later. What I knew then  was  how
to bring the rains back, to bring the winds, and to  put  out  this  fire.  It
needed to be extinguished. I needed to do it.

     I raised my arms and felt the Force, the great web of life in the jungle.
I felt the tension in the air that had been lightning, and was now memory. The
heavy mist around me, and the puddles around my feet, shivered  as  I  reached
out and slid myself inside them. I became the tension. I became the  water.  I
wrapped myself in the memory of the storm and brought  it  back,  all  roaring
winds and whipping raindrops the size of my scorched claw.

     The rain blasted sideways, swirling  its  way  around  me  and  into  the
doorway in the Tree. I tugged at the wind, twisting it, bending it through the
doorway and up, deep inside, carrying the water with it. I closed my eyes  and
moved with the wind and rain up into the Tree, up stairs carved into  wood  so
ancient that it had forgotten it ever lived, through rooms where  Tarasin  lay
on the floor, all the way to the top of the Tree where the black hole that had
spewed smoke now spewed rain - - my rain - - straight up.

     I felt, but did not see, the fire die. Lowering my arms, I let the  storm
go, let the winds settle and the rain fall back to the ground, and all of  the
tension again settled to memory.

     When I opened my eyes, she stood in the doorway  before  me.  One  burned
hand gripped the frame of the door, poised to slide a finger into the knothole
I'd used to open it. She stared at me through soot-blackened eyes, and I  have
never in my life been more certain that another living creature wanted to kill
me. Tarasin or no, there was an anger in those eyes that went beyond  anything
I had imagined. Strength, too. I still have not met her equal.

     Her voice, a hiss like a recently doused cookfire, made me  shiver.  "Why
are you here?" She flexed the fingers of her right hand, the one that did  not
hold fast to the doorway, and continued to glare at me.

     There was no answer I could give, I thought, that would satisfy her.  She
would kill me without regard to what I said. I thus determined that, if I were
to die, at least I would tell the truth.

     I looked up the Tree, with its patchwork bark and its hidden  secrets.  I
felt life, stirring inside it - - the other Tarasin I had seen, waking in  the
aftermath of the blaze. And I knew, for the first time, the darkness that  lay
at its heart. It was a place of power. I had to come here, no matter what  the
price.

     "It called me," I said. Then I met her eyes once more and waited for  the
end.

     Instead, she stepped aside. "We will see if it called you. Come inside."

     So I entered the Tree, and the door closed behind me. When I emerged  two
days later, I was of the Wyrd.