Fungal Halo

“I am not an angel.”

Her claim is hard to accept. Her snowy wings, delicate complexion, and shining halo make such a denial an absurdity.

Even if the look in her eyes is not at all the flat certainty of an angel acting in accordance with her Purpose.

Sometimes the witch—surrounded by tools and trappings of arcane origin—gets lost in her research, book stacked upon open book as she cross-references another lead on some magic gone awry.

Sometimes her doll catches her working late and offers a blanket for her shoulders.

I kiss her and feel wetness everywhere she touches me.

She grips me firmly, fingers wrapped in my hair, pressing my face into her as if to keep me from looking down and seeing what she is doing to me.

As if I didn’t watch her do it to someone else before.

Nobody summons me on purpose.

I live in the accidental spaces between correct rituals.

My forms are as different as there are ways for a mirror unlocking to go awry.

So why did such an experienced one as you seem so sure of yourself, drawing those lines on mirrored glass?

I haven’t seen the ocean in so long. I barely remember it any more. I barely remember myself.

I grew up there, you know? I miss having access to fresh seafood everywhere.

Out here, in the middle of the continent, it all tastes lifeless, somehow. Definitely missing something.

A witch may use many different techniques for the construction of her dolls.

Most witches these days create dolls from raw material imbued with purpose, but some still keep the old ways alive by making their dolls from people.

Either way, one has many options.

The wyrm writhes within your guts, bringing such acute pain that you have to force yourself to bite off the screams your throat involuntarily produces.

You have to remind yourself that you swallowed this thing on purpose—this pain is a necessary step of your symbiotic journey.

You never could quite destroy me, no matter how you tried. Your greatest hero could diminish me, certainly, but never destroy.

So you shackled and chained me in the deepest, darkest dungeon you could find, and you called it victory.

You never did understand my nature.

Another sneeze. She wasn’t sure what to do about how hard it was becoming to stifle them. This time she just barely had time to bring the handkerchief to her face.

She folded it quickly before shoving it back in her bag, trying to ignore the mold increasingly covering it.

Little moth, little moth… seeking the light of knowledge so eagerly, so indiscriminately, so relentlessly, so obliviously, you have lost yourself.

You found me, now.

And I am something quite far from that small, flickering light.

Do you know the number one killer of witches, child?

Not age or infirmity or disease. Those come to us so rarely that they are of minimal concern.

It is certainly not witch hunters, no. The followers of that religion have not been a relevant force in many generations.

Why me? Of all the people at that party, why am I the one you drugged and dragged out and brought to that dingy basement of yours?

Why does it have to be me you tied up and left in an empty room with only a bare bulb and a mirror in front of me for company?

Why any of this?

“I am not a doll,” she tells her friend, voice not quite managing a dispassionate dismissal.

The witch nods. “Of course.” She pauses a moment before slowly continuing, as if something just occurred to her, “Many dolls say so before they find their way to their true selves.”

“I’m worried. You’ve been spending a lot of time gazing at the Midnight Spire lately. Is something wrong?”

I stop on my way out the door. “No, I’m fine,” I lie. I scratch at my arms absent-mindedly and try to control the writhing things under my skin. “I just like it is all.”

Something has changed in this temple, and I am afraid.

My sister-priestesses, even some who have proven themselves devout and fastidious caretakers, have been noticeably neglecting their duties.

And the mold creeping in seems to return as quickly as we clean it off.

She was dying.

After decades of uncertainty about that fact and more decades of research on how she might avert it, she came to the conclusion that her death was both unavoidable and imminent. Likely no more than a century away.

So she did what witches often do. She plotted.

Have you ever seen a doll that has been excessively emptied by an inexperienced or careless witch?

It’s a sad, strange thing. It cannot hear commands. It cannot speak. It cannot move at all! It is a meaningless, decorative object at best, nothing anyone would want.

But I do.

The Chosen One’s blade finds its way home at last, buried to the hilt in my chest.

I look up from the wound into brilliant blue eyes, where I find triumph and questioning, “Did I do it? Is it over?”

I smile in reassurance. It’s over. This whole charade is over at last.

Most people were put off by their encounters with the two dolls who sometimes claimed to be witches.

Well. One of them claimed they were both witches, since the other never spoke. Or rather, claimed that the other claimed so.

Most people found this very confusing.

“If your mistress does not deign to reveal herself to us, well, to move against one of our own would grieve this council terribly, but—”

YOU THINK YOU KNOW GRIEF

The doll in front of them was not speaking aloud as the other had. This scraping voice echoed within my own mind.