The Way of Things

Cassandra sat at the end of the bed, gazing out the second-story window of her mycele. Her candlewood violin sat at her side, atop the wrinkled bedsheets, as she waited for the inspiration to pick it up and practice her spell-songs. Master Ryal had given her a list of ten songs to memorize by the end of the month, but she could not find the motivation she so desperately needed. She stared at the birdfeeder dangling from the roof of the mycele; the normal visitors were nebula starlings, wickerjays, northern sparrows... but today there was just a mating pair of whiskered treeswifts - her mother's favorite. She saw a red squirrel approaching the feeder, and at the same moment, one of the treeswifts saw, and sent it running. The poor squirrel would not be sharing in this meal. She thought about the politics of the forest, the way the different animals interacted with each other, and the natural hierarchy that all the earth's critters must be aware of, consciously or otherwise. Cassandra did not feel aware, or connected to the natural world. She thought that humanity had drifted so far from the Natural Order as to not be a part of the hierarchy at all - or perhaps that meant they had moved to the top. The treeswifts flew away. A few moments later, the squirrel returned to the feeder, but found that it had been emptied.   Cassandra picked up her violin, slung it over her back, and descended the ladder to the first floor. The house was quiet. Although the sun had already come down, her father wouldn't make it home from his travels until nearly dawn. The cook-pit in the kitchen was cold and unused, the charcoals at the bottom must have been weeks old. A thin layer of sporedust coated the floor, causing her to nearly lose her balance as she walked towards the door. The whole place needed to be cleaned, but she couldn't bring herself to do it. She hoped her father would take care of it tomorrow, but it was unlikely. He would have another assignment and he would be off again by the afternoon, and then she might not see him for another week. She was eighteen years old, certainly old enough to live alone, but it was still a new and uncomfortable feeling for her. As she exited the mycele, she saw the familiar lights of the forest - blue slime-globes dangling from mushroom caps, fluorescent amber vines snaking across the forest floor, and the thousands of glowspores drifting through the air. Night time here was not so dark. Even in the hardest of times, the Fungal Forest was a place of undeniable beauty and peace. As she walked towards the Glass Pond, she began the Song of Mending, the first spell-song she had ever been taught. Her footprints dissipated behind her as she walked, and trampled areas of the forest floor sprang back to life around her. For a moment, she felt like a part of the Natural Order once more.   Just as she reached the edge of the Glass Pond, Cassandra finished her song. In the dim light, she could see a group of shadows on the opposite side - children, by the looks of it, chasing something much smaller than them. She sat at the bench where she had skipped rocks with her mother as a child; fingering the strings of her violin, she reached down and plucked a toadstone from the ground with her other hand, and sent it flying into the pond as hard as she could. The stone made a loud sploosh as it entered the water, nearly splashing the children on the other side. Taking a full breath, she steadied herself once more and her anger subsided. As she closed her eyes and raised her bow to the slender neck of the violin, the Song of Healing began to resonate throughout the park and across the pond - beautiful, and effortless. There was meant to be an accompanying drumbeat, but today she would play it alone. As the humble, yet powerful tones vibrated out from the strings of her instrument, Cassandra began to glow in a warm, yellow light, which engulfed just her body at first, then the bench, and then grew into a sphere which completely surrounded her, floating in the air like a fiery bubble. Ryal would be pleased to see this, but that was hardly on her mind. A single tear fell from her still-closed eye, but it turned to vapor among the healing light almost instantly. A wave of sorrow swept over the young woman's body, as her tears continued to stream invisibly into the light of her own spell. Gradually, the heavenly tones of the song returned to earth and came into an emotional decrescendo, quieting as the song came to its end, and the fiery light disappeared. Cassandra opened her eyes - the children had left, and she was alone at the Pond. She slung her violin back over her shoulder, picked up another stone, and skipped it across the pond. One, two, three... She watched it sail, counting the skips until at last the stone gave up the act, and sank into the water like all the others before it had. Sixteen: a personal record. There was no-one around, but she knew her mother would have seen it anyway. As she started the walk back to the mycele, she took out her violin once more, and plucked out the first measures of the Vagrant's Song.