“Marmot! Run!!” Marmalade cried, flinging herself to the side as the creature chasing them barrelled through the luminous underbrush. The monster lurched after them, a twisting mass of vines and flowers, bone and thready sinew, and—most alarmingly—several unblinking eyes.
Marmot skidded to a halt, paws scrabbling for purchase against the frozen earth and sodden leaves coating the forest floor.
Unsteady on its spindled legs, the monster skittered towards Marmot, who huddled in place frozen with dread as probing vines whipped towards him.
“No!” Marmalade stood, rolling to her feet like a feral cat, all but spitting as she brandished her wooden ladle in wide, sweeping arcs. A large circle of burning blue light hung suspended in the frigid air like the tail of a comet, pulsing with fury.
Distracted by the flare of light, the creature turned, the eyes along its spine swivelling and frantic in their mossy sockets as the light burned brighter.
With a snarl, Marmalade dropped her ladle to the forest floor. Flinging her arms wide, she stomped forwards on one foot, bringing her hands together with a clap like thunder. The noise resounded from gnarled wood and shining ice, rattling the trees around them as the earth shuddered.
The circle of light began to spin, the light shredding away in ribbons as screeching winds began to rise. Wind was followed by stinging rain and shards of hail. The unnatural howl of a witch-made blizzard rang from the knotted canopy far above as the storm tore at the lumbering creature.
Marmot stared in limb-locked horror, even as Marmalade scooped him into her arms and continued their flight through the dark woods. Marmot watched over Marmalade’s shoulder as the monster collapsed into a broken mass, and the winds died to stillness.
As they left the malicious glitter of the Darkwood’s bracken behind, fleeing towards the safety of home, Marmot clung to the witch in awe.
Never had he seen Marmalade cast that kind of magic. Never had he seen a monster felled by light and fury. Never had he seen anyone face down a living nightmare like a hero of the legends Marmalade read to him as they sat by the hearth into the late hours of night. Certainly, never had anyone fought like that on his behalf.
Later that evening, as he sat safely in Marmalade’s lap by the fire, teeth chattering from cold and terror, Marmot resolved himself.
He wanted that power, too.
✧✧✧
Marmot flung down his stick of charcoal with a squeal and tore his scrap of bark to shreds.
“It’ll take time, Marmot. I didn’t learn this overnight,” Marmalade chided with an indulgent sigh. Marmot chittered in frustration as he tossed the torn strips over his shoulder to join the growing pile of failed runes.
Marmalade smiled, her gaze fond as she tucked a wayward lock of copper hair behind her ear. “Let’s return to the beginning, shall we? No, don’t argue, you can never learn the basics too well.”
Marmot huffed and sat with a heavy thump, feet splayed, as he watched Marmalade once again fill a broad-rimmed teacup with salted water from a pitcher.
They sat in the dappled shade of the garden behind Marmalade’s red treehouse. Flowers swayed in a gentle breeze, warmed by the magic of the glade. Small flurries of snow drifted through the air, though the flakes melted to mist before reaching the ground. Glittering motes of magic swirled like pollen, sparkling and bright despite the chill of the day.
“Now,” Marmalade began, her voice taking on the melodious timbre of a practised storyteller. “Everything that lives has a soul. An immortal heart woven from starlight aeons ago. In order to thrive, to replenish and grow, the soul must be bathed with spirits.”
Marmalade spun the cup idly in her hands, causing gentle eddies in the water as she spoke. Marmot had heard this before, but he found the cadence of Marmalade’s voice soothing, and so listened eagerly to the familiar lore.
“Spirits are the substance of magic.”
Marmalade brushed a finger across the petal of a nearby daisy with a hum. Under the coaxing touch of the wood witch, a sparkling mist, like liquid diamond, collected in a bead on her finger tip.
Marmalade presented it to him. Marmot craned forwards, sneezing as the bead evaporated to glittering vapour and tickled his nose. It smelled of sunlight and cold, floral dew. The petal withered and curled, falling from the flower’s stem to the mossy ground.
“Spirits,” Marmalade continued, “are created when souls interact with the material world… most especially when the world is perceived, experienced, through the senses. Spirits emerge at the seams of soul and body, and so each are irrevocably intertwined.”
Marmot prodded at the dead petal with his paw, wondering if spirits might also bring it back to life.
“Spirits exist within all facets of the natural world. They exist within creatures and plants, within earth and stone and sea. They live within storms and within stillness. They are the animating force of limb and tissue… Spirits are the foundation of personality and memory. Of hopes, and fears, and dreams…
“And yet, once made, spirits can leave soul and body behind. They can spill out into the world as wild magic. Very often, without us even realising, we leave little ghosts of ourselves behind.”
Clouds passed overhead, casting shadows across Marmalade’s face as she paused in her tale. For a moment, her expression seemed haunted. Weary. Before Marmot could utter a curious chirp, the moment passed and Marmalade smiled.
She touched a finger to Marmot’s chest, flooding him with a golden, fizzing sort of warmth. Marmot savoured the liquid affection now thrumming through him as the last of his frustration melted away.
“Knowing as such, that spirits are born of our interactions with the world, both within and around us, we can thus exert some control over the nature of spirits. We can call them to us. Or, with enough focus and skill, we can bring them into life within us and push them outwards. By the will of our intent.”
Recognising this part of the tale as a cue to begin their next attempt at the storm rune, Marmot sat up, resting his paws on the stump of wood which served as their work table.
“All spirits keep time to their own rhythm. They dance to the pattern of their own unique geometry. Each spirit exists as a magical song, of sorts. A chord in the vast melody of living alchemy.”
This Marmot struggled to understand.
“The rune we draw is an expression of this pattern. But first, we must find the shape of it.”
Marmalade swirled the salt water in the teacup. “Ready?”
Marmot watched the eddies until he felt prepared, then nodded.
“Good.” Marmalade smiled as Marmot preened under her praise.
“We must start gently,” she encouraged, circling her hands around the cup where she had settled it atop the smooth surface of the stump. Marmot placed his paws atop her hands, careful not to curl his claws into her pale skin.
Closing her eyes, she began breathing slow and deep. “Bring to mind your memories of wind. The feel of it whipping against your skin… or your fur. Recall the sound of it screaming through trees. Remember the scent of ice and rain. Hold it first within your mind, the thought of a storm. The seed of it. Then. When you are ready, imagine planting that seed in your heart.”
Marmot nodded, though Marmalade still had her eyes closed. She smiled at him nonetheless.
“As the storm grows in your heart, building with each beat, push it outwards. Down through your arms, out through your palms… allow your whole being to crackle with it.” Marmalade inhaled sharply, puffing out her breath as the water in the teacup began to tremble, glowing ice-blue.
Marmot could feel a strong pulse of power flowing through Marmalade’s hands. His own efforts felt thready and thin by comparison, yet far more stable than attempts on his own.
“Hold the flow of the storm. Allow yourself to be the driving rain and whistling winds tearing through the skies.” Marmalade’s voice deepened as magic laced her tongue. Marmot watched, entranced as ever, as the water in the cup rippled with tiny frothing currents. Dark puffs of vapour began to gather into clouds, curling into a dense mass over the water’s thrashing surface. Within the peaks and troughs a pattern emerged, the water forming complex lines of interlocking circles.
“As you shepherd the storm through your mind and body into the water, you watch. You keep steady. And you remember the pattern. The pattern in the water is the shape of the blizzard. The design of the spirits that drive it into being. The shape of the magic that the storm needs to become itself.” Marmalade opened her eyes, her gaze intense and luminous, crashing with colours like the sea itself.
Marmot nodded again, peering enthusiastically at the now-familiar pattern rippling in the teacup.
“And now,” Marmalade said as she let her hands fall away from the cup, the water becoming still, “we draw. We recreate the shape.”
Together they sketched, laborious and precise, on a fresh scrap of bark paper. Marmalade offered small corrections, smudging and redrawing the lines, until the rune was done.
Marmalade nodded in satisfaction. “Now you have your anchor. The rune is the conduit of your intent. The shaper of creative power. Any raw magic channelled through the lines of this rune will be woven into storm. Now, try again. Sit and feel the power of the earth. Of the sun. Of the forest around us. Connect with that power outside of yourself and draw it down. Draw it within. Not too much from any one thing. Just a little bit of warmth from everywhere at once.”
Marmot puffed air through his nose and closed his eyes. He listened to the birdsong filling the glade. He thought of the cool light of the sun shining in the garden. The hard wood of the trees, and their burrowing roots reaching down and down deep into the earth. He felt the pulsing life of the forest, beating alongside his own heart, and pulled on it.
He drew it through his paws and limbs. He felt it rustle through his fur and rumble through his bones. He trembled with the power of it filling his every nerve and sinew.
Despite his best efforts to pull softly, a few nearby daisies withered and curled, their stems turning dull and brittle.
“Whoops… Alright, good, that’s enough… Now…” Marmalade’s voice felt very far away. “Push it gently gently down and into the symbol on the bark.”
Marmot felt the rough touch of the leaf-thin bark as it was placed into his hands. Trembling with effort, Marmot pushed the power gathered in his chest back down, and out. Like the torrent of a burst dam, the magic spilled down his limbs and through the pads of his paws. His claws sparked like lightning, and the bark caught fire.
Marmot wailed as the power poured away and the symbol he had so carefully drawn burned to ash.
“Hush now, hush, little one. That was a fair effort. It just takes practice.” Marmalade sighed, blowing a tickling lock of hair away from her nose as she ran a soothing hand through Marmot’s fur. “Come, that’s enough for today, I think.” The small witch heaved to her feet, lugging the distraught critter into the cradle of her arms as she carried him inside for tea.
✧✧✧
Days passed and the winter became bitter as Marmot tried—and failed—to grasp the sigil magic of a wood witch. He did, however, discover that he had a natural affinity for fire.
Eyes crinkling with amused resignation, Marmalade watched on with encouraging words as Marmot reduced parchment after parchment to cinders with the crackling power he could barely control.
He lit the ovens in the kitchen and the logs in the hearth. Once, he even ignited a candle, though with such a force of heat it half burned away.
He grew in confidence with his new talent which, while not quite the skill he had been hoping to attain, delighted him regardless.
“No no no, not the curtains! Argh—”
Marmalade drew a small circle of light, hurling icy rain towards the window seat where Marmot had been doodling more sigils with explosive results.
He gave a sheepish chitter as Marmalade swiped a hand over her eyes with a groan, the curtains now smouldering and a nearby stack of books dripping wet.
He scratched at his furry belly as Marmalade laid down the new ground rules of ‘No Setting Fire To The Curtains’, ‘Or The Rug’, ‘Or Anything That Isn’t Firewood’, with the hastily added addendum of ‘Firewood Contained In A Hearth Or Stove Or Cauldron’.
Marmot nodded solemnly and shook the water from his fur, leaving Marmalade to splutter at the icy spray as he settled by the fire for a nap.
✧✧✧
The first thaw of early spring arrived soon after, coaxing Marmot outside after a cosy winter by his self-lit hearth fires. With his woven basket tucked neatly under arm, Marmot scampered across the dampened earth as the snowdrifts melted into puddles and trickling streams.
Drawn by the scents of nuts and seeds, Marmot ventured deeper and deeper into the awakening forest, accompanied by the sounds of birds and tree-dwelling critters. His basket—and cheeks—were half filled with hard seeds when the first flakes of a new flurry began to fall.
Swallowing down his mouthful, Marmot looked skyward, gulping again at the harsh, grey clouds gathered there. As he hastened back towards Marmalade’s tree, a trek that would take hours yet, the snow began to fall in earnest, blinding Marmot to the path ahead.
The air grew colder as harsh winds chilled his paws and nose. New banks of white snow piled quickly amongst the roots of trees, blanketing the paths in tall mounds that Marmot could not ford.
Breath misting in frantic puffs, Marmot looked around, desperate to find some shelter. Hopping through the snowfall, his eyes stinging in the freezing winds, he spied a tall, silver-barked tree growing from a raised mound of earth. There at the base of the tree was a small hollow, sheltered from the falling drifts by sweeping boughs of dense blue foliage.
Scrambling through the powdery banks towards the haven, Marmot at last emerged into shelter, huddling in the dark feeling wet and cold and miserable. Winds howled and Marmot quailed.
Before he remembered.
Shivering in the brisk breeze curling into his hollow, Marmot felt for the warm pulse of life in the deceptively dead-looking world. He closed his eyes and reached down into the earth where mice burrowed, outwards to the cold ferns curling in on themselves under winter’s final onslaught, upwards to the canopies where the first buds of a warmer season grew. He reached into the whipping blizzard itself and all the tumbling motes of free magic spent on the winds.
He called them to him, these tiny glimmering flecks of warmth. When his heart felt full, his chest burning with raw power, he pushed it down into the dry weeds by his feet, setting them alight.
Oh.
Flames burst upwards, climbing the smooth walls of the tree’s interior. With a squeal and frantic flight of paws, Marmot snatched up his basket and wrenched himself from the hollow in time to watch the snap frozen tree crack right up the middle, splintering under the sudden storm of heat.
A large bough groaned as it broke away, dislodging a nest from a crook amongst its branches. Marmot watched in alarm as the small nest tipped down the length of the branch, falling towards the ground. Darting forward, Marmot flung himself beneath branch and bough, catching the soft cradle in his paws before it hit the hard earth.
Soon the canopy above him was ablaze, and Marmot fled.
✧✧✧
Placing the nest in his basket, Marmot made his way slowly through the snowdrift in the direction he hoped was home. Four tiny, speckled eggs sat clustered in the frail clump of twigs and feathery ferns. They looked so terribly cold.
Marmot tried to shield them with his body, curling himself over the basket the best he could as he battled his way through the snow.
At last arriving in a small clearing sheltered from the worst of the snowfall, Marmot was able to set a small blaze. He settled the basket near the fire and held out his frozen paws, shivering with cold and fatigue. The woods were growing dark, and the glow of prowling eyes glinted from the shadows. He wondered if Marmalade might come and save him.
Once the chill had faded from his paws, Marmot held each egg in turn, hoping to impart some of his warmth into them. He was clutching the last egg, still cold as ice, when a shadow moved amongst the trees.
A yip was followed by a low growl as a fox emerged from the underbrush. It shook dew from its fur, tracking Marmot with its yellow gaze and sniffing at the cold air.
Slowly, oh so slowly, Marmot placed the egg back in the basket. The fox tracked the movement with keen eyes, its steps fluid and feather light as it homed in on the nest of eggs.
Fear numbed Marmot’s limbs as the fox prowled closer. Marmot couldn’t let the fox take these eggs. It was his fault, after all, that they had fallen from the safety of their bough. Anger, and a fierce sort of protectiveness, burned like hot stones in his chest.
Marmot crouched low in front of the basket with a screech of warning, shielding the eggs from the fox. Tilting its head in confusion, gaze wary, the fox paused. Marmot saw the hunger in its eyes, the resolution in those lithe muscles as they coiled to spring.
With a wrathful squeal, Marmot reached and pushed. The fire flared, embers sparking high towards the canopy. The fox skittered back in surprise, dancing around the flames. Marmot chittered in rage as the fox made to circle around the other side.
Raising his paws, Marmot flung all of his intent towards the fire, which burned high between himself and the fox. The fire curled in on itself, lifting, spinning, compressing, until a flaming ball hung in the air. The fox whimpered and whined, startled by the sight.
With a final cry, Marmot pushed against the fire, sending the flaming sphere towards the fox, which turned tail and fled into the thicket whence it came. The flaming ball crashed into the snowy earth with a violent burst of orange sparks, and extinguished with a hiss of steam.
Marmot sat breathing hard in the sudden darkness of the clearing. The protective rage buzzing through his bones began to settle, leaving an anxious exhaustion in its wake. Without warmth or light, and feeling far too exposed, Marmot set off once again into the snowdrift, now under the blanket of night.
Crossing a small river and climbing a large mossy log towards a raised embankment, Marmot collapsed in the nearest clearing he could find, a small circle of bare earth amongst tall ferns. The clearing offered little space to raise another fire. Not that Marmot would have dared, too fearful of attracting hungry predators to his scant shelter.
Marmot sat huddled up to his basket, munching on seeds and nuts as he cradled the eggs close to the tepid warmth of his fur. The eggs were too cold.
He could see the glowing pulse of life within them, illuminating the flecks of opal and rosy gold speckling the shells. He cradled them as close as he could without crushing them, shivering as the cold of late night settled into his bones, causing his teeth to chatter.
He didn’t know what to do. As he sat, the night grew colder still, and the glow within the eggs began to fade.
Despairing, Marmot closed his eyes, searching, reaching, ever so gently for any spark of warmth in the frozen world around him. Marmot picked up a nearby stone, small and only slightly larger than the largest egg. He practised pushing power down his arms, pushing the warmth of raw life into the stone. Sparks flared as flames licked across the grey rock, charring it black.
Marmot whined and tossed the rock aside. He picked up another, and another. Despite his best efforts to control the flow of heat through the pads of his paws, the magic was too raw, too wild. It felt uncontainable when all it wanted to do was pour back out into the world in a rush of sparks and flame.
Marmot tried again and again, watching in dismay as the life within the eggs diminished. One of the eggs was completely dull and cold as a riverstone by the time Marmot finally, finally understood how to pull just so and push exactly right, enveloping his clutched pebbles in mild warmth.
Feeling frantic, Marmot cradled the eggs in his arms and, so very gently, carefully, encased them in a steady aura of warmth. Like the kiss of sunshine in mid-spring.
Ice melted on the nearby ferns and the hard ground softened as Marmot sat, hour after hour, keeping the cold at bay. As the morning light crested the shimmering canopy, the snowfall had ceased and the winds stilled to a whisper through the trees.
The glimmer of life shone bright within three of the four eggs. One remained dulled and grey.
Though exhausted, Marmot packed the eggs carefully back in his basket, and scurried the rest of the way home to Marmalade’s tree as fast as he could. The sun was high in the sky when the small witch flung open her door and raced down the steps to greet him.
With a cry of relief, she hefted Marmot, basket and all, into her arms and carried him inside.
“I was so worried, little one,” the witch exclaimed as she set him on the rug by the fire. Marmot snuggled against her legs as she sat on the floor beside him and began brushing frost from his fur.
With a forlorn grunt, Marmot pushed the basket towards Marmalade, pointing at the dull, cold egg.
“Oh… Oh dear,” she whispered. Marmot whined, pleading for her bigger magics, for her to bring back the glow of life.
“I’m sorry, dear one. It’s beyond my power to restore life once it is lost… At least, not exactly so. Not the way it was. I’m afraid that poor egg is gone.”
Marmot grizzled his grief as he stroked the remaining eggs and Marmalade combed her fingers through his fur.
“However, nothing is ever wasted.”
As the sun drew higher and the day outside remained clear and still, Marmalade guided Marmot outside to a spot of earth amongst the thickets behind her tree. From her pocket she withdrew a large teardrop seed.
Holding the seed in one palm and the cold egg in the other, she began to sing. A humming melody that seemed to weave over and back on itself, like layers of folded silk.
Glimmering beads of light rose from the seed, swirling like a constellation set a drift, before Marmalade guided them into the egg.
With Marmot’s help, she dug a different sort of cradle, burying both egg and seed within the quiet earth.
✧✧✧
As the season grew warmer and the daylight longer, Marmot kept vigil over the eggs, warming them with a stoked hearth and the humble heat of his magic.
The day the shells began to crack, Marmalade held him as he tried to help.
“No, no, little darling, they must find their own way into the world. Watch.”
And watch he did as the chicks emerged with spiky coral-coloured down and wide, chirping beaks. With Marmalade’s help, he fed them crushed beetles and fruit paste.
Their frail newborn down fluffed out to a cloudy golden fuzz that Marmot loved to rub his snout against. They followed him around the house, running about on legs thin as a daisy stem. They learned how to hop down the stairs into the garden and sing to the spring sky.
Marmot wailed with pride the first time they took flight on sharp, angled wings that glinted in the sunlight.
All the while, from that small circle of mounded earth behind Marmalade’s tree, grew a sprout, which became a sapling, which unfurled to a witch-sized tree with rosy gold branches and fuzzy peach-toned leaves.
There the fledglings roosted, nestled amongst boughs that Marmalade had strung with hanging bells of honeyed seeds, safe to sing as spring became summer became autumn, and the winds of winter were kept at bay by a witch’s gentle power.
