Young Writers Society

I was born in a faraway lightning.

Magic is always like this — you would think it’s textbook sensible. Clear. The forbearer of facts. But if there is anything factual about magic is that it’s as nonsensical as, well—life. Its heartbeat is a heartbeat of chaos and it breathes in odd rhythms to prove itself as such. Truth is stranger than fiction, after all.

-

It only took me a handful of breathing hours to steal from the wicker queen. Partially it can be blamed upon my “youthful innocence”, but only partially. Lightning children grow fast—our childhoods are spent in the charge before the strike and when we touch earth we are already adults. I came down in a field with a lone tree in the center, and when I woke up there was nothing left except a burnt-out hull—a womb I crawled out of, covered in ash and soot and leaves.

The forest hunched close to the horizon and was the best shelter I could find. Rain still came down like afterbirth and I hadn’t the sense to figure out just then that I was born in a flash and was therefore called to shiny things. I am a creature of magic and magic is not logic, and if you had stumbled through the woods, desperate for anything that reminded you of a mother already gone after shitting you out in the middle of a field in the rain, you would have wanted that crown too.

It was not a fairytale crown. It didn’t sit in the middle of a clearing. It was in a gilded cage, yes, but instead of centered on a tree stump, it was shoved in a thicket, covered with dead bramble. The cage was light in my hands and the crown rattled around inside, shining and glimmering and desperate to cradle my head. The cage wasn’t even locked, when I pulled it free, my hands covered in light, fine scratches—scratches I liked. They looked like lightning strikes on my skin—and all I had to do was lift up the little latch and reach inside.

The cage was light but the crown was heavy in my hands, silver as the bottom of a lake and twice as enticing. It looked like a silver tangle of branches, and strands of jewels oozed from the rim to form a cold coronet against my forehead as I put it on.

-

Who wouldn’t want a crown?

-

My theft wasn’t discovered right away. I was able to leave with my prize. The forest and surrounding valleys provided ample place to be. I was able to watch the world grow without me. I was born already old. I was born already dying.

-

The Wicker Queen found me in the forest. She didn’t tell me her name, or that it was me, specifically, that she was looking for. As I’ve already said, magic is anything but factual. As far as I knew, she was another strange creature—born from a rainstorm or a waterfall, or a drop of fae blood fallen on a rock.

She came to me as I sat on my haunches, crouched in front of a berry bush. My lips and cheeks were stained purple with juice, my hands scratched—lightning scratches. I couldn’t live without them in one shape or another. She put her hands on my shoulders, digging down into my collarbones. Her voice, when she spoke, crackled more than my lightning strike birth. “My crown likes you.”

I couldn’t look at her. The jeweled crown slid forward on my forehead—it was vibrating with her presence. She continued, “You have stolen a boon not meant for you, my love. My son weeps—for the last task meant for his beloved has no prize now, no purpose. Who will free him from his tower? Certainly not his lady love, wandering lost in the forest, endlessly searching for a cage containing the last piece of her puzzle.”

The mouthful of berries I had in my mouth had turned to mud on my tongue. I spat them out and said, “the cage wasn’t locked. I found it. It was mine for the taking.”

The Wicker Queen’s hands moved up my shoulders and along my neck, then higher still to cup my face. “So factual—” she said. she could have broken my neck right then if she’d wanted to. “—for a magical creature. Tell me, small one: would you like to keep my crown?”

The crown was mine already, decreed by wild magic strong as blood. Maybe even her magic. “Yes.”

“Then we shall play a game,” the wicker queen said. “Of three tasks.” Her lips brushed the back of my neck. Her mouth was dry as an autumn leaf. “Do you agree?”

“Yes,” I said. It is what one says in this situation. It is the bargains you make for magic.

“Then it is so,” the queen said, her breath moving my hair. And then she was gone.

The crown sat heavy on my head.

-

Who wouldn’t want a crown?

-

The first messenger came at daybreak three days later.

The forest had a system of small streams and brooks and they all came together in a misshapen pond deep in the depths of the forest. The pond created a clearing of its own right—there were trees right up to the water’s edge, and trees even growing inside the pond itself—and that deep inside, it was the only place where sunlight could be found.

I sat on the edge, my feet dangling in the water, my toes digging holes in the mud by the shore. Typically lightning and water get along too well. There were fish and small creatures living in this pond and if I’d wanted to I could have turned them all into enough dinner to last me several fortnights. But again, magic. And that’s really all the explanation I feel obligated to give.

I stilled my toes in the water and waited for the surface to settle. When it did, I could see my reflection perfectly. The crown sat high and straight on my head, those jewels kissing my forehead like tiny lovers. I reached up and trailed my finger along the longest strands, and then tapped them along the edges of the silver branches. I tried to picture it on the wicker queen’s head—a feat that would have been made easier if I had actually seen her.

I thought about her son, locked in a tower, waiting for his lady love.

A crow flew out of the branches just then and landed by the water’s edge. It pecked along the shore for a moment, its wings shifting. It pulled a long, glistening worm out of the mud. After it’d swallowed it whole it turned to me, cocking its head. I didn’t greet the bird. I held its gaze. I waited.

“Your first task,” the crow said, hopping on its feet. “Is to fetch a crown of mud.” It opened its wings—they were so dark I thought that they would swallow me whole, like a black star—and flew with a mighty caw to a tree growing in the middle of the pond. “And bring it to the wicker queen in the center of the forest. It must not dry or crack or crumble or your crown shall be forfeit and your life and magic will belong to her.”

We stared at each other. I dug my toes into the bottom of the pond.

The crow clicked its beak. “You have three days,” it cawed, and then it flew away.

-

The next day I went back to the pond and dug my hands into the shore, right at the water’s edge. The previous night I’d discovered a dead tree and found an almost circular fork of branches. It would do. I carried it with me and set it down nearby while I worked at getting mud. I’d had the thought that I could use the branch as a sort of frame and work the mud around that. Magic finds its way into this sort of thing and sometimes magic manifests itself as cheating.

I hauled up handfuls of mud and worked it around the branch until it looked like a lopsided coronet. It didn’t even pale in comparison to the wicker queen’s crown still sitting on my head. They weren’t even remotely similar and I wasn’t going to try and make them so. The crow hadn’t said anything at all about being beautiful.

Cradling the dripping crown in my hands I went around the pond and started off to the center of the forest. Even though I hadn’t been there, I knew where it was, and what direction to go in. I knew because I could feel her there. Her magic was almost visible in the air—thick and cloying like tree sap. It got in my hair and under my fingernails with the mud.

With magic in the air to guide me, it shouldn’t have taken long. But more than two hours went by as I walked and occasionally stumbled. When the fourth hour reached its apex, I could feel the crown in my hands starting to dry out. When it started to crack, I saw the tower in a clearing beyond a copse of dead trees—it wound thickly up into the sky, covered in flowering vines. Someone in the tower was sobbing.

The Wicker Queen sat at the foot of the tower. I only knew it was her because who else could it be? Her brocade dress was brown along the hem and bled green all the way up to her bodice. Her hair, blackly blue as a starless night, was coiled at the back of her head. I imagined if she wore a crown, it would have been the one still sitting cold and content against my forehead.

I knelt at her feet and lifted the mud crown for her examination, even though I already knew what would happen. When she reached out to touch it, it crumbled in my hands, dry as dirt.

-

Who wouldn’t want a crown?

-

I tried again the day after. Even though the tower came into view quicker than it had the day before, the crown had congealed from mud to clay. The Wicker Queen’s deft fingers pinched it and left indents.

One would think magic would have swept in and saved my efforts, but I remind you again—magic is logicless. It’s nonsensical. And in the end, it’s a vindictive little bitch.

The jewels on my crown shuddered in time with my trembling.

-

That night I swam in the pond. Endless laps while I stared at the trees and stared into the water and stared at the Wicker Queen’s crow, come to gloat at my failure. I hissed at it as I went by, and sparks flew out of my mouth and fizzled on the water. It cawed three times at my anger—there’s nothing quite like the laughter of a crow to hammer down feelings of inadequacy.

I was on my fifty-seventh lap of the pond when I saw them. I was on my back, kicking soundlessly, and staring upwards. The Wicker Queen’s crown lay on my stomach, cold and clean and, soon, no longer mine. I stared up at the branches of the tree in the middle of the pond, blinking slowly. When I opened my eyes next I was staring at a large leaf—wide and bowl shaped. I grabbed my crown and righted myself.

Lightning children are good at trees—instinctively we know how to get to the top and the fastest way to make our way down. The leaves were thick and hardy and I could barely contain myself as I knelt by the edge of the water, digging out handful after handful of mud and slapping it onto the leaf.

Above me, the crow cawed.

I didn’t wait until morning. I set off right then toward the Wicker Queen’s tower, where her son still cried, waiting for his lady love to come free him. I felt no pity for his circumstances—it wasn’t my fault I had found the crown first. It wasn’t my fault his lady love hadn’t looked hard enough.

When I got to the tower the Wicker Queen was there, even though it was some hideous hour in the morning. The night shadows played across her face as she watched me march toward her with my muddy bundle.

“And where is my crown, little lightning child?” She asked. Her voice scratched like branches on a boulder. Gooseflesh prickled all the way down my spine in a delicious trail.

In answer, I knelt at her feet with my branch and opened the leaf. Quickly, wordlessly, I packed mud around the branch until it was thick and oozing droplets dripped down it, not unlike the jewels on my own crown. I stood, and without permission, placed the crown of mud on the Wicker Queen’s head. Mud trailed down her face and into her eyes. She said nothing, but when the crow flew out of the woods and landed by her feet, it gave one, loud, single caw.

In the tower, her son cried.