Robin Sloan

My new story, The Writer & the Witch, is now avail­able on the Kin­dle (and the Kin­dle iPhone app, too, of course).

For this one, I’m going to use the ran­som model: After 100 Kin­dle copies are sold, I’ll post the free web ver­sion right here. Done! Thank you, Kin­dle crew.

As for the rest of you…

# # #

ONCE, LONG AGO, A YOUNG MAN WAS WALKING down an old road on his way to the New Cap­i­tal. Ancient trees leaned in on both sides and cast shad­ows that dap­pled his way. He was very ambi­tious. His father was a farmer, but he wanted to be a writer. He wanted to see every­thing and try everything—and he was in a hurry to get started.

(That’s how it starts. This is a story that’s been in my fam­ily for a long time. It gets told and retold in times of transition—graduations and wed­dings, births and deaths. It’s not a story you tell around a table; it’s a story you tell qui­etly, one-​​on-​​one, maybe after every­one else has gone to sleep.)

So, the young writer came to a short stone bridge that crossed a nar­row river. There was an old woman sit­ting like a heap of gray rags at the base of the bridge.

“A coin for an old woman?” she asked as he passed. He said noth­ing and kept walk­ing. “Just a kind word, then?” she called. Again, he said noth­ing, and picked up his pace.

“STOP!” she said—her voice very dif­fer­ent. He turned. The old woman was stand­ing, point­ing at him with a long, pale fin­ger. “In such a hurry? Then, in the name of the rock and the ice, I curse you. For every step you take along your path, you will age one year. And then you will die.”

The young writer rolled his eyes. This was not the first time he’d been cursed by a vagabond. He turned and con­tin­ued on his way across the bridge. But the air sud­denly smelled like a thun­der­storm. And with every step, he felt it: some­thing inside of him was coars­en­ing and thick­en­ing. His heart was ham­mer­ing in his chest.

He reached the other side of the bridge and there he fell to his knees. Reflected in the river, he saw not the face of a young man, but one twenty years older.

He lifted his eyes. A jet-​​black crow screamed and spun above the trees. The old woman was gone.

# # #

THE YOUNG WRITER’S FIRST INSTINCT was to run, to out­race the old woman’s words, to put this hal­lu­ci­na­tion behind him.

But it was no hallucination.

He stared at the for­eign face in the river. He felt sick and dizzy. He thought of all the things he wanted to do, all the places he wanted to see. It had all been laid out before him, like some mag­i­cal feast. Twenty steps ago, life had seemed like an improb­a­ble bless­ing. How could some­thing so small and stu­pid destroy it all? How could he have made such a sim­ple mistake?

He cursed the old woman—the witch—and he cursed him­self. He made lit­tle stran­gled sounds of pain and he wept.

He sat there. A step in any direc­tion was suicide.

The sun set and he curled into a fit­ful sleep. In the night, cold rain fell, and it soaked him through.

# # #

IN THE MORNING, he woke and ate some of the bread he’d brought for the jour­ney. There wasn’t much.

He stretched his arms and legs, which ached more than they’d ever ached before. The young writer was no longer young.

A wood­cut­ter came down the road lead­ing an ox-​​cart. He slowed in front of the sprawled writer. “Are you hurt or sick?” he asked.

The writer began: “A witch”—and then he paused. There was a choice to be made, and I’m not sure that he real­ized just how impor­tant it was. You’ll under­stand soon enough. Once told, sto­ries take on a life of their own.

The writer glanced over to the river. The water was run­ning fast and dark. He made his choice. He lied:

“I am a pil­grim from far away,” he said, “and I have come to spend my life in prayer and med­i­ta­tion here, in this spot, where the river meets the road.”

The wood­cut­ter frowned and glanced around. “It’s not much of a spot, is it?”

“It is more impor­tant than you real­ize!” said the writer. “Why, there is a spirit in this river that would devour you and your ox, and hav­ing done that, it would roam the land until it found your vil­lage, and it would eat every­one there, too.”

The wood­cut­ter looked dubious.

“But I have placed myself here as sac­ri­fice to the spirit. And as long as I sit in this spot, with­out mov­ing, it will be sated. Lend me some branches to make a shel­ter, will you?”

The woodcutter’s cart was piled high, and the story was set­tling in. “Yes, I sup­pose I can spare you some cut­tings,” he said. “I’ll even nail them together for you.”

So he built the writer a sim­ple, slop­ing roof.

“Good luck to you, pil­grim,” the wood­cut­ter said when he started back down the road. “And thank you.”

# # #

THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED were very difficult.

The writer ate every scrap of edi­ble or nearly-​​edible mat­ter in the radius of his reach. He lured a squir­rel into his lap and wrung its neck. Stretch­ing down towards the river, he tried, and failed, to catch a fish with his bare hands. He choked down slimy snails.

He begged for food from pass­ing trav­el­ers, but there weren’t many of them, and most passed him as silently as he’d passed the witch.

But with patience, things improved.

When a fish­er­man came whistling across the bridge, first the writer begged for food. Then he thought bet­ter of it, and asked for a hook and a line.

He honed his beg­ging. His sur­vival depended on it, with so few peo­ple on the old road. The story of the river-​​spirit grew more elab­o­rate; now there were images of chil­dren whisked away in the night, of whole towns sud­denly flooded, and when the water washed away, no one was left.

Slowly, the story was spread­ing. One day, two monks from a for­est tem­ple came out of the trees, eyed him up and down, and then—satisfied—they bowed and left two bas­kets full of fresh veg­eta­bles and dried fruit. It was a feast.

# # #

WEEKS PASSED. The writer’s entire body had shrunken, his legs most of all. They were in dan­ger of with­er­ing. He began a reg­i­men of stretch­ing, squat­ting, and run­ning in place. Some­times, as he was pump­ing his legs, he thought of lean­ing for­ward, of let­ting his feet dig in. He would race down the river­bank, grow old and fall down and die, and it would be over. But he couldn’t. Even though its cir­cum­fer­ence was so tiny, he had a life, and he couldn’t give it up.

He became adept not only at beg­ging, but at trad­ing, too. A cart would clat­ter to a stop, and he would offer a tiny treasure—a shell he’d snagged from the river, or a dec­o­ra­tive band woven from grass and reeds—in exchange for some mate­r­ial to improve his shel­ter. Now he had tat­tered can­vas flaps to keep the rain out and a tiny fire-​​pit, along with a small, dented iron cook­ing pan.

# # #

FINALLY, HE PAID A PASSING MERCHANT to take word to his father. His father, who had warned him about his ambi­tion. His father, who hadn’t come in from the fields to say good­bye on the day the writer left home.

His father, who came running—running!—down the road days later.

His father, out of breath, car­ry­ing a huge brown sack. It was full of seeds: tomato, cucum­ber, potato, and kale. Mint and rose­mary, too. His father, who sat down right there beside him and used his fin­gers to rake fur­rows in the black earth. His father, who reminded him what he’d learned on the farm, and explained the seeds he’d brought, one by one, and showed him how to grow a gar­den in that lit­tle disc of dirt.

His father, who took his face in his hands and said, “You look just like me now.” And then, smil­ing, “You’re a farmer after all!”

His father, who slept there with him, under the stars. Who would not leave his side until the first har­vest, such as it was, had come in. Who, even as he returned to the road, because his own har­vest was long over­due, was say­ing: “Don’t for­get to rotate your crops, or you’ll wear out the soil. Treat it right, and it’s all you need.”

His father.

# # #

IT WAS MORNING, months later.

The writer woke to find his gar­den rav­aged, all of his food and small trea­sures stolen. There were foot­prints in the wet ground. His heart sank. Almost a year of work, all gone. And it had been so easy. They’d taken every­thing while he slept, there where the river met the road, out in the open, with no walls and no friends.

The writer stood up and brushed off his knees. He crouched in a sprinter’s stance, fin­gers stretched down to the ground. He flexed his muscles—and pulled up a tiny trap-​​door. It was his cache: always secure, because he was always sit­ting on it. There wasn’t much in the shal­low pit, but it was enough to begin again. He knelt and mas­saged the soil of his gar­den, mak­ing it ready for new seeds.

# # #

YEARS PASSED.

The writer was trans­formed utterly. He had a thick, black beard. He had improved his reg­i­men; now he lifted heavy river-​​rocks every day, and bal­anced on one foot with them. He ate a carefully-​​metered diet of fish, nuts, and veg­eta­bles. His body was lean and strong. His eyes were sharp and clear.

But even more impres­sive than his own trans­for­ma­tion was the trans­for­ma­tion of the space around him.

His shel­ter had become a house. It was very small—what use did he have for space?—but it had walls, clev­erly engi­neered with the help of the woodcutter’s son, a car­pen­ter. They could lift up like awnings or shut down tight at night. The wall fac­ing the road even had a door—not so he could leave, of course, but so he could invite trav­el­ers into his home and offer them shelter.

He slept not on hard ground but on a thick straw mat that he could roll up and put aside when he woke.

The leafy trees that bowed in around his house were fes­tooned with ban­ners and gar­lands. The monks from the for­est tem­ple made reg­u­lar vis­its now. Peo­ple from nearby vil­lages came, too, offer­ing small gifts in exchange for blessings.

The road was busier; the New Cap­i­tal was grow­ing fast, and all of its trib­u­taries swelled with traf­fic. And so bene­dic­tions were not all that he traded in. The writer also sold information.

He was, after all, the eyes of the bridge. He knew who came and went, car­ry­ing what, and when. Mer­chants paid him to tally their rivals’ ship­ments. The secret police in the New Cap­i­tal paid him to watch for men with north­ern accents, lead­ing cov­ered carts, trav­el­ing by night.

You might be won­der­ing if he was lonely. No; he had friends, monks and mer­chants alike. He had com­pan­ion­ship from time to time, too: liaisons arranged by those mer­chant friends. Women he paid in gold.

He had carved out a strange lit­tle king­dom, there where the river met the road, just beyond the bridge.

# # #

HIS FATHER CAME EVERY YEAR, some­times sev­eral times a year, and his mother too. She brought him fresh-​​baked bread from home and copies of his favorite books. Then, one day, she came alone, and she told the writer that his father had died in the fields.

His father.

She didn’t return after that, and soon the writer heard that she, too, had died.

His father and mother had lived to be very old, and in their pass­ing, the writer had real­ized some­thing very important.

His sta­tion­ary life, his refusal to walk even a step, had halted the witch’s curse. But it had done more than that: It had also revealed the bless­ing inside the curse, because in all these years, the writer had not aged a day.

The witch’s curse of rock and ice had made him immortal.

# # #

NINETY-​​NINE YEARS RUSHED UNDER the short stone bridge, and the writer’s life and leg­end grew together.

The monks sent novices to sit beside him for days at a time, to learn patience, dis­ci­pline and still­ness. With­out fail, each novice would grow bored and rest­less. He would rise to dip his toes in the river. The writer would make him gather fire­wood, or repair his roof, or carry mes­sages to his mer­chant friends. Then, when the novice’s mas­ter returned, the writer would report: Oh yes, your stu­dent sat beside me. His men­tal endurance is aston­ish­ing for one so young.

That same mas­ter hav­ing done exactly the same thing twenty years before.

Pil­grims arrived from far away. They brought offer­ings from their homes—gems, heir­looms, spices. They were sur­prised when the writer smiled and offered them tea. They expected a mossy statue of a man, maybe even lit­er­ally just a mossy statue. Instead, they found a wiry 40-​​year-​​old who gob­bled hand­fuls of nuts and pep­pered them with ques­tions about the places they came from.

Some pil­grims brought books as offer­ings, and the writer read, and read, and read. Over the years, he changed his story a bit: This is a river of knowl­edge, he told trav­el­ers. Bring me your books and tell me your sto­ries. I will remem­ber them and recount them to the river-​​spirit when it grows hungry.

The pil­grims kept com­ing, so with the help of the woodcutter’s great-​​grandson, who was an archi­tect, the writer built a library into the leafy trees that bowed in around his house. It was a strange sight: green leaves, rain­bow ban­ners and shelves built across the branches, piled high with books.

And finally, the writer did what writ­ers do. He wrote, and wrote, and wrote. He made sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to the new sci­ence of nat­u­ral­ism, observ­ing in impos­si­ble detail the habits of birds and bugs in his lit­tle world. He com­piled his­to­ries of nearby vil­lages. He wrote fan­tas­tic tales, honed through telling after telling, there where the river met the road, just beyond the bridge, where trav­el­ers gath­ered and gasped in the light of his fire.

He hadn’t moved one step, but he was healthy, at the height of his pow­ers, and he was famous.

And then she returned.

# # #

IT WAS ON A COLD AFTERNOON that a jet-​​black car­riage pulled by two jet-​​black horses clat­tered across the bridge and shud­dered to a halt in front of the writer’s house. The dri­ver, a tiny toad of a man, scram­bled to open the car­riage door, and a woman stepped down. She was young. She was beau­ti­ful, with pale skin and jet-​​black hair. And she was angry.

She glared down at the writer, and her voice was sharp: “Who are you?”

The writer said noth­ing, only gazed up at her. She looked com­pletely dif­fer­ent now. Of course, so did he.

Her lips drew tight.

“Do you real­ize,” she said, “that in a thou­sand years of curses, no one has ever done this?”

Now, I need to tell you: the writer was ter­ri­fied. He knew the witch could snap her fin­gers and bring her curse to a sud­den close, or sim­ply cast a new one. She could trans­form him into a fish or a fern.

But, even so, he rose to his feet. And he bowed low. Time had taught him a few things.

“Thank you, kind witch,” he said. “I did not real­ize, a hun­dred years ago, that your curse was a bless­ing. With­out it, I would be long dead, and I would not have lived as I have lived. I owe you a great debt.”

Now, I should tell you about the witch: This was a woman who had lived as long as the trees, who was born of rock and ice on a far-​​off moun­tain­top, who was filled with the same power that lit the stars. She had coursed from one end of civ­i­liza­tion to another, by car­riage and by crow’s wing. She had enchanted kings and queens and cursed whole king­doms. But some­thing inside of her was still jagged, unsmoothed by time. She was almost always on the edge of rage and tears.

She had, quite lit­er­ally, seen it all. And it had all dis­ap­pointed her.

But now, before her stood some­thing entirely unexpected.

There was a silence. It seemed, to the tiny toad of a car­riage dri­ver, to go on for­ever. The two horses stamped and snorted on the nar­row road.

Finally, the witch said, “I am glad you real­ized my true intent.”

The writer sat. “I ask trav­el­ers on this road to tell me their sto­ries,” he said, “and I imag­ine you have the best sto­ries of all. Would you care to sit, and tell me a lit­tle of what you’ve seen?”

The witch’s lip curled. The air smelled like a thunderstorm.

With a crack! her car­riage and horses flut­tered into the sky, three crows spi­ral­ing away. Her dri­ver croaked and hopped into the river.

She sat, and the writer poured two cups of tea.

# # #

NOW, THIS WOULD BE A STRANGE ENOUGH STORY if it ended here: the tale of two long-​​lived foes who found a quiet rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, there where the river met the road, just beyond the bridge.

But it’s not over yet.

The writer and the witch talked and talked. The sun set and the moon rose.

He told her the tale of the river-​​spirit and how he’d invented it, on the spot, a hun­dred years ago. She leaned her head back and laughed—more of a cackle, really, which sounded strange com­ing from those lips.

She told him about her appren­tice­ship in the swel­ter­ing swamps, learn­ing the art of potions and poi­sons and hon­ing her tal­ent for transformation.

He told her about the books he’d col­lected, and about one of his favorite ancient writ­ers, a poet from the north. He even recited one of his poems.

She told him about the time she led an army defend­ing the Old Cap­i­tal, wear­ing jet-​​black mail and a cape of crow’s feath­ers, throw­ing light­ning bolts left and right.

He told her about his friends the monks and the mer­chants, and the din­ner he’d once tried to orga­nize, invit­ing all of them. It was a disaster.

She told him about her time in the court of the Old King, where art and music flour­ished. She told him about meet­ing the poet from the north in per­son. “He was entirely full of him­self,” she said, and cackled.

The witch was beau­ti­ful when she cack­led. And even in this young form, there was a depth to her eyes: tiny crow’s feet that betrayed all the things she’d done, all the places she’d seen.

The writer was sharp and atten­tive, and he held court like a king in his tiny house.

A very strange thing hap­pened that night, there where the river met the road, just beyond the bridge.

The writer and the witch fell in love.

# # #

THE WITCH MOVED IN, which strained their rela­tion­ship at first, as it usu­ally does—but even more so in this case given the size of the writer’s house. And he felt self-​​conscious about his strangeness—which is to say, he felt young again.

With gold he had saved over the years, he paid the woodcutter’s great-​​grandson to build an addi­tion, with space for a closet, a kitchen and a witch’s workshop.

The witch was not always beau­ti­ful. Some days she was the young queen; some days she was the old crone. Some days she inhab­ited a spec­tral in-​​between space, and the air smelled like a thun­der­storm and her black hair floated up over her shoul­ders as if she was under­wa­ter. She would go wan­der­ing up and down the banks of the river on those days, and she would scare peo­ple, because they thought she was the river-​​spirit come to steal their chil­dren away.

One after­noon, the writer finally spoke the silent ques­tion. The witch looked away, and softly said: “I cursed you in the name of the rock and the ice. It can­not be undone.”

The writer and the witch were happy together. I mean, really happy. He taught her patience, thought­ful­ness, and how to make soup from grass, nuts, and river-​​rocks. She told him more stories—stories far stranger than the ones he’d heard that first night, sto­ries you would never believe, if it wasn’t a witch telling them by the light of the moon, curled up next to you on your thick straw mat.

She made the writer real­ize he had been much lone­lier than he’d been will­ing to admit, there where the river met the road, just beyond the bridge.

They had a baby.

# # #

THE WRITER’S SON WAS PLAYING with snails on the bank of the river, within sight of the house. The boy was very small, just two years old.

The writer was watch­ing him fondly—that’s what he did most of the time, watched his son fondly—and day­dream­ing about all the things he could do, all the places he could see. It was all laid out before him, like some mag­i­cal feast.

There was a dark shape in the water.

At first the writer thought it was a fish, but it didn’t move like a fish. It wove its way through the water like a snake. It was aim­ing straight for his son.

He called out to him, but the boy didn’t hear. Or couldn’t hear. The air was heavy and damp. Some­thing strange was happening.

The shape was closer now, and it lifted its head up out of the water. A giant, leer­ing serpent’s head, with deep black pits for eyes.

It is impor­tant that you know the writer did not stop to think. He did not stop to cal­cu­late the num­ber of steps it would take to reach his son.

He sim­ply leapt to his feet and raced along the river­bank. The first steps he’d taken in a cen­tury, and each one was a gallop.

Every stride car­ried the weight of years and fell across his back like a ham­mer. He left his house a middle-​​aged man and by the time he reached his son, his beard was white. He placed him­self between the boy and the ser­pent, and the thing struck him. It was huge. With unnat­ural speed and strength it wrapped itself around his body and it squeezed.

He strug­gled and pulled at it, and with each stum­bling step, another year jolted through him. His joints tight­ened and his heart pounded in his ears.

He fell to his knees, but he got his hands around the serpent’s neck. It was a shock­ing sight: the monster’s mouth, yawn­ing wide with rows and rows of jet-​​black teeth, and below it his shak­ing hands, white as paper, thin as bones. He leaned and swung with every shred of strength he still pos­sessed, and he bashed its head against the river-​​rocks, again and again.

The ser­pent loos­ened its grip, and died.

The witch was there now, cradling their sob­bing son in her arms. She bent low over the writer. He was very, very old.

“My love,” she wailed.

The writer said, softly: “So there was a river-​​spirit after all. That mon­ster was prob­a­bly as old as I am.”

“You saved our son,” the witch said. She squeezed his hand. She could barely make words. “My curse…”

“No, no,” he said.

His voice was very faint.

“All bless­ings.”

# # #

IF YOU PASS THAT SPOT NOW, where the river meets the road, just beyond the bridge, you will see that that the tiny house is still there. The addi­tions have fallen away, and the gar­den is no more, but the main struc­ture still stands, and so do the strange shelves in the leafy trees that bow in around it. They’re filled with books, which peo­ple bor­row or steal. Some­times they leave new ones, too.

In one of those books, you’ll find the story of a boy, the son of a pow­er­ful sor­cer­ess, who grew up in the court of the New King. He went on to roam the world, hik­ing the rocky north­ern reaches and sail­ing the warm south­ern sea. He was, var­i­ously, an explorer, a pirate, a diplo­mat, and a poet. He had one of the all-​​time great lives.

Inside the house there is a statue of a man sitting—yes, it really is a statue now, cov­ered with moss. Its form is lean, and its face car­ries the rough shape of a beard. Its eyes are closed, and there is a smile play­ing on its lips.

Pil­grims still come from far away to seek his bless­ing. He is the keeper of traveler’s tales, patron of the patient, and pro­tec­tor of small children.

And all who pass know they must slow and say hello. Here, no one hur­ries along the path.

# # #

# # #

# # #

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks to Andrew Fitzger­ald and Kiyash Mon­sef for pro­vid­ing valu­able feed­back on an early ver­sion of this story.

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