Born Through Motion

It’s a mistake—a wrong number, per se. No witch it’s ever known has lived in such an, ah, dated, home. Furthermore, no practitioner that ever summoned it has been absent, as if they’d up and ding-dong ditched it. No, it didn’t work that way. Not at all. Not if they want to survive the encounter.

It hears the clinking of movement in the room adjacent—the kitchen, going by the pungent, bitter scent of cooled coffee and soggy, sweet sponge cakes, but more jarring is the smell of blood. It moves—feels something slip beneath its clawed foot as it does, and sees a crocheted blanket of whites and greys and deep black yarn, wound intricately, perfectly, into a summoning circle. Its summoning circle. There is a small splash of bright scarlet and sharp, jagged bits of a broken curio scattered on top, as if someone had dropped it, attempted to pick it up the pieces and pricked their finger. It would explain the blood. And it would explain the demon being brought into this strange place.

As it connects these pieces in its mind, the inhabitant of the house rounds the corner and exits the kitchen, holding a damp, white dish towel close to her hand and fumbling with the beaded bifocals hanging from her neck by a crocheted lanyard before stopping dead in her tracks.

Now, to be fair, the demon wouldn’t ordinarily second guess being face-to-face with a hunchbacked crone with a beaked nose, beady eyes and a peculiar lack of teeth, or a spidery shawl and ankle-length black dress, but there is definitely something amiss here. Especially when the old biddy lets her spectacles fall slack on her bosom and erupts into a wide, toothy (toothless) grin, eyes squinting and crinkling from the sheer effort of it.

“Todd! Todd, dear, I didn’t know you were visiting this year! You didn’t call, you didn’t write—but, oh, I’m so happy you’re here, dear! Would it have been too much to ask you to ring the doorbell? I almost had a heart attack. And don’t worry about the blood, here—I had an accident. My favorite figure toppled off of the table and cleanup didn’t go as expected. But I seem to recall you are quite into the bloodshed and ‘edgy’ stuff these days, so I don’t suppose you mind.” She releases a hearty, kind laugh, but it isn’t mocking, it’s sweet. Grandmotherly. The demon is by no means sentimental or maudlin, but the kindness, the familiarity, the genuine fondness, does pull a few dusty old nostalgic heartstrings. “Imagine if it leaves a scar! It’d be a bit ‘badass,’ as you teenagers say, wouldn’t it?”

She is as blind as a bat without her glasses, it would appear, because the demon is by no means a ‘Todd’ or a human at all, though humanoid, shrouded in sleek, black skin and hard spikes and sharp claws. But the demon humors her, if only because it had been caught off guard.

The old woman smiles still, before turning on her heel and shuffling into the hallway with a stiff gait revealing a poor hip. “Be a dear and make some more coffee, would you please? I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

Yes, this is most definitely a mistake. One for the record books, for certain. For late-night trips to bars and conversations with colleagues, while others discuss how many souls they’d swindled in exchange for peanuts, or how many first-borns they’d been pledged for things idiot humans could have gained without divine intervention. Ugh. Sometimes it all just became so pedantic that little detours like this were a blessing—happy accidents, as the humans would say.

That’s why the demon does as asked, and plods slowly into the kitchen, careful to duck low and avoid the top of the doorframe. That’s why it gingerly takes the small glass pot and empties it of old, stale coffee and carefully, so carefully, takes a measuring scoop between its claws and fills the machine with fresh grounds. It’s as the hot water is percolating that the old woman returns, her index finger wrapped tight in a series of beige bandages.

“I’m surprised you’re so tall, Todd! I haven’t seen you since you were at my hip! But your mother mails photos all the time—you do love wearing all black, don’t you?” She takes a seat at the small round table in the corner and taps the glass lid of the cake plate with quaking, unsteady, aged hands. “I was starting to think you’d never visit. Your father and I have had our disagreements, but…I am glad you’re here, dear. Would you like some cake?” Before the demon has a chance to decline, she lifts the lid and cuts a generous slice from the near-complete circle that has scarcely been touched. It smells of citrus and cream and is, as assumed earlier, soggy, oversaturated with icing.

It was made for a special occasion, for guests, but it doesn’t seem this old woman receives much company in this musty, stagnant house that smells like an antique garage that hadn’t had its dust stirred in years.

Especially not from her absentee grandson, Todd.

The demon waits until the coffee pot is full, and takes two small mugs from the counter, filling them until steam is frothing over the rims. Then, and only then, does it accept the cake and sit, with some difficulty, in a small chair at the small table. It warbles out a polite ‘thank you,’ but it doesn’t suppose the woman understands. Manners are manners regardless.

“Oh, dear, I can hardly understand. Your voice has gotten so deep, just like your grandfather’s was. That, and I do recall you have an affinity for that gravelly, screaming music. Did your voice get strained? It’s alright, dear, I’ll do the talking. You just rest up. The coffee will help soothe.”

The demon merely nods—some communication can be understood without fail—and drinks the coffee and eats the cake with a too-small fork. It’s ordinary, mushy, but delicious because of the intent behind it and the love that must have gone into its creation.

“I hope you enjoyed all of the presents I sent you. You never write back—but I am aware most people use that fancy E-mail these days. I just can’t wrap my head around it. I do wish your mom and dad would visit sometime. I know of a wonderful little café down the street we can go to. I haven’t been; I wanted to visit it with Charles, before he…well.” She falls silent in her rambling, staring into her coffee with a small, melancholy smile. “I can’t believe it’s been ten years. You never had the chance to meet him. But never mind that.” Suddenly, and with surprising speed that has the demon concerned for her well being, she moves to her feet, bracing her hands on the edge of the table. “I may as well give you your birthday present, since you’re here. What timing! I only finished it this morning. I’ll be right back.”

When she returns, the white, grey and black crocheted work with the summoning circle is bundled in her arms.  

“I found these designs in an occult book I borrowed from the library. I thought you’d like them on a nice, warm blanket to fight off the winter chill—I hope you do like it.” With gentle hands, she spreads the blanket over the demon’s broad, spiky back like a shawl, smoothing it over craggy shoulders and patting its arms affectionately. “Happy birthday, Todd, dear.”

demon: you’re not blind here – but you’re not surprised. when…?

anette: oh, toddy, don’t be silly, my biological grandson’s not twelve feet tall and doesn’t scorch the furniture when he sneezes. i’ve known for ages.

demon: then why?

anette: you wouldn’t have stayed if you weren’t lonely too.

demon: you… you don’t have to keep calling me your grandson.

anette: nonsense! adopted children are just as real. now quit sniffling, you silly boy, and let’s go bake a cake. honey, heel!

Let’s talk about the times Robin survives Marian, when she is the fair memory who haunts him all his days, the wild eyes he learns to live without, the part of his heart he teaches to heal;

And the times Marian survives Robin, when she stands at the firelight’s edge and looks over these brave men, these few and merry men, and says with the even, carrying voice that she did not learn from Robin, this is not the end of us.

There are a hundred ways to fall in love and Marian and Robin have fallen into each of them. A shepherdess and a yeoman, a feisty noble daughter and an estranged noble son—she has fallen for his wit, his bravery, his chin; he for her skill, her beauty, her kindnesses. No matter how many arrows she loses or witticisms she drops at the audience’s feet, Marian will always be a lover.

Marian the shepherdess, with her loyal sheep dog and her loyal Robin, a Marian who understands being hungry, who understands patience and how to find a lost ewe, who knows the hills of Nottingham better than the sheriff or the outlaw and delights in outwitting them both.

Marian the archer, the way she held competition between her teeth til it begged for mercy; or the single daughter of a destitute house, who took up poaching in the king’s wood and knows the meaning of silence but somehow, despite it all, falls for a brash youth with a big mouth and a bigger heart. 

A Marian who fights; or a Marian who sews and listens and whispers and smuggles out who and what Robin needs; a Marian who gets lost in the woods, who gets held up on the road or who gets suspicious in the market when rough men trade silver for bread and cloth; a Marian who is the heart of their cause and the head of their crimes.

They call her a lover so let’s call her a lover.

Let’s tell stories about the first time Marian falls asleep on hard ground beside the wheezy snores of Sherwood’s outlaws and feels safe, feels wanted, feels like she’s come home. They build something out in those woods with deer hides that are theirs only by right of aim and speed and skill, with the gold of fat rich men, and with the thanks of poor farmers whose children will eat decently five days a week instead of two.

Let’s talk about her love. Let’s talk about how she falls in love with this.

The runaway daughters, the girls hidden in boys’ clothing, in boys’ names, in boys’ bodies—Marian takes them aside when she can and whittles them bows to suit each of their strengths.

When a youth with skinned knees and tightly bound breasts weeps with rage when she can’t keep up with Robin’s combat practices, Marian tells her here’s how you fight when your center lives in your belly and not under your breastbone. Trust your legs, child. Trust your center. Yours is a different strength, not a lesser one.

Soon enough the girl is flipping boys over her hip while she stands with slightly bent knees, and Marian is making money hand over fist, betting against her opponents.

Let’s talk about how many ways there are to fall in love. Let’s talk about how the love of one man as a life’s calling is not a story I am interested in telling.

The outlaws were her children, her flock, her brothers and her right-hand men. They held each others’ secrets and each others’ lives in their callused palms and kept them safe.

Let’s talk about getting lost in the woods: Marian the shopkeeper’s daughter getting lost at fifteen, the first time she ran away from home, getting lost in the dark, the creep and tangle of it, and making it back long after moonrise by way of her aunt’s old nursery rhyme about how moss grows on the north side of trees. (At the next full moon she runs away to the woods again. She is not afraid, or, if she is, it doesn’t matter; she is in love).

Lost: Marian, dyemaker’s daughter, walking out to the woods with all the men who came before Robin, not for them but for the woods: the trees snarling overhead, the way they make her feel like life is more than this, that there is mystery, there is depth, and there is distance.

Let’s talk about how she loved Robin, yes, the quiet ways she traced his jawbone with shaking fingers, the hard way they both looked at each other across the fire and knew neither of them could long survive this. Let’s talk about how she loved. Let’s call it being lost.

Robin saw her first in a market, a smithy, a crossroads, and she was beautiful, but it wasn’t until she raised her chin that he loved her (til she smiled, til she shot, til she vanished—there are a hundred ways they fell in love). 

Let’s talk about how she fell in love with herself. 

Because she did: arrows and whispers, cold nights and good liars, Robin’s hand and the men who made Sherwood their own– she fell for it all. She fell for herself most of all. 

Maybe your name is not Marian and my name is not Marian and sometimes hers is not either.

Let’s hope that 2015 is full of life, love and (less) anime

and thus ends our hero’s journey.

Let’s talk about how Cho cried in History of Magic (under Binns’ slow drone), in bathroom stalls (Myrtle peeked and this was sometimes enough to startle Cho into wet giggles), in her four poster (silencing charms tossed up around her, but Marietta crept over anyway, rolled her eyes and gave her some chocolate), behind the greenhouses, in the Forest, over homework and letters home.

Cho cried and she survived Pansy Parkinson’s cruel jabs about a dead boy. She wept and she passed all her classes, kept up with Quidditch, watched fairweather friends scatter in the cold wind. She got very good at wordlessly summoning tissues and she joined the DA against her parents’ wishes.

They had told her to behave, begged her, ordered her, as the threatening darknesses of the world clung close even inside Hogwarts, and Cho walked out to the little pub in Hogsmeade and wrote her name down on Hermione’s list.

I hope someone in the DA told Cho that she ought to have been in Gryffindor. 

I hope she laughed at them, hard. 

Integrity. Truth. Honor. Dedication. These were the tenets of her House, of the blue and the bronze, the eagle called raven (called nerd, called stuck-up, called so many things that were not their names). Bravery was only one way to be a hero.

I hope Luna drifted into Cho’s orbit and Cho into hers. I hope Luna sent paper airplanes over the bathroom stall when Cho was crying in there and took her out to see thestrals.

Maybe Cho squeaked at first sight of her first thestral, because of her mother’s horror stories, or simply because she wore her reactions on her sleeve. But I hope she froze herself before she ran. I hope Cho held her breath and let her heart calm down. I hope she thought they were beautiful, in the end, these bony creatures who only appear for the grieving. 

They are not creatures of death, these skeletal horses and their sweet tempers. They are creatures of life. They are for the ones who have been left behind. 

I hope Cho believed her when Luna touched a pinky to her cheek and told her solemnly that tears are gifts. “They feed blibbering grackles,” Luna explained, and told Cho how very generous of her it was to share so many. 

Cho was one of the few DA members to produce a corporeal Patronus. Hers was a swan, an emblem of grace, of beauty, of lovers, a bird with dense muscle and a terrible temper who is romanticized to be sweet and useless. They’ll mob you, swans do, if you get too close to their nests. They have teeth. 

What sort of happy thought did it take to make a silver swan to defend her from bad dreams? Dementors are despair, they are grief, the kind of grief that steals your soul before it kills you. 

Cho’s was not that kind of grief. Hers was the grief of the living. She was flying and learning and loving and, yes, crying. Cedric was not. Her pretty world, at fifteen, had been shattered. It was darker than anyone had ever warned her of, but she was growing into it. She was growing up. Sometimes that takes tears. 

Mourning is not selfless. We do not weep for the dead. We weep for the living—what could have been and the tragedy that is. We weep because our hearts are breaking. It is not selfless but neither are we. We are selves.