Once, in the west countries, a girl sought a witch to beg for the love of a dead man.

  Stop if you have heard this one, but don’t quite, it’s important. The smallest things can be important, details we lose as we run through the world, dancing past sickness and injury until we finally fall as ashes into the holy river. The people of the west countries may not speak as beautifully as us, true, but this is their story to tell, and this is how we will tell it.

  Long ago, in the days before, there were many types of dead. Heart dead, head dead, gut dead. Can you believe there are fools in the west countries who believe the soul stays in the stomach and not inside the temple of the heart? Fools live in every time.

  The girl wept over her beloved man, a broken vessel. The valley folk, they believed that the body was a set of jars atop itself, and so she saw his shattered jars and hoped someone could fix him. And so she packed his wounds in soft linen and hid his body, then went to find a healer.

  The physicians laughed. To bring a man back from the dead? It is impossible! the work of the gods. So she went to the potters, who know how to repair even the most broken clay. The potters laughed. Foolish girl, the body is not a pot though some may say it so. She wandered then, asking all and every person she found. The king offered her a coin, the priest a prayer shawl. The thief gave her a stolen promise, and the warrior gave her a knife so sharp that it could make the sky bleed.

  She walked to the ends of the earth. The sun gave her a band of light to wear upon her hand. The moon gave her a crown of silver to wear on her head.

  Still, she found no person to help her. So she went to the animals. Hanu gave her an apple whose seeds would grow into apple trees overnight. The garu gave her a fright, and she stole from those thieves of the sky a song to whistle on her passage. At last she came to be a beautiful place, a tree covered in white silk and jewels hung all around.

  She asked the spider for her love. And the spider told her of the witch. They played at riddles for each letter of the witch’s holy name, the hidden name that each witch or warlock holds in their heart away from the world. The girl would win a letter, but if she lost the spider would eat the girl as just another morsel who wound up in her web.

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  And nine riddles later the girl walked from the spider’s nest with eight letters of a name and a fine silk purse to carry her gifts in.

  She walked with the moon and sun between her, a turn away from the path of days. She drank sweet water from a river of tears, and fought a great beast in a valley filled with mirrors. She tamed the horse of sorrow that rides before every funeral, but those are tales for another day.

  She came to the witch on the day her appleseeds ran out, the day her hunger and thirst was greater than even in her journey. The witch’s hut was built as a folly, with walls too small and too straight and perfect to hold any living being.

  Still, she persisted. She opened the door, which had been drawn on the side of a wall. She walked into the rooms, as she felt her body stretch and shrink. She spoke to the guards, whose faces were crude child’s work, and fought through them til they brought the girl before the witch.

  “I have walked through the sands of the wasteland. I have spoken with the hanu, the garu, to spiders and kings. I have earned a knife to cut the sky, and a sack that holds the dreams of all who walk with me. I am born in the world you have left, but I have gained the gifts of heaven and earth.

  “I come to beseech you, mother of magic, to give me the life of my beloved.”

  The old witch sat, still as a statue. Her skin was covered in whorling marks, her tongue split in two like a snake. The hair of her head was white as the silk bag the girl carried, her nails stained red as the apple’s peel.

  “Name him.”

  And the girl realized she could not recall her lover’s name.

  “You have strayed and dallied long away. Your lover’s bones are scattered to the winds. He has been dead for years, but inside of you you carry his memory. Name him, and I will restore your love.”

  And the girl cried, for she did not know his name.

  The witch laughed, and blew the girl away. The girl swore vengeance, and went to destroy the witch. She learned magic, speaking to the wind, and the dead, and the fires of life itself. She walked back between the sun and moon, and burned the old crone’s paper house to dust.

  She had hoped the violence would silence the pain in her body. It turned out it only made her hollow. No one remembered the girl who had come before her adventures. No one would tell her tales or bring her food in her old age.

  So she sat down on the witch’s crude throne, until her hair turned white and her nails were stained, and a girl came asking to bring her lover back to life.

  Is there a lesson here? Some stories are just stories, but perhaps there is a lesson here, a story in the story. But will you waste your life trying to find it?