Chapter Six

Pablo trudged through the forest, at wits end with frustration. Exhausted and filthy, his suit was torn and soiled. As he walked, he cursed himself for a fool. Approaching Heather at the funeral had been a mistake. Of course, in her bereavement, she could not help but see him as nothing but a villain. His clumsy attempt to smooth things over had only made things worse.

If only he had waited! A few days, perhaps, and Heather would be calm and somewhat more willing to listen.

If only he hadn't run away. If he had faced his fear and stayed to fight that wretched, terrifying snake, what then? Would Tabitha still be alive?

He could not quite silence the nagging voice in the back of his head that told him, maybe, he had no right to ask forgiveness.

He dismissed such cheerless thoughts with a shake of his head. No. Pablo would find Heather, and he would make things better. Somehow, he swore, he would think of something to say that would make her forgive him. At least Heather's trail was easy to follow.

Suddenly, a deep, stentorian noise echoed through the forest. It sounded almost like a moan of grief, though far too deep and loud to be anything human-like. Nor did it sound like it was far away.

Pablo froze in place and held his breath for several seconds. The sound died away, leaving only the sounds of the forest. He strained, and thought at last to hear the faint echo of voices. Could that be Heather? His heart ached, and he could not restrain himself.

"Heeeaaatheeerrr!" he screamed.

He lit out in a run in the direction of that deep, booming sound. What could it have been? It occurred to Pablo he might be running into danger, but that only made him run faster. If Heather was in trouble, he would hesitate this time. He would prove he was no coward.

The sounds grew closer, and Pablo perceived two: one, unmistakably Heather, and the other a deep, inhuman rumble. As the land gradually sloped downward, Pablo realized he was nearing the river. He burst through the trees, and his heart leapt with terror at what he saw.

A hulking monster stood in the center of the river, towering some ten feet above the surface. Pablo had never seen its like; some sort of golem, or rock giant? There was no time to speculate, as the creature turned, and regarded him with a pair of haunting yellow eyes. It spoke in a voice like grinding boulders.

"Ah, hello. You must be Pablo," it said.

Pablo, wishing desperately for a bow, planted his feet on the riverbank and stood his ground.

"How do you know my name?!" he demanded.

His voice sounded more like a terrified boy than a hero. He coughed, and tried again.

"What have you done with Heather, you monster?!"

The creature snorted, and seemed faintly amused.

"Heather? You mean, my daughter? Fear not, she is well. And closer than you think."

"Wait, daughter?"

Pablo racked his brain, and remembered something Heather had told him on their first date.

"It's you! Heather's father! That...that river god!"

"Correct. I am the Ancient Sleeping Guardian of the Glowing River," he said. Then, in a darker tone, "Heather has told me all about you, and how my beloved wife sacrificed herself to save you, while you ran away."

Pablo broke out in a cold sweat, realizing just who he was talking to. His impression on Heather's father could well influence his atonement with Heather. He gathered his composure and spoke in a pleading tone.

"My sincerest condolences, Sir Guardian. I know I've made some mistakes, but I can't let my relationship with Heather end this way! Please, sir, I just want to talk to her."

"You are welcome to try."

The creature moved aside, and gestured with his watery arms to a small tree on the far bank. Pablo squinted in confusion.

"Where...where is Heather?" said Pablo.

"Look closer, mortal."

Pablo examined the tree more closely, and noticed that it bore an uncanny resemblance to a human figure. Recognition struck him, and he gasped.

"Heather? No...no, no!"

He ran forward, heedless of the rushing water. His feet cleared the bottom, and the thrashed forward through the current, nearly drowning himself. When he reached the far bank he was sobbing.

The resemblance only grew as he approached the tree. He reached out and grasped the burl of wood that had once been Heather's face, now wreathed in a mane of leaves. Her features, transformed into patterns of bark, were frozen in a look of terror.

Pablo rounded on the Guardian.

"What have you done to her?!" he screamed.

"I did only what she asked of me," said the Guardian.

Pablo fell to his knees and outstretched his hands in a gesture of supplication.

"Please, sir, change her back!"

"Perhaps my daughter would rather be a tree, than talk to you. Aye, verily, who could blame her?"

The Guardian gave a tremendous yawn and began to settle into the river.

"Alas, the transformation has left me terribly drained. I must slumber yet again."

"But-"

"I bear you no ill-will, mortal. You are young, and foolish. I wish you peace. I wish you wisdom. I wish you far, far away from my daughter. And by the way, if you intend to shake loose your mortal coil, please do it some other way than drowning. I don't want your corpse stinking up my river."

And with that, the creature vanished beneath the churning surface of the water.

Pablo doubled over and wept for what seemed an eternity. At last, he steeled his nerves, stood up, and again faced the repellant thing that had been his girlfriend.

There it was, the same uncannily Heather-like tree. He approached it and again cradled the face in his hands.

"Forgive me, Heather," said Pablo.

He kissed her, feeling nothing but rough bark beneath his lips. He realized, to his dismay, that he had been half-expecting her to change back. He shook his head and stood back.

No. He would have no choice but to live with this tragic farce for the rest of his life. Hoping to numb his raging emotions, he fixated on the tree, and studied its every detail. He was not quite able to convince himself it was really just a tree, and not his beloved Heather, transformed.

However, as he studied it, he observed that although some of the branches had clearly once been Heather's arms, several other branches had sprouted about her head, back, and shoulders. A sudden, poetic impulse struck Pablo.

Yes, he thought, I must carry a reminder of this day, that I do not forget its lesson. I will carry a piece of my love forever.

Not wanting to deface her countenance on the "front" of the tree, he selected a stout branch that seemed to grow from her back. He gripped it in both hands and shifted his weight, preparing to snap it off in a single mighty heave…


In the inviolate darkness between death and rebirth, Heather found her mind.

She gasped and opened her eyes, but the world was not the same. She seemed to stand on the same riverbank, but everything was dark. Her eyes adjusted, and she began to notice bizarre details. The flowing river was replaced with a texture of static, and the ground was a crawling pattern of jagged purple lines.

"Where am I?" she said.

"Greetings, young one," said a bland male voice.

Heather started, and tried to turn, but found she could barely move. She was frozen in place, holding her arms up in the air.

A strange creature walked into view. Its body consisted of three pale green spheres of different sizes, stacked on top of one other to form a tapering pear-shaped mass, from which extended a set of ordinary looking arms and legs. The smallest sphere at the top, the "head" had a pair of large black eyes, a drooping nose, and a long mane of red hair tied back with a fillet of woven leaves. A wide grinning mouth was situated on the larger sphere below, the "chest."

"Who are you?" said Heather.

"I am the Spirit of the Forest, and I will be your guide," said the creature.

"My guide? You mean, you're my father's friend, right? The one who's going to teach me to be a wizard? Um...why can't I move?"

The Spirit of the Forest chuckled softly.

"Oh, Heather. So many questions. If you'd just listen, you'd hear all the answers."

"Listen? What?"

"Just listen."

Heather obeyed, and fell silent. At first she heard nothing, and then, she heard music.

It was a deep, soft music, that seemed to grow louder the more she listened. It was neither happy, nor sad. It crashed and swelled, only to quiet and fade, waxing and waning in an endless cycle. She was shocked to realize that she recognized the music, and in fact, had been hearing it constantly her whole life, but had never truly listened.

It was like no mortal music she had ever heard. At first, it was breathtakingly beautiful. She almost wanted to cry. But strange thoughts swam through her head, and she felt a powerful longing for...what? To dissolve, to return her constituent atoms to the cosmos as was her fate. To surrender to that hideous siren call, and cease to exist.

"What is that?" she breathed.

"That, my dear apprentice, is the Song of the Forest. Get used to it."

"Huh?"

"You know, my deepest condolences for the loss of your mother."

"My...my mother…"

"Magic always comes at a terrible price, and right now, you're paid up for about half. You've got the sadness, sweetheart. Now all you need is some madness."

Before she could ask this frustratingly cryptic thing what he meant, the sky of the horizon began to lighten, with the dull red glow of dawn.

Heather somehow remembered she wasn't even facing East, but South.

"The sun's coming up. Stare directly into it, for as long as you can."

"What? Stare into the sun? I'll go blind!"

"You're a tree, Heather. You need light. It will allow you to see."

The sun was rising unnaturally fast, and soon it was high in the sky. Heather was able to tilt her head up to look at it, and immediately winced as the brilliant light stabbed her eyes.

But soon, her eyes adjusted. She felt like she had never really looked into the sun. It was bright, yes. Blinding, even. But it was beautiful. Its light was the most beautiful thing Heather had ever seen. It nourished her. And true to the Spirit of the Forest's word, she saw.

The sun illuminated for her the secrets of the universe: she saw the darkness at the center of all creation, and glimpsed the red, idiot god that waited there to devour it all. And she saw the faint, frighteningly tenuous web of light that held the beast at bay. The gossamer strands were made of symbols, which formed instructions and rules which seared themselves upon her brain as she viewed them. This web of logic formed the foundation of the universe.

And it was all arbitrary. It was weak. It could all be changed.


Suddenly, Heather was struck in the shoulder by an unfathomable, white-hot pain. The vision fell apart into a sea of static, and she screamed.

"Sp-spirit! What-"

The Spirit of the Forest appeared, looking slightly annoyed.

"Oh, dog-trangit," he said, "Sorry, Heather. We'll have to finish this lesson later."

And everything went dark again.


Heather's vision returned, and she was back on the riverbank in the physical world. She was still frozen in place, and still screaming. The bark that had been her skin began to change back, receding like a wave spreading out from her screaming mouth. Branches shrank and retracted into her body, and soon she could move her arms. Her roots retracted into her feet, and she stumbled. All the while she screamed from the splitting pain in her shoulder.

Someone had gripped her by her good shoulder and was shaking her. Someone was shouting at her. As her confused senses settled, she looked up and recognized him.

"Heather! I'm so sorry! For Glob's sake, speak to me!" said Pablo.

Her lip curled in disgust and she swatted him away.

"What the blood, Pablo! Can't you see I was in the middle of something?! GAH! My shoulder…! What did you do?"

Heather reached back and touched where the pain was most concentrated, right above her right shoulder blade. Her hand came back red with blood.

Pablo stood there, clutching a tree branch to his chest. The broken end was likewise stained red. Heather felt her anger rising as she realized what he had done, yet she paused. Pablo was staring at her, mouth agape, an expression of mounting horror written on his face.

"Heather...what happened to your hair?" he wheezed.

"My hair? What?"

Taken aback, she reached up to feel it.

"What's wrong with my ha-"

She felt a leaf on her head, and tried to brush it away, only to feel more leaves. And more. Where was her hair? She pulled herself to her feet. Pablo tried to help her, but she shoved him away. She staggered down to the water's edge and squinted, trying to make out her reflection.

She did not recognize the face that stared back up at her. Just as she had feared, her dark hair had been transformed into a mane of leaves. The sclera of her eyes had turned green, and her pupils had narrowed into vertical slits. A pair of curving branches had sprouted from the top of her head, like antlers.

Heather reached up with trembling hands and touched them. They were real. It was all real. She felt faint.

"Is that...me?" she whispered.

"Not anymore, it isn't," came a voice from behind.

She whirled around and saw the Spirit of the Forest leaning against a tree, same bland expression on his face.

"What did you do to me?"

"I...you turned into a tree, and I thought...oh, I'm sorry! I broke a branch off! I don't know what I was thinking," said Pablo.

"Huh?" she said, turning to Pablo.

"He can't see me," said the Spirit of the Forest, "Like any predator, he has eyes only for his prey."

Pablo was moving closer, one hand outstretched, the other still clutching the bloody branch. She stared at him, as if seeing him for the first time. It was as if a veil had been removed from her vision. He was not the perfect boy that she had fallen in love with. And she was not the naive girl that had loved him. The last of her old identity broke off and fell away.

"Heather, please-"

"Don't call me that!" she screamed.

Pablo cringed backwards, and the whole forest seemed to quake as she spoke. A dread power awoke within her and began to pour from between the cracks of her clenched fists in the form of amber light.

"Heather is dead. I am…Huntress Wizard! And I don't need you. I don't need anybody!"

"Mm, not quite," said the Spirit of the Forest.

Huntress Wizard thrust out her palm and projected a bolt of power, aimed for Pablo's head. He ducked, and ran. Huntress Wizard watched him go, running down the bank of the river, gasping with terror. When he was a hundred yards downstream, he stopped and looked back. Huntress Wizard extended her palm and prepared to shoot at him again. He dove into the river, and soon passed from sight.

"Not bad, for your first spell, my apprentice," said the Spirit of the Forest.

"So what happens now?" said Huntress Wizard.

"Go home and sleep for eight hours. Your next lesson begins as soon as you hit your REM cycle."

With that said, the Spirit of the Forest seemed to twist himself into a spiral, which dwindled to nothing. He was gone in an instant.


Huntress Wizard returned to her, or rather, to Heather's old cabin. She rested, and the Spirit of the Forest came to her in her dreams, revealing to her the secrets of nature.

She marveled at her newfound senses. Her vision sharpened, revealing things unseen: spirits and monsters that moved through the spaces between worlds. Her hearing was keener, her reflexes quicker, and now she heard the Song of the Forest at all times. It beckoned to her, tempting her to relinquish her mind and become one with them.

The trees that Tabitha had felled to build her cabin were long dead, and did not sing. Huntress Wizard felt claustrophobic, and worse, she felt like an interloper. She could not bear to remain, as this was no longer her home.

At first, she agonized over what she might take with her, into her new life. But soon, she realized, material goods were of little value to a wizard, who could shape reality with their mind.

She put a few changes of clothing in a bag, along with her flute. Heather's flute? The distinction was becoming tiresome. She put a whetstone in her bag, for the good knife she put in a sheath in her boot. And, though she hardly needed it, she took Tabitha's bow. Her mother's bow.

Try as she might, Huntress Wizard could not stop thinking of Tabitha as her mother. That pain would never go away.

Cooking implements, tools, boxes and jars for storage, a pithy handful of books. Dross. Detritus. She set the cabin on fire. As it burned, she disappeared into the forest, and did not look back.


Author's Notes

If you're wondering how there could be a section from Pablo's POV when the whole framing device of this story is Huntress Wizard telling a story to Finn, there's a very simple explanation: I am a bumbling dilettante! I slapped my forehead when I realized what I'd done, but I'm not getting rid of it. Pablo is meant to be a deeply flawed character whose actions are mostly in the wrong, but I wanted an antagonist a little bit more nuanced than, say, Gaston, from "Beauty and the Beast," who was my original model. This section helps with that.

Also, that mystical mumbo-jumbo that Heather experiences in tree-form is my attempt to explore what Huntress Wizard's "madness" might be. In S6E38, "You Forgot Your Floaties," when Betty is explaining her research into "magical madness and sadness," or MMS, we see a montage of wizards suffering from it. One of the scenes is Huntress Wizard fused with a tree, pretending to be a branch. I think that's supposed to be her form of "madness."

So why does she do that? I was reminded of Ursula K. le Guin's Wizard of Earthsea, where wizards can transform into animals, but if they stay transformed too long they'll lose their humanity and forget how to change back. I thought something like that would be a neat idea for Huntress Wizard's "madness," i.e., she feels an irresistible pull to become part of nature and experience "ego death," and turning into a branch or a tree is her way of temporarily indulging that desire.

Also, also, do you have any idea how tempted I was to make Keith say, "Honestly? Mood," with regards to Heather turning into a tree? Hilarious as that would be, I felt it would be tonally jarring.