Cobwebs & Crow Magic - Chapter 2

These unfolding adventures of The Goblin & The Crow are given their narrative by a single rune shuffled and drawn from Liffruma. The rune, artwork & words all inspire a dimensional space or realm in which to consider ourselves and our journeys with the deck. For chapter 2, card 62 Stencnes was randomly drawn to inspire the tale’s theme.

“To fearlessly venture on a journey along an untrusted track is the deepest of bird magic. To be chosen to travel by a feathered guide is a gift rarely bestowed and always by nightingales or some other mellifluous songbird. So to be cawed by a corvid is to embark into the very source of magic.”

Niðhöggr - Geatweard, Helheimr.

Awakening this time in utter darkness and still bound, goblin tried desperately to peer for any form in the absolute coal pitch dark engulfing her. A rapid rhythm rattled to her side like rapping on a door. Distantly high above Brother Mōne swept aside clustering clouds obscuring his night gazes and beamed down, his smile illuminating the rhythmic beating form outside. Goblin was now able to make out a small moonlit framed window marking the boundary of her prison.

The silhouette of a bird appeared, flapping outside and flying directly towards the dark glassy panes. Wincing backwards into the mattress and wall, goblin braced herself as the impact approached. Shutting her eyes tight once again but determined this time not to weep, especially for a dumb bird.

The beating of the wings grew closer and closer and closer until without any splintering shattering crash it fell eerily quiet. She heard only her breath trying to pull air inside to still her fears as silence sang like fog blinds. Needing to look but still too completely scared to even peep from just one eye, goblin remained fearfully frozen as her grandmother’s voice echoed through her head, “Goblins are fearsome because they are fearless!” Goblin thought how she'd always been a disappointment to her Bloodcestors in that way. She had never been fearsome, just fearful and from a very very young age. Goblin felt sure this was because she remembered some other place, somewhere else and as so often, she questioned all the reasons and excuses goblins gave for why they lived as they lived. Goblin was always certain it wasn’t meant to be like that.

The silence was now so heavily ripe it seemed to have entombed her sense of hearing. Goblin would have to look. Just one quick peep should at least pop the ache to comprehend what hadn’t happened when the bird didn’t hit the window. Goblin decided to peep incredibly quickly through just a tiny slit in one eye only. Unfortunately her eye muscles were frozen rigid from being held so tightly shut. When she finally summoned the courage to peep, her eyelids overreacted by opening wider than they had ever opened before in her entire life. There, just an inch from her eyeball was the head, eye and beak of a crow that hadn’t died not shattering the window. Goblin gasped unable to think as a jet-coloured cackle erupted from the crow’s widening beak. It stopped still fixing a menacing eye on hers before hopping off goblin’s chest to the mattress. Then crow pulled back the sheet, looked at the bindings holding goblin fast and cawed once more playfully before refolding the cover back into place. The crow then turned, unfurled its wings and took flight towards the window. It simply and silently slipped passed the glass as if were not made from physical material at all. Like something ethereal and unreal. A freedom denied to goblin. Something magically mystical.

Brother Mōne kept smiling to ensure the goblin’s cell was illuminated. Not to comfort goblin but so he might drink in the events of crow’s magic show, now unfolding in that small sunken space of lost love and malnourished futures. The magic began when a cluster of spiders arrived scurrrying in weaver-legions. They climbed and vaulted, swung and shifted, laying silken braids to anchor the ancient Cræft of the Cobweb. The web of lines and times and spirals that amplify wyrmholes was forming ever denser tunnels of their Cræft. Threads were spun and webbing glistened all around there and beyond and behind and before everything we recognise as real and stable.

This Cræft was something so mystically rare that it hasn’t been seen being performed for centuries and goblin felt something else watching too, from over Brother Mōne’s shoulder. Something huge, of powerfully strong magic was witnessing this Cobspider Cræft so long unseen and forgotten by almost all creatures except the spiders themselves and perhaps the crow? Was the crow controlling the spiders? That seemed so unlikely given that Cob and Crow Cræft are very different magical disciplines indeed. Was that hidden shadowy, over the shoulder figure in control then? Perhaps, worried goblin. Goblin was scared but being scared always comforted goblins. It made them more fearless usually but this bound goblin had always been rather unusual. She sensed detachment and desire from that shadowy witness. That shadow-power was wishing for the wisdom of magical hindsight and the power it offered. Wishing for hindsight is only Urðr’s to gift and a dangerous thought to linger on.

Goblin watched as the weavers wove static magic. She was incapable of comprehending their ancient art and instead just saw hundreds of tiny, juicy spiders. Goblin was now so hungry from her ordeal. All she wanted was to gobble some up and fill her aching dry belly. The spiders though were too wise, never wandering too near goblin’s face. Since goblin was also tied down she couldn’t grab any of the mystical weavers to munch, so on they wove.

And then something else happened…

All the spiders left except one. It crawled up and sat on goblin’s chest seeming to stare directly at goblin. It raised itself up on six legs and folded what suddenly seemed like its arms and opened one of its eyes, much much larger than all the others, scrutinising goblin. Goblin opened her mouth, pleading with the weaver “Give me your little life so my belly might stop aching, please spider. I need strength to escape this imprisonment. Offer me your fearsome life force so I might live to escape. Walk towards my mouth and I’ll lay my tongue as a drawbridge to your sacrifice.”

Spookily the spider obeyed and walked towards goblin’s open mouth. As goblin extended her tongue it did indeed appear to be just like a deep wooden brown, moist and pitted drawbridge. The spider crawled onto the tongue and as fast as the goblin could lash her tongue back in she slammed shut her mouth, registering a small giggle emanating from the spider as it was pulled inside.

Then it happened again...

Everything went dark. Suspended in time’s stationary stopped stillness. Cræft magic exploded within goblin. First goblin felt a sharp compression throughout her body. She realised this power was way vaster than her. This was everything ever, all pressing together and she couldn’t think past the density of magic not just around her but deep inside her. Then from nowhere a bursting gush, of what we shall call Æther but that the goblin couldn’t comprehend remotely.

The magic rolled through her adjusting all the weight and space of time. Goblin suddenly felt very terribly small and curled up like a foetus to sleep. Totally overcome from traveling through the magical wyrmhole, goblin didn’t realise that her bindings had melted away as she was jolted awake in some other place, wide eyed and wide mouthed.

At that exact moment the spider inside her danced free from her mouth, chuckling. The spider walked away up a web thread and vanished. Gone.

Not gone however, more appearing from nowhere was the crow, towering above goblin like a vast shadow. Goblin comprehended that she was suddenly and devastatingly very tiny. Very very terribly tiny. She had after all she recalled, just hurtled through the entire nine realms and beyond. All the vastness of creation had just been absorbed by her and was burdening her new miniature form. What’s more, all these new realms and remembrances were crammed into her suddenly smaller brain.

Goblin couldn’t seem to hold any thoughts at all. New thoughts rose up and spilled free. All poor goblin could understand right now was that she was facing the immediate consequences of being dinner. Actually being gobbled up as crow grub and goblin shuddered at this thought. The crow tilted its head and fixed the tiny goblin with a deep terrifying stare. One of the looks it had perfected over many many years of being a crow of the Cræft. A Bloodcestry that sings so fiercely through all corvids.

“Smelt you a mile off!” rasped the crow.

“Please don’t eat me!” mumbled goblin while stammering in disbelief realising the crow had actually just spoken. Why does every magical layer of any mystical peeling onion have to be faced with immediate denial? The crow then seemed to curl it's normally rigid beak into an uncertain smile, which is apparently now possible for goblin to see with her magically burgeoning new perceptions.

The crow chuckled explaining to goblin that it took vast cosmic forces just to bring her here, free from her previous imprisonment. “Do you really imagine all those immense and dangerous mystical forces were woven together just for you to be a snack?“ Crow tutted and continued to explain just how terribly difficult to digest miniature goblins are in fact. Quite disagreeable, like eating miniature goblins is quite an everyday experience. Continuing to chatter on the crow began explaining how an old friend often remarked that some parts of goblins never quite leave the body fully. There were sometimes bits that lingered but crow qualified this by pointing out that the old friend had always been quite a queer rook in truth. The crow gabbled on and on about more and more times gone by. Stories of other tiny goblins and their fates until furiously our goblin found the power to speak up, interrupting the crow.

“I don’t feel reassured by these stories you know. You’re talking about eating my fellow goblins! Why crow have you brought me here? Why have you picked on me?”

“Why not?” he cawed back. This wasn’t the answer goblin required and so she kept repeating

"Why me?” over and over again.

“You’re not special if that’s what you’re thinking?" pecked the crow. Goblin was silenced by this pointed answer. The crow then looked away and stillness throbbed silently. Eventually the crow cleared its throat and sighed a short almost melodic caw and then stopped still once more as a blackbird with a bright yellow beak flew in and landed to face the crow.

“Beautiful Ærīc. Thank-you for coming.” charmed crow to the new arrival.

Ærīc lowered his head and the crow mirrored him. The blackbird began to warble and call and wrap thoughts into melodies that bloomed like water meadow flowers. As Ærīc sung goblin felt joy swim through her tiny frame as images of her next life cycle flashed inside her mind as melodic images entwined in birdsong. Goblin saw her life tied to the crow. Merging as one being with one mind. Riding together through worlds, times and the other places on a quest to find the source of goblin’s truest essence. She finally felt at ease and sighed a long easy sound of peacefulness.

Dropping suddenly down from a long single thread the spider from her mouth returned and smiled at goblin. The crow teased and poked fun at the goblin for begging the spider to sacrifice itself for her. The spider smiled and the crow darted forwards barely visibly and consumed the entire spider in a flash of savagery before remarking to goblin, “Spiders sacrifice so much for others yet so often they’re rewarded with fear by those they seek to assist. That weaver truly did give her life for you because you asked her to. Think on grublin.“ and with this the crow chuckled as the goblin gulped wishing the spider were in her belly.