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The Chest of Wonders

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I've been toiling away at this particular picture for a while now, on and off for a couple months. (I actually started it last October as a Halloween project and redid it two times!) It's the most lengthy art project I've ever attempted, and I'm really happy with the final product, and while I do find distaste in the watermark, I must protect my work.  This serves the purpose of being an illustration for the short story you can read below.  Please enjoy and feel free to provide comments!
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    A long time ago, there was a dark, damp forest, which no child would dare come near; and within this forest, there was a little two-floor house, built as if the designer had not possessed a sound (or rational) mind when he had created its plans.  A cobble path lead from nowhere into the porch, which was floored with solid stone bricks and walled with some dark wood, and ivy crawling up each uncut, unpainted corner post all the way up to the porch’s roof.  The outer walls of the house were constructed of a dark wood much like that displayed by the porch, sporting many tall, thin and uncut branches in each corner, insulated by the wool of many wild thistles.  The windows were few, the glass made from many different colors as if someone had picked up a dozen broken shards of glass and melted them into a single sheet, and framed with the cleanest reeds, which were tied together with ramshackle vines like those possessed by grapes.  The roof was thatched with what appeared to be pine needles and grape vines, with a small, round chimney, with what appeared to be a teapot welded to its top.

    What might make one wonder about the rationality behind this house was, rather than appearing to be abandoned like one might think, smoke that smelled of cinnamon was always seeping from the teapot’s spout.  The few that dared come close enough to know this fact claimed that the house was haunted by the spirit of some long-dead spice merchant, or a deceased old farmer who specialized in such herbs.

    However, this was far from the case.

    Inside, upon an old rocking chair set in front of a hearth, that looked to be made by hand, was an old woman wearing old, torn and burnt brown and black robes, worn by decades of cauldron mishaps and incendiary salamanders.  As one may think, based upon these activities, this aged woman was indeed a witch, and her name was Madam Cardamom.  The woman often enjoyed long hours sitting in front of her hearth which she burned her cinnamon in, constructed of bricks with the odd vine of ivy poking out of the cracks every now and again.  She also liked various herbal teas, preferably of the floral kind, which her tongue ached for now.

    As a young maiden passed by the doorway to the living room the old witch sat in, she called out to her. “Saffron!  Be a sweetheart and fetch me some lavender tea, would you?”

    The girl stopped in her tracks and looked at her.  She wore a corset and a long, plain dress sullied by months of similarly occurring accidents regarding potions and cauldrons.  Her hair was strawberry blonde, cut short with a tightly-woven bun in the back, framing a youthful, angular face with light green eyes.  Her orphaned apprentice, Saffron. 

    “Okay.” She replied, breaking into a swift trot.  Saffron was a young child, earnest but still somewhat misguided.  She seemed incapable of doing the right thing unless she had previously been instructed upon the subject, and even then frequently needed a reminder.  She often found herself irked by her own ignorance, wishing only to know how to do things right the first time around so that she never had to make the mistake in the first place.

    As she went down the stairs and appeared in the cellar where they kept their workspace and all of their materials, a smile crept onto her face and she looked on into the room in childish awe as she searched the cabinets and shelves for a vile of dried lavender.  The mystery and allure of witchcraft had never become old in her apprenticeship, as the sole reason she pursued it was to escape the normalcy of the mundane lives her ancestors had lived.  She felt that she could achieve something more, something grander, more adventurous and daring than something that her dead father or mother could ever achieve with their limited perspective.  Of course, Saffron was still a child, just a few months shy of 13 years old, only apprenticed for just over a year, and children often had fantasies of these kinds.

    She originally kept her eye trained on the insides of the herb cabinets on the right side of the room, but as it always happened her eye would occasionally slip to the very back of the room where a dusty old, dark-colored chest lay, untouched for decades.  For some reason, Madam Cardamom had always said that while some rules were less strict, the one rule she should never break was ‘never open the old dark chest’.  She had always been dodgy about the subject and never gave details as to why, only told her that the chest contained things that mortal man was never intended to know.  Whenever she inquired further about it, it was always the same; ‘Never try to open that chest.’

    Sometimes she would give vague reasons as to why, what had happened to those who had tried beforehand, but the warnings had never been able to shake her nervous curiosity.  She frequently felt guilt for not heeding her warnings, morbid wonder and fascination when her imagination tried to find out what it contained and confusion when she considered that it would be much easier to control her curiosity if her mentor hadn’t made such a big deal of it and simply hid it away somewhere inconspicuous instead of leaving it out in the open.  It was as if she was testing her.

    Just as her hand reached the lavender she had been looking for, she fully turned her attention to the chest.  It was like a demon, tempting the child to sin, testing her willpower.  ‘Things mortal man was not meant to know…’ Those words were intimidating, but surprisingly offensive at the same time.  Saffron had become a witch’s apprentice and turned to the darker side of life’s coin for the sake of rising above mortal man, for she found the life boring and purposeless.  If mortal humans could not open it, then why not she, who was not mortal as was typically thought to be?  Witches could do whatever they pleased, she often thought; they could set whole forests aflame, could control an entire murder of crows, could even achieve immortality, or they could simply make some strange tea and sit around the hearth enjoying life.  Mortal men could not achieve this.

    Her bare feet took one hesitant step forward, still holding the vile of lavender.  She couldn’t let her master intimidate her into cheating her out of all of the world’s knowledge.  To do the fantastic things that they did, a witch had to know how to do them.  What if some things could only be done with knowledge that ‘man was not intended to know’? 

    She took another step forward, and then another.  Madam Cardamom wouldn’t know.  She only wanted to take a quick peek inside, and then go make the tea.  She only wondered what would happen afterwards.  Would she slowly lose her mind as all of the information managed to register?  Would life go on as usual?  She hoped that it was the latter.  If it was like that, then Cardamom would never have to know.

    She looked over her shoulder at the door to make sure that nobody was coming in, and then began to take slow, hesitant steps towards the chest.  Her heartbeat pounded, her breath quickened with each step, her wonder and intrigue pushing her forward.  She soon found herself kneeling in front of the chest, her wide, curious eyes staring at it with all of the curiosity she held, and still all of the guilt that came with breaking the rules behind her master’s back.  The mystery and intrigue that surrounded the chest was the perfect bait for a hapless child who didn’t know any better – well, perhaps Saffron had known better, but simply had not cared in the moments when she approached that chest.

    She blew the dust off, seeing clouds and flurries of dust accumulate in the air, which she recoiled from, coughing up whatever had found its way into her system.  When the dust had finally settled, she  turned back to it, seeing the simple, dark-wood chest, an ornate plaque set in the front; a stylistic, unusual rose was engraved in it, surrounded by floating petals, its stem spotted all over with numerous sharp thorns.  Underneath, it said;

    EVERY ROSE HAS ITS THORNS

    She was intrigued by the inscription, but not deterred.  She swallowed heavily, carefully placed her hands on the chest, and then began to slowly crack the lid which was curiously unlocked.  She didn’t stop to think about it much, peeking inside, trying to decipher what remained in the darkness inside, but couldn’t see well and opened the lid a little more, and then she just opened the lid entirely, allowing her a full view of its contents.

    A… Book.  It was a book.

    This was understandable, considering that this chest was supposed to contain ‘knowledge’, but what she did not understand was the size.  It didn’t exceed the dimensions or thickness of a typical novel.  The sheer levels of confusion she faced right then was comparable to the confusion one would face in the event that squirrels learned to make lemon pie with walnuts.

    She picked the book up regardless, scrutinizing the cover for a title or author, though there was none; only an ornate gold pattern bordered the edges.  She opened it, still confused, and became even more confused at the realization that there were no words inside either; just a large collection of yellowed, blank pages.  She started to flip through it, trying to find something, anything that might be what she came for.  She found something very different than what she hoped for, though.

    When she came upon a page somewhere in the middle of the book, a squirt of water came out of it and hit her between the eyes.

    She yelped in surprise and threw the book to the floor, her face utterly soaked and her heartbeat frenzied in her sudden panic.  Realizing that the racket would most certainly give her away, she stood up quickly and tried to find a hiding spot, some place where she could hide at least temporarily until the storm died down.  She looked to the long table in the middle of the room, and dove underneath it, knowing that this was a terrible place to hide but too frightened to come up with anywhere better.  She made no attempts to clean up the scene of the crime, knowing full well that her fingerprints were now marked in the dust that had remained upon the chest and that water soaked the floor and her clothes, all of which could not easily be reversed.

    Soon after, the sounds of footsteps began to echo from outside the room.  She began to panic furiously, breathing heavily.  What would Madam Cardamom do to punish her?  Would she be thrown to the forest’s local wolves?  Dissected to be made into viler potions than she hadn’t been yet shown?  Eaten in a pie??  None of it felt like a pleasant prospect.

    The door squeaked open, and when Saffron looked around she could see her master’s leather, high-heeled boots walking around to the back of the room.  When she finally came within view of the mess, she exclaimed, ‘Oh, my!’ and began to look around the room. “Saffron!  Saffron, dear!  Come here, please!”

    She didn’t respond, nor did she try to come out of hiding, too shaken by the whole event to work up the willpower to face punishment for what she had done wrong.  Madam Cardamom bent down and began to look under the table, soon seeing her pupil hiding underneath, her eyes wide and afraid.  She sighed and beckoned to her with her hand. “Come here, dear.”

    “A-are you going to eat me…?” She asked tentatively, shifting uncomfortably.

    “Of course not!” The old hag gave her a look that seemed to drift between ‘ridiculous!’ and ‘do you really trust me that little?’ “You will be punished, of course, but eating you would just be a waste of talent!  Our coven isn’t so vile as to eat children, remember?”

    “Y-yes.  I remember.” Saffron worked up the iron to come out of her little protective ball and come out from under the table, standing up with her master and staring at the floor in shame. “Will the wolves eat me instead?”

    “Ridiculous!  Stop jumping to conclusions!” She raised her voice a little at the idea that her pupil seemed so set on thinking that she would kill her. 

    When she noticed her pupil shrink a little in response, emitting a quiet whine, she sighed and patted her on the head, which earned her a hopeful little look from Saffron.  “So I’m not going to die?”

    “Not yet, no.” She stated calmly. “Why did you open it?”

    Saffron took a moment to gather her thoughts, her gaze returning to the floor.  She finally said, “I want to be a really good witch.  I don’t want to be normal.  So I thought that if I knew a lot of things, I would be an even better witch.  I thought that witches weren’t mortals and were excluded from the rule you said about the chest containing ‘what mortal man wasn’t meant to know’.  I thought that if I just took a look inside, I would be a better apprentice and you would never have to know how I got good.”

    Madam Cardamom simply stared at her for a moment, and then sighed, letting her hand slip off of her head.  “I appreciate your dedication.  However,” She paused to gather her thoughts. “Witches are still mortal.  You were once a normal human child, weren’t you?” Saffron looked up at her and nodded, but didn’t try to interject. “Any mortal can do what we do.  We are pinned as ‘witches’ because we dedicate our lives to this ‘vile’ craft.  Witches are no different than any normal human being.” Saffron took a moment to think on that. “As for the knowledge, I can see where you are coming from.  However, as the old adage goes, ‘too much of a good thing is no longer a good thing’.   Delving too far into any subject, to the point where the knowledge starts to become incomprehensible or utterly terrible, can have unfortunate consequences for the good-intentioned witch who discovered all of this.”

    “Unfortunate consequences?”

    “Yes,” She said, nodding slowly, speaking as if relaying a bedtime story to a child. “I once knew a witch, and during one coven meeting she didn’t seem quite right, so I asked her what was the matter.  She claimed that she had spoke with the devil.  I heard that she committed suicide two days after that.”

    Saffron looked on in horror, terrified of the idea. “The devil??  That sounds terrible!”

    Madam Cardamom slowly nodded. “Yes.  Some witches feed off of the power of Satan and his demons, as I’ve taught you, but why does he share it?  What are his reasons?  She may have discovered these things and despaired.  Witchcraft is like any science.  One may become overenthusiastic and go over the acceptable limits, which is where the craft becomes vile, the evil demons come into play, and where most witches fall into darkness.”

    “We don’t use the devil’s power, right?”

    She smiled and placed her hand back on her head.  Every time the terrible beast came up in a conversation, she needed reassurance that they weren’t as evil as him. “Of course not.  There are other places where we can obtain power.  Just look at the salamanders, for example.”  What she never told her was that most other sources were not particularly saintly themselves.

    She nodded uncertainly. “Okay…”

    A few seconds of silence passed, and then Madam Cardamom turned back to the mess on the floor and took her hand off of her head. “Now, first off, you have to clean up this mess, and then you still have to make me my tea.  And then, for opening the chest when I told you not to, I’ll have you weed the herb garden out back this time instead of doing it myself.” She bent down and picked up the vile of lavender, which her apprentice had dropped in her panic, and set it neatly on the table. “Chop, chop!”

    Saffron nodded and bent down to pick the book off the floor, somewhat concerned that it would spray her in the face again. “I understand… If I may ask, why did you tell me that this chest contained so much knowledge and wonder when it merely contained a prank item?”

    “I was testing you.” Madam Cardamom grinned and began laughing. “I’m old, but I’m not senile just yet.  I’m not so stupid as to leave something out in the open with the chance that it could seriously hurt you, even if I did have such an item.”

    “Okay… I understand that, but…” Saffron sighed somewhat disappointingly as she tried to unsuccessfully dry the book’s cover off on her soaked dress. “I feel kind of cheated.”

    “Which is natural.” She turned around and began to make her way back to the door. “I’ll be waiting for you by the fireplace.  Don’t forget my tea!”
©

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This is mine, and as such you may not recolor, edit, or otherwise alter or use it for your own purposes.  There is a signature and watermark for a reason, so please, mind your manners and keep your little mitts off.  Thank you. :3
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ArtOfTheGame's avatar
Wow, this is nicely done! That must have taken some effort to work out that perspective! The lighting makes it all feel nice and cozy too. Appropriate for the abode of a witch with a warm sense of humor!