Burlap

     I once was burlap, nothing grand. From that nothing, I was planned.

     Fashioned by fearsome paws, fabric ripped from old gathering bags.

     If I had to say a date, I could give no year for witchery is timeless. Under the sprawling branches of the forest, I remember hearing the calculated movement of witches—three in all: Zafaras cloaked in cinder coloured robes chocked full of darkness. They moved like shadows, countering the dark paths they stealthily darted upon.

      I had no means of memory at that time, though it is often misunderstood that the insentient do still have their sensibilities. Consider the leaves that flee when unwelcome breezes careen their way through the unmoving stasis. Dirt paths untravelled descend into overgrown oblivion, or matches reacting with fight or flight to friction. The trees that grow in search of light, from the confines of the soil as a seed to the trunked majesties of oak truncating the Haunted Woods. Where there is light, there is life. Even in undead thickets, we trick our ways into existence.

     So it was, so it shall be. So it came as no surprise when the witches snatched me up on their private trick-or-treat, a burlap bag abandoned once my contents were emptied. It was, after all, the Month of Collecting. Halloween was approaching and I was to exist. The witches shrieked in delight as they grabbed me, the dark green Zafara cooing among themselves, “This is it. Sisters, we shall materialize the Burlap Bori. The matters of a Neopet who by design will serve our kind.”

     “To the tower at once!” jeered the fuchsia coloured one, pulling at my sides.

     “Not without the final ingredient,” implored the Zafara who had yet to speak. She reached above, her grey fur matching that of the dim branch she snapped. She waved the stick like a wand to gather the tired cobwebs above. Ironically, I was being homed while a poor Spyder was robbed of theirs.

     “Excellent,” their green leader spoke, the word rolling off like a spell. In their paws, I joined the ranks of Bogieberries and Magic Ghost Marshmallows. The latter smiled as they do; perhaps they knew their fate. The fuchsia Zafara carefully carried a tree stump fashioned into a cauldron. Many words can describe witches and among the few positive ones is resourceful—the Haunted Woods prove that one Neopet’s trash is another Neopet’s treasure. The most mundane things can be ingredients that transform our magical understanding of the world.

     While the witches cheered and jeered on their way back to their tower, I could feel eyes on me. More than one pair actually. I had no vision yet, but the onlooker had plenty to spare: a tiny Spyder peeked at me while wrapped up in the cobweb that the grey Zafara had torn down. Maybe he also knew what was to come.

     The tower was meagre, just a few stories high. Its entrance was a mouth of a door; gnarled spikes for teeth reaching at the feet of those who dared to enter. The green Zafara wrung her hand before her and the ancient oak door opened as requested. The insides of the tower were messier than my own previous contents, but a ghostly golden light emanating from a cauldron at the center of the room stained everything like the dimming evening sun. The Zafara witches congregated at the cauldron and wheezed in delight. The green Zafara took lead and began to read from the worn spellbook clutched in her hands:

     From nothing to something is our design:

     Cauldron take these items from our kind.

     Fashion us a Neopet to do as we demand:

     Render a subservient Bori made of Burlap.

     The green Zafara dropped the Bogberries in first: the light turned putrid red. Then the Magical Ghost Marshmallows offset it to a presumptuous pink. She stirred the wooden ladle and bubbles attempted to escape. The fuchsia Zafara spoke next:

     Humble spell, please accept this:

     I pour in the Elixir of Intelligence.

     Grant our Bori sentience and duty

     To do our bidding without agency.

     She poured in the green concoction that was in her tree stump vessel. The concoction rumbled into a brownish grey. As if a colour cue, the quiet grey Zafara sprung back to life and grabbed the cobwebbed branch. The displaced Spyder hiding it in darted out, undetected, and made its way to a corner of the crumbling ceiling. From there, the Spyder watched as the grey Zafara continued the spell,

     Insides made of cobweb stuffing next.

     Our magic and yours thus intersect.

     We now offer you the form of fabric

     To finalize a Neopet from the inorganic.

     As the cobwebs entered the mixture, the liquid muddied to a brown—the same shade of burlap I was to become. The green Zafara witch took her lead again, finalizing their design with the incantation,

     Welcome a Burlap Bori into our tower,

     Tending the duties within our power.

     Only when a resident gives him a name

     Shall the contract go up in flames!

     And there I was. I rose out of the cauldron untouched by its contents like a Flankin tiptoeing through a flame unscathed. I could see the way you see, I could breathe the way you breathe. I was still the same, a figure made out of burlap, but in ways I didn’t understand I was more myself than ever before. The witches cheered as I took my shape: flopping strands of mop for hair, weathered fabric for a shell and two brown buttons in place of eyes. I was a Bori willed from the middle of the night.

     The green witch spoke first, “Nameless Bori, you are our servant now in exchange for this spell’s outcome. Without a name you cannot defy the residents of this tower, and you will need to do the tasks we ask.”

     The stitching on my smile loosened and allowed me to respond, but the unseen weight of the magical contract shaped the words out of my mouth, “I understand. What needs to be done first?” It was my voice, and it wasn’t—a peculiar start.

     The grey and fuchsia Zafara beamed, knowing their rote routines were ameliorated by this newfound service. The fuchsia witch croaked, “First, sweep the floors around the ingredient bureau!”

     And the grey one piped, “And start the morning meal now—the apples won’t carve themselves, and we want to reserve our magic for more spells.”

     The green witch nodded in confirmation, and so it started. In a whirl of movement, tiresome and initiated by a force I could only describe as a marionette moved by a puppeteer’s accord, I completed my tasks. Living to work, and working to live—I can’t remember how many nights passed of this. I was relieved when they all fell asleep, the nocturnal beings that they are, and that was my only chance to return to my prior state through a slumber of my own.

     As Halloween approached, the onslaught of witch-demanded tasks increased—they kept busy, which kept myself busier. They were distantly strict with their commands, when the green one slipped—she asked me to clear the cauldron room of its cobwebs.

     “As you ask,” I instinctively responded as I bumbled around for the step stool.

     I entered the room and propped myself up in the corner— it was likely that centuries of Spyder webs accrued in the nooks of the tower—where I noticed a familiar face. The Spyder from the Woods the day I was collected peered right back at me, its tiny eight eyes almost teary.

     “Please don’t take down my web,” the Spyder cried in its tiny voice. “You saw me lose one, I can’t bear losing another.”

     That’s right-- the Spyder’s web. This Spyder’s web in particular was used to construe myself. My head ached for the first time, perhaps I was connected to this Spyder by something more than the serendipity of place and time. The pressure of the spell eased itself off my back, and for the first time I answered on my own.

     “I won’t,” my voice said— no, I said.

     The Spyder sighed in relief. “There’s a spell on this tower, and just like you, I am not able to leave. I’ve been hiding in this clutter of cobwebs just getting by, hoping to go unnoticed. How do I repay you?”

     I had no idea. I quietly stammered so, “I don’t know.”

     “Well, what is your name? The least I can do is thank you.”

     “I am nameless.” The pressure of the contract refortified at this response, and I could feel my newfound volition closing off like the canopies blocking out light in the heart of the Haunted Woods. Maybe it was all over.

     “That’s alright,” the Spyder squeaked. “I thank you all the same, Kind One.”

     I tensed up like papier-mache. Was I just named? I heard the tearing of thick paper from a distance—the contract breaking—and a gold light began to emanate from inside me. The same overwhelming golden hue that swirled in the cauldron room the night the Zafara witches took me in.

     Next, the echo of vials dropping pierced the shredding sound, and the Zafaras scrambled to get into the room. The green one bellowed, “Who named him?! Who named him?! Was it you?” as she pointed at the fuchsia one.

     The fuchsia Zafara snarled back, “Of course I didn’t! I know the spell!”

     They turned to the grey one who looked on with distress. She snapped, “I wouldn’t have either!”

     The witches drew their wands against each other, conjuring up spells to find the resident of the witch tower who broke the contract. I began to levitate as the clamour reached a threshold, the gold light lifting me up in the room. The green witch sent a spell toward the grey Zafara, who dodged just in time—only for it to shatter the stone roof. Little flames burst around the circular room, like a cauldron spilling forth. This was my way out.

     The Spyder jumped onto my shoulder as we began to ascend. “He’s getting away! How did the spell break? Who named him?!” the Zafaras howled skyward.

     My voice came to me, and this time it was myself speaking: “The Spyder whose home you destroyed while gathering cobwebs was made a resident of your tower against its choice. The Spyder named me because I was merciful.”

     The witches cackled in this realization, the tower crumbling around them and consumed by the lights and fires emanating from within. Just as the light serves as a guide for the saplings that preserve through the Haunted Woods unforgiving canopies, we find a way. We trick our ways into existence.

     I am hauled through the air by contractual magic, away from the tower with my Spyder friend and newfound agency. From a distance, I see the Zafaras interlock hands and their final incantation reverberates through the forest:

     Doubled trouble, foiled in our rubble.

     A Bori and Spyder burst our bubble.

     Our sympathies for the darkest nights,

     Tricksters tricked in robes of light.

     The End.