Needles and Dust

 "In 'Needles and Dust', a hastily arranged meeting with a desperate, mad preacher offers a witch an opportunity for revenge against the coven who had banished her. Casting needles into diverse divining dusts, the Patchwork Witch discovers as well a chance to betray the fraught fraud seeking her help."

The last we saw of Dawn Campbell Weaver, the Patchwork Witch, she had given me direct one of my more memorable introductions and publications. Right away she provided me, mind you through the experiences of another, with yet another Tale that was immediately accepted for publication. Now while the Widow Weaver did not give her consent for that second Tale, that it was accepted right out the gate and it was all about her tapped into that one weakness common through this cursed creation called humanity and that is vanity. As a loner and a recluse, shunned and avoided her whole life, this little bit of attention she's getting in her afterlife seems to be suiting her. She has some things to say and I think she's finding her voice.

I've mentioned that there are different ways in which I arrive at what I am to write when a Tale has ended. Sometimes I consult a grand and mysterious List wherein titles, most all subject to change, hold the places of story ideas. This is a fertile ground as there is quite a bit buried here, some quite ready to write and just needing the right voice and others aching to be written but unable to define what they want to be. Then there are the moments of inspiration pulled from whatever aether surrounding my skull allows to spark. These Tales are rife with such examples, either inspired by such inconsequential things as passing a cyclist on the way home to the inspirational moments in "Fruit of the Womb" and "Permissible License", either in-story or construction, which gave rise to "Goodbye Mama Elena" and "Dance of Skins" respectively.

Another source which I have used quite often for the choice of what next to write is seeing a submission call and things start off from there. This is how "Needles and Dust" began, from a call for witchcraft, one that specifically focused on "divination". Well, I had me a witch, indeed I did. I actually have me right now... let's see... starting with Delores Jackson and her 12 boarders, that's 13 until we add the Patchwork Witch. Add to that growing number Dieumene over in Pitt's Junction and we're now at 15. I also happen to know someone else ya'll have met before is a witch... something I did not know when I found her up in that tree so that leaves me right now with 16 witches, some a wee bit more active than others. Dawn was active and then some.

I needed a story under 5k words in which witchcraft was specifically the focus. Dieumene's struggles here fated night over in Pitt's Junction did involve descriptions of ritualistic magic... imagination mixed with a dive down the traditions of a specific lwa... but the story was about a thousand words too long and I was having concerns over the violence present as this call hinted toward nothing extreme. "The Witch of Pitt's Junction" whistles happily past that bar. Thus I needed a new story and thus I needed Dawn. No other witch is anywhere near developed to her degree and I had motivation already established. In "Necessary Arrangements" it is hinted that this is not the first meeting between the Patchwork Witch (Dawn Campbell Weaver) and the Patriarch (Jonathon Kearns). Or, in other words, I needed to make necessary arrangements in order for "Necessary Arrangements" to take place so that I may get on to fulfilling that conflagration with Lucifer's match and get the Kearns' over to Pitt's Junction and out of the way so the Patchwork Witch can go on to wonder why her dolls are still little bitches even with the Widows gone.

Is it any wonder I have made the spreadsheets I have? Just for that paragraph I referenced three different ones and left out branches extending in every direction.

If this was to be the meeting before the meeting, I needed a ruse to kick it off. This was Anson and I have some plans for him... not much yet, but just know he's got fiery red hair and like his dad, tall and lean. The insults he receives here will smolder over the next few days following the end of this, but I'm pretty confident I know how they'll flare up. Just not there yet... so much to write!

The crux of this story is the construction, not of the tale itself, but of the witchcraft therein. I was coming in cold on this, google groaning beneath my requests for diverse traditions or techniques which I might focus on. There were two basic practices of divination that I had landed on after discarding ever so many. I did not want entrails and cards of any sort were trite. My thoughts on crystal balls do not need expounding upon here. I needed practices that could be broad in range, both in interpretation of use, as well as culturally as it was revealed in "For the Dolls Had Eyes" that Dawn's education and thus craft is wide and varied. Being that needles are a very important part of the Patchwork Witch's identity, the use of needles of different types was one selection. As for the other, it was dust, a universal substance which could be derived from endless sources. I had "Needles and Dust".

"Needles and Dust", the 4,970 word prequel to "Necessary Arrangements", inspired by "For the Dolls Had Eyes" and completed September 30, 2019, is an example of the way these stories are building their own legacies. "Lucifer's Stick" is a working title for what happens five nights after these two as "Needles and Dust" ends a few hours before "Necessary Arrangements" begins. Of course, as we shall see in "The Sestina of the Witch", to be featured shortly, she had good reason...