“So, boys and girls, your teachers have brought you all to this hallowed domain to learn something that every witch and wizard has to learn at some point. As you may have noticed, all your teachers have chosen to not accompany you here because once you have heard the truth it can be difficult to hear again. Anyone want to venture a guess as to what that fundamental truth is?”<\/p>\n
All the teenage students looked around their class with varying amounts of confusion writ large across their faces, and everyone kept their mouths closed and hands down.<\/p>\n
“Oh come now, my children.\u00a0 Every single one of you has casted a spell, each and every single one of you has said a magic word and has waved a wand about to make something happen.\u00a0 Have any of you ever asked, why does this work?\u00a0 Or more importantly, how does this work?”<\/p>\n
The class stayed silent, shrugging and shaking their heads pathetically.\u00a0 The Weaver always asked the question, but knew that none would answer.\u00a0 They were innocent.<\/p>\n
“Shame,” the Weaver paused feeling the frustration rise. “If you think about picking up a wand, your hand moves because the impulses your brain creates travel down your arm via your central nervous system, which in turn, create a series of complicated fine motor movements in your muscles, resulting in your meaty little mitts grabbing your wands to wave more sweets over into your fat gobs.”<\/p>\n
A few looked insulted.\u00a0 The Weaver grinned and continued.<\/p>\n
“Take the same case outside of your own body.\u00a0 In that case, when you instruct your classmate to pick up snow, shape it into a ball and chuck it at the girl you like, you are providing instruction to another human being to perform the action, correct?\u00a0 But the fundamentals are the same.\u00a0 Another being is performing an action due to a series of actions.\u00a0 Cause and effect.”<\/p>\n
Most of the faces among the group still look confused, but a couple changed over to a deep severe confusion that accompanied the dawn of a philosophical revelation.<\/p>\n
“Ah, I see that it has sunk in among the brighter students in the room.\u00a0 However, to continue the exercise, lets take it a step further, and extrapolate it yet again. If you use your wand to make the aforementioned sweets fly off the table and towards your mouth, what is making that happen?\u00a0 What force are you imploring to do your work for you?\u00a0 What is the conduit for your effect?”<\/p>\n
A student near the back raised his hand.\u00a0 Finally a response.\u00a0 They were getting dumber every year that passed, the Weaver thought.<\/p>\n
“You, the ugly one in the back. What would you say?” The Weaver said.<\/p>\n
“We are doing it ourselves.\u00a0 Our will is being expressed.\u00a0 That is what makes us magic.”<\/p>\n
“Great answer, and yet, utter shit,” the Weaver grimaced. “Any other ideas?”<\/p>\n
The room remained silent.\u00a0 The boy in the back looked like he was about to blow a gasket thinking it out, while the Weaver rolled eyes hoping for such a blessed event.<\/p>\n
“Fine.\u00a0 Your wand waving and magic words could be doing a couple things.\u00a0 One, there is a god or deity or force that you are somehow commanding to perform your request.\u00a0 Two, mankind somehow stumbled on the right combination of things to manipulate the natural order of the universe.\u00a0 Or three, its all a complete and utter lie, and all your schooling is shit.\u00a0 Which is it, my dear children?”\u00a0 The Weaver said as he clasped his hands in mock penitence.<\/p>\n
Which was all met by dead silence.<\/p>\n
“Fine. I will spoil it for you.\u00a0 It is all an accident.\u00a0 We don’t know why it works.\u00a0 We don’t have magic words that are magic because they are certain sound or perform a certain function or were spoken by the great creator.\u00a0 The words are purely for our benefit.\u00a0 It is how we keep our spells ordered, to be honest. If you think of the universe of potential spellwork, what is possible; the magic words and wand movements are just part of a huge alphabet to help us keep things straight.\u00a0 And that is what you are learning in class.\u00a0 You are learning how to navigate that alphabet of magic and force your little young brains to match the expectation of what magic is and how it functions.”<\/p>\n
“So we don’t need the wands or the words or the movements?” The same dullard of a boy asked.<\/p>\n
“Of course you do.\u00a0 You would not be able to keep track of anything if you didn’t.\u00a0 Human beings need structure to function.\u00a0 Our brains are structures, right?\u00a0 Links of neurons all bundled up by structure, not just a jiggling random mess.\u00a0 When we learn something, our brains are collating, sorting, filtering, and storing that information in an advanced, self-editing network.\u00a0 If your brains did not do this, you would be wriggling masses of gelatin on the ground.\u00a0 Think!\u00a0 When was the last time you met an unstructured magic user?”<\/p>\n
“Elves are that way.” A girl near the front commented defiantly.\u00a0 The Weaver felt the immediate urge to grab her by her elephantish ears and shake her violently.<\/p>\n
“Yes, they are.” The Weaver responded kindly instead. “Elves think our human approach to magic is dumb.\u00a0 But its our own kind of dumb and that is why it works.”<\/p>\n
The Weaver stood up and stretched his arms above his head, his bare feet poking out from underneath his much-patched robe.<\/p>\n
“And now, any guesses what the Weavers do?” No responses, and the Weaver shook his head, scoffing loudly. “We make it all up.\u00a0 We spend our days inventing new ways to help define what all this magic is.\u00a0 We also go back and change and remove parts of our own magical history.\u00a0 Our magic today is very different than it was a couple hundred years ago.\u00a0 In fact, our magic is very different from just ten years ago.\u00a0 We are the reformationists and the revisionists, constantly changing the current, the past, and the future all at once.\u00a0 That is why we are called the Weavers.\u00a0 We weave the world of magic for all of humankind.”<\/p>\n
“You make it up?”\u00a0 One of the kids asked incredulously.<\/p>\n
“Of course we do.\u00a0 Have you ever wondered why there are no bad wizards?\u00a0 We all learn that power corrupts, and you can imagine how corrupt and evil a bad person could get with magic.”<\/p>\n
“Yeah.”<\/p>\n
“We just make all the spells they favor fail.\u00a0 We change the narrative, and their nasty curses no longer work.\u00a0 They just seem impotent and idiotic, waving a wand and saying abracadabra like a stage magician.\u00a0 We have to let a couple mean petty magicians function here and there to keep the world moving, but the really bad ones get filtered out pretty quickly.”<\/p>\n
“So you let the jerks use magic to steal money here and there, but if they start gathering power or anything…”<\/p>\n
“We cut them off.”<\/p>\n
“Huh,” the kid replied. “And what if a Weaver went bad?”<\/p>\n
“They can’t.\u00a0 All Weavers are as mad as hatters.\u00a0 We don’t have the ability to go bad.\u00a0 That is why all of us Weavers are in these Sanitariums.\u00a0 We are batshit crazy, hence the glass that keeps you over there, and us over here.\u00a0 And keeps me from ripping that one’s ears off, slapping that one silly, and hitting that particular dull one in the back with a length of oak.”<\/p>\n
All the kids gasped.\u00a0 A few started crying.\u00a0 The Weaver grinned knowing that the dull one was particularly upset.\u00a0 He turned his back and went back to work.<\/p>\n
******<\/p>\n
That was the last time that particular Weaver saw students in a safe place. That was before Jerry was unwillingly thrust into the world, scared, crazy, and looking for a way to beat the first Bad Weaver the world had ever known.<\/p>\n
It really was quite unfortunate that Jerry was the only one left, because he hated the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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