Complicated Blue

The Extraordinary Adventures Of The Good Witch Anais Blue.

A Witch With A Twist

Witches

A word of warning: forget everything you think you know about witches. And know this; not all witches are created equal.

I’m no witch but I know enough to consider myself a bit of an expert. If I were one of them, I wouldn’t be able to tell you any of this anyway. So, you should consider yourself in a fortunate position. Not everyone has the opportunity to be party to this kind of information. I will try and keep it short but be aware we still have a lot to cover.

Some of what I have to say will probably seem unimportant or insignificant. I can’t be the judge of that. I just feel it necessary to impart all I know. I have no idea how long my memory will last and need to pass it on before it gets lost. Maybe you can do something with what I am about to tell you. At any rate, I am feeling the pressure of time and don’t know how long we will have together.

So let’s get started.

The primary goal from days of old is that witches provide a connection between the living and the dead. The overriding problem is that in general the dead are a notoriously uncommunicative bunch. Way back at the dawn of time it was decided that witches should shoulder the responsibility nobody else wanted. Somebody had to take care of the dead. Straws were drawn and witches ended up with the short one. It’s a tough job but someone has to do it.

Some of them are better at it than others. No two witches are alike. Everyone has their own special skill, your usual run-of-the-mill human is no different. We all have our own special gift. The whole purpose in life is to try and work out what that is. Unfortunately some of us never find it. Witches suffer from the same sort of problem. They do have one advantage and that is they know from birth that they have a skill. They don’t always know what to do with it, but the fact they can identify their skill gives them a head start over the rest of us. Unless they are very lucky, humans only work this out much later in life. Some of us never find our true calling. It’s not our fault, it’s just the way modern society is structured.

Generally we humans are brought up to believe that we have to learn something. It doesn’t matter what that is, anything will do, we just have to go out and study, or train, or learn a trade. We are driven to do this because we need to get a job. Somewhere in our exponential growth as a modern society, we have forgotten we should be doing what we are good at. Before we even begin we should start by working out what that is. Most of us don’t. We just do whatever drops in our lap. We invest huge amounts of time and energy in preoccupying ourselves with something we are not suited to. We then either stick it out until the end of our days or fate steps in and we are forced to change. At which point, we usually try the next best thing that comes along. If we are lucky we chance upon our special skill. If not, we are doomed to a living purgatory until we work out what that particular talent is. That is another reason we have witches. Someone has to help us find out our one true purpose.

At some point in history the powers that were decided witches was not a good idea. They made witches the enemy and convinced us they were bad. This was incredibly stupid because the entire idea was basically bad, it just complicated an already complex situation. It actually makes no sense that someone would decide to cut the only physical thread between the here and the there. As is usual, fear got in the way. Fear of the unknown has caused more misunderstandings, invasions, wars and outright slaughter than anything else. If there is any power on earth which reigns supreme, then it has to be fear. It also prevents us from uncovering our special skill.

This is why we need witches. It doesn’t matter who you are, we all need them. Unfortunately we no longer live in a world which accepts them. We have effectively shot ourselves in our own proverbial feet. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Witches are not blessed with a positive image. They are usually associated with something old and decrepit that feeds on small children. The general impression is that most of them have a high-pitched cackle and run around turning people into frogs. And then there’s the obsession with pointed hats. Somehow we are locked into a medieval viewpoint of witches and wizards. This was when the seed for the modern idea of magic was laid. The practitioners in the middle ages were generally clergy in apprenticeship who dabbled in all things spiritual. Their experimentation with summoning of demons and such has left us with a warped view of how witchcraft is practised. This has encouraged all kinds of wildly imaginative takes on the subject of necromancy.

The purveyors of fiction have also not been gracious to the witching community. Put simply, the overall view of a witch is not good. They are hated, feared and considered positively evil. From a witch’s viewpoint it is a disappointment to considered in this way – but also a blessing. It makes for a very good cover-up. If you wish to practise any form of supernatural endeavour, you require a certain amount of freedom. Having a good disguise or being able to distract people from reality is advantageous. If you can do this on a large scale without having to put in too much effort, then even better. Bad press is not necessarily negative. In fact there is no such thing as bad press. It needs to be manageable but, other than that, under certain circumstances there is a preference for it.

For the witching population bad press has been extremely fortuitous. It frees them up to go about doing the work they do best without the fear of prying eyes. It is a form of protection.

Before I forget, if you want you can take notes, it might help. I wish I’d done the same myself when I had the opportunity. Then perhaps I could recall more than I presently do. I have the feeling that just by retelling what I know, the facts will come to light. So please be patient with me and together we will get to the bottom of this.

Now read carefully and pay attention.

Blue

Anais Blue hated her name.

Not the first part. She thought the name Anais was kind of cool. It had something mysterious about it. It was different. It was foreign. It made her feel important. It was very close to its more common counterpart, the name Anna, but unusual enough to be special. She was secretly proud to carry the name Anais and completely content with being its bearer. It was the name Blue that she had a problem with.

Firstly, she hated the colour itself. She didn’t think it was beautiful. She couldn’t stand the sight of it and, worst of all, it was everywhere. When she looked up it was there; when she looked through glass it was tinted with it; when she went to the beach it was as far as she could see. It was was all over the place. She hated it because it was inescapable. She thought it was too ordinary. Just like her first name, she liked things to be different. Blue was too common, she preferred the colour purple.

If she had her way, Anais would have had the sky painted purple. Which incidentally it was on occasions. However, occasionally wasn’t enough. It had to be all the time. It had to be permanent. In her opinion, everything blue should be replaced with purple. If she could have, she would have truckloads of it dumped into the ocean. She would have skywriters spray the heavens with it. She would have blue barred from the planet entirely. She was even willing to live with an excess of green to get it done. And green was her second-most hated colour. But if she had to make a choice between the two, she would rather live in a world that was entirely green, and not the blue-green one that it presently was.

The greatest frustration for Anais was that she did have the power to change things. She was a witch. She was capable of the most amazing things. She could change people into animals and vice versa. Or at least give them the impression it was happening. She could make huge objects disappear. Once she had taken the Empire State Building and put it smack-bang in the middle of London. People were surprised. That was until her caretaker made her put it back and flush the memories of those who had seen it. But the one thing she wanted above all others eluded her. It was an enormous disappointment to her that she didn’t have the power to change colour.

She had made it her number one goal to find the incantation or potion with which she could do that. She had tried all the avenues open to her. She had done extensive research and experimented with various concoctions. She had attempted to make contact with those who were more experienced. All to no avail.

She had only found one way to do it. Colours could be changed on an individual basis. This meant that in order to achieve her goal she would have to personally cast a spell on every living thing on the planet. Casting the spell was not the problem, that was easy. In fact it was one of the most basic spells there was. The spell which made a person see something in a different colour was a trick even the most inexperienced novice could perform. Casting it en masse was beyond her capabilities. The best she had achieved was at a Rolling Stones concert. Fifty thousand people was a special achievement. But it was a long way off her ultimate goal. It was also a hollow victory as most of the audience were already seeing purple anyway.

The real problem was that she couldn’t physically do it. Nor could she make it permanent. She couldn’t get rid of one colour and replace it with another. This was especially the case with purple as it depended entirely on the colour blue for its own existence. So she had shifted her focus to something within her realm of influence. She decide to change her surname.

She thought this was doable. Deep down it was also the thing that made her dislike the colour blue so excessively in the first place. She really wanted to be Anais Purple. She secretly hoped that if she started with her name then perhaps everything else would fall into place. There was one problem, which she was unaware of, but soon to find out. Witches have special relationship with their names and tampering with them is not advisable.