He loved visiting the old woman, in her tiny cottage, in the woods, with her cat.
She was strange. The boy knew that. Everyone said she was strange. They said she was probably a witch who could cast spells and make things happen. Things that were beyond the understanding of common folk. Things that were magical. But he would visit and listen to her talk. He liked the way she talked and the things she would tell him. She said he was special because he wasn’t afraid to listen. She said that he listened because he possessed a wisdom not held by many. This would grow as the years go by, she said. In time, he would come to an understanding of it and he would have to choose what path he would take, she said.
Now, on a summer morning, they sit.
“This world aches with problems,” she says, stroking her cat, as it makes itself comfortable on her lap. “It groans beneath the weight of it all. Folk crave magical solutions, yet they refuse to believe in magic.” She chuckles. “How do you explain that?”
He shakes his head.
“People don’t believe in the power of incantations, for example,” she goes on, “yet how do they explain the enchantment brought about by the words of a poet, for instance. How do they explain how such feelings mesmerize and leave the reader spellbound when, if only momentarily, they allow a brief glimpse into a world filled with magic? Why is it that these fleeting moments of brilliant beauty and true magic do not leave their mark?”
Her head drops to one side in a silent question.
He smiles and shrugs.
She nods. “Is it the case that in full innocence they deny magic, but are themselves truly magicians… unknowing magicians. They won’t be told, they cannot be told.” She sighed. “And they cannot listen.”
The old woman looks out through her tiny window.
“Dwell on this,” she says, “for those who maintain steadfast that magic does not exist, let them explain love!”
She grins at him. “I think I’ll sleep for a while,” she says, closing her eyes.
The cat’s purring grows louder.
He leaves, quietly.
Every visit brings something new, he ponders. Always, there are ideas that he would need to think about.
In his youth, he only knows for certain that he loves visiting the old woman, in her tiny cottage, in the woods, with her cat.
That is all he needs to know.