Council of Elders (5)

Mi seemed to be having a long dream. She came to a strange place where a group of witches lived. Each of them had their own life story. They were beautiful and intelligent, gentle and wise, and they also carried endless pain, living in the past and torment.

Mi stretched, her hands touching a gentle barrier. She opened her eyes and was enveloped in a soft purple light. The petals slowly opened, and the familiar green world reappeared before her.

Mi blinked. She wasn't dreaming; she was still in the Witch's Forest. She looked down and saw a blurry figure. She raised her hand, then her foot, and the arms and legs of a tiny ink doll moved accordingly. Some ink dots moved quickly, others slowly trailed behind, forming a watercolor-like human figure in the air. Mi leaped out of the flower, jumping down from mid-air. Lazy ink droplets draped behind her like a cloak, resembling an upside-down shuttlecock, eventually gathering on the ground to form a human shape.

Mi stroked the giant tree, feeling the sap flowing through its trunk, slowly and powerfully heading towards the heart of the forest.

Mi lifted her foot, and the lazy ink droplets, like mud splatters pulled from the ground, slowly rose from the grass. The grass was bent under the weight, its leaves swaying and growing upwards. Mi squatted down, and the grass was flattened again. Mi lifted one foot and reached out to brush away the bent grass. The blades of grass wrapped around her hand, growing long. Mi placed one foot on the ground and looked at her other foot. Grass peeked out from under her sole, as if pleading with her. Mi lifted her other foot and used her palm to brush away the tender shoots. The grass wrapped around her fingers, one by one, until Mi was a tiny person enveloped in grass. She felt a little ticklish and couldn't help but laugh out loud. Her laughter startled the grass, and they all withdrew their leaves. Mi fell down, but the grass stretched out tender shoots to support her. Mi discovered she could fly. She moved forward close to the grass, which parted like waves to create a path.

Mi drifted all the way to the heart of the forest. El and Joe were still sitting on the rock, smiling as they watched Mi circle around them like a mischievous child. Gray ink droplets fell onto their dresses, then slid down into the black soil, before gathering around Mi one by one.

Mi felt that all these ink drops were her; she had become countless, and then converged into one. Mi sat down on the stone, the ink drops enveloping the entire stone. She was like a boneless person, slumped on the stone, becoming a gray carpet covering it.

Mi raised a finger, and a bump appeared on the carpet. She raised her foot again, and a section of the carpet floated up. Mi raised both hands and both feet—oh, she became a flying carpet! She flew to the riverbank, where red flowers waved their little trumpets at her. Mi continued to fly forward, but on the riverbank, she was squeezed into a ball, like an ink droplet obstructed, each drop twisted and crooked, unable to break through the dome that enveloped the entire forest.

Mi rolled back into a small black ball to the center of the forest; El and Joe were gone. Mi stretched out, extending each ink droplet outwards, slowly covering the entire forest. The grass was covered with a gray blanket; the grasses bent down together, then pushed together, and Mi was propelled into the air like a net. She grabbed a green leaf, causing the ink drops to rise upwards together.

Al and Joe were in a giant tree when Mi quietly approached. Al crouched down, stared into Mi's eyes, and asked, "Is it fun?"

Mi was startled and ran away in a panic, like a broom sweeping up a cloud of dust that swept across the entire forest.

Mi stood above the forest and discovered that if a single drop of ink landed on a treetop, she could form a straight line, rising all the way up into the gray clouds, which would tumble and avoid her. Mi, with her army of ink droplets, drove the clouds above the forest, forming cloud clusters, each separated by a transparent dome.

Mi exerted her strength again, and she turned the ink droplet into a small ball with a long, thin tail. The tail was connected to the top of the giant tree, and the ball was blocked by an invisible shield, so nothing could be seen from the outside.

Mi slowly stepped back a little, and she raised her middle finger at the transparent dome. Suddenly, the clouds began to churn, and rumbling thunder and bright lightning flashed continuously in the sky above the forest, as if an immortal was undergoing tribulation there.

Mi was terrified and hid behind a rock. El stared at the sky as Joe pulled her into a dormant flower; its petals were tightly closed, as were all the other purple blossoms. Mi crouched under the rock, trembling: "What did I do? What's up there?"

Time passed, and the forest returned to calm, but the heavy rain that Mi had been waiting for never came. She spread the ink blob on a stone and twisted it into various shapes. She stretched the ink droplets into a straight line and then twisted and intertwined them in various ways, forming all sorts of inexplicable patterns. In the end, Mi successfully confused herself, like a clump of hair that had fallen to the ground and become an unmanageable mess.

More often than not, Mi lay sprawled out like a blanket, even if it was just a gray rug, it was the most oddly shaped rug. Mi was exploring her new body, if this was her body, at least the ink droplets followed her.

Mi saw El and Joe sit on the rock again, and she waited for the elders to reappear.

“The elders need to rest; they won’t be coming out,” El told her gently, noticing her waiting.

"That beautiful woman with the awl?" Mi had already seen it; the scars on the giant tree had disappeared, and a raised fold had appeared on the bark.

“That was the Fifth Elder,” El told her. “The Fifth Elder was also falsely accused of being a witch, but she didn’t just sit and wait to die like the Fourth Elder. She took up arms and killed those who wanted to burn her.”

"Well done!" Mi recalled that an elder once said that when faced with the choice between dying himself and someone else dying, a normal person would choose to let the other person die. The Fifth Elder's actions were the normal thing to do.

Mi scratched his head: "But she is a witch, isn't this the Witch Forest?"

"Uh?" El was taken aback by Mi's question. She asked, "Do you also think witches should be burned at the stake?"

“No, no one should be burned at the stake,” Mi asked curiously. “Why burn witches? There are so many ways to execute them.”

“Actually, most witches were hanged or beheaded,” Joe whispered. “Later, people discovered that burning witches was more frightening and more likely to involve people.”

What does this mean?

“Burning witches is like a nationwide carnival, where everyone can add fuel to the burning fire.” El’s voice was cold and filled with despair. “With everyone involved, it will create an even bigger wave of opposition to witches, because everyone is a murderer who burned witches, and these people have become allies because of this fire.”

“Then it’s not just about executing witches, it’s about eliminating heresy,” Mi thought for a moment and said. “Burning heretics, not just witches, but others, are all real events that happened in history. It’s not that witches should be burned, but that people’s fear of the unknown forces led to ignorant people uniting together to fight against heresy. Eliminating dissidents is prevalent everywhere.”

What are you saying?

"To put it simply, throughout human history, fire has always possessed immense power, a kind of force that must be contained. Humans have always feared fire because it possesses a powerful force that humans cannot control. Faced with equally uncontrollable forces, they would place their hopes on fire, using an even stronger force to eliminate these uncontrollable forces. Witches wield such power—yes, witches are power." As Mi spoke, the grass in the forest peeked out at her again.

"What power does a witch possess?" El's blue eyes, like the blue sky above a river, radiated a captivating light.

“The witches I’m talking about aren’t the witches here,” Migan explained haltingly. “The witches I’ve heard of were all exceptionally capable women who tried to seize power and status from men, and were executed because they failed in their attempt to take power.”

"Seize power?"

"Yes, the Fourth Elder has treated so many people, and her superb medical skills are widely known. Doesn't she want to be a doctor? Those people don't stop her from treating women, it's just that there's no profit in treating women. I think that with the Fourth Elder, there's only one way to deal with a sick woman: to suffer. Wealthy noblewomen are another story."

Can curing men lead to seizing power?

“Men own property and money. A man who can work and earn income will always need medical treatment when he gets sick. This way, doctors get paid, and men can earn even more money after they recover. It’s a win-win situation.” Mi clapped her hands. “If the Fourth Elder charged like a doctor, not so many people would come to her for treatment. Doctors in the city wouldn’t lack patients, and their income wouldn’t decrease. They would most likely still keep the Fourth Elder to treat women. After all, if the fees are the same, more people will choose a licensed doctor.”

"What does this have to do with seizing power?"

“I think that with the Fourth Elder, the money must be in the hands of men. Only when women have nothing can they stay at home to give birth, raise children, and serve men,” Mi raised his head. “If women were like the Fourth Elder, able to practice medicine and control money, they wouldn’t stay at home obediently. Men have power because they can go out to work and have the right to control income and property. The reason they restrict women from going out to work is to prevent women from having the opportunity to earn income.”

“But men are naturally stronger than women, so they do have an easier time getting jobs,” Al said after a moment’s thought. “Women can’t compete with men.”

"You're talking about competition. Men and women eat at the same table, and if I'm not as skilled, I admit defeat." Mi nodded. "But the Fourth Elder doesn't even have the chance to sit at the table. The men don't allow women to eat at the table. Why do you think that is?"

“Because once women sit at the table, they take away some of the men’s power.” El nodded. “You’re right, that is indeed a power grab.” El pondered for a moment and then asked, “Are only witches capable of seizing power?”

"The witches I've heard of are just ordinary women. The witchhood is a charge that men came up with to frame women in order to prevent them from seizing power, a charge used to divide women."

"Dividing women?"

“Yes, they consider women who want to enter the men’s world, women who eat at the same table as men, as heretics, and burn them alive. Then they appease the obedient women—look, those are witches, witches who make deals with the devil. They are no longer women. You should be good women.” Mi thought for a moment, “If they burn women, all women will be afraid and will unite to resist. Only by kicking witches out of the ranks of women can things eventually develop into a situation where even women hate, fear, and oppose them.”