Champignon Witch

Episode 10

One moment in my college education stands out to me above all others. It wasn't particularly profound, but midway through a lecture in a psychology class, the professor stopped talking, sighed, and leaned back against the blackboard. “People,” he said after a moment, “are morons.”

I'm not sure what brought that on; I don't think anyone was talking through his lecture or anything. But I think about it a surprising amount, and this week's episode of Champignon Witch made me do so again. Luna, after multiple bad experiences in the city, has stopped going in. While we don't know for certain that it was the loss of Henri that was the deciding factor – we did see her go in a bit after that – it was clearly painful for her to venture in. And because she wasn't making regular trips with her purifying mushrooms, the city became overwhelmed with miasma, to the point that her fairy friend, the bookseller, couldn't leave his shop. And now fear is running rampant in a city desperate for the purifying touch of a black witch, even though they don't know it.

It's so frustrating to watch how people treat Luna when she shows up. Her mushrooms are many times their usual size because the air is so thick with poison. Still, the fools all attack her anyway, somehow not making the connection between how, as one person notes, the air is clearer around them and that Luna's absence and the rise of the miasma coincide. Perhaps it's the foulness in the air that's keeping them from realizing. Or maybe they've been fed lies about black witches by the white witches for so long that they can't see what's staring them in the face. People are, as my psych professor said, morons.

But it's worth wondering, in this case, why they're so blind to the good Luna does. At this point, it's hardly alchemy (the Medieval equivalent of rocket science); she's been absent, and things got worse. Black witches and magicians perform an essential service, as we see even more fully when the elusive wind magician shows up to help. So, who is brainwashing the populace into believing that practitioners of black magic are bad?

My money's on the white magic users. We saw last week how the fairies turned on Lize when he used their gifts in ways that benefitted a bird poisoned by miasma, and this week, a white wizard shows up to jail Luna for the crime of existing and being helpful. His actions tromp all over the emerging goodwill that the people of the city are beginning to feel, driving home the idea that Luna and her black magic are inherently bad. And since the white magic users are members of not just the ruling class but the ruling family, they're in the perfect position to poison the well. The only white magician who seems willing to believe that Luna isn't evil is…Henri.

Before you get your hopes up, Henri, now recognizably much older than Luna, is married. He has a child. Their ship has sailed, leaving Luna on the pier. But somewhere deep inside of him, he remembers her. He knows her, and because he never truly forgot, he's able to see past the prejudice against black witches. He always could, if you recall, but we might reasonably have expected that kindness towards her to vanish with the beautiful mushroom she pulled from his heart. That it remained tells us more about Luna's “evil” magic than any superstition. Love couldn't be eradicated, and although it has cooled and he has largely forgotten her, Luna remains in his heart. That tells us he didn't want to forget, and that her magic, which is all about preserving life and purifying the world, allowed him to hold on to that.

That may be more important for Luna than Henri. She has believed for all of these years that he had forgotten her completely and that the boy she loved essentially no longer existed. To be proven wrong is to tell her that she's not alone and that she matters. True, she told Minos that she never felt alone because she had the forest, but now she knows she matters to people, too. Maybe it will help her to see herself as lovable and deserving of affection. If nothing else, it will bring her closure for what happened with Henri years ago.

Lize's not sure he likes this, but he also doesn't know the whole story. In some ways, he seems destined to play out Luna and Henri's love story with him in Luna's role. But this is a fairy tale. Lize fits so much of the iconography of the best-known fairy-tale princesses that I have to think that, somehow, something will work out. We may not have very many episodes left for it to happen, but Henri, in the role of the Big Bad Wolf, freed Luna's Little Red Riding Hood this week. I think we have reason to hope for a happy ending.

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