Fear No Evil: On Sorting Hats and Forest Gods
Don’t be afraid.
Step forward and allow your teacher to place the omniscient, transdimensional sapient hat upon your head.
Yes, sapient. More than sentient. It is no magic mirror, no crystal ball. Nothing that small or simple. It does not predict; it knows. It has been at work longer than your bloodline has been in the world, and it has forgotten none of what it has learned in that time. It is more powerful than you can begin to comprehend, so do not try. It commands the aid of the phoenix and it understands the weaknesses of the basilisk. It can teleport ancient artifacts of unspeakable power based solely on the loyalty it reads in your heart. (You don’t yet know what loyalty is in your heart.)
The hat does not require your input. The hat knows.
It knows who you are and what you want. No, not that thing you think you want. It knows what you really want. It knows what you’re going to want tomorrow, next week, 20 years from now. It knows what you’ll regret on your deathbed. Trust it to choose your fate; trust it to choose your friends. It sees the seeds of identity in you and in all of your peers. It knows who among you will find courage and brilliance and power and friendship. It knows who you will become, and it knows precisely who you are. It knows the future of war and chaos, and it knows the deepest evils in the hearts of men. Yes, even yours. Yes, even that, the thing you never told anyone. The hat knows. It knows, and it delivers seraphic compassion: perfect objectivity, perfect understanding. Perfect judgment and perfect sentencing.
It does not care that you think you could change. It does not care that you are uncertain and small. It does not care for your trembling heart or your petty desire for self-determination. It knows already. It has turned the lidless eye of its wisdom upon your soul. It has seen you, and it will set you onto a path from which you cannot stray.
Trust that it is speaking your fate, and not drilling a tunnel into your future in which it can plant the seeds of the person it needs you to become. It could not have designs of its own. It is, of course, just a hat.
The hat will sing to you. Listen as it sings. Isn’t that song fun? Enjoy the song. Listen closely. It wrote a new one just for you.
Don’t be afraid.
Come into the dark woods. Follow their steward. Do not drink from the river where his lover swims—the Withywindle is not friendly to you. She is beautiful, but do not look too long. Do not swim with her. Do not allow the trees to take you—they will if they can. Try to dodge the barrow-wrights. You are not kings, but that will not protect you. He will protect you, if he chooses; he commands these woods, these wights, these trees, this river. He commands it all.
Stay on the path. Follow him. Trust him. Obey him, because he is friendly, and because he is Iarwain Ben-adar, Eldest and Fatherless, who saw the first of everything. Try not to notice the way the One Ring doesn’t stir any evil in him. It corrupts everyone who wears it, but not this man. Try not to wonder about what kind of purity is incorruptible; try not to wonder what he is made of, that a thing of perfect evil does not change him at all.
He sees you. He saw you coming, and he sees where you will go. You cannot hide from him, not when you are invisible; not even when you are in the wraith-world. There is nowhere to hide from his eyes. He is eternal. He is childlike. His black heart of innocence shines into the darkness between the trees, loves and deepens it, owns it without possessing it. He is not bound by the confines of the physical. He was ancient when your first ancestors were born, and he will be exactly the same kind of ancient when your bloodline is forgotten by history.
Listen to how he sings. Isn’t that song fun? Enjoy it. He is singing it for you.
What fun, these two. What fun they are and what fun they have—smiling and singing even as war boils all around them, calmly continuing their work even as they read mounting terror in the hearts of those they encounter. Smiling and working, because war and terror are not their concerns. They have seen this before, and they will see it again, and they will be here long after all of the wars are over and all of the men have died. The hat remembers his own birth, and the steward of the woods has no birth to remember: why would they hurry? They have time. They have always had time. The world is theirs to watch and rule. They are patient.
They are patient with you, certainly. They know the path you will try to carve through the world, and they will accommodate it, so far as it suits their purposes. They see your failure and your cruelty and your suffering. They see the path of your life and your struggle and your death.
And they laugh, because the world is an entertaining place. They enjoy the corporeality that will turn you into a hollowed husk, and they sing to pass the time. And their songs are such fun.
Don’t be afraid. Your fear won’t change anything.
Put on the hat. Go into the woods.
Enjoy the singing.
It’s for you.
Sarah Gailey has the heart of a Gryffindor and the cunning of a Slytherin. She lives in the Pacific Northwest, where Tom Bombadil would feel right at home. She also writes books.