In the distant islands of the West there lived a shaman who was called Evangeline. Her mother was one of the Ocean’s dreams, who had slipped away from the tower where the Lady Simone dreamt them all, and her father was the eldest son of a family long allied with the spiders and privy to all their secrets. Her mother showed Evangelnie all the secrets of her dreams, and her father taught her how to speak the language of spiders, although because she was not the eldest child of the family, she did not inherit all their secrets. Yet Evangeline was a clever girl from the very start, and the spiders soon willingly told her their own secrets, and as well as the secrets of their cobwebbed dreams.

Evangeline was not a shaman right from the very start. Her mother showed her how to weave clothes at a loom and stitch patterns in silk. Her father showed her how to read the waves and go out onto the ocean in a small boat, and catch fish. One day, when her father was out fishing, and her mother was out selling cloth, Evangeline gave a tiny caterpillar a drop of honey and so the caterpillar let her weave a net out of his silk. Then Evangeline took her fine silken net out to the line of rocks jutting into the waves (the one where all the old men of the village would go to fish), and cast it into the ocean. When she pulled her net back it had caught a fish with golden scales.

“I see the silkworm told the secret of how to catch me,” said the fish. “But if you throw me back I will give you a thousand gold scales.”

“Oh, I made this net on my own, little fish, and I do not want so much gold. What use do I have for it? I am told you know the language of every fish in the ocean and I would like it if you taught them all to me.”

The golden fish squirmed and struggled and tried to get Evangeline to take all manner of treasures, but she was quite firm and would not be dissuaded. Thus the golden fish was forced to teach Evangeline the languages of all the fish in the sea. Evangeline thanked the golden fish and set him back in the waters. Then she walked along the rocks to the beach, and walked out along the beach into the water until it was up to her waist. She called all the minnows to her and told each one a secret, and each minnow told her a secret and gave her a silver coin.

Evangeline brought home the silver coins to her parents. At first they scolded her, because they did not know where she had been. But then she showed them all the coins and told them she had learned the languages of the fish. Her father was proud she knew so many languages and her mother told her, “That is what you must do. You will not be a seamstress or a fisherman’s wife. You must go and learn all the languages of the world.”

Thus Evangeline went out into the world and learned how to talk to all the creatures she met. She found a moth caught in a spider’s web on the very first night, and she begged the spider to let it go. “Please madam spider, you have so many insects in your web, and the moth is so much larger than you, surely she is more than you could eat. Let me free her and you may call on me in times of need.” The spider thought on this, and agreed, because so few men knew how to speak to spiders properly. Evangeline very carefully freed the moth, without disturbing the spider’s web even a little bit.

The moth was very grateful and offered to bring Evangeline a sliver of silver moonlight, dust to make true lovers meet, or leaves from the tree at the top of the tallest mountain in the world. But Evangeline did not need any of these gifts. “Teach me all the languages of all the moths, for that is all I desire to know.” The moth wondered if she was sure she wouldn’t rather have the seeds of a plant which would bear glowing fruit, or the key to a door hidden deep in the darkest forest instead, but Evangeline was quite insistent. The moth acquiesced, and taught her how to speak with every other moth in the world.

Evangeline slept through the night under the spider’s web and dreamed of all the spiders in the world weaving their webs together. When she woke up, she went into the dark forest and called all the moths to her and told each one a secret she learned from the minnows. Each moth told Evangeline a secret and they gave her feather dust to cure fevers, cloth woven from silver silk, and cast off keys which could only open forgotten doors.

She traveled through the forest, and came upon a village where no one could get any of their plants to grow. Evangeline talked to all the farmers and all their wives and all their children and every grandfather in the village, but no one knew why none of their crops would grow. Evangeline asked the spiders, but they did not know either. “Ask the moths,” they said. Evangeline asked the moths, but they did not know either and so they told her, “Ask the moon.”

Evangeline wasn’t sure what language the moon spoke, but she ate some apples and drank some honeyed tea, and stayed up late into the night until the moon was high above the earth. She looked up at the moon, and she asked it in every language she knew what might be wrong with the land, but the moon did not turn to face her. She exhorted the moon until she almost could not speak anymore, and just when it seemed like the night would pass in silence, she heard a woman’s voice say, “Even I cannot tell you why the crops do not grow. Ask the mushrooms.”

Evangeline slept through the whole next day. None of the farmers had any food, so she walked out into the ocean and called the sailfish and the swordfish and all the ocean’s turtles. All these fish brought in a catch of shrimp which Evangeline plucked from the ocean and roasted over a great bonfire. All the villagers gathered round and were happy, and at the end of the feast, Evangeline lay down with her head in the grass and listened for the sound of the ants crawling through the dirt. She picked up an ant on her finger and carried him to her lips. She gave the tiny ant a tiny kiss and promised him a drop of honey if he would teach her how to speak with mushrooms. Ants will do anything for a drop of honey or two, so of course the ant instantly taught her everything about the language of mushrooms, and all the mushrooms’ cousins, and she sent him on his way with two spoons full of honey for his family.

The next night Evangeline went into the forest, calling softly to all the fungi, and soon enough she heard a response. She asked the mushrooms why the farmers’ fields would not grow, and the mushrooms said: “They drive us out of their lands. They discard us from their compost. They cast us out of the shadows into nowhere. Make space for us. Respect us. Nurture us, and we will make the land grow again.”

She went back to the village, and they told her how they had planted all their crops on what had once been a field of truffles. “This land is also the land of the mushrooms,” she said. “You must in kind with them on their land, or nothing will grow here ever after.” The villagers did not like this advice, but she had spoken to the spiders and the moths and the moon and the ants and the mushrooms for them, thus they went about setting aside land and dark sheds where they would grow mushrooms. Soon enough the fields were more fertile than they had ever been. The vegetables grew large and were full of flavor, and all the fruits of the land were juicy and sweet.

This was how Evangeline became a shaman, taught by her parents and all the world. She would travel from one end of her islands to the other, and ride turtles to the far shores of the jungles of the east, to the rain-swept lands of the far south, and to the distant isles on the other side of the world shaken by the earth itself. When she would laugh, butterflies would appear, and scarab beetles held up her hair.