Natured Wits: The Darkling and Black Widow

By Ronald Cheek

Step into the world of the Wits, who are fun loving little people that have lived secretly amongst humans since the beginning of time. Only six inches tall, the Wits are born human and are also given DNA of an insect or small animal (which gives them unique powers). Life is easy for them and their animal friends until bad weather and another gro

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stratton Press
• Release date: Jun 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9781643455907

Ronald Cheek

Ronald Cheek I grew up on a farm in Middle Tennessee. There were many long days in the fields as I thought of stories. I went to Harris School of Art for four years. I started painting Civil War paintings and never seemed to get much out of this experience. Then I tried fantasy art, and after looking at my first three pictures, they needed a story written; so here's my first book and more to come.

Book preview

Cast of Witters

Anissa - Queen of Crystal Lake. Sister to the Valley Wits’ King Aska. Not married yet.

Aska - King of the Valley Wits. Brave and as veracious as any Wit whoever lived.

Bit Hardison - One of the landowners of the valley that the Valley Wit colony live on.

Black Widow - A double-DNA Wit. Could be considered dangerous when she spins her cocoon on any animal or Wit.

Cara - Small Witling who steals the heart of Prince Ryon and all who are around her. Likes to kiss everyone and Ryon.

Cannon - Master of the Water Wit Colony Outwits.

Carnavella - Also known as Lady Moth to her colony subjects. Queen to Aska. Loved by all who know her. Although she is royalty, she is a Wit who also likes to have a little fun most of the time with her brother.

Shag - A small human boy. Likes to get in trouble. Brother to a smaller boy named Rusty.

Cupid - Some say he is the son of Venus, the love god, or he could be a Wit. Not liked by Rufas most of the story.

Darkling - Rejected Soothsayers who have joined their force together to cause suffering on those who have opposed them in their past.

Divvyians - Monk like society of Wits who handle the making of different DNA material to administer to infant Witlings. Give spiritual aid. Secretly oversee problems of wrongdoings by the Darklings. Experimenters of DNA that is banned for use by the Divvyians and colony leaders.

Edyta - Rufas’s girlfriend. Mother to Cara.

Eli Master of the Outwits. Brother to Queen Carnavella. Loses control when picked on (by everyone).

Ezra - Son to Rufas and Edyta. Stepson to Carnavella and Aska.

Hazel Hardison One of the landowners of the valley that the Valley Wits live on. Elder brother to Bit Hardison. Well educated compared to Bit. Very closefisted.

Ivory - She has an unknown secret life before becoming Ryon’s sugercup. Has powers of levitation. Kindhearted to all.

Jal-Bo - Rufas’s father and a good friend of Aska’s.

Jeddy - Outwit trainer and a friend of Aska’s. Father to Ivory.

Old Tick - Worthless old hound dog raised and owned by the Hardison brothers. Has fabulous hearing.

Oran - Master of the Soothsayers. Uncle to Eli and Carnavella. Can feel natural and unnatural forces. Prime investigator of the Divvyians.

Out Wit - A colony soldier.

Owl Yakalot - No one knows where he got his name. Raised to be the colony storyteller (historian). Talks a little too much sometimes out of the story text.

Ozor - Swamp Wit whom no one likes because of his manner toward others.

Paxton - Mountain Wit who can show bravery at any time, can be called upon at any time, and can be counted upon at any time.

Rufas - Wit raised by Aska and Carnavella. Loves to get in trouble with the plots made by his best friends Waldo and Ryon. Cannot pronounce his Rs at the beginning of a word, so he uses the W sound (Ryon=Wyon).

Rusty - Young human boy who will follow his brother Chag anywhere and get in the same trouble he does.

Ryon - Valley Colony’s prince. Loved by all the subjects of the colony at his home and other surrounding colonies. Finds his future sugar cup in a disastrous time of his colony. Has powers of telepathy.

Snake Doctor - No, he is not a doctor of snakes. When he was given his DNA at birth by mistake, someone gave him the DNA of an insect we call a snake doctor. This gave him the wings of a snake doctor insect. He did grow up to be the colony doctor of herbs and potion. Father to Edyta, grandfather to Cara.

Ivy May - Nanny of Prince Ryon when he was a Witling. Now a servant to the royal family and dear friend to them all.

Waldo - Wit in the Valley Colony. Loved by all for his sharp wittiness except by Eli. Best friend to Ryon and Rufas. Madly in love with Anissa (who is a little bit older than him).

Wyon - The way Rufas pronounces Ryon. You have to overlook him at times with his Ws.

Zuleika - Darkling who has bitter feelings toward Aska and his family. Experimented a few too many times with DNA on himself, which has made him very disfigured and dangerous.

Who Are the Natured Wits?

Have you ever wondered what is going on when you look up in the sky and you can see two or three little birds attacking a larger bird? A leaf moving on top of water in a still pond or snow falling off a branch when there is no breeze. What are those little flashing lights you see in those pictures you took at your last outing in the park? They look like little fast white streaks of light. Do you really know who is making those crop circles? Who or what might they be? Who is controlling them? Could it be a spirit, or a force unseen?

My name is Ol’ Owl Yakalot. I am a cross between an Owl and a Wit. I was raised to be a storyteller for the Wit colony I live in. Very few humans ever get to hear our stories, so you should count yourselves lucky to hear this one. What’s that? What is a Wit? Well, I guess that would be so since you can’t see or hear us. I will tell you who those unseen forces might be.

When our Creator made Adam, there was a little piece of clay left over. The Creator decided to make someone special, and he would be called a Natured Wit.

Now you already know how Adam’s mate was made. The Creator made the Natured Wit female the same way the human female was created. Both the humans and the Wits coincided together in the Garden of Eden until Eve took from the Tree of Life. The Wits knew better; they chose not to take of its fruit. After the humans took the fruit, they felt the shame of what they had done, and the Creator punished them both.

The Creator permitted the Wits to continue their way of life, living freely in the lands because of their honest nature. But there was one problem: the Wits have a strong free will and sense of freedom, so this did not exempt them from their own problems of wars throughout their history.

The Creator knew the Wits would have a hard time existing in the world with the humans, who could be a threat to them. He also knew the problems they would have trying to live in the wild because they are only six inches in height. The Creator decided to protect the Wits from humans by making them and anything they built or own invisible to the sight of all humans. Hopefully that answers the question of why you have never seen or heard of us.

As for living in the wild, the Creator gave the Wits the ability to give their Witlings at birth the DNA of an insect or small animal. With this introduction, the Wits now have a chance to exist in the wild. It’s unbelievable the things we Wits can do or develop into with the wings of most creatures. Sometimes we have witch like powers that show up in most females, and once in a blue moon, a male might get those powers if the queen or the Divvyians deem it necessary.

What you humans call death, we call dust. When a Wit dies, their humanlike form will turn to dust. The dust will be the texture and the color of the earth they die on. This was the Creator’s design so the humans will never discover their remains. The insect or small animal parts that have grown on us will remain on the earth to help identify the Wit that has passed on.

The best thing I like about being a Wit is that we cannot feel the extreme of the winter cold, which is another reward the Creator gave us for being trustful in the beginning of time.

Every now and then, nature or someone takes a twist, and a Witling will get more than one kind of DNA, which sometimes can cause trouble; or it can be very handy. This does not happen very often because the material is carefully handled, stored, and distributed by a society of Wits we call Divvyians. After a Witling is born, the Divvyians will administer the DNA, and the transformation will happen immediately.

Then there is a group of Wits called the Darkling, who overuse the DNA a lot. Sometimes to the point that it disfigures them from not looking humanlike.

Wit homes are unique in size and shape. Most of them are high in the trees or along rock ledges where larger animals, humans, and machines will not touch them. Colors and shapes of the Wit homes are the most unusual of all. If only you could see them, you would be fascinated by their creative blend of natural colors, but the Creator has fixed time and space so humans cannot see anything we build or make.

Even though it looks as if we still live in the Garden of Eden, we still have to live in the conditions that Mother Nature gives the earth. Despite our size and exposure to the elements around us, we are a lot stronger than we look.

chapter 1

Skirmish in the Watermelon Patch

Today, this old storyteller would like to tell you some stories. The first story has just happened, and I hope you have time to just sit back and enjoy the tale about two little Wits, Waldo and Rufas. They live in the same Wit colony that I also live in. You cannot believe the trouble these two can get into or cause. Their most favorite pastime when they are together is playing jokes on the two old human bachelor brothers, Hazel and Bit Hardison, who own most of the valley our colony lives in.

Bit and Hazel own over 3,500 acres of the most fertile farmland in the valley down in southern Georgia. They are also the two stingiest old men that have ever existed upon this earth. Just one look at their house and barns will reveal it all. They live in only two rooms of their two-story house in the winter because most of the windows have been broken out over the years since their parents passed away thirty-five years ago. The barns never have livestock in them because so many boards have fallen off or rotted off the framework. What is left of the barns leans so badly that the livestock would rather stand under a tree during a storm. Well, that should make you wonder who’s the smartest!

Fences on the farm are in real good shape. Nothing can get through them because there are so many blackberry vines, honeysuckle vines, and just plain old weed like vines growing in them. They will never fall over or let anything pass through them. Sometimes I wonder if there is any wire left in the middle of them due to rot and rust. Their father put the fences up before they were born. Ha! Do the math; it’s nearly eighty years ago before the boys were born.

Bit and Hazel are by no means two-peas-in-a-pod-type brothers. Bit weighs about four potato sacks full of potato and two buckets of water, and he is so tall he has to duck his head to go under the front door of the barn. He has buckteeth so bad just about all the mules in the community talk about him. He never wears a shirt under his worn, dry-rotted, holey coveralls in the summer. They say a man that grows hair on his back is a good hog grower. So in that case, Bit should rear all the hogs in the world. As a child growing up, Bit could and can still to this day tear up an anvil with a rubber mallet.

Hazel, well, the poor little fellow looks like Bit pushed him away from every meal they’ve had for the last year or two so he could eat all the vittles himself. He only weighs a bucket and a half of water with his clothes on wet. Everyone calls him Shorty because he is almost as tall as the shoulders of a Jersey cow standing on a fl at rock. Hazel seems to want to do things right, but Bit is such a handful to deal with that it takes up all his time keeping an eye on him. Hazel almost got married fi ve different times; however, when the girls would see Bit, they would start wondering what their babies might look like if they got married to Hazel. Due to Bit, Hazel has had to tolerate his brother’s burdens all his life.

It is just another hot day down here in southern Georgia. The heat is so hot; it feels like a scared cat running from a pack of hounds on a sultry tarred road. There was absolutely no relief from the heat, not even under the shade of the big live oak trees in the deepest woods surrounding Duck River, which runs straight through the middle of the Hardison brothers’ farm.

Now there are two matted, blond-haired boys that live a little over a mile from the Hardison farm. Shag is eleven years old; and his little brother, Rusty, is nine. Each day they would come up with a different plan to swim across the river so they would not be seen walking down the road toward the Hardison farm.

Then they would scramble up the riverbank, through a small piece of the woods, and they would try to be quiet as mice. Once they got to the outside edge of the woods, they would be in sight of the largest watermelon patch in Georgia, or maybe in the world, as seen through their young eyes.

Shag looked over at little Rusty and boasted, saying, Look at all those watermelons out there, I have a feelin’ we arr goin’ to git our fi ll of that prize watermelon today Rusty, I can jus’ taste that big watermelon right now with its juices runnin’ down our cheeks. Then, we will fi ll our bellies so full they will look like a basketball.

Rusty swallowed with a loud gulp and said, Au, I only hope we don’t git apprehended by those two old desperados. I heard the last two boys who git captured out there a few years ago have not been seen by anybody to this day. They say the Hardison brudders buried them under that Ol’ scarecrow. What the boys didn’t know was no one got apprehended; they just moved to another town with their parents the following day.

Waldo and Rufas—now here is a pair of Wits that just look for something to get into. They break almost every rule the Wit colony lives by. One thing you can say about these two: when push comes to shove, these little fellows are fast and can put a sting on you that won’t quit. Put a spear in their hands, and the boys can be a fighting dynamic force to be dealt with. They are tiny in size and have large hummingbird wings on their backs, which most of the time makes it almost impossible for anything to catch them. They love to play and prank around whenever they get time together these days; but don’t, whatever you do, provoke them.

Waldo, most of the time, has his head on straight; and he can come up with the most sneaky capers you have ever heard. When it comes time to be there for a friend, though, he can be counted on, especially when it comes to Ryon and the royal family, of whom he is a best friend.

Rufas is an interesting little fellow. Most of the time, he’s right there with Waldo following his orders, capers, or whatever practical jokes come up at the time. Now he can get distracted sometimes because his observation level is low, ha, I mean real low. Like Waldo, he is also a best friend to Ryon, the colony prince. Rufas’s respect for the royal family came when his parents were put to dust by a flock of predator birds while he was a Witling. Aska took him in to raise because Rufas’s father had saved his life once, plus the little fellow was quite playful and lovable for the family and Ryon. Rufas never knows when to quit talking. His mouth runs off like ten or twelve bumblebees chewing a hole in a barn post.

Meanwhile, Shag and Rusty slowly crawled trying not to be seen or heard. Waldo and Rufas sat on top of a fence post waiting most of the morning for the mischievous boys to make their daily attempt for the juiciest watermelon in the patch.

Rufas remarked, Au Waldo, those boys think they arr so devious, they don’t hold a light to us. Do they, Waldo? Waldo, does they? Pause. Waldo, does they? Waldo?

Waldo gritted his teeth, saying, Will you hush up, you arr always runnin’ that mouth and not watchin’ what’s goin’ on. No, Rufas, they arr not as cunnin’ as ME!

Rufas puckered his lips out, saying, You, YOU, what do you mean cunnin’ as you?

Waldo looked at Rufas, shaking his head, saying, Okay if it will hush you up, then cunnin’ as us. Now, if that makes you happy, will you please watch the boys!

Most of the time Shag and Rusty had to settle for a tiny melon on the edge of the patch because the Hardisons’ dog (Old Tick) would hear them and start howling like he had a raccoon treed, and the Hardison brothers would be on-site within minutes.

Right smack-dab in the middle of the watermelon patch stands the most hideous scarecrow. Well, the Hardison brothers would like to think it’s unsightly, but everybody else thinks it is the funniest scarecrow you have ever set your sights on. Anyway, the scarecrow’s only job is to safeguard the Hardison brothers’ prize watermelon they