"I didn't eat any of it, I swear!" he called out. Earlier that morning Capucine had told him the blue color came from goblin ore and when Nestor had asked if it tasted any better than it looked, his wife had waggled her finger at him, telling he would find himself down on the ground and ten toes up if he even so much as thought of eating the paint.
Once outside and clear of any more finger waggling over poisonous paint, he had had himself a good laugh over it.
After all, it was ugly blue paint, and not some of the tasty pasty glue she made from time to time. Naturally, it never hurt to ask just to be sure of things.
"Nestorrrr!"
His darling wife's shriek was even more shrill than usual, and it sent a chill down the old man's spine.
Something was very wrong, or even more likely with Capucine, something was about to go very wrong.
Nestor bounded off as well as his old joints would let him. Oddly enough, he forgot that he still held the damnable pail filled with horrendous blue.
In short order, he found his wife standing stock still on the front porch of their modest home. At first glance she seemed quite calm, but Nestor saw that her hands were clasped so tightly that her knuckles had gone white.
"Dearest treasure of my heart, what has put you in such a state?"
He let fall the pail of paint, and it went straight down to land on the ground without tipping over.
A charmed paint pail? he asked himself.
Not that he would do such a thing as spilling the paint on purpose, of course, but he could not help but wonder if his darling wife had been about her divinations with her darling husband as the object of her attention.
He came up the two somewhat uneven steps to the wooden porch and stood just in front of her.
Or, he thought, maybe after so many years, she simply knows me better than I do myself.
In that moment, he saw how old she had become, and this was all the more surprising because Nestor had always felt that Capucine carried her many years more easily than he.
Still, the worry that creased her brow and pursed her lips seemed to multiply her wrinkles tenfold.
Capucine startled then, as if only just noticing that her husband stood in front of her.
"Oh you," she sighed and gave him a little push that was not so different from the way she used to when they were both young and wore endless smiles in each other’s company.
"This is no time for fooling, Nestor. I was about my divination when things took a hard turn for the worse."
The old man nodded.
Ever since a certain scarred swordsman accompanied by a barely hidden demonic lizard had come down their road, his wife's herb and poultice business had picked up handily.
Pilgrims and other folk had begun to pass by once more and the old couple had heard rumors of the sudden and quite total disappearance of the gang of ruffians that had accosted travelers to the North. Instead of turning folk from the most direct path to Licharre to the South, a certain number of them had found the old road again, and that meant folk in need of an herb witch's wares.
Better still, as they limped to their door with blistered feet or legs blazing red in a nettled rash, Capucine had just what they needed and this without their needing to wait while she prepared the specific unguents.
Of course, Nestor knew her secret. She had always been skilled at divination, but it appeared that age had improved her abilities.
She had an old cauldron passed down from her mother and from her mother before her. In it she would pour their clearest well water, the purest at hand. She said water from the swift running river just downslope from their home would never do, for divination required still water that had known the depths of the earth … wise water that would let her look so far into the past that she might glimpse a slip and sliver of the future.
Strange herbs and powders were added, then rare old words of power did the rest so that she knew before the travelers themselves knew what they would need once they came down their road.
Nestor worried that she had been spending more and more time at her divination, often staring deeply into that cauldron for hours at a time. Of course, if he bothered her while she was at it, she would almost always be quite cross quickly followed by finding her dear husband something to work on outside. Most recently she even went so far as to make him fence paint, which to date was the surely the worst outcome he had known.
"Capucine, please, tell me."
She sighed again.
"Old powers stir, dear husband. New powers have been born. I saw it just now as I looked upon a family of pilgrims who will likely come to us a fortnight hence."
This time it was Nestor who looked startled. He had never known her to be able to look so far. One or two days, three at the most, but an entire month was surely beyond her.
She eyed him and smiled a tired smile.
"Aye, I see what you're thinking. It surprised me, too. But that's all part of it, all of it is connected in one way or another. Something has been nudging me along. Whatever it is has been very quiet, very subtle until now, but today I was shown things I could have never seen on my own."
Nestor shook his head.
"What are you saying?"
"I'm saying that something very, very old has been awakened and other things have are stirring about with it."
Nestor swore for the second time that day in an ancient language that no living soul in those parts had ever heard. Somehow it felt appropriate.
"Wife, I ask you again — and speak plainly this time — what is this all about?"
She spoke as if she had not heard him, her voice turning eerily melodic.
"I saw a family on a road that will lead them here. And what mattered most wasn't those plain folk, but the woman who removed herself from their path. In her brave heart burns a terrible fire and she turned away to spare them from herself.
"I saw a man watching her from very far away, a man who has passed on to the other side of a darkened mirror, and his own heart breaks to see this woman shorn of herself, imprisoned now just as he is.
"I saw the scarred swordsman as he rages to his destiny, but the outcome of his end is balanced upon a dagger's blade and nothing more is sure.
"And then I saw the thing that showed me all this, and its face was black as coal and its eyes blood red."
Nestor gasped, then blurted out, "Do not tell me the vanquished evil of elder days has spoken to you?"
He shuddered at the thought, for the return of those abominable, black creatures would mean an end to all that men and women hold dear.
"No, Nestor," she replied. "The power that reached out to me was darker than black, but in its red eyes I saw what could only be described as compassion. And when it spoke to me, in its beastly manner, I knew that this creature does what it does now for love.
"It warned me of coming danger, and in exchange for its warning, it asks for our intercession."
Nestor thought he understood then what danger was in store for them.
"Will that horrid feathered creature come again?"
His darling wife took his wrinkled hand in her own and said, "No, dear husband. Worse. What comes is that creature's master, and this time we cannot simply hide and hope that he continues on his way."
Nestor's eyes grew wide at what his wife said next.
"This time we must intervene and delay the dire being. I was told that if we fail, then the swordsman will fail. And should that brave man fail, then before long the world shall fail with him."
The old man stood still, then straightened his bowed back as best he could before speaking.
"I love you, darling wife. If you say that we must do this, then so be it."
She smiled at her dear husband.
"You're a good man, as I've always known you to be. Now fetch us a barrel, for we will need it before we are done."
Nestor clambered down the porch steps before turning back one last time.
"Do you mean to say, darling wife, th
at I'm done painting for the day?
"Of course, foolish husband. The fence can wait and whether we are still here for it to matter is far from decided."
Capucine bustled off while calling out for him to fetch one of the largest empty wine casks from the garden shanty.
Nestor walked off, taking care to step well over the paint pail, in search of what he thought of as their joyless barrels.
The old couple had at least six or seven of the red stained oak barrels, the insides fire hardened for what was supposed to impart a better taste to wine. To Nestor they smelled mostly of smoky vinegar and less like wine, but that was as far as things went for him and his wife.
He considered the barrels joyless things because he and Capucine had had no part in emptying them, rather, they had simply recovered them after lazy dray drivers had pushed them off their wagons on the return trip from Licharre. The river downslope from their cottage flowed toward the city and not the other way, which meant the return trip for the empty barrels was over land and not water.
So it was that foolish city folk paid the drivers in advance to haul them back to the vineyards. Then certain of the least scrupulous among the overland porters simply dumped the used barrels once down the road a fair piece from the city.
His darling wife had said that one day they might come in handy.
He hoped she was right.
Nestor hurried to the old shed where they were stored while thinking that at least the news had not been all bad.
No more painting for me, he thought, followed just as quickly with, Perhaps no more painting ever again if this goes wrong.
He loved his wife more than life itself, but the old man had to admit that he had never seen her so shaken.
And then despite the danger they were about to face, he had the most surprising realization of the entire day as gooseflesh broke across his skin.
Come to think of it, I ratherwould like to finish painting that fence. And why not with that delightful blue paint?
Chapter Nine — Melisse
He stared into the darkness of the cauldron, willing it with as much focus as he could muster to allow him to reach through to the sleeping woman.
Melisse, hear me, he said in his own mind as he pushed his hands against the surface of the cauldron's strange contents.
However, the black interior refused him this time, and no matter how much force he brought to bear, Silas could not achieve the same effect as earlier.
But I must … somehow. I was so close to reaching her.
He shook his head at the sleeping figure reflected in the image before him.
So close, I could almost touch her.
Silas saw the image shimmer before his eyes at the same time as he felt … something.
He furrowed his brow and concentrated mightily as if by sheer force of will alone, he might arrive at his desired end.
It was only a short time ago that he had seen a glimmer of fire awaken in Melisse's eyes, but he had been pushed back, just as the fire was pushed back and the fierce gleam of her expression went dull again.
Silas had watched, his frustration only growing, as Melisse had fallen back on her bed, her eyes once more vacant, before the passing hours carried her off to what he supposed was a sleep devoid of color or hope.
But something has just made the cauldron react.
Silas paused to consider. Then, in a gesture contrary to what he wished for most, he closed his eyes, ceasing to see the woman who filled all his thoughts.
Instead, he kept his hands pressed to the cauldron's surface, then forced himself to remember what it was to touch her, to feel her body under his hands as she had smiled for him so long ago and so far away.
This time there was no doubting it.
Silas reached out with his mind and in the darkness he found her.
***
Someone was calling out to her.
Melisse heard them and it was like a light in absolute darkness, just as it was all around her then. She knew she was dreaming and she knew she was lost.
She wandered aimlessly, for the landscape was featureless with everything covered in a shadow that lay so heavily in all directions that it seemed to her even sound was dimmed by it.
All that she knew was she had to keep going, to keep searching for a way out of the muck and mire that menaced to pull her down and drown her from one minute to the next.
Moving forward seemed the only thing she could do even if she knew that it might mean walking in circles in the endless dreamland that lay behind her sleeping eyes.
It had seemed to go on like that for centuries until, at last, she heard the voice.
The sound was ever so faint, so slight as to be a thing born of her desire for something, anything, that would break the monotony of her sort.
But it came again and again, growing in force, until she was sure that it was as real as anything else could be in that dreary place.
Melisse changed her direction as well as she was able and moved toward the sound that grew into a voice.
A voice that called out a name with each breath.
Her own name, she realized.
She redoubled her pace, desiring nothing more than to find that voice at once just so she could hear her own name issued from the mouth of another.
It would be a small thing, but at least it would be something a little less bleak than all shadowy desolation surrounding her.
With no warning, the voice went silent.
Melisse stopped walking, frozen, casting about herself, desperate to know that the sound had not disappeared never to return.
She strained her ears, not moving from where she stood.
And when she heard it again, it was not something lost like she was, aimlessly wandering.
It was a sound filled with purpose. It was a sound of gladness.
Best of all, it was a sound that came from just behind her.
Melisse spun around.
Her eyes were immediately filled with tears as she took in the sight of him.
The owner of the voice was a young man who stood in a shadow. Until then, Melisse was surrounded in a sea of shadows, but here she saw that a darker one could exist and it hid the young man's face.
However, it did nothing to hide the smile that appeared upon his full lips like the rising sun.
"Melisse," he said with a soft yet solid tone. "I am so glad I found you."
She shook her head.
"You speak as if we know one another."
He nodded.
"We do. It was some time ago, but we met on an evening that changed everything for me afterward."
Melisse felt a pang of fear.
"Did I do something wrong? I'm afraid I don't remember."
He chuckled with a low sound that pulled at her deep inside. Somehow, it was all so familiar, while still hidden from view.
"That's fine. I don't think you're quite yourself right now. I'm hoping we can fix that."
She nodded. She would have liked very much to set things aright.
"For now, can you tell me what you do remember?"
Melisse considered then shrugged her shoulders.
"I just remember walking around here. Sometimes up, sometimes down, most of the time on level ground. But that is all."
She looked down, suddenly feeling quite shy.
"I don't think I even remembered my own name until I heard you say it."
The shadows of his face moved, as if what she said was surprising.
"Then it is worse than I had imagined."
Melisse nodded. It was worse than anything.
The figure of the young man said nothing for a time. Melisse took in the outline of his body and she thought to herself that in other circumstances, he was surely a beautiful man.
"It seems to me that this place is a made thing. And not by you," he said, finally.
"But I dream, do I not?"
He replied, "Yes, but I can't help but believe that your true dreams are filled with
color and life. You, Melisse, are not someone who dreams of such unrelenting ennui."
She stuttered, "How … how can you know this about me?"
His reply surprised her.
“Because I have dreamed about you, many times since we met at my family's farm. I would like to say more, but I think most of what I have to say will be pushed back when you awaken.”
“Then how shall I ever remember?” she asked.
“Actions speak more loudly than words, beautiful Melisse. I will show you what you must remember.”
“How?” she asked, her voice fallen to a whisper.
"With my body, and with yours."
He came close to her, so close that she could feel him, then he bent his head to press his lips against her own.
She knew he was nothing more than a shadow in a shadow-darkened world, but she wanted him.
She wanted to know him — very much.
"There was a time …" he said as he drew away just enough to speak, "… that I thought a shadow had passed me by during a beautiful moonlit night."
Their lips found each other again as their hunger for one another forced the young man silent.
"That shadow …" he said with a rough voice as he brought his hands to Melisse's jawline, then let them slip to her shoulders, "… was a woman with fiercely bright eyes, despite their being dark pools of mystery."
His slipped lower, his fingertips trailing over her breasts, and Melisse drew a sudden intake of breath as he brushed her nipples before continuing to move lower.
"She lured me into my father's barn. She trapped me with her beauty."
The young man held both her breasts, then lifted his thumbs to drift across her nipples once more.
It was like a tiny bolt of heat lightning, and Melisse felt her heart begin to pound.
"I was helpless before her," he continued. "She was a goddess descended from the heavens and she taught me what it is to truly be a man."
Echoes reverberated through Melisse as he touched her. The scent of fresh straw and stabled draft animals rose in her thoughts as she spoke in her turn.
"I had hidden myself in the loft but you climbed the ladder."
The Marechal Chronicles: Volume VI, The Crucible: A Dark Fantasy Tale Page 10