The Blooding

by Luke Sky Wachter

  “How good is thy drawing?” the Witch ignored her query as she tossed her a pair of small brushes and an ink well of some kind that glittered in the candlelight, along with a rolled up parchment.

  “Okay I guess, I mean maybe I could observe and draw at the same time,” Cloe said looking down at the brushes in dismay, “but are you sure…” she trailed off.

  “Trace out the ley lines of his foot to just below the knee and then open the scroll. It’ll show thee what thou need do from there to connect the magic of the earth to his body,” Tulla instructed.

  “I can’t do that,” Cloe yelped as soon as she realized what she was being asked to do. Quickly lowering her voice she leaned forward, “Making a painted warrior is illegal! We could be executed with prejudice for casting such a spell—we would be burned at the stake!”

  “The first thing thou need remember is that Invaders have spells, but we perform workings or do magic, thou little bint,” Tulla said shortly.

  “Anything else I should remember oh wise one, or was that the extent of your great wisdom?” Cloe snapped back at her sarcastically.

  “Yes,” Tulla’s eyes suddenly seemed much larger on her face, “thou needs remember that those who would hang you are outside this tent, and I am inside. Another thing bint…this man you seem so concerned about most certainly will die if you stand aside and do nothing—so cross me at thy own peril.”

  Cloe gulped and after a moment of hesitation picked up the brushes. She wasn’t scared of the old Witch’s threats…well, not too scared, but Madam Tulla was right: someone could die if she didn’t do her part.

  She lifted her paint brush and began the first stroke when something occurred to her and she immediately dropped the brush, which marred the bed’s sheet with a glittering dye.

  “Do you have any idea how much each drop of that paint cost, you empty-headed little fool,” rasped Tulla, looking genuinely enraged for the first time that night.

  Like a possum caught in the light of a torch, Cloe froze, too afraid to speak.

  “Pick it up,” Tulla said dangerously, while Cloe’s mouth opened and then closed, “no one wastes what is mine. Get control of thyself girl.” Knowing she looked more like a fish than a person, Cloe squeezed her eyes shut.

  “If thou hast something to say then just spit it out,” Tulla hissed, snatching up the brush and thrusting it back into the ink.

  “I’m not sure if I should—” Cloe began, her eyes flitting around the tent, “I mean I know something that might interfere with the spell, I mean it could…that is, I’m not entirely sure.

  Tulla’s eyes bored into her. It felt like she was slowly being crushed under the weight of that merciless gaze. She literally couldn’t say a word as her speech seemed to have deserted her, and yet at the same time the weight of those eyes was like a pressure she couldn’t escape.

  “Look, he’s a girl!” Cloe finally blurted out, “I know I let you think he was a boy but he’s not! I found out when I went to heal his—I mean her chest wound. The lung had collapsed and…I hope that doesn’t affect your spell any.” The words finally released, it felt like a great weight had been lifted from her and for a long moment all she could do was sit there her head hanging and gasping for breath.

  She eventually looked up at the Witch through the bangs covering her eyes. She was just in time to see the shocked expression on the old Witch’s face slowly fade into a growing smirk.

  “Well, well, well,” Old Tulla said looking down at the body of the wounded girl dressed up as a man, “Mister Falon Rankin is it? Aren’t you just the wiliest hen in the chicken coop, pretending to be a full blown rooster my strutting little girl. These sneaky New Blood, Invader foxes around us could learn a thing or two, I’d wager,” the old lady paused, and the calculating smile that crossed her face caused Cloe’s blood to run cold.

  “Anything else?” the old woman snapped rounding back on Cloe with eyes as hard as agates.

  Cloe gulped, wondering if her Mistress had had any clue as to the true nature of Madam Tulla before she had sent her apprentice to the faded blue tent.

  “He-her abdomen glittered in the moonlight,” Cloe said in a small voice, “my Mistress said something about tattoos?”

  “Moonlight tattoo’s,” Old Tulla said in a contemplative voice, “and here I thought no one kept to the Old Ways anymore.” At Cloe’s look of incomprehension, Tulla frowned at her. “Of sending our proud young daughters off to war at the head of our armies!” the old Witch explained forcefully.

  “They did?” Cloe gaped, “that’s crazy! War’s for menfolk.”

  “This generation,” Tulla sneered.

  “Women don’t go to war; we never have,” Cloe protested, “not this generation, nor the one before.”

  “Half Bloods,” Tulla said derisively, “they know nothing of history. Why, my grandmother was a warrior queen! Try telling her that and she’d cut thy tongue out and feed it back to thee.”

  Cloe just shook her head mutely. She had never heard of women warriors before, except in the occasional fireside tale. Everyone knew the Old People who used to rule their lands had been enslaved by women. They had cast magic at the head of vast armies.

  But everything changed when the King and his Wizards came. The New Magic was stronger than the Old, evil magics used by the Old People, and the King’s armies—led by men—had triumphed over the Old Armies led by their Warrior Queens. She knew that everything probably wasn’t exactly like in the history books. The old magic wasn’t inherently evil, no matter what they claimed, but even still…

  “If women never go to war then what about this one,” Tulla said jaw jutting as she pointed to Falon. “She looks from the battlefield.”

  “I don’t think—,” Cloe started, “I mean of course she’s here but…”

  “I don’t care what thou thinks,” Tulla snapped, “continue with the task I set thee.”

  Cloe opened her mouth.

  “And keep thy mouth shut, if thou knows what’s good for thee,” Tulla said flatly.

  Falon felt herself floating outside of her body. It was a sense of freedom such as she had never experienced before. The world was filled with so many new and different colors—colors she had only ever seen a few times before, when Mama Muirgheal had helped her walk the moonlight path. But those had been faded and careworn compared to her new vision, and what she could see filled her with a sense of wonder.

  She started to float away to take a closer look at the colors when something forcibly stopped her, pulling her up short. She tried to pull away but it was too hard.

  Looking back she saw a chain made up of links stretching from her body up to her spirit. That’s when she realized with a sense of serenity she would not have expected, that she was standing outside her body.

  “We’re losing her,” snarled Mama Tulla and Falon was surprised to see the Old Magic woman leaning over her body, “she’s stepped outside her body!”

  “What kind of magic is this?!” a younger woman Falon had never met exclaimed, looking up and meeting Falon’s eyes with a look of panic, “I thought you said there was no magic that could take a soul outside of its body? Her eyes are green and…why is she naked?!”

  “Thou can see her then,” Tulla mused, looking up briefly before continuing to draw on Falon’s neck with a pair of brushes, “interesting. Now get back to work.”

  “You said—” the younger woman began to protest.

  “I said there’s no such thing as a soul stealer, not that a spirit can’t leave its own body any time it wants or pleased for normal, everyday occasions—like dying!” Tulla snapped.

  “Then wh-what are we doing here if she’s already dead?” the young woman stammered, ceasing her drawing yet again.

  “Magic, especially Spells,” Tulla snorted derisively at the reference to the New Magic, “can’t simply jerk a soul from its body—at least, not against its will—but that doesn’t mean that ‘our’ magic can’t help to keep a spirit locked up insid
e until we’ve had a chance to repair that body. This,” the old woman said pulling back her brushes, and pointing at the thorny necklace she was drawing on Falon’s neck, “helps keep the spirit inside the body…among other things.”

  Falon had been distracted by the colors, but the more the old woman spoke, the less she liked where this was going.

  “Then what am I doing down here?” the young woman demanded, putting down her brushes. Falon was curious to know that answer as well.

  “That will give her spirit the power to overcome the magic of the Invader’s weapon and allow us to heal the body before she really does die,” Tulla instructed, returning to her task.

  “Okay,” the young woman eventually agreed, this time using her brushes with a will, and happily painting on Falon’s foot.

  Falon was getting irritated that these two women could see her but didn’t feel the need to actually say anything to her. So she opened her mouth to protest, but while it felt like she was talking, no sounds came out of her mouth.

  Now not only couldn’t she communicate with the outside world, but she was being stopped from exploring the wonders of her new senses as well. Shaking her head in frustration, she tried to go as far from her body as possible to see how far she could get.

  Sudden sharp and agonizing pain flamed across her throat and Falon—or rather, Spirit Falon, as she supposed that’s what she was at that moment—fell to her knees. If the tether holding her near her body were like the links of a chain, then whatever was around her neck felt like barbed wire!

  “I think you’re hurting her,” the young woman dressed as an Apprentice Healer protested, stopping whatever it was she was doing to look up at Falon. The apprentice quickly blushed and looked down again, and Falon realized it was due to her spirit body’s naked state, and belatedly tried to cover herself up with her arms, “and why is her spirit starting to turn red in the center? This isn’t like any healing magic I’ve ever heard of!”

  “Did thou think we were simply binding moonlight here?” Tulla hissed. “This is Deep Magic, the magic the Earth, of Life, of Death, and of dying. It has almost as little to do with the moon thou are familiar with as does the magic of a Wizard and his thrice accursed spell book!”

  Finally Tulla stopped drawing and placed her hands on either side of Falon’s neck, and she immediately felt as if someone had grabbed hold of that chain holding Falon into her body and started hauling with absolutely no care or concern for the barbed wire now encircling her throat.

  Jerked off her metaphysical feet, Falon’s hands rose from where they were attempting to cover her groin and chest, immediately going to her throat as she was dragged kicking and silently screaming all the way back into her body.

  Slamming inside with punishing force, Falon was instantly returned to all the pain and suffering of her body that she had left behind, and it was like running face-first into a stone wall.

  Dazed, confused and no longer certain of what was going on as everything was now filtered through a haze of pain, Falon’s unfocused eyes roved around wildly.

  “Wha—?” Falon gurgled trying to move her head but was far too weak.

  “We did it!” Tulla’s helper cried, right before Falon’s body started seizing.

  “Hold still,” Tulla said and her words seemed to thunder through Falon’s mind and body with the force of the gods, “and thou,” Tulla glared at her assistant, “finish with that boot!”

  “Boot?” her helper asked sounding at a loss.

  “The painting, the earth tattoos you are making on her leg,” Madam Tulla instructed.

  Unable to move with her body locked up and everything on the inside feeling on fire, Falon opened her mouth and screamed like she had never screamed before. Only this time, now that she was back in her body, her cries rent the air with the sounds of her suffering.

  “Sleep, you wretch!” Tulla once again spoke with the thunder of command. “Sleep, curse you!”

  And Falon passed out.

  When Falon opened her eyes she expected to see the undercarriage of the wagon, everything felt like a bad dream that couldn’t possibly have been real. All the fighting and killing, the fighting again, the being killed, the part where she was wandering outside her body and then not being allowed to pass on and then passing out, it all seemed so surreal. But the moment she saw the faded blue insides of the tent was when she knew that it had all happened.

  Reality came crashing back and with it came a flood of fear accompanied by an overwhelming urge to get up, run, and keep on running.

  Quivering on the small cot, Falon wasn’t aware of the tears until they rolled down her face and onto her ears. Shaking from side to side, when she tried to move her hand she realized she was unable to; it was as if a heavy weight was holding them down. Opening and closing her mouth, she tried to speak but her tongue wouldn’t work, and all that came out was a weird kind of low pitched moan, which was quickly cut off by a vice-like pressure around her neck that squeezed until she almost passed out.

  A wave of terror washed over her. Am I paralyzed, she wondered with a rising sense of panic.

  She lay there for what felt like hours unable to move her arms and legs, or to speak. She couldn’t even turn her head from side to side but a few inches before the vice started cutting into her neck, but eventually the other occupant of the tent made her presence known by staggering up to her feet and plopping down on the chamber pot

  “I see thou art awake,” Madam Tulla said in a grumpy voice after she had finished her morning business. When she had done so, the old woman leaned over Falon. Seeing the way Falon was only able to open and close her mouth, and look from side to side caused the old Witch to smile.

  She had to be an old witch because no one else could do what Falon remember being done to her spirit and body.

  “I thought I told thee not to move,” the old Woman tisked in a silky voice that was nevertheless laced with the power of command, her wicked smile growing as Falon’s jaw abruptly locked in place.

  Panicking, Falon tried to force her mouth open and slowly, creakily, it did so but as soon as it had, the band of barbed wire tightened around her neck. If she could have cried out she would have.

  Tulla frowned down at her, “So you can move thy mouth a bit,” she shrugged, “I’d still say that’s a pretty good binding. Be careful now and stop fighting the bindings; thou wert pierced through the side by an evil wizard enchantment. It took all of my powers to seal you back up again—if you move you’ll reopen the wounds.”

  Falon’s eyes bulged and she stared up at the Witch with panic, wondering what the old woman had done to her?

  Then Tulla looked down and then waved her hand irritably. “Oh go ahead and speak,” she ordered abruptly.

  The words thundered through Falon’s body like a powerful storm, until the pressure around her head and neck was suddenly relieved, with only the faintest prickling sensation remaining.

  “Speak. Thou shall speak,” Tulla instructed her with a scowl. “Although, I can already feeling the ingratitude oozing out of thee,” she finished with a harrumph.

  “What have you done to me?” Falon asked in a tremulous voice.

  “Why, I’ve saved thy life by binding thy spirit back into thy body,” Tulla explained, looking and sounding incredibly smug.

  “I can’t move,” Falon said her voice pleading. She knew no shame in that moment’ being trapped and unable to move was simply too terrifying.

  “An unfortunate side effect of the spell,” Tulla said, not looking like she thought it was unfortunate at all, instead resembling nothing so much as a cat that had just got the cream. “Thou kept screaming and thrashing about during the healing that I thought it best to keep thee from harming thyself, so I employed a simple binding.”

  “Thank you,” Falon said closing her eyes as tears leaked out again. She wanted to believe the words, but the Witch still seemed cruel—even if she had saved Falon’s life.

  “Oh stop thy crying,” Tulla
snapped, only this time without the thunder of command inside her voice.

  Falon felt the tears temporarily stop for several moments before they started welling yet again. Apparently the Witch’s magic wasn’t quite as powerful as Tulla might like but it was still far too potent for Falon.

  “I still can’t move,” Falon whispered, not wanting to feel the angry lash of Tulla’s magic, but the need to move was overpowering.

  “Oh right, right,” Tulla muttered and when she spoke again her voice thundered, “I release thee.”

  It was as if a great weight had been removed from all over Falon’s entire body. Her still muscles felt locked up, and at first every movement was agony, but it was her body’s natural stiffness rather than the overwhelming power of the Witch that held her back. Eventually Falon was able to work out the worst of the kinks from being stuck in one position all night.

  “Anything else I can do for you, Squiresheir,” Tulla drawled, as if the title made her want to laugh. Yet somehow she still managed to sound irritable, despite the touch of levity threaded throughout her words.

  “Did we win? The battle I mean, and…the war too, I suppose,” Falon asked hopefully.

  “Yes, yes, our spoiled little Princeling got his revenge on the other one spoiled brat. You ‘boys’ slaughtered whole job lots of them Ravens before driving them off the field; your precious little war has been won,” Tulla scoffed.

  “It’s not my war,” Falon said, her voice an echo of what she remembered it and then with more vigor, “not my war. Never my war!”

  “You fought, you bled and you died,” Tulla said so dismissively of her denial that it took Falon’s breath away, “that makes it your war in my book.”

  An extended silence filled the room and Falon realized that with the war over her Father’s military service obligations had been fulfilled. None of this mattered anymore; she could go home!

  “I can go home and see my sisters again,” Falon whispered, a tremulous smile blossoming on her face with that realization. She had been so caught up the horrors of both battle and of healing that she had actually forgotten this, the most important fact.