by H C Turk
The alderman attended. He at least was kind enough to have Marybelle and her stone pushed overboard as one instead of dropping the rock and allowing it to rip her asunder. I watched the deep splash and thought how awkward she appeared striking sideways, her visage lost in a tangle of hair as she disappeared, her personal wake lost in the sea waves.
Too numb to view Chloe being tied to her rock, I took scant notice of a sailor viewing through a metal tube he pointed toward shore. I took no notice, waiting for a salt rush around me to clog my breathing, to clean my disruptive life. But the next holy demise was interrupted by this same sailor buzzing to his captain, the captain conversing with the alderman and bishop, all these males looking toward a boat that neared.
The sinners waited. Stinking men from the two ships were soon speaking. Not so similar were all their faces that I could not discern a red flush about the bishop and smell his anger. He then sputtered with a twisted mouth as Chloe was cut loose. What manner of salvation could this be when my sister was released only to be beaten bloody by the holy man’s metal cross? The alderman bid Dalimore cease, the bishop complying before Chloe was delivered a bloody sleep even a witch would slow recover from. But since Chloe was too dazed to be his audience, Dalimore moved to Mother and me, whereupon he screeched down with no godly passion, his anger an evil no witch could match.
“What sin could you Godless wenches produce worse than lying to God and His man? The Lord’s grace has sent truth in the form of Amanda Rathel on shore this moment. She has heard of your plotting and described how you would make fools of me and God by gaining the water that could be your witches’ home. And though the devil has regained one of his creatures, the remainder of your unholy pack will meet God’s judgment—in ashes. As quickly as this ship can be turned, we shall arrange the posts and chains to bind you as God’s flames burn you lifeless. And you shall suffer the charred flesh and blackened blood due amoral liars and their immortal evil.”
My last recollection of the return was the anchor’s being raised. The chain seemed to be pulled through my person, for it was massive, metal, a loud and odorous symbol of sinners’ murder. Beyond this, I recall nothing. The incarceration was as noticeable as common breathing. My sister and mother nearby were positions, not people. We had no praying to God nor mocking Jesus, no cursing the sinners, no torment so overbearing that dementia would result, witches babbling mindlessly like the balding sinner who guided us. No response had these sisters because the dead do not respond.
I recall utter sadness, the pitiful waste of the finest witches a girl could know, but have no recollection of the smell that ripped me breathless, the smell of Chloe beyond sight becoming rancid smoke.
She was beheaded first. As suggested by Lady Amanda, the witches would be separated from their heads; for although believing that under certain circumstances this cutting might not be permanent, Rathel knew that even witches with their heads at their feet would be immune to physical agony, for the lady was no torturer. Only a killer.
I did not notice them take my mother, though from the adjacent cell I should have smelled her depart. I should have smelled her cook, but this as well escaped me. Without intent, I had refused to die from the hell of perceiving my precious mother become burnt meat.
With no deliberation, I met them, beginning to step out as soon as the door opened. But they pressed me backward as an unknown woman stated clearly that I was no witch. For a moment, I needed to recover, not from the surprising move but from the absolute lie. Quickly I stepped toward the door again, for I was a witch, and since I could no longer have my mother, I demanded the pride in our love.
I moved again and they stopped me. The woman, whom I had guessed the Lady Amanda, astonished the alderman by insisting that she speak with me alone. I looked at no sinner who departed, and not the murderess who remained.
She attacked me. Of course, this was her goal, to kill me personally. After looking behind to see that the males had departed, this sinner quickly reached out and cut my wrist with some implement concealed in a kerchief. But, no, she only formed a scratch barely felt. I looked to the wound, the fine line of blood, then up to this sinner, wondering what bizarre form her murder was taking.
“No human can have the oil of the Nevier thorn in the blood without a pain to set her screaming,” Rathel began, looking carefully to my wrist. “But you have not even a redness—because you are no human. You are a witch. A more certain test is with the sexual tissue, but you are a youth and undeveloped. Perhaps not even your evil is mature.” Then she looked to my face, and with a rapid tone explained herself.
“God help you, child, but I could not save your mother. By the time I learned of a perfect girl, the truth had been told of witches and water. Had I known before, I would have spared Evlynne, even though witches ruined me, and I would rid the world of their evil. But I have use for you, white daughter. As a witch, you will kill a male whose father sought my ruin. For merely being natural, your life will be spared.”
With her words, I became as hot as any death flame. Immediately I stood and shouted to the door, “I am a witch equal to any you have destroyed! Before God, I thank Him for making me a witch and not a murderous sinner!”
Moving loudly, Bulkeley entered with his constables. At once I stepped for the doorway so that I could be beheaded and burned. So that I could join my mother, and rejoin our love. But I was detained by reeking men as Rathel with calm confidence conveyed her latest lie.
“Your honor, this girl has been taken in the mind by witches who stole her as an infant, even as they later stole poor Sarah Vidgeon’s thinking. This child, however, can be healed. I will return with Alba to London, where with the grace of God, special practices will aid her recovery. But first, I must prove not only to the world but to the deluded child herself that she is innocent and human. I have begun by scratching her with a thorn that will set a witch’s skin palsied, but she has no reaction,” and the lady nodded to the thin line on my arm. “Available, however, is a greater proof that even common folk may understand.”
The alderman, familiar with a calm township wherein the devil rarely ventured, was weakened from the stress of killing, from evil and all its adjacent manifestations. Exasperated, he demanded that Rathel explain herself and be on with the proving or on with the execution.
“This girl is all the witch she appears,” the lady told him, “for no witch can be sublime. As well, no witch can swim, but neither can many normal folk. But no human, we all know, can remain beneath the water’s surface for any duration. The true witches were prepared to walk a league beneath the sea, allowing this girl to die in the process, a fact I shall demonstrate in verity.”
The alderman agreed that I should be conveyed to the shore and submerged, but I would have no more of the sinners’ evil.
“She lies for her own gain!” I screeched while attempting to pull away from men too strong for any girl. “I am a witch and will join my mother in Hell!”
“A pitiful delusion to be quashed,” Rathel declared with sadness. “She will calm when the truth is shown and she becomes aware.”
Avoiding the crowd gathered to inhale witches’ smoke as though perverse tobacco, the alderman led me through the prison’s rear door, into alleys and then to the sea. But once outside, I found a greater cause to continue my screeching; for the odor in the air was stronger here, and if I were to concentrate, surely I would be able to determine its source. Impossible to determine was the source of that new, phenomenal sound; for with my smelling came a shrieking so near my ear, so near my heart, as to collapse me with its power, throwing me to the ground where I lay—but why was my mouth open so wide as to pain my jaw? Why was my throat stretched and sore? What power had that sound to throw me, take me, yet allow me no feeling? With all the shrieking and ranting of my voice, my body, my brain, I felt nothing; for there is no higher life for a witch after death, and I had died from that smell.
The alderman’s attempted prudence was thus ruined by the s
ensual blotting I required, that mutilation of my senses coming from me, from my mother. This girl panicked as though stricken by Satan was a sight to rouse the populace. What thoughts had they of this screaming child with her neck stretched backward? What of this agony in her eyes and not a single tear?
Scores of sinners rushed from their buildings as insistent males pulled me to my feet. Young and old had to be pressed away from our entourage, unable to approach too near with their shoving, though removed they could remain and yet hear that groaning I could not control, a sound as horrid as the previous shrieking, for both were sounds of death.
Once near enough the sea to smell salt and concentrate on this water rather than the smoke behind, I ended my noise, not only from exhaustion, but to give my mother her final due. With all my prideful resolve retained, I knew that verifying my identity would be a more important truth than revealing the dishonesty of this sinning woman, for it would be my final gift to Mother.
“I will take her myself in that I have handled witches from learning their revelations,” Rathel proclaimed to Bulkeley.
Though balking at a lady’s submitting herself to such danger, the alderman had no desire to be splashing in the sea or exposed to a witch’s evil. Therefore, he agreed, Lady Amanda a believable authority.
She led me into the water as constables restrained the sinning crowd. Immediately upon Marybelle’s submersion, I had come to loathe water; but to honor my mother, I would suffer it. Directed by Rathel, I slid beneath the water’s surface to lie flat on my back in the shallows. Cooperative Rathel guided me down, then unobtrusively stepped upon me as she straightened, her weight on one heel and against my abdomen.
I could not breathe. Even in my depleted state, the water caused no problem until Rathel crushed the air from my lungs and the sea rushed in. Then I suffered from both the force of her weight and the terrifying suffocation. I choked and struggled to regain the surface—but the lady held me under longer, for she would not remove that foot from beneath my lungs. With the desperate effort of dying, I forced her leg from me and tore my way to the surface, gasping in God’s dry air in accord with the lady’s newest comments. As she straightened, drenched from having lost her balance as I fought her, Rathel cried forth to the observing officials, delivering her latest false depiction.
“Do you see this human child and how desperately she struggles to breathe God’s air and not Satan’s lies?!”
Constables were ordered to aid us ashore. With my lungs burning and my body bruised, I could not oppose Rathel, even more the authority now that she had jeopardized her own health to reveal the deluded child as innocent, to reveal the witch as human.
• • •
Due to a true debility, I poorly remember being conveyed along with Lady Amanda to a fine home in which she sojourned, poorly remember being dried and dressed in borrowed sinners’ clothes, then made comfortable upon an elaborate bed. A clearer recollection is of my life’s first nightmare, the first and worst sort for being true. Therein I found my sinning part, which seemed vengeance, and for the first instance experienced the true evil of witches.
Naturally I moved past the sinners in my sinning apparel as though the attire signified a part we shared. Through inactive streets I moved with no sinners aware, smelling their presence or potential observation beforehand. The home I sought was not hidden to one sensitive to the reek of witch death, of piety as charred as black bodies.
Though guesting in an occupied home, the bishop lived alone, his sinner’s station to be without a spouse as though witch himself. The cat sensing me once within cared no more for this witch than did any aware creature, a category not including the well-souled and their corporeal evil. Surely, the bishop considered the force to awaken him holy, for in me he viewed an angel of deliverance, not asking what or whom was to be delivered, not wondering whether angels are properly nude.
With the sinner’s gown at my feet, I was revealed by the dim lantern as a stranger known, the bishop unable to recognize Alba, for he saw only a creature to become his most intimate friend—angels have neither age nor identity. As I removed his cover and pulled at his clothing, the bishop was replaced by a man, revealing a male’s uniqueness, that central bone grown on occasion as though replacement for Adam’s taken rib. This rib I smothered with an insertion foretold by Marybelle the swimmer. The former bishop swam against me, stroking through my body, receiving ecstasy from the special pressure of sex. Now the bishop was a man forcing his woman flat, holding her down with his bulk and his thrusting as he gained great pleasure denoted by his groaning, great pleasure from the muscle he stroked through. But soon he found the pressure of this angel uncommon, giving great pleasure that came immediately before equivalent pain. The force of her vagina holding him increased with his arousal until his ecstasy hurt. Until he had to cease his swimming. But the pressure did not end.
Careless was I, without intent, as the man failed to remove himself, the lust rushing out of him though his phallus was unchanged—too hard, too hard and hurting as noted by his silent grimace. But what equivalence had I gained to be equally pained? Was my sinning aspect the reception of the same misery in sex as any male invading me? Surely, the bishop’s misery could not have been worse, for my body was cramped as though crushing me, the agony so tortuous as to convince me death was next. This impression, however, was only feeling; the bishop’s was fact, the former minister and temporary man grasping my thighs and attempting to remove himself as the agony increased, filling his life as completely as God’s awareness. But awareness was soon lost to him as he fell away and the torture ended, replaced by a shocked numbness more terrifying than any pain; for when he fell away, he did not fall whole.
Too exhausted to move, too damaged to respond, the former man only temporarily alive looked to me, to the orgasmic contractions of my witch’s muscle. Certainly no awareness was to be seen in my persona, only the same exhausted pain. And the man became religious again as he stared at the child’s tearless eyes, became religious with guilt, perhaps; or had he ever felt remorse for fucking such a baby before she pinched his prick off? Whether awareness or shock, his attitude was ending, replaced by an empty sleep that remained. Before morning, the bishop was holy again; for although without blood, permanently he was with his God.
• • •
Again I dreamed, for God had not yet allowed the interval between Mother’s death and her daughter’s new life to end. Hellish was this intervening era to provide dreams as tortuous as they were real, to be verified later only by further death. Within this reality that my memory made a dream, I remained upon a sinning bed. So sickly I felt the entire night that only vague impressions of lost Mother could penetrate, soon replaced with further pain, no comparison, no seeking a source for the illness in my family’s death, only suffering as I perspired and shivered uncontrollably. I scarcely felt better when a vomiting came, an expulsion so forceful as to seem murderous. So weak that I could not lean toward the floor, upon myself and the sinners’ bedding I vomited utter misery. Thereafter, my pain remained dense enough to make me oblivious to those sick materials. Lady Amanda, however, was interested in my puke.
I became so ill I could not distinguish that dream of illness from the evil health itself, could not be certain whether the lady entered in the morning of my day or the era of my imagining. But if not a dream, it became a dream, for what other source could generate such strange activity? Lady Amanda searched my vomit. With the sounds of sinning males outside the chamber of my nightmare, Rathel entered to view that literal illness coating the bedding and me, finding an item so desirable that she stole it. Into my vomit she reached to lift an object, and then she had six fingers on that hand. But those nearing voices chased away her hand, men entering the room even as Rathel entered her own clothing, that increased hand swiftly into the bodice of her apparel to come away with only five fingers, her stolen good safely stored against her bosom, both hands and their body bilge wiped upon her gown as though to lead the curio
us to that locale.
Then came street theater, the male sinners mentioning witches and asking of the girl’s whereabouts as though some reasonable association existed, Lady Amanda insisting in the negative as per her recent proving. But with a new death and the witches all executed, it seems one was left, the men replied. Left in the world due to your inferior search, the lady retorted—or believe ye this child was out killing folk in all her illness? Rathel then moved aside to reveal a sickly lass with vomit everywhere and a personage too vanquished to be aware. Awake the night I’ve been with this child who has retched upon myself, the lady asserted, displaying her bodice. And if you need more convincing than this blatant proof, I suggest you find another occupation. Now, away with you to find the true witch, though doubtless the creature is escaped to the wild world, what with her cleverness to have eluded you while in your own village.
Away the males went to gather many witches, though Rathel pronounced them all women the following day. Thereafter, she refused her further expertise; for surely the killing demon had been lost, and work had she in greater England denouncing greater evil. Away the males went, the lady allowing me to sleep, returning in my better memory to have the servants clean the bedding, though Rathel with a soft cloth wiped my face herself; for some stolen items should be handled only by similars, wealthy folk aware of an evil as expensive as death. On to London, then, for further malice, Rathel’s greater task not denouncing evil but promulgating her own, the lady’s best sin in the guise of a comely lass who ate men and discharged vengeance.
Book II: London
Chapter 4
Grasp The Air
Sinners excel at calculation. From the firmament of nature issues the Earth in portions, all its living parts mathematical in growth: the geometry of a leaf’s veining, the pattern of a ferret’s coat. Ponderously imitating God’s superior ways, sinners effect nature’s numerics by calculating exact lengths and widths of the stone rows they’ve heaped to form buildings. How profound these people are to emulate a tree by killing it, cutting it, and rearranging the pieces into shops. But how unnatural was this witch to approve of, even appreciate, their architecture?