by Fran Jacobs
"Why?" I whispered. "If I'm the prophet of a demon, why would anyone want me to be born?"
"Because Ellenessia will be freed one day, Candale, and without you and your visions, mankind would have no way to prepare for what she has planned. That's what the women of our family believe, at least." Her mouth twisted as she continued with her story. "And perhaps it's true, but it didn't matter to me. I didn't care about Medyna or the prophecies or you. I wanted to be a mage, someone in my own right, but no. No, my gifts were all for you, had to be used to prepare myself and my daughter, for you. It was all about you! I went to White Oaks anyway, against my mother's wishes, but I quickly found that they weren't prepared to let me be the powerful mage that I wanted to be either, that they would deny me books that could help be to be so much more than I was. They threw me out when I tried to get hold of those books myself, but, by then, I didn't care. Gerian had left and he was all I wanted. I came here to be with him, only he didn't want me, he had married another. But I was patient, and I waited, close by, hoping, praying he would come back to me. And one day he did, only it was just so that I would have a child for him!"
I didn't say anything. I wasn't sure what I could say. She was rambling now. None of this had anything to do with the questions I'd asked of her, but I had the feeling it was something she had needed to say for a long time and I didn't dare interrupt her.
"So I agreed to have his child, in the hope that the cycle would be broken, that the daughter I was bound to have, wouldn't know about me, or the family legend, or what she was meant to do. She wouldn't have to grow up the way that I had, believing that she was worthless, and that all that mattered was the birth of a boy yet to come."
"But I was born a boy," I whispered.
"Yes," she said sadly. "And that changed everything."
"Why?" I whispered, rubbing my shoulders, which had started to ache. "You could still have walked away, not told me anything about myself, and let me find out the hard way. Why did you want to keep me and help me?"
Mayrila hesitated. "Because you're my path to power, wealth and position, Candale," she said finally. "I will help you be all that you can, to control your gifts, and you will help me. You will give me what I have always wanted."
It was what my grandfather had always believed was behind her actions, but it was a different thing to hear her say it like this, to my face. "You think to use me," I gasped.
"Yes," she said calmly. "You are, after all, using me."
"But you know what the prophecies have said is going to happen to me, Mayrila. Are you really going to use my gifts to get yourself power and fortune, even knowing that they're probably the reason I'm destined to go insane?"
Mayrila's eyes widened and she suddenly seemed uncomfortable. "I might be able to help you avoid that," she said softly.
"How?" I snapped at her. "You said that prophecies could not and should not be changed." I shook my head. "You're just going to let it happen, aren't you? You're just going to use me, until I'm sitting in a corner, my own name forgotten, covered in my own piss, and no longer of any use to you, and then you will just walk away."
"I have no intention of being another link in the chain, Candale," Mayrila said, "Another nameless witch in the long line of nameless witches. I want to be more than that and, as White Oaks has denied me power, why shouldn't I use you? You are my son, after all. But I will do all that I can to help you, to help you to avoid what the prophecies have said about you, but if they can't be changed, why shouldn't at least one of us benefit? You do owe me, after all."
"Owe you! You agreed to help!" I roared at her, feeling a familiar fire of anger burning in my belly. My head was pounding, too, and my body was aching the way it often did before a fit. "If I had thought that money wasn't enough," I said, more quietly now, "that you had helped me because you thought to use me, I would never have suggested that you come here. I thought it a fair trade, coin for help."
"Perhaps, to someone else, it would have been," Mayrila told me smoothly. "But not to me." I shook my head at her and she let out a soft sigh. "And after everything I have sacrificed for you ..."
"You? Sacrificed for me? What exactly have you done? Had me for money, helped me for money. I don't think that was much of a sacrifice. Besides, all of this happened because of you in the first place!"
"And I'm trying to help you --"
"To gain more for yourself! None of this is about me, this is all about you!"
"Are you all right?" Mayrila asked me. "You've gone very pale. I know that you're upset --"
"Yes, I'm fine," I said, rubbing at my temple. "I just have a slight headache." But it wasn't so slight anymore, more like a lightning storm inside my mind. There were little flashes of pain going off throughout my body, too. And I felt very light-headed and my vision was edged with bright stars and spots. I took a deep breath, trying to steady myself, trying to breathe through the pain.
"It is very late, Candale. Why don't you go to bed? We can talk about this tomorrow, when you've calmed down."
"I don't think there is anything to talk about," I told her. "You want to use me, that's all there is to it."
"But at least I told you, Candale," Mayrila replied. "That has to count for something." I shook my head and she sighed. "Well, there is nothing else that I can say then, is there? I'm the only one who can help you, the only one who knows the legends, who understands about Ellenessia. You can let me stay, give me the power and money that I want, or you can send me away and face it all by yourself. The choice is yours."
"Not by myself," I said, through gritted teeth. "I have my family."
"Little good they will do you, Candale. They don't know anything about this."
"They can find out," I snapped. "And failing that, well, perhaps I will ask Ellenessia herself to help me. If I am her prophet, then she will want me to be the best that I can be."
Mayrila laughed. "Ellenessia is bound in limbo, Candale. She can't help you!"
"No? But she has visited me, she has touched me. I think she has more presence in this world than you know. I think she can help me, if I was to ask her."
"You have seen Ellenessia?" Mayrila gasped. She got out of the bed and came towards me.
I took another step back.
And the pain in my head suddenly grew, sharp and hot, and I cried out despite myself.
"Candale?" Mayrila gasped, and her hands caught my chin, lifting my face. "Candale, the demon touched you? You've seen her?"
Her touch hurt me and I shrugged her off violently, accidentally hitting her in the face. I saw blood appear at her nose and start to trickle down her face, but I didn't pay it much attention or have any feelings of guilt or sympathy in me because everything was hurting too much. Tears were running down my face now and the flashes of pain in my body had become continual and intense. I could barely breathe for it, let alone stay on my feet.
I collapsed onto the floor in a heap. "You --" I gasped at Mayrila's bare feet, which were all that I could see. "You ..."
Something dark caught my eye in the corner of the room, something twisty and ethereal. Something that I'd seen before. It was hard to make it out clearly, the room was so dark with just that one lantern, but I could see enough to know that it was a shadow. A shadow that was part of the shadows around it, part of the darkness, yet at the same time it wasn't. And I knew its name now. It was Ellenessia, it was the demon.
And it was coming for me
I whimpered, as the shadow started its slow journey towards me, and scrambled backwards, my feet desperately pushing me across the floor, doing all the work while my arms were locked tight around my stomach, trying to ease the pain I felt inside. The room was very cold, as though it were coated in ice and my breath was smoke as I wheezed, yet, despite the cold, I was sweating. My tunic was stuck against my chest, my hair was damp with it and glued against my face, and I felt a bead of it run down the length of my nose, and trickle past my mouth, salty and wet.
And all the whil
e, the shadow was flickering closer, dancing so calmly, moving towards me.
"Candale!" I heard a voice gasp. "Please! What's wrong?" It was a female voice, I could tell from the softness to its timbre, but I suddenly couldn't recognise it, although I knew that I knew it. The name of the owner of the voice seemed to slip out of my mind in a tide of pain, taking with it the sound of the voice and the words that were spoken. I tried to cling on to what I'd heard, and what I knew. I tried to grab at it with every part of me, with my hands, with my mind, but it all slipped away from me, a leaf blown away in the breeze.
I could hear a child's voice singing;
"Five rings of silver,
Five rings of gold,
Five rings of stone,
For a secret to be told
Six rings of silver,
Six rings of gold,
The rings of stone have fallen
Ellenessia comes.
Ellenessia comes.
The demon comes, it comes for me ..."
The voice trailed off into sobs, hard and heavy, 'the demon comes for me', was whispered over and over, a gasping sound of pain, and still that shadow creature was there, moving towards me, and I was slithering backwards.
"She's a witch,' I heard a voice saying, a third layer, whispering, talking to me, yet not to me. "You know what we have to do with witches."'
"But she's our daughter!" another voice begged, on the edge of tears.
"That doesn't matter. It's for her own good and ours. If anyone finds out what she is, all of us will suffer, not just her. Our whole family will be tortured and burnt alive. Is that what you want, Olisa, for us all to die? You, me, and the boys, just to save her?"
"But she's our daughter --"
I heard a squeal of pain then, and then screaming, a child screaming. And someone was crying, heavy sobs, while whispering, 'no', over and over.
I closed my eyes and pressed my hands tightly over my ears to try and block out the sound and it worked. Now there was nothing, just muffled darkness, and the feeling of my own tears running down my face, scalding my skin.
Something touched me, something cold and sharp and dark, clad in shadows. The shadow had caught me, was touching me. I knew it, even though my, now, open eyes could barely focus on it. I lashed out, my fists flying, trying to push it away from me, and I struck something. Something soft and insubstantial, yet somehow real, and slowly the mist moved backwards, away from me.
And then it was gone and I was alone. My head was throbbing, as though it would explode, and the voices were still whispering on the edge of my consciousness, having their conversations about witches, singing their little songs about demons. Let them. Let them sing and talk, and scream and laugh. Let the voices do what they wanted. I didn't have to listen to them. I didn't have to pay them any attention. I could just lie here and sleep, or wait for death, whatever decided to come first.
But it was neither sleep nor death that came, but a fit and it was unlike any fit I'd had before, where the world crashed into darkness and I wasn't really aware of anything. This time I was aware of it all, as though I was trapped inside my own body, forced to go through every jerky little movement. I was aware of every time my head bashed against the floor, and sent a sharp sudden blast of pain shooting through my skull, or my arms and legs twitched. The sounds I could hear myself making terrified me - choking, gurgled, gasping sounds. But there was nothing I could do. I was trapped and helpless, betrayed by my own body as my limbs twisted and thrashed about, beyond my control.
***
I woke, half blinded by dawn's light, shining in on the room. I was lying on the hard floor and there was a familiar, bitter taste of copper and salt in my mouth. It hurt to move, but I did so slowly, my muscles crying out in agony, as I sat up.
There was blood everywhere.
I was covered in it. My tunic was sticky with it, stuck against my chest. My breeches were soaked, my hands were red with it and drops of it dripped down my face like rain. My sword, which lay close to me on the floor, was completely covered. I couldn't believe that there could be so much blood in one place like this. It couldn't all be mine!
Slowly. I got to my feet. The blood squelched beneath them, turning my stomach, and I felt bile rise up in my throat.
A moment later I was curled in a corner, vomiting hard, emptying the contents of my stomach into a patch of dark red-black and drying blood.
It wasn't my blood.
Most of it was on the bed, staining the sheets and coverings that lay across it. They'd been white covers, not red, as they'd appeared in the night by the light of that small lantern, but they were red now, stained with Mayrila's blood. She lay in the centre of the bed, her pale skin awash with the dark contents of her own veins and arteries, almost as though she were drowning in it. Her lips were white and pale, her skin was drawn and almost blue and her violet eyes were fixed on the ceiling, staring, unseeing, up at the rafters and the cobwebs that hung there.
She was dead.
Continued in Book 2
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About The Author
Fran Jacobs lives in the UK and graduated from the University of Nottingham with a Masters degree in Ancient History in 2001. She now lives in Swansea where she runs an online gothic website, Megaera's Realm. Fran mostly writes fantasy, with a penchant for the darker side of it, and her stories have been published in a variety of magazines including Forgotten Worlds, Nanobison, Chaos Theory: Tales Askew, Neo-opsis, Alien Skin, Dred, Art and Prose and a Tangled Script of Intangible Soul Engravings.
You can read more about her past achievements and future projects on her website:
http://www.franjacobs.com
You can also keep track of her books on her author page:
http://www.writers-exchange.com/Fran-Jacobs.html
Return to Contents
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Table of Contents
Ellenessia's Curse Book 1: The Shadow Seer By Fran Jacobs Writers Exchange E-Publishing
Chapter One THE DYING BOY
Chapter Two MAYRILA
Chapter Three RECOVERY
Chapter Four SECRETS AND LIES
Chapter Five TRUTHS
Chapter Six NORMALITY
Chapter Seven MY BALL
Chapter Eight TRAITORS
Chapter Nine BRUISES
Chapter Ten THE FIVE SIGNS
Chapter Eleven THE AUTUMN ROAD
Chapter Twelve THE APPRENTICE BARD
Chapter Thirteen TALIRA
Chapter Fourteen WHITE OAKS
Chapter Fifteen SYMBOLS CARVED IN STONE
Chapter Sixteen CALRAN
Chapter Seventeen ACORNS
Chapter Eighteen TRELLANY'S ANGER
Chapter Nineteen HAZEL'S GIFT
Chapter Twenty STANDING STONES
Chapter Twenty-One CONSQUENCES
Chapter Twenty-Two A VOICE IN THE DARKNESS
Chapter Twenty-Three SPRING
Chapter Twenty-Four HOMECOMING
Chapter Twenty-Five BUTTERFLIES
Chapter Twenty-Six BY THE LAKE
Chapter Twenty-Seven BETROTHAL
Chapter Twenty-Eight SILVER
Chapter Twenty-Nine VISIONS AND PROPHECIES
Chapter Thirty THE RED LION
Chapter Thirty-One HUNTING
Chapter Thirty-Two TOUCHED