“Inside,” Madeline puffs out, pushing open a large blue door.
Nicholas maneuvers me into the door and through an earthen space, made entirely of cobble-stone and brick. Several people rush forward as we enter, the only one I instantly recognize is Tobias.
“Stop!” Madeline raises her sword, warding off the crowd. “Show us your wrists, now.”
One man objects saying, “We’ve already...”
She spins to point the sword at him. “Does it look as if I care? Show me your wrists now, or get the bloody hell out of my house!”
They do, all of the men and the one woman pull up their sleeves and show their un-marked wrists.
Whether it’s the smell or something much more fundamental a couple of the pairs of eyes widen as they gaze at me, many of the mouths pucker, a few of the bodies shift back. It’s almost as if they’ve never seen anyone be raised from the dead before. Boo.
Madeline must pick-up on the general feeling of repulsion because the moment she lowers her sword she bellows, “Don’t you have jobs to be doin’ now?”
The objecting man and one woman rush forward; they start prodding me still in Nicholas’s arms. A thermometer goes into my mouth, a stethoscope onto my chest, something I don’t know the name of goes in my ear. I can only assume that both these people are doctors.
“She’s hypothermic,” the woman doctor says as she peers at my thermometer. “Get her in the bath, quick.”
“No,” this is from a nasally familiar voice, Tobias. “We need to film...”
“You’re joking, right?” Nicholas says, “If we film her now, looking like this, what do you think his reaction is going to be. She looks half-dead and she can’t even talk.”
For some reason his words sting, or maybe just the way he said them.
Nicholas continues, “The runners can’t even leave until sunrise. Let her bathe and recover, then we'll film.”
****
The bath's warm water feels like the right place for my re-birth, rather than being surrounded by demons in a rough-hewn nest.
“Madeline, why d’it take so long?” The doctor says to Madeline. They are on opposite sides of me, the doctor scrubbing my back, Madeline my legs.
“Well, mam,” Madeline replies, tartly, “Even in the sealed box she decomposed more than predicted. I had to use twice as many sacrifices and it still took additional time to rebuild her organs. Not as if anyone came at me with advice over this, is it? Not as if raisin’ the dead is as easy as whistlin’ a tune?”
My gaze darts between Madeline and the spot she’s scrubbing. My breath comes faster and faster. Decompose? Sacrifices?
“Oh, you’re scaring the bejesus out of the poor girl,” I feel the doctor’s arms tighten around my soapy shoulders. "You tell this girl what happened to her."
“Mother...” Madeline drops her sponge.
“No, nothin’ about it."
Madeline stands with a groan, she looks exhausted, dirty and sopping wet. This is the first time I can really take her in (in any detail), my eyes only now focusing. She’s wearing a filthy grey dress that looks to be more of an eighteenth-century puritan garb than a witch’s gown. She has deep dark circles around her eyes and dirt everywhere the water didn’t splash.
Madeline takes a seat behind me and speaks inches from my ear, “We took you to the hill...”
“Earlier. Start from the beginnin’, before she died.”
“Mother,” her voice lacks its earlier exasperation, now just sounding exhausted. She groans, “Ah...well, I was on my way passin’ through Hognas when Nicklaus called to tell me what you were doin’ and where. He had told Mrs. Trandle too, we got there at the same time, and too late to stop ya’. Surprising, too, because it only took me a coupla’ minutes. You swallowed a charm I always kept on me. The charm took in your soul before you died and kept it there...”
I flinch.
Madeline’s grip tightens around my arms. She says, scolding, “Did you want something different? Maybe you should’ve thought twice about killin’ yourself.” She makes an exasperated sound. “So I was sayin’, you died and your soul was still inside lodged in your throat. And as we promised, we told everyone you were dead, and that was the end of that. I had to fight Nicklaus every step of the way but I had you sealed in a box and kept from being embalmed, buried, burned or any other outcome.
“We had to move you sudden-like and ended up bringin’ you here to my house in Ireland. Yesterday mornin’, I got the call that Stephen saw your sister and father safe in America and we started bringin’ you back at sunset.
“There’s no nice way of puttin’ it, so I’ll not try, your body decayed, we weren’t even sure you’d come back at all. To do somethin’ like what we did you need a whole lot of energy; and, to make energy you need to sacrifice something living.” Her voice fills with emotion at this. “Living things have energy, and when they die you can pull their energy with spells.”
This is when I start hyperventilating again.
“Tell her what you sacrificed, now,” this from Madeline’s mother who just finished cleaning my feet.
“Six trees.”
I release a long breath.
She shakes me. “Don’t you be sighing now. Don’t you be relieved that old, beautiful, living beings had to die to bring back the sorry life you threw away.” She’s crying, I can tell.
My body is limp as she shakes me.
“Stop that now!” Her mother scolds, “Get a hold of yourself, Madeline Emily Ruuth!”
This takes a few minutes, she sobs but does not let go of me. When her weeping subsides she sniffles a bit while continuing, “I used the energy, I killed for, to reverse your decay. You recomposed just as you decomposed, from the inside out. It took several hours before your body was functional enough to digest the charm and release your soul. By that time, the demons had found us...and then they killed my entire coven...”
“That was a choice they made, it was somethin’ they were willin’ to die for; so hold your crying ‘till we fail and they die for nothin’.” The doctor holds a hand to my forehead. “She’s warm enough now. We should probably get her to the filmin’ before that man combusts into a million pieces.”
They dress me in light blue; an airy floor length cotton dress that I assume is supposed to make me look more alive.
Nicholas carries me to a stiff, tall-backed chair with two hand-rests pulled up to a small folding table. The chair forces me to sit straight and tall. Madeline's mother places an enormous cup of water on the table beside a stack of papers and a sharpie. It takes a few strenuous attempts and a little sloshing to get the straw between my lips. Sucking is another challenge, one that makes my cheeks hurt, but it’s worth it. Ahhhh ...Water. It’s sweeter than anything I’ve ever tasted. A little dribbles down my chin, but I don’t care.
Madeline strides up as Nicholas pushes my chair even closer to the table. She picks up the sharpie and snatches my hand. Her grip is too strong to resist, and I don’t even try. She marks six lines across my palm before snatching up my other hand and marking five lines from pinky to thumb. “Six trees and five women died for you today, and don’t you ever forget it.” With that, she marches out of the room calling, “I’ll be restin’ up now,” over her shoulder.
I stare at the marks. Marked again, but this time not with love or possession, or whatever the mark on my neck is, these marks are of death. She wanted me to have their blood on my hands, or I guess, sap in the tree’s case.
“Raven, say ‘I’m Alive’ now into the camera,” It’s Tobias, where did he come from? He’s talking to me with slow annunciation, as if I’m dim-witted. He’s pacing behind a camera and tripod that I didn’t notice either.
“Ieh...” Well, no wonder he’s talking to me that way; I sound like I’m too inebriated to talk. “Aliaeeeeee....”
I can hear Nicholas pacing behind me now, also.
I lean forward to sip through the straw and wet my mouth. When I’m no longer parche
d, I try again, “Ah aala...” Oh, that one sounded even worse. “I alah.”
Tobias looks as if he’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown; his pacing has turned into stomping and his already red nose is running. He makes huffing sounds as he listens to my pitiful attempts. “This is just terrible, awful. I thought that witch was going to bring her back to life. Not bring back some half-witted shell of a person. How permanent do you think this brain damage is?"
I momentarily stunned out of my, ‘I’m alive,’ endeavor.
I swing my head to look at Nicholas. He stares at me, he has to see the intelligence in my eyes; but, he says nothing.
"This thing is pitiful; do you really think it'll convince that demon to stop?"
I can hear Nicholas stop pacing and I'm sure he'll defend me, but what he says when he responds is, “Two days ago we had no solution, you have to admit that this is an improvement.”
Ouch. I didn't think I could possibly hurt anymore today; I was wrong. Now that I think of it, Nicholas hasn’t said one word to me. Not a ‘hey’ or ‘nice to see you alive again’.
“Hardly...” Tobias throws up his hands.
“Iah aliah.” I don’t think I’m helping my case, because the men seem to just feed more tension into the already crackling air.
Tobias turns, pointing into my face. “Use the pen,” This is not a request should finish that statement. Tobias glares and points down at the layers of paper on the desk.
I should throw the sharpie at his face and spit into Nicholas’s, but instead I do exactly as Tobias’ orders. My hands shake even more than they did a moment ago. On the paper I manage a line that looks more like an ‘S’ and takes up half the page.
Tobias rips the paper out from under my pen. I slowly look around at Nicholas, but this time he won’t meet my gaze. With as little movement as possible I search for the doctor, Madeline’s mother, who might still be here. She’s not.
Tobias slaps the table and in his nasally snotty voice demands, “Pay attention.”
I narrow my eyes and fix him with a glare. Channeling all my energy and rage, I manage to carve the word, “snot” into the paper, though the ‘t’ runs a little off.
He takes a second to read the messily scrawled word, “Sn-snot?” He says the word as if it’s in a different language, and then flicks his gaze between my face and the paper. I know he catches my meaning when his hand shoots up to his face and he conscientiously wipes his snot with a handkerchief from his lapel pocket.
I grin up at him, half-witted shell of a person am I?
He lowers his arm with a jerk and spins away from me. Tobias crosses the room to a laptop, which contrasts with this setting almost as much as the guards outside. He stiffly drops the computer on the stack of papers in front of me and taps the space key.
The monitor fills with a short-haired brunette in a tan suit in front of an opaque white screen. She starts with, “Thank you, Michael.” She has an English accent. “What was earlier this month referred to as the Carrion Bird flu is now by some experts called: a pandemic, and by some religious extremists: a plague; as the death toll rises from thousands to hundreds of thousands in a matter of weeks. The current death toll is, unfortunately, unknown, as the world has lost contact with those inside the quarantine zone. The last contact we had was, to say the least, disturbing.”
It takes me a second to realize that the street the news broadcast flashes to is a street I know, a street I walked down in Copenhagen, but it’s nothing like what I remember. Whoever is holding the camera is running and the shot is nauseatingly shaky. But everywhere the Camera points is destruction, and fire, and bodies; so many bodies, living bodies raging, running, destroying, and dead bodies trampled beneath them. It’s not a flu they’re talking about it’s Hell, it’s Hell in the streets of Denmark.
A female voice continues over the shot, “...The spread of Carrion Bird flu or the disease itself has yet to be proven as the cause for the violent riots spanning across Denmark, Sweden, and now threatening to spread into Finland. But could this really be a deadly coincidence?”
The screen returns to the brunette who looks so clean compared with the carnage that had just burned into my retinas.
She continues “... infectious-disease specialist, Dr. Fredrick Matron, does not think so.” The shot pans out to include a thin elderly man who looks as if he doesn’t like the smell of the studio. The female anchor smiles not-too-broadly at the doctor, “Dr. Matron, you have a theory that the unkindness’s, or groups of ravens’, deadly attacks starting nearly a month ago in quarantine area, the infectious spread of disease and the violent behavior that followed, can all be linked?”
“Well...” He has a thick accent (German, maybe), “It’s hard to consider that they could not be linked. Until a month ago, the idea that any raven’s beak could even penetrate a human’s living flesh was limited to unconfirmed reports and horror movies, now...”
Tobias leans over me; he has a sour day-old cologne scent that makes my stomach turn-over. He fast-forward through Dr. Matron’s rather lengthy interview.
When the broadcast starts again, the doctor is mid-sentence, “... it’s not. So, my colleagues and I have come to the conclusion that no matter the species infected, violent behavior is a symptom of this disease.”
“Thank you, Dr. Matron. With more on the communication barrier with quarantine is special reporter Paul Brawler at the Germany/Demark border.”
“Thank you, Sarah,” a tall man standing in front of what looks like a maximum-security-prison-gate in the middle of a freeway says into a wireless microphone. “I’m standing here at the border to Denmark. These defenses are not the only factor that keeps our communication with those within the quarantine zone impossible; satellite photos taken last night revealed that after seven days, the power has not yet been restored. The black-out spans all the way from Copenhagen to Stockholm effecting roughly four million homes and businesses. Cell phone calls received from within the quarantine area have decreased daily as this power shutdown persists. In Hamburg families and people with loved ones...”
Tobias snaps the laptop shut and returns it to its original perch. When he turns to me, he almost looks happy though he’s not smiling. His brows seem to spread across his forehead and his eyes gleam. He doesn’t say, ‘and it’s all your fault’. But, the accusation is as present in the room as it would be if he spit the words into my face.
When my body can finally respond to my mind’s commands I raise the pen and slowly move it across the paper to write: “how long?”
Tobias reads the message then answers, articulating every syllable, “Twenty-six days.”
I inhale sharply. I was dead, a soul trapped inside a rotting corpse, for twenty six days? What happened? Why did it take so long?
My questions must shine through my expression because Tobias answers them, “Unsurprisingly, the beast you bartered with was more intelligent than you. You said nothing in your deal about her releasing Linnie or your father. This was made obvious when the demon demanded your corpse for Linnie’s release. Thankfully we had agents rescue your father within the next week. But for Linnie, everyday more and more demons were guarding her. Since we did not know about your unnatural plot to rise from the dead, some of us were willing to make the trade. But, Madeline and Mrs. Trandle guarded your coffin, armed, night and day. Others in the family also strongly disagreed that we should...” His gaze flits to Nicholas, “...negotiate with demons.”
“It was not until a week ago that we suspected there was some sort of plan for your corpse. That was when five soul-bound infiltrated our base and through stealth found your remains and attempted to destroy them. They were rounded up, of course, and under question revealed to us that any soul-bound who destroyed and scattered your remains would be rewarded with the gift of keeping their soul, post-mortem. This was when our suspicions were confirmed that there was some conspiracy, we were unaware of, concerning you.”
He pauses to glare at me, “The witc
h declined to reveal anything. And, our own operative refused; Mrs. Trandle was dismissed for obvious reasons. When a second more desperate attempt was made by the soul-bound we decided that you needed to be moved. With much deliberation we followed the witch’s scheme, since she was the only person to know this plot.
“Two days ago our mission was successful and Stephen liberated your sister from Copenhagen and out of the country. When we gave the news to the witch, she revealed her twisted plans, her ungodly schemes, which held our last hope. But it seems...” he examines me, “our hopes were misplaced.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Day Fifty-Six
“She,” Albert says, pointing a finger to where I’m sitting, “had the whole of Hell resting on her shoulders; and she let it come crashing down!”
This is more of the same that I’ve been hearing since Tobias snapped the laptop in my face last night.
I could croak out a response, Madeline used a spell to restore my speech and wobbly walking this morning, but, truly, I have no defense.
Unfortunately, Madeline waited until this morning to restore my speech; well after the torturous video was finished and the operatives (called 'runners') had left, each with a copy of the video. But, she told me she had needed sleep to conjure anything.
My knees have started to complain from sitting in this position for so long.
“Hundreds of thousands of people, can you feel their blood on you?” This comment is from Tobias.
Nicholas is here, too, in the Leijonskjöld Slot dining room; but he hasn’t said a word to me. They told me they were going to feed me a late lunch but what they really gathered for was a tribunal. Yeah, a tribunal where no one defends me? That's fair.
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