by Mara Webb
“There you are,” a woman smiled. She stepped into the room with a teacup in her hands, placed it down onto the nightstand beside the candle and brushed my cheek with her thumb. “I heard you washed up on our beach.”
“I did?” I managed. The woman walked over to the exterior door, gave it a hard shove with her shoulder, then turned the key in the lock. The heat wouldn’t be able to get out now, but neither would I. I didn’t recognize her, so maybe being trapped in here wasn’t a great idea.
“Yeah, that storm probably didn’t help you much, but you aren’t an experienced boat-user, right?” she said, laughing slightly. “I don’t know a lot of people that would decide to head out onto the water after sunset.”
“It wasn’t super dark when I left,” I protested weakly. I was instinctively defending my own dumb ideas, but I was well aware that I’d done something dangerous. It hadn’t felt like I was in control at the time though, but that was after I’d performed some ill-advised solo magic in my house. I should probably keep that part to myself if I had any hope of maintaining some dignity, if there was any left after being found washed up on the sand.
“Why did you get in a boat?” she asked. I didn’t have a good answer for that. The truth was that I had followed some smoke, that sounded insane, and I couldn’t bring myself to say that aloud. The woman sat at the foot of my bed and took a deep breath.
She was older than me by a couple of decades at least, the lines on her forehead deepened as she furrowed her brow in my direction. The air felt cold, but she was wearing a sleeveless dress quite happily as if she didn’t sense the chill.
“I don’t know,” I answered. I wanted to sit up and take in my surroundings, but the aches throughout my body kept me horizontal. “Where am I?”
“These are good questions for the morning,” she replied, standing back up again to walk to the head of the bed. She lowered herself onto her knees and handed me the teacup. It had a distinctive pattern around the rim, colored moons wrapped in vines. There was no way for me to drink anything if I stayed in this position. I rolled onto my side and struggled up onto my elbow. “Drink this, it will help with the pain.”
I considered briefly that it was a bad idea to drink anything handed to me by a stranger, but she seemed to be attentive and kind. Of course, someone that was hoping to kill me would be very capable of acting friendly, so maybe my situation-assessment strategies needed work.
“Why does everything hurt?” I asked. I took the teacup and sniffed the brown liquid within, it had a sweetness to it, but also smelled like freshly churned dirt.
“You were in a fight with the water, cold water at that!” she said. “I don’t know how long you were out there on the beach. You were lucky we found you.”
“Yeah, I don’t feel lucky,” I frowned. I took a sip and was hit with a licorice flavor that made me recoil, but the aftertaste was pleasant enough that I drank more of it until the cup was empty. “What’s your name?” I asked.
“Again, these questions are best for the morning, Sadie,” she smiled. She took the cup from my hand and began to walk towards the exterior door, the one that lead back out into the wind.
“How do you know who I am?” I asked.
“Ask me tomorrow,” she called, pulling open the door and disappearing through it. I sat up a little more and considered trying to force myself after her, but I didn’t think my legs would be up to the job. I saw that my hair was back to its previous style, short and dark but with the blue streak still ever present from my magic surge a few weeks ago. Why had the long hair gone?
The interior door opened, and two women walked in, one holding a glass of water and another holding a pile of clothes.
“You’re awake,” the glass-holder said. “I brought you a drink.”
“I’ve just had one, but thank you,” I replied.
“What do you mean?” she said, looking confused and almost amused by my response. “Is it a joke? Oh, I get it, you washed up on the beach, so you drank a lot of sea-water.” She nudged the other woman and they both laughed. “Very good, but you still need some actual water. We will have a healer come out to you at first light.”
“N-no, I was given a drink by… well I don’t know her name, she’s gone now,” I said.
“We are the only two in here, there was a third, but she’s gone off to find the healer,” she explained. I was confused, but I had just been dragged out of the water so maybe the confusion was a normal part of it. I shook my head and reached for the water, gratefully drinking it as I seemed to be unreasonably thirsty.
“You should change, get out of those wet clothes. Do you need our help?” This was the other woman talking, the one holding the new outfit.
“I’ll be able to do it myself,” I lied. I had no idea how I could muster the strength to pull off soaking wet fabric, and it was probably weird to point out that I needed dry underwear as well.
“Okay, we will be just outside if you need us,” the first one smiled. “Like I said, the healer will be here in the morning to check you over.”
“Brielle? You mean the doctor?” I asked.
“No, our healer,” she clarified. “Get some rest.” They walked out of the room and I could swear I heard the sound of a bolt sliding into a lock, were they sealing me in like a prisoner? That was ridiculous, at least I still had the good sense to acknowledge that my brain was fried. The problems would start when I was acting crazy and didn’t know it.
It felt like I’d been in a car accident, every part of my arms and back felt tight and uncomfortable to move. I let out a loud grunting noise as I sat up fully and swung my legs onto the ground, it made me more grateful that I’d said I could manage this task by myself, I didn’t want to be making these embarrassing sounds in front of anyone else.
Taking off my dress was less difficult that I had anticipated, but the shorts were glued to my body. I’d worn shorts underneath a sun dress ever since I was a teenager. You only let the wind whip up the bottom of your outfit and flash your butt to the rest of the people waiting outside a Chipotle once before you take precautions.
I unfastened the button and stood up long enough to pull them down a few inches so that I could sit down again quickly and slide them down my legs. If I was sleeping in here by myself, would it be crazy to sleep naked? What if they came in during the night to check on me?
The dry clothes had been placed on a chair that was within reach from the bed, so I reached over to grab what looked like a pajama shirt, pulled it over my head, and collapsed back down onto the pillow. My hair was wet, the mattress was slightly damp from where I had been lay down since I arrived, and I had no idea where I was. Normally that was enough to keep me awake with concerns, but I was too tired to worry about it.
I looked around the room briefly, struggling to see much in the dim light. There was a wooden shutter over an area that I assumed was the window, a bare wooden floor and dark wall color made the room feel small and old. It reminded me of a servant’s quarters from some old English period drama and I smiled at the thought of how much Kate would love it here, wherever here was.
Was I on the main island? Had I somehow drifted back after the boat had tipped over? They didn’t seem to know that Brielle was the doctor though, they had kept talking about a ‘healer’ instead, which made me think I was out on one of the smaller islands. I didn’t recognize any of the women I’d met, so it had to be a place I hadn’t previously visited.
So long as they had a phone or something, then I could contact Kate and Effie in the morning and let them know where I was. I could only imagine what they would think when they walked into my bedroom and found me missing and a chalk pentagram on the floorboards.
I had no idea what time it was, but I knew that I needed to sleep. Hopefully I would wake up feeling refreshed, find a way back home and Kate would only mock me about the whole mess for a week or two. I still had so many questions about The Bureau and who this woman was that had inserted herself into my life.
Everything will look better in the morning, that’s how the saying goes. I closed my eyes and hoped that it would ring true for me when I woke up, but even as I started to drift off, I knew that it was just wishful thinking.
6
I woke up to the sound of birds outside. I had forgotten the events of yesterday until I opened my eyes and realized that I wasn’t in my own bed; my hair had dried in distressed curls and was almost matted against my cheek and I could smell salty water on my skin. There wasn’t a mirror in here, but I could only imagine that I looked indescribably terrible.
There was a golden glow around the edge of the exterior door where the sunlight was trying to fight its way inside, it was morning. There was now a long, silk robe on a hanger on the back of a wardrobe that I hadn’t noticed yesterday, the wood of the furniture in this room was so dark that it was perfectly camouflaged at night.
A knock at the door made me flinch, I hadn’t heard anyone approaching the room and I pulled up the sheets on the bed to cover as much of myself as possible.
“Yes?” I called out. I wrapped a blanket over my head and held it tightly beneath my chin with two hands, now the only part of me that was visible was my face, the women from last night probably already thought I was weird, but this wasn’t going to help. The door gently opened.
“Good morning, I’ve run a bath for you in the bathroom next door. I figured you would want to clean up before the festivities today.”
“Thank you,” I smiled. “What’s your name by the way? I’m just sleeping in your house and you dragged me off a beach and I didn’t even ask.”
“It’s Daphne,” she answered. “But don’t worry about it, your boat capsized, and you washed up on a strange island. You must be thinking a million things.”
“Something like that,” I said.
“Why are you wrapped up like a cotton-burrito?” she asked.
“Oh, I was kinda hoping you couldn’t see me,” I laughed. She chuckled and gestured for me to get out of bed.
“I’d get in this bath while the water is hot, it will help with any aches and pains you still have. It’s just next door, come find us when you’re ready,” she said, backing out of the door and pulling it closed as she did so.
The stiffness in my back was worse today than it had been last night, but somehow, I felt more able to move now. I took the blanket off my head, threw back the bed sheets and put my feet firmly on the ground. I was able to stand, stagger forward a step or two, and then lean against the wardrobe without major incident.
I was also still recovering from a head injury, a fact I needed to keep in mind as it explained the throbbing from within my skull. I’d never been so accident prone. The spell I’d cast in my bedroom, the good luck spell from Sage, had clearly been faulty. Well, there was a small chance that I’d done it wrong. Nowhere in her instructions did it suggest that I follow the extinguished candle smoke to a watery grave.
The silk robe looked expensive. It almost seemed criminal for someone like me, in the state I was in, to be allowed to wear something so luxurious, but there was no way I was going to pass up the opportunity. I pulled off the pajama top, pulled the robe off the hanger and slipped it onto each arm. I immediately felt like a rich housewife and I loved it.
I tied the belt in a bow around my stomach and picked up the clothes that had been left for me on the chair. I had been sure that there was something else here, but now it looked like all I had was a pair of pajama pants that matched the shirt I’d slept in. I opened the wardrobe, hoping to find something suitable.
The wardrobe was large, so I half expected it to be filled with clothes or coats or something. It contained a single hanger with a floor length dress, feminine and delicate in its embroidery which was floral and bright over a dark fabric. It was similar to the design of the silk on the bed, but the colors were different.
I couldn’t just assume that this dress was up for grabs, it would be inappropriate for me to spend the night in a stranger’s house and emerge from the bathroom wearing a formal gown that they had earmarked for a special occasion. I hadn’t applied that same logic when I’d put on this fancy silk robe, but I had really wanted to wear it, so it’s different. I’m opportunistic, what can I say?
I opened the bedroom door and leaned my head out to see if Daphne was anywhere close by so I could ask her about clothes. I debated whether I should go for the blanket-over-my-head trick again to hide my hair, but it would be a bit much to do that if I was walking around the house, right?
“Daphne?” I called out.
“Yeah?” she replied, shouting from somewhere deep in the belly of the building.
“Do you have anything I could wear? My dress from yesterday is still soaking wet,” I said, not wanting to point out that it might have dried if I hadn’t discarded it in a ball on the floor instead of hanging it somewhere.
“There’s a dress in the wardrobe for you,” she replied, her footsteps approaching so that we didn’t have to keep speaking so loudly to hear each other. When she rounded a corner and appeared at the end of the corridor, I saw that she was wearing a dress not dissimilar to the one I’d found on the hanger. Long sleeves with a delicate, lace trim.
“You don’t mind? It seems very…” I didn’t know how to finish the sentence.
“Fancy? Yeah, but it’s May Day! We always dress up,” she grinned. “Go get in that bath!”
I turned to the right and saw the bathroom, the door was wide open and a steaming bathtub with brass clawfoot detailing sat beside a floor to ceiling window. Wow. As I stepped into the room, I could see that the view consisted of the tops of trees, as if the room was high up above a forest. I still didn’t know where I was, and this gave me no clues.
I dropped the robe to the ground, turned to double check that I’d locked the door, searched the room for towels, then climbed into the bath. If this was an Airbnb, then it was the nicest one I’d ever been in and I was already mentally working on the review I would put on the listing.
‘Owners came to my rescue, dragged me from the beach after I almost drowned and provided a warm bed, hot bath and evening gown. Five stars.’
The water was milky and scented with lavender. I leaned back to submerge my hair, but almost immediately sat up again, gasping in a panic. In order to get my hair properly wet, I’d needed to have my ears below the surface. When I’d gone that far into the water, I’d been able to hear something, specifically, I’d been able to hear voices.
Maybe it had just been one voice. A woman’s voice. It sounded vaguely familiar, but it was too scary to listen to for long.
Something was talking in the water that I couldn’t hear now that I was sat up. I grabbed the shower head that was resting on top of the faucet. I’d been hoping to soak up the heat and ease the tension in my neck and shoulders, but I wasn’t prepared to do it at the expense of being spooked by mystery murmurs.
I found a shampoo bottle in a basket on the ground beside the bath, leaned over to grab it and got back into the water. I was starting to feel increasingly uneasy about the situation I’d found myself in, no matter how kind these people had been, it was still a red-flag-palooza in here. I rubbed the shampoo suds into my matted hair and used the shower head to rinse out the bubbles. There was no way I was dunking myself again.
I got out and began to dry myself off with a towel, wrapped my now clean locks up into a smaller white towel on my head and motioned for the door. I stepped back in to grab the robe; I wanted to check the label to see if I could order one for myself online when I got back to my house, hopefully the price wouldn’t be prohibitive. I’m more of a t-shirt and shorts girl, not so much a four-thousand-dollar silk robe girl. I had my fingers crossed that it was less than fifty bucks.
When I got back into the small bedroom, I could quickly see that someone had been in here while I was bathing. The bed was made with different sheets, my dress was no longer screwed up on the floor and the gown from inside the wardrobe was now hanging on the
door. My dress was dry, as were my shorts, but they had definitely been wet when I’d left the room.
There wasn’t a drying machine in the world that could work that quickly, so these people had to be witches. I thought back to Kate’s lessons on witch types, who ever had sorted out the mess in here so quickly must be a kitchen witch. At least that gave me hope of them finding me a quick way home, they could just use their magic.
There were tunnels that connected all the islands, right? If the storm hadn’t been too bad, then I would be able to just walk back to the main island and get out of everyone’s hair. If the tunnels were flooded though, I’d have to wait for a boat to take me back.
I closed the bedroom door behind me and sat on the edge of the bed to rub at my hair with the towel. Of all the places in the world to wind up after falling out of a boat, this was pretty nice. I slipped on the embroidered dress and gathered up the used towels, I was as ready for a May Day party in a strange place as I would ever be. Well, if you ignore the fact that I didn’t have any shoes and that my hair was wet.
I searched the room again briefly to see if there were any shoes lying around that I could borrow, no such luck. There was a laundry basket outside my room now, presumably Daphne had left that there for the towels, so I deposited them and walked in the direction of the chatter that was taking place elsewhere in the house.
I soon found myself in a kitchen that was large enough to house a long dining table with benches either side. There were at least half a dozen women sitting in dresses like mine, eagerly discussing something that was making them all laugh; that was until, I arrived. They saw me and immediately stopped speaking, their faces falling to expressions of alarm.
“I thought you were joking,” one of the women gasped in Daphne’s direction.