Dark Winter: Last Rites

by Hennessy, John

  In the right hands, it was more than a match for Toril’s wand. Still, Lunabelle let it fall.

  “Kick it away,” demanded Toril.

  “You wouldn’t leave an old woman defenceless now, would you Toril?”

  “You’re hardly defenceless. Now do it.”

  From a distance, Lunabelle could pass for someone in her forties. But something was giving her away. Toril tried to take in as much information as she could. Just how old Lunabelle actually was, could wait for now. But she was a clever coyote, and had survived in the Circle all this time.

  She complied with Toril’s demands.

  “We both know you’re not going to strike me down, Toril, so let’s get this charade over with.”

  “You’re not taking away the things in my possession,” Toril informed Lunabelle. “They belong to me.”

  Lunabelle laughed. “I haven’t come to take the Mirror from you, merely look after it while you go and save your mother. After all, that’s what you really want to do, isn’t it?”

  “What do you know about my mother?”

  “I’ve read the book, Toril, so I know almost the same as you. Almost.”

  “And you want me to tell you the rest. You want me to tell you what I saw.”

  Yes, Lunabelle would love to know what was on the pages only Toril was allowed to see. She had always believed that the Circle would do everything in their power to get a hold of Toril and compel her to join them. They perhaps believed someone would betray them too, but Lunabelle was a competent witch and had covered her tracks well. At least she believed that she had done so.

  “I believe I can help you, if only you would trust me.”

  Toril gave Lunabelle a look that strongly suggested that she did not trust her at all.

  “Toril, let me bring you up to speed. Your mother is in grave danger. Right now, somewhere, some place, some time, Curie is torturing her. He will get the information he needs from her, or she will die in the process. You know your mother. She is as stubborn as you. You know I am telling you the truth. I implore you lass- Toril, please don’t do this. Help me to help you.”

  “I can’t give you the Mirror. When this is all over, I plan to return it to Romilly.”

  “Toril, you cannot take the Mirror with you. Curie will manage to return it to his Master. You know who I am talking about.”

  Toril was a smart girl. She would have the perfect retort for Lunabelle.

  “I am not leaving it with you either.”

  “Then I suppose it all comes down to what is more important to you. The safe return of your mother, or that Mirror.”

  Toril knew that Lunabelle was not seeing the whole picture. Far bigger things were at stake. Whatever she had done to me up until now, I would not forgive her if she gave the Mirror to somebody else.

  Toril had been a solitary Wiccan for as long as she could remember. But she could sense that Lunabelle was saying something like look, we are witches, we are on the same side. Trust me on this, because you can trust no-one else.

  Toril was a pragmatist. She looked around the wood, checking all directions, before facing Lunabelle once more. She took the Mirror out of the bag. It was covered up, but the size of it surprised Lunabelle.

  “Is that it? It’s much larger than I remember. I mean, from the drawings we had of the object.”

  Well, the Mirror has been used a lot of late. And despite my thoughts to the contrary, Nan was telling the truth. The Mirror really did keep evil at bay. But with it in Toril’s hands, I couldn’t say with any certainty that things would remain that way.

  Toril held the Mirror in her hands. She couldn’t hide it in a tree, not in Gorswood Forest. The Eastern side would know of its presence.

  “Can I trust you?” asked Toril. “I love my mother. I would do anything for her, including giving you this to protect. But I will be back, and I will expect you to return it to me.”

  “I am going nowhere,” replied Lunabelle. “You know in your heart what you have to do. Sometimes, you have to put logic aside, Toril.”

  Lunabelle didn’t know Toril as well as she thought. Toril was all about logic, but she could be flexible if the situation called for it.

  “Do you know how to find her?”

  “Of course I do,” replied Toril. “Though I have to admit, I would have a better chance of success if a great witch like yourself joined me.”

  “I haven’t lived this long by walking into the lair of Diabhal’s minions, Toril. I won’t be going with you. Leave the Mirror with me and go.”

  If Toril did what I would have wished with my heart and my head for her not to do, the Mirror would be heading its fourth owner in the last seventy years.

  There was no telling what the consequences of that would be. Toril wasn’t about to take a risk that she hadn’t thought through, and before Lunabelle could protest, Toril used her wand, trapping Lunabelle in her own circle. She immediately walked to its perimeter.

  “I wouldn’t do that,” said Toril. “Harmful to witches, and everything else for that matter.”

  “You are leaving me to my fate, little one. Where did you get such power?”

  Toril didn’t answer, though Lunabelle understood. Toril made a small gap through the shield surrounding Lunabelle, and placed the Mirror on the ground.

  “You’re not to touch it,” ordered Toril. “It has imprinted itself on me.”

  “I’m not going to touch it, unless the one it has imprinted itself on comes to harm. You have ten minutes. That’s my best guess, Toril. You had better return with your mother before then.”

  Toril was cocky to a degree, and more than a little arrogant, but she had a way with people that made them trust her. Right now, this was something personal.

  Toril had a decision to make. Either Lunabelle was telling the truth, or the book was. It was also possible that both were lying, or were just plain wrong. Woman’s intuition? Toril wasn’t sure she possessed such a feeling.

  Where would her logic guide her now?

  Her mother would not want her to risk all to save her.

  That’s why Toril had to do it.

  She stood up in the forest, and opened the book, reading words that no-one else could see. If she was part of this Prophecy, Toril would not have her mother sacrificed. Maybe that’s what they were expecting her to do.

  It might have been woman’s intuition, but inside herself Toril felt awful. In the pit of her stomach, she knew something was wrong; that something extremely bad was happening to someone that she loved.

  With a heavy heart, she pointed her wand into the sky.

  A rift opened in the expanse ahead of her and she rose towards it.

  “Hang on Mum. I’m coming.”

  Settling Old Scores:

  Chapter 5

  Curie was watching the proceedings with unbridled delight.

  “Like all true witches, they never protest their innocence. Some of them remain mute. But the outcome is never in doubt.”

  He shouted to Tori-Suzanne.

  “Now would be a good time to give me that name, Tori.”

  The flames began to climb. Tori-Suzanne refused to believe this was actually happening, that Curie was able to project one of her biggest fears onto her. Witches being burned at the stake? That practise died out centuries ago.

  This could not be happening.

  The crowd chants turned to screams as the sky began to darken. A blistering light penetrated the area directly above Tori-Suzanne.

  At first, Curie was annoyed, but the feeling turned to anger when Toril disintegrated the binds that tied her mother to the stake. Toril screamed as her mother’s body fell to the ground. She was unconscious before she connected with the unyielding cobbled ground.

  Curie was in two minds whether to be happy about seeing Toril or not. He wondered how she could have found them? Maybe she had decided to side with Diabhal and the Circle after all. But Tori-Suzanne belonged to him.

  The crowd could deal with Toril. Some
of them were completely overcome. There would be no reasoning with them.

  “She’s one with the Devil! Only one who sides with Satan could appear from the sky. Seize her.”

  Curie was thrilled. Two witches would be executed instead of just one.

  ***

  Toril created a circle around her. The crowd couldn’t enter, but Curie knew he’d been down this particular road with the little witch before. She would have to come out to rescue her mother, and she knew it. Curie was going to call her bluff once again.

  He turned to the small group who had surrounded Tori-Suzanne.

  “Take her up to the hill.”

  “No!” they screamed. “We demand her death!”

  “And you shall have it,” he replied. “If she does not tell me what I want to hear, make no mistake. She will die this day.”

  Toril’s brain was working overtime, wondering what to do. She couldn’t help her mother if she was captured. She looked into the sky, wishing for the deity, a God, or something to stop Curie from hurting Tori-Suzanne.

  Toril couldn’t risk the book falling into evil hands either. So she did the only thing she could do, and soared into the sky, entering the rift once more. She had to hope that when she returned it would not be too late.

  “The heir to Gorswood? The heir to the Circle? Look everyone, that is no witch, but a coward. She flees! She’d rather save herself than her own mother!”

  Tori-Suzanne had begun to come around. Many of the crowd were holding large stones.

  “She might survive the burning, but not a stoning. Let’s stone her to death.”

  “Bring her up to the hill, then lay her on the ground,” ordered Curie. “Hold her down. If she moves but an inch, cut her throat.”

  “What’s to be done with her?”

  “Leave that to me,” he said.

  They did as he told them, and laid her on the grass, some three hundred yards from where she had been tied to the stake. He requested some food and drink for her. Far from seeming angry, Tori-Suzanne lay quite still, almost resigned to her fate, her eyes staring into the night sky. Curie poured some water onto her lips.

  “I know you can hear me, Tori. I need that information. I can’t stop them if you don’t give it to me. Think of your daughter. If not for yourself, do it for her. She came here at great risk to herself for you. But she saw it was hopeless. As you face your end, I implore you to do the right thing now."

  She turned her head to face her nemesis. She had never hated anyone more than she hated Donald Curie. Barely audible words were released from her mouth.

  “What? What did you say?” asked Curie.

  “I….said….go….fuck…..yourself.”

  Curie’s face contorted, showing his ugliness and hatred for Tori-Suzanne.

  “Toril will return, you know. I just wonder which of you will die first? Toril, burning on the pyre? Or you, under the weight of the stones?”

  He turned to the small group behind him. “Strip her, then place a heavy oak board over her chest and her shins. Place the stones you have on her limbs first. Leave the biggest ones for the board across her chest.”

  “What do you plan for her? What is the point of all these stones?”

  “She’ll either talk, or die under the weight. As for the stones and the boards, it’s called being pressed to death.”

  “We approve,” they affirmed. “How long will it take?”

  “She’s only a little woman,” said Curie hatefully. “Her frail body may expel long before the heaviest stone has been put in place.”

  “But if she really is a witch-”

  “Then I suppose she will last a little longer. But she will die all the same.”

  He clapped one of them on his back, and kicked up some dirt in the direction of Tori-Suzanne.

  The board on her chest was already covered with heavy stones. Her body might have been in a weakened state as a result, but her eyes burned as bright as ever.

  As much as she tried to hide it, she would be succumbing to this horrible fate. But she could not, would not see the day where Toril could come to harm. She was too special. She was the One. Her One. All the trauma of leaving the Circle to protect her only daughter would have been for nothing.

  Toril would have to hurry.

  An Uncomfortable Truth:

  Chapter 6

  I had been kept in hospital for a full three months after I had come out of the coma. My body had felt weak, though my mind felt well rested. I fully understood why the doctors refused to discharge me early.

  Beth seemed fine. The week following my recovery, she never left my side. After that, I insisted that she go home and rest. Reluctantly, she listened to me. All the stress had clearly taken it out of her, and yet there was something else that bothered me.

  Beth was coughing at all too regular intervals, and though she did her best to hide it, sometimes I could see blood on the tissue paper.

  I wanted to talk with her about it. Actually, it would have been a great distraction for me. Things were quiet. Belial was still there, I knew that. Perhaps he was waiting for an announcement that I was returning to full strength.

  I could sense agitation when a priest would enter the hospital ward. One look in my direction, and he would high tail it out of there. Had he stayed, I have no doubt that I would have suffered.

  But I could not focus on myself. I was beside myself with worry over Beth. I mean, she looked okay. A bit pale sometimes, but basically fine.

  When I was in the coma, Beth would talk a lot of irreverent nonsense, nothing too deep. I know she didn’t want to worry me about anything. One night, however, she told me things – the kind of things that, had I been conscious, would have sent me scurrying for the nearest place I considered my sanctuary.

  She had told me what was bothering her. But could I admit that I truly knew what she was saying? I knew what vision I had seen of the future, and it bothered me terribly that Beth was not in it. I could not live without her. Not now. We had all lost so much. I don’t think we could bear another loss.

  I’ll try to piece together what she said. She told me it over the course of three whole nights, and she cried with relief after she had gotten it all out.

  I remember it like this.

  ‘Romilly. I have to tell you something that maybe you don’t want to hear. The truth is, and I know this to be the truth – people don’t want to hear about problems. They only want to hear that your life is going great, and that all is well. They tune out when you say ‘I need someone to listen to me for a while. I need someone not to show me sympathy, but to try and understand me. That’s all.

  You’d think it would be easy, wouldn’t you? After all, it’s human to care for one another. Right now, you are the only one I would tell my fears to. At first, I thought it was some kind of depression – perhaps related to that cursed doll I had. Funny, isn’t it Milly? When we were at Curie’s that time, and I held it in front of him, and called out Dana…funny how it all came horrifyingly true, isn’t it?

  I know you have been through an unfair share of pain. Here’s something you might not know. It’s a Irish tradition to look on the dark side of things. My Gran is always taking phone calls from some relative or friend from Mayo or Clare, or wherever, but the conversation is always the same.

  They always talk about who has died, or is dying.

  If you have heard about the luck of the Irish, I think hearing about it is all we do. We never actually have that ‘luck.’

  I’m…..not well, Romilly. I’m losing more blood over the course of a month than I do during my time of month. I need help, but I’ve seen the priest, and I have seen the witch. Both, I am unhappy to report, were unsuccessful in helping me.

  I don’t know if I am dying. I know we all die a little each day, that’s why enjoying our life is so important. But I recall you telling me about the time that darkness appeared over Rosewinter, with your Nan describing how her sense of joy had been ripped from her.

 
; Oh Milly, I feel that now. I know too that you have faced your every challenge with great bravery. I’m trying my best to be like you. And if I could escape my skin, slip out of this body, and be somebody else, I would want to be you.’

  I felt her kiss my cheek. She had been crying hard. I could feel these sensory inputs, but was unable to respond to them. I was grateful to Beth. She never stopped trying to bring me out of it.

  ‘But I have to tell you this. Since that demon attacked me in Grandma’s home, I mean, thank God you were with me Romilly, otherwise it doesn’t bear thinking about what would have happened.