The Codex of the Witch: Fantasy Novel

by Federico Negri

  “You’ve gotten to be pretty good as well. You saved my life.”

  “When Captain Cerriwden split us into two different groups, I couldn’t breathe. Not knowing where you were and what sort of danger you’d fallen into, unable to be by your side, it made me sick to death.”

  “I was thinking about you as well.” Alina watches speechless as her hand leaves the wheel and places itself on the young German’s shoulder. He has blue eyes—intense, hot—like two turquoise stones, and a strip of blonde beard which frames the smooth curvature of his face.

  “Thank you,” he whispers and lets a hand slip behind her neck. A delicious tingling runs through her spine, while the boy’s eyes shine like they’re hiding two stars.

  “Alina, I…” he says and slowly brings his face closer. She wants to answer with something light and witty, or at least pull away, but instead, who knows why, she moves her mouth towards his as if drawn in by a powerful magnet.

  The boy’s lips are unbelievably soft and warm with a fruity taste. A boiling sensation washes over her from head to toe, but not a flicker of flame rises from her body. She sees Hansi lower his eyelids and feels his mouth slide open. He kisses her deeply and comes in closer still, squeezing her between his arms and crushing his chest against her bosom. Their tongues start darting at each other, the young witch encircles him with her hands on his back and presses her pelvis again the boy’s, causing him to let out a moan. She would like to close her eyes and abandon herself to that embrace, let herself be enveloped by that animal desire which insistently spurs her to throw her body against his, but the dragon in her heart lifts his head sternly and stares at her with contempt, to remind her of the Rule she’s violating.

  She musters her strength and after she stretches her finger across his back for the last time, she forces herself to unglue her lips from the boy’s.

  “Wait,” she says panting.

  “No, I beg you, why? You’re so beautiful,” he whispers, diving back into the embrace, but Alina manages, she’s unsure how, to turn her head to one side.

  “Wait, wait,” she lands some soft punches on his shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have,” he says and quickly lets her go, turning his attention to the floor.

  “Hey!” Alina takes his hands. “Of course you should have.” She smiles at him and finally sees a bit of that happiness reappear in his eyes. “I like you as well,” the witch continues, “and kissing you was insanely wonderful. But, you know, sex, love and magic don’t go well together. We witches live in abstinence and contemplation; we can’t have relations. Well it’s not quite that we can’t, we constrain ourselves not to, at least not every day.”

  Hansi looks at her dumbfounded.

  “Oh, come now,” Alina laughs. “You’ve never heard anything about us? Never heard speak of the witches’ Sabbath?”

  “My grandmother told me horrible stories: young men forced to copulate with the demon who would sodomize them the whole night inside the witches’ circle.”

  “Get out of here!” Alina says and gives him a wide smile, studying the curve of his chin, then caressing his cheek. “I’ll explain it to you.” The witch checks the rudder and everything seems in order, fortunately the graydar is quiet. “Our magic is born from the most violent and lascivious impulses of our soul. Safeguarding it requires a lot of concentration and a careful control over our emotions. Love and, especially, sex light up areas of our personality which, unavoidably, suffocate the magic being inside us. I shouldn’t be telling you this, but I trust you.” Alina places her index finger on the young man’s chest. “After the kiss we exchanged, I won’t be able to reawaken my demon for several hours, I think. If instead of a kiss it had been more, we wouldn’t be talking of hours, but days.”

  “And the Sabbath?”

  “On a certain night of the year, when the full moon is at its perigee, we can free ourselves for a few hours from our damned spirits. They need to prepare a powerful spell and a potion so complex that the most expert witches spend months concocting it. After the opening rites, the witches taking part can let loose and…” Alina lowers her eyes, “surrender to every vice until sunrise. Then the effect vanishes and our demons regain consciousness, unaware of what’s taken place.”

  “Who participates in this festival?” Hansi asks.

  “Every witch is free to invite the people with whom she wants to pass those hours of freedom with, whether they’re men or women.”

  “Invite or force?”

  Alina breaks into laughter. “Invite! Have you ever seen an unattractive witch?”

  “Well, Riger, on the Needle, isn’t exactly stunning. She dresses a bit old-fashioned.”

  “Riger is over eighty,” Alina teases him, “and I assure you she can still turn a man’s head if she wants to. It’s just that now she’s loosened her grip a little.”

  “But she looks to be thirty, thirty-five at most! Anyway you’re right; you’re all gorgeous. You more so, however.”

  That simple compliment sweetens the young witches grin. “You’re cute as well. You have very deep eyes.”

  They sit in silence for a few moments, staring into each other’s dilated pupils. Alina’s heart gallops desperately and her mouth insists on staying dry as a carpet.

  “Could you invite me to the Sabbath?” Hansi breaks their silence. Alina pulls away her eyes and he continues, his cheeks red as two tomatoes. “Sorry, I was too forward. But kissing you was like a jolt I’ve never felt in my life, and I can’t wait to do it again.”

  “We shall see,” the little witch smirks. She’d like to shout “Yes, of course!” but she forces herself to still maintain a modicum of composure, after all it’s her first Sabbath.

  “Meanwhile,” Alina takes a half step back, “we need to try to get back alive and find the Needle again.”

  “May I kiss your cheek?”

  “You can. But that’s it then. This isn’t a situation where I can neglect my magic, on the contrary, I have a great need for it.”

  “Like the one I have for you,” he whispers and, with a thirty-two teeth smile, he draws near. Alina closes her eyes, enjoying the gentle kisses the German boy administers under her cheekbones, lost in his subtle, intoxicating smell. She’s about to burn in the heat of Hansi’s body, leaning against him softly, when the dragon gives a snort, from the shadows.

  “Okay,” the girl says, right as the other’s lips are finishing their exploration of her face, heading toward the sensitive skin of her neck. “That’s enough for today.”

  “A dose like this will never be enough for me even if it lasts a minute each day.”

  She laughs. “Since when are Germans so romantic? Come on, I need to tell you something important.”

  Hansi moves away from her and a discreet cough is heard at the end of the cabin.

  Gabriela drags herself to the helm’s wheel, her onyx eyes surrounded by two visibly dark circles.

  “What flushed faces you have,” she says, rolling her eyes. “How did you manage that with this frigid wind? Oh, and my aunt wants to speak with you.”

  “How is she?” Alina asks, moved by Cerriwden’s look of despair.

  “I don’t know.” Gabriela sinks her fingers into her raven hair. “Bad. See for yourself.”

  “You need to rest, Gabri.”

  “Right. It’s a shame if we drop anchor those damned hybrids will find us and then we’ll be resting in hell. I’ll go on for a few more hours. You,” she turns to Hansi and makes a show of putting her hands on the grips of her pistols, “stay here with me, that way I can shut my eyes. We have a compulsory route for the next half hour, there isn’t much to do.”

  Alina says goodbye to him with a last squeeze, hand in hand, and then sets off into the bowels of the East Wind, until she’s knocking at the door of the captain’s cabin.

  An almost inaudible voice invites her enter. Jillian Cerriwden is stretched out on her bed, singed hairs clinging to her forehead, heavy with sweat. Her face
is pale and damp like the skin of a frog. The sheets are immaculate, freshly changed, but under her rib Alina can already see a small blood stain.

  “Alina,” the witch murmurs.

  A little awkwardly she comes near the edge of the double bed. The smell of blood and sweat is almost unbearable there.

  “I’m not looking my best,” Cerriwden smiles, quickly cut off by a coughing fit which makes her brow wrinkle in pain.

  “We need to find a doctor,” Alina says.

  “Gabriela is attempting to save my feathers. She’s steering toward Novograd where I had a friend, once.”

  “Seems a dangerous choice.”

  “I know, it’s a pirates’ cove. But it’s also one of the few places we can stop without fear that those abominations will swoop down on top of us. Novograd—” She coughed harshly into her hand. A moment’s silence, then, after a faint sigh, “Novograd’s claws are definitely long enough to defend itself from those two airships. We also require repairs and provisions.”

  “But,” Alina objects, “to get back to the Palatinate we’ll need to cross back over the Russian and Ukrainian expanses and there we’ll be out in the open.”

  “We’ll dispatch a message to our clients or else hire an escort. First, however, I need to get back on my feet and that will take a few days. Don’t look at me like that, young Santunini. You can hold off buying my casket, it’s not certain we’ll need it just yet.” A weak smile crosses her face, quickly replaced by an irritated frown. “In the meantime my niece is in command. I called you here to learn your intentions.”

  “In regards to what? I just want to get back to my aunt.”

  Jillian digs her fingernails into her cheek, as if to chase off other more acute pains with those scratches. Then she says, “Gabriela will act according to the plan I just explained to you, as you can see I’m laying my cards out on the table, witch to witch. But there’s that Englishman, the dashing Allport, who has other plans. No, there’s no point shaking that little blonde head. I’m a fairly young captain, but I’m not so naïve. He will try to take control of the airship and pilot it across the Channel. But, I warn you, I’ve given Gabriela orders to blow the Wind sky high, with all of us on it, rather than relinquish it to the English.”

  A shiver runs through Alina’s shoulder blades. All that time Gabriela had spent below deck it wasn’t to plan who-knows-what strategy, but to set the ship with mines! That’s why she seemed so tired: she had to roll out the fuses and check the explosive charges, probably both inside the cabin and on the frame.

  “Then there’s the other Englishman,” Cerriwden continues, “who could come to at any moment. Curious how almost my whole crew fell in that mad battle, while he, who looked like he was on the verge of leaving this cruel world, is still alive and flourishing.”

  “In the guests’ cabin,” she goes on, her voice cracking from fatigue, “we’re lodging the two centenarians, as Gabriela calls them, whose intentions are inscrutable. A witch who declares herself slave to a man, what sort of perversion is this? Anyway they are our spoils, so we need to take care of them. Still they seem a bit touched to me, so I would watch them closely and I certainly wouldn’t assign them any duties.”

  “Of everyone you’ve named, only Gabriela, Kenneth, and I are capable of navigating.”

  The ghost of a smile crosses the other witch’s visage. “I haven’t forgotten about our trusted Santuini, have no fear. You bring that little German boy with you, who hangs on your every word like a dog on his mistress’s whims. Furthermore, I believe, somehow, you can keep Allport at bay. Not that he trusts you, but he thinks he can manage you.”

  With difficulty Cerriwden tries to lift herself up and Alina quickly works to fix the pillows behind her back. The woman takes this opportunity to place her hand on Alina’s. “And he will try it, have no doubt. He will try to manipulate you in any way by any means. He’s an attractive man, you need to stay on guard.”

  “I’m not one to let myself be swayed by—”

  “No,” Jillian Cerriwden clicks her tongue and shakes her head. “I was young once too, Alina. At sixteen you aren’t in full control of yourself, especially when there’s a well-muscled statue like that sailor running around next to you.”

  “I’m almost seventeen, and I assure you that I—”

  “Okay, okay,” she pats her hand twice. “Nevertheless, your position makes you useful and frightening at the same time. You are the needle on this airship’s scale, at least until I recover. Gabriela cannot navigate without support, there will be moments, hours, in which you’re alone at the Wind’s helm. Therefore I summoned you to ask: where does your loyalty stand?”

  Alina thinks for a second, then she declares, seriously, “Captain, I asked you for sanctuary and you helped me in that moment of need. Therefore I will obey your orders or Gabriela’s without hesitation. Nevertheless,” she pushes a curl back behind her ear, “you can’t ask me to betray the English flag.”

  “The English used us. With all honors and courtesies, but in the end they simply used us during the last war and all those before it.”

  “Perhaps. But the Germans burned witches, remember?”

  “Drop that tone of voice, you’re just a little girl.”

  “A little girl who was taught that witches, when the trumpets of war sound, always and only march under the Union Jack.”

  Cerriwden narrows her eyes, pain sweeping through her. After a few moments she reopens them and stares at the young witch. “I’m only asking for your honesty. If Gabriela gives you an order which you don’t feel you can carry out, will you tell her that clearly?”

  “That I can do, of course.”

  “What did I tell you at the beginning of this voyage?”

  Alina scrunches up her mouth a bit. “To remember I am a witch.”

  “There it is exactly. Gabriela and I, we are your sisters. I know we’re not in the same clan, but try to broaden your horizons just a little. The day a witch betrays another witch, our race will die out.”

  Alina wants to answer back that, maybe, that day already took place during the last war and that it was the Cerriwden clan themselves who sullied their kind. But Jillian is at the extreme of suffering and insulting her like that would mean spending the rest of the trip in irons; thus she limits herself to nodding silently, before taking her leave.

  ***

  Later, lying on her cot, just when the longing for her friends on the Needle swelled her heart like a balloon, a friendly face passes through the hallway.

  “Hansi,” the young witch calls to him.

  “You’re here,” he stops at the threshold.

  “Who’s at the controls?”

  “Gabriela. She asked me to take care of the witch Julya’s corpse. I’m on my way back from the cargo hatch now.”

  “You could have asked me, I would have helped you,” Alina whispers.

  “It was a nasty job. I didn’t want burden you with it; you need to rest.”

  “You need to rest too. Don’t be protective with me, Hansi Gingelmann. I’m still a witch after all!”

  “I know. An adorable witch.”

  “Ssh. Go on, you’re embarrassing me. And what are you doing there in the doorway? Come in!”

  “I don’t know if I can enter, Officer Maike…” He lowers his eyes.

  “Maike is dead. Now it’s just Gabriela and myself sleeping in the quarters and I’m here, she isn’t. So come in.”

  Hansi seems hesitant, but he takes a few steps into the large crewmembers’ cabin.

  “Sit here, on the cot,” Alina slaps her thin hand against the pallet. “You know,” she continues, “I thought a lot about what you said before.”

  “Really?” His eyes light up like lanterns.

  “Of course,” Alina smiles. “I think that… well, it would be my pleasure if you would come to the Sabbath with me.”

  “Oh!” He kneels down passionately to kiss her.

  “But,” Alina raises an index finger an
d puts it in front of his nose, frustrating his attempt, “there are conditions.”

  “Everything you wish, if I can,” the young man answers, pleased.

  “First of all, stop with the kisses, at least not until we’re in calmer waters. As I told you, it’s essential I’m able to command my magic at any moment and at its full power which, I assure you, is no small amount. For my safety as well as yours. Second,” the girl raises another finger, “being invited to the Sabbath doesn’t automatically mean we’ll have sex. It’s the witch who decides how far to go with her guest.”

  Alina takes in with amusement the shadow of disappointment that flickers for an instant across Hansi’s eyes.

  “Third, young sir,” she says raising her ring finger, “participating in a Sabbath requires acceptance of many rules and proscriptions. For example, you’ll have to take a potion.”

  “To do what?” Hansi stretches out on the cot in front of hers, and the witch feels like she’s falling into the depths of his blue eyes.

  After a moment, she answers him. “Witches are jealous of their secrets and their intimacy. The potion makes it difficult to remember your experience; you’ll only have some sensations or some images afterward.”

  He knits his brow. “What rubbish is this? I want to remember every moment we spend together.”

  “And I will recount it to you every day, for weeks afterward, until its carved in your head. But the potion is mandatory, it’s the Rule.”

  “I don’t understand it, but I’d obey any rule to be with you.”

  “You’re sweet, do you know that?”

  “Was this the important thing you had to tell me?” the German asks.

  “No.” Alina grabs his hands. “If we want to make it to the Sabbath alive we need to manage to get back. I was afraid, too when they separated us. And I believe in the next few days it could happen again. I could be forced to make some radical decisions. I don’t want to betray the Cerriwdens,” Alina lowers her voice to a whisper, “but I don’t like what they’re plotting. So the important thing I wanted to tell you is don’t lose your spirit and have faith in me. I will come to find you, always.”