The Crystal Crux: Blue Grotto

by Allen Werner

  Old Nan later told her how they found her.

  When the storm subsided and she didn’t come back into town to restock her supplies, they grew concerned and came looking for her. They found the door ajar and her naked, ravaged body lying in a pile of snow on the floor. They were sure some wild animal must have broken in and ravaged her, chewed on her flesh and molested her. They thought at first she was dead because of all the blood but the drift of snow and the cold wind had covered her sufficiently and protected her. It was amazing, a miracle she survived. Several townspeople wanted to have her declared a saint. ‘Saint Claire,’ they said. Claire liked the ring of that. And strangely enough, they wanted her blessings also. People came from all around, wanting Claire to touch them, heal them. Some even requested locks of her hair. A tale went about the town saying that the Lord saw what evil thing had befallen this young lamb of the Church, and Christ, in his infinite mercy, immaculately blessed her with a child to ease all her sufferings. They couldn’t wait for summer and the opportunity to tell the abbey and the pope. Saint Claire is having a baby.

  Claire believed them. She had to believe them. It was the only way she was going to remain sane after all she had endured. She chose to block out and keep secret the appearance of the hirsute knight and how she nursed him only to have him turn on her. She convinced herself that a bear or a beast had barged into the cabin and molested her and she had indeed been graciously impregnated by God.

  ‘Margaret, Saint Margaret,’ she prayed without ceasing. ‘Make my child a sauver.’

  And then Sinibaldus was born and the derision began.

  Father Lamaire managed to coerce the mob into giving Claire some time to think, and consider her decision, see the mercy in killing the creature. At her bedside, he preached. “It is not a child, Claire. It is a beast, a creature, a test. This pallid thing is not a blessing. We were wrong. An incubus from hell has placed its demonic seed in you and if you do not destroy it, it could destroy the whole world. You must show God you love Him and only Him. Do not love this grotesque. It does not have a soul anyway. Kill it with your own two hands and prove to everyone in Chamonix that you are not a disciple of the devil.” He leaned over to get a better look at the albino in her arms. Sinibaldus hissed at him. “My Lord,” he squawked, snapping back. “The creature has teeth already.” Father Lamaire shook his head. “Claire, the people will stone you both if you are unwilling to do the right thing. We cannot have this evil beast in our midst and you are wicked if you decide to keep it.” And with that, he took his Bible and left.

  Claire cried all night until her resolve returned. Before the first rays of sunlight broke over the horizon, she collected the child, stole some basic items from the storeroom, and crawled out the window.

  When Claire tired of crying, her echoing wails no longer returning to her from the surrounding mountains, she covered the infant up and rose bravely to her feet. She was about to move again when two raggedy women appeared. Their faces and hair were decidedly filthy. They were wretched and worn, wearing even less dress than she. They had climbed up out of a hole in the nearby ground in a place she hadn’t even noticed.

  Claire was petrified. She had heard the tall tales, the terrifying accounts of sauvageons, uncivilized, flesh-eating cave-dwellers living in these parts. These people were unmerciful, viciously assaulting Christians, sacrificing babies to their heathen gods, drinking blood from the skulls of their enemies.

  The women stared at Claire with suspicious eyes.

  And then Sinibaldus began to cry.

  “Un enfant?” One woman asked, a hint of enthusiasm in her voice.

  Claire was apprehensive. “Yes, my child.”

  Sinibaldus suddenly stopped crying and pushed his face out of the swaddling cloth. He fought Claire and made her put him down. Claire didn’t want him to fall on his head, so she placed him on the ground.

  Naked and white, Sinibaldus tossed away the swaddling blanket and stood on his own two feet to face the disheveled women.

  The two women gazed at the child with affection and pleasing sighs, cupping their hands and placing them near their mouths. Meekly they began pointing toward their private hole in the ground, inviting Claire and the child to enter.

  Claire didn’t have a chance to say no, or even consider it. Sinibaldus took his first shaky step towards the women, and then another, and then another.

  Claire turned back to the beaten trail behind her and thought about the village of Chamonix, the angry Christians she had come to love and trust, the ones now willing to stone her to death. She remembered their words, the condemnation and the judgement. She pictured them all, even Old Nan, hurling rocks at her and her child.

  Claire spat on the ground. A sense of pride roared up and restored itself inside of her. The tears were gone. She followed her toddling son and together they went with the raggedy women into the hole.

  Chapter 25 – White Ghost

  By all rights, Sinibaldus should be dead. The giant knew that. He let his guard down and they jumped him, caught him unawares. Of course, it was his own fault. Sinibaldus believed the cave-dweller of The Living Pool reverenced him, loved him and feared him. He was their god, their King, King of the Living Pool. There were but a few souls left in the coven community, male or female, he hadn’t been intimate with. It was part of his symbiotic outreach. They were all driven by desire, consumed by passions. Intimacy, congenial sharing of the bodies was necessary to build trust and maintain it. Everyone had to love everyone, no exceptions.

  When Marcel wounded him, sticking that jagged dagger into his back, it came with utter shock. The love and trust was gone. The harmonious intimacy destroyed.

  Luckily for Sinibaldus, the blade went in the shoulder, in the bone, and missed his heart and lungs. The mad King, stunned and wounded, possessed the heightened awareness necessary to spot the other maniacal priests, his other brethren, who had hesitated waiting for Marcel to initiate the treachery. They too approached the giant now with their crude weapons drawn. Sinibaldus sacrificed his chest and back once more, allowing two more daggers to penetrate his flesh while his enormous hands rose to grab hold of young Wyatt’s unsteady arm, breaking it swiftly. Wyatt was going for his jugular and had to be dealt with first.

  Staggered by the three blades now lodged in his body, Sinibaldus realized he had survived the first wave. There were more attacks yet to come but these four were the instigators of the rebellion, the brave ones.

  The giant wheeled around, flailing his arms and roaring as a lion, creating a tempest of dark motion with his long black cape, his constitution matching that of the god they supposed him to be.

  Sinibaldus crushed Haver’s skull without hardly trying. He went lower on Osia with a thundering fist, catching the thin priest in the chest, breaking the bones shielding his heart. Sinibaldus turned swiftly about and shoved the bastard High Priest Marcel backwards with such ferocity that when Marcel slammed against the cave wall, his head smashed like a soft melon. And then there was Wyatt, the youngest of the conspirators, the one he had held out the most hope for. The youngster was clutching his broken arm and screaming. Sinibaldus pulled him up by the collar and lifted him above his head. The terrified priest had no time to plead or protest. Sinibaldus lumbered three steps to his left and hurdled Wyatt down Trou de l’enfer, Hell Hole, a seventy-meter-deep pit where the remains of sacrifices had been commonly dropped.

  Hours earlier, word had begun to spread quickly and silently amongst the cave-dwellers. This was the moment for the revolution, the revolt. The King had gone mad, lost his mind, and must die. The Living Pool was teeming with an outraged militia of cursing priests, hissing priestesses. Thin and angry witches did the same. Dark cloaked warlocks stood in the background, up on the ledges of the cave, chanting in the recesses, lifting their canes and wands, spinning them widdershins, reciting dark prayers to the spirits inhabiting the Living Pool, begging them to rise and aid their just cause.

  Sinibaldus was buffeted from every a
ngle as the cave-dwellers hurled things at him. One large rock whispered by his face, barely missing his eye. A series of smaller stones buffeted him, raining like hail, striking his arms and legs. Bruised and bleeding, he yanked out one of the three jagged daggers stuck in his chest and flung it into the swarming masses. It caught one young woman straightway in the forehead. She collapsed immediately. This did not intimidate anyone. They all held their ground, hissing and coiling like snakes.

  Looking around the massive cave, Sinibaldus realized he was surrounded and outnumbered and required a hundred more daggers and a hundred more arms with which to throw them. His reign was officially over. It was time to abdicate.

  Lording more than two feet over even the tallest of the enemy, Sinibaldus leapt down from the stone dais like an enormous beetle weighing through a swarming nest of black ants. His former worshippers were not as bold or as brave as his loyal priest had been and they frightened easy. They still considered Sinibaldus to be a god and feared whatever magic and strength he had in him. They parted, granting him the passage he so desperately desired.

  This parting, however, was not without its woes. A flurry of stones, rocks and garbage continued to fly. Everything and anything they could throw at him was thrown. In less than thirty-seconds, the giant lumbered out of the cave-opening and into the dark world outside, a world lit only by a waning crescent moon.

  Sinibaldus was a strange creature. Since the day he entered the world of the cave-dwellers with his mother, he had not cried, never shed another tear. Today he wept. He wailed and he screamed, rejection streaming down his cheeks. He was no longer loved. His mother was dead and truly gone for good. He might as well have died.

  Triumphant, the proud cave dwellers stood on the stepped ledges of the mountain, on the cliffs and precipices of Mount Dolent, cheering and jeering, waving their canes, contorting their arms, directing curses, obscenities and incantations towards their former king, damning the earth he walked on, demanding it not feed him or shelter him.

  It was a night Sinibaldus never forget or forgive.

  His demise began the day his mother Claire died. Something simply snapped inside of him.

  Sinibaldus and Claire had maintained an incestuous relationship which was not uncommon amongst the cave-dwellers. What was uncommon was the prophesy surrounding Sinibaldus and Claire. It was believed that they were going to sire a legion of monstrous bastards, immortal warriors of supernatural strength and superior intellect to destroy the Christian stranglehold on the world and restore the former order. Nature must once again be divine.

  Survival was difficult for nearly every one of the cave-dwellers. Anyone who had come forward and refuted or denied the supremacy of Christ and the Church of Rome were ostracized and considered anathema. Heretics survived outside civilization, foraging and hunting on constantly shrinking lands, encroachment pressing them like animals further up into the mountains into less and less habitable terrain. The Alps were wild, remote and barren, wolves and bears and other predatory creatures fighting the same battle for existence. Most souls living in the labyrinth of covens were malnourished and wizened, often underdressed for the elements and filthy.

  Despite all the privation, the King and Queen of La Piscine Vivant were revered and doted on. They never lacked for anything and neither did their nearest and dearest companions, their counsellors, the highest order of priests and priestesses. Their stores were always full, a religious tax keeping it so.

  When Sinibaldus woke to find Claire’s cold body lying motionless beside him, her womb still without any child other than himself, he sunk into depression. Claire’s uterus and ability to take seed had been apparently undone by Sinibaldus’ own destructive father. This truth, however, did not prevent Sinibaldus from being wholly convinced of his divinity and ability to impregnate his deceased mother. ‘Mon souhait. Ma faҫon,’ he chanted softly. My will. My way.

  Sinibaldus was reared not by his mother but the priests of the covens who had awaken him to the myriad forces inhabiting the universe. While some of them were capable of channeling spirits, drawing them in and speaking with them, learning things about the other side, performing a few rudimentary magic tricks, igniting a cold fire in a bush or transforming sticks into snakes, none of them could execute and accomplish enchantments as well as Sinibaldus. He was lightning rod for lost and lonely souls as well as dark and angry spirits. They came to him at all hours, whispering in his ears, throwing things at him, creating quite a stir. They were constantly enhancing his knowledge of what could not be seen by the human eye. He learned to manage some of them, call them to him and control them, intimidate some and wrestle with others. There were days when Sinibaldus left the coven and wandered alone in the nearby hills, searching other worlds in his mind, roaming through invisible fields of color and time, waging war with magnificent beasts, nearly all of them unheard of. This ability to manipulate the elements and travel off-world, not only frightened his fellow cave-dwellers, it inspired them to seek more and be like him. Many sought him out, to become his disciples, the ones who revered him. They asked him to bless them and grant them favors, contact deceased relatives and send messages back and forth.

  Sinibaldus was not a charitable sort and everything he did for them came with a price, their devotion and sex being the two chief forms of payment.

  Prepared to do battle with the creatures in the otherworld once again, Sinibaldus carried Claire’s corpse to The Living Pool and placed her on the stone altar where sacrifices were completed. With wrath gripping his heart, he sought those spirits out, the ones who had filched her soul from this earth. He had no idea who they were or how power they might be. He didn’t care. He had to see Claire again. He had to bring her back. If that meant concessions, sacrifices and war, so be it, it mattered not. He would win and resurrect her.

  The way was dark, a far blacker path than any road he had ever travelled. There were omnipotent eternals shrouding the road. The haze was murkier and denser than anything his ambitious spirit had ever encountered. These beings that had her now, possessed more authority than he could imagine. Their understanding of the universe and time itself, their abilities to manage it and corrupt it exceeded his own. ‘There has to be a solution,’ he kept telling himself. ‘They can’t keep her. I won’t let them. She is mine.’

  In his madness, Sinibaldus insisted the priestesses bathe and care for Claire, change her dressing daily and treat her as if she were still alive. There was no time for grief or capitulation. His whole future and the future of the coven community depended on his ability to sire children with his mother and raise a warrior class of priests. It was prophecy. It had to be true.

  Thinking back on it years later, Sinibaldus realized time had become irrelevant to him. He had forgotten how they had aged over the years. Claire was fifty and had gone gray long ago. She didn’t even enjoy the act of sex anymore, performing it with him as though it were a necessary labor. On more than one occasion, she tried to communicate this hopelessness to him, lying like a frightened child in his enormous arms, chilled and tired, fearful of what their failure to produce these gods meant.

  Sinibaldus refused to give up hope. More than a few times, in his madness, he thought to take his mother, enter her while she lay dormant and rigid without a heartbeat on the altar. He wondered perversely if his superior seed might be the missing element required to return her to the land of the living.

  The more he thought on death and dying, and discussed these things with the various spirits inhabiting The Living Pool, the more his passion to do something violent in this temporal world increased. ‘There must be a ritual I can perform to reach her and appease whatever impedes my will, my way. I must tear through that darkness and open the gates of her prison.’

  On a stand behind the altar, three sorceresses were performing a common ritual for the dead at The Living Pool.

  Renée, a young, black haired witch, not unlike Claire, was cutting up live ravens when she accidently sliced her finger. The
women were removing the still-warm hearts of the protesting birds and mashing them into a paste, a vie cataplasme, or life-poultice they called it. The paste was being applied daily to Claire’s chest, near her petrified heart.

  “Merde.” Renée squeaked in pain, tossing the bloody organ and bird aside. The flapping, injured fowl flailed about on the ground without its heart for a moment. “I contaminated it with my blood. I’ll have to go wash up.”

  Sinibaldus’ mind suddenly churned with new and devious thought. ‘Blood. Blood has always been the key to life. Mama’s blood was old.” He turned to look at Claire’s body on the altar. ‘She needs new blood and she needs a lot of it, more than she’ll get from a few ravens.’ It was time for miracles. Time for a resurrection.

  Sinibaldus called his priests to his side; the most loyal and faithful, Marcel, Osia, Haver and Wyatt. He ordered these devout men to round up every dark-haired woman living in the covens, anyone who even slightly resembled Claire. He did not tell them anything of his revelation. They obeyed, trusting him as they had always trusted him.

  The round up was met with optimism. The cave-dwellers anticipated that their King had finally awakened from his mourning and was going to choose a new bride, christen a new woman to take Claire’s place by his side and serve the people as Queen of the Living Pool. One of them was going to birth a superior race of children, be a mother of gods.

  Sinibaldus had reared dozens of bastard children with dozens of women but none was considered special or superior. They weren’t even allowed to refer to him as their father. They were given no special honor. Everything about the prophecy up until now hinged on Claire giving him children.

  The black-haired women came to The Living Pool of their own accord, most wearing their best attire, wearing what little jewelry they might possess, washing and cleansing themselves, doing their utmost to be attractive. A few women who didn’t even resemble Claire tried to slip in but were turned away.