Just like last time, tears mingled with the water. When the first one dropped from her face to his, it startled her. She stopped what she was doing, sat up straight, and touched her own cheek, only to find it damp. “You’re a fool, Arianna. A hopeless fool,” she told herself.
She bathed Nicodimus’s face and his neck. She washed his hands, gently working the soil away from each strong finger and from the creases in between. His arms and his chest, she cleansed. No movement came from him. No life. She spent a great deal of time on the wound in his chest, the place where his heart would rest once again, when she had finished. One entire jug of the fresh rainwater she had brought went to this purpose. She rinsed the gaping place again and again, and shone the flashlight upon the open wound, to be sure it was perfectly clean.
Then she moved lower, washing his strong thighs, and the place in between. His calves, and his feet. She rolled him over, and cleansed the ages of soil from his back and buttocks. And with the remaining water, she rinsed his hair, running her fingers through it to scrub the dirt away.
Finally, all was ready. All that remained was to replace his mighty heart. Arianna paused to brush a lock of gold and russet hair from his forehead. “Come back to me, Nicodimus. Fight your way back, if you must . . . but come back.”
Closing her eyes, drawing a deep, steadying breath, she reached for the box with trembling hands. It was small, intricately etched with symbols and designs. Engraved upon the lid of each of Dearborne’s tiny wooden prisons was a single letter. She could only guess, only hope, that the N on this one stood for the initial of its rightful owner. Nicodimus.
Carefully, she lifted the lid, and gathered the heart in her hands. Lifting it high, tipping her face up to the moonlight, she held it, and it seemed to Arianna that its beat grew stronger as she spoke. “By the powers of the Ancient Ones, by every force of the Universe, I restore this heart. I revive this body. I resurrect this man. Nicodimus, I call you forth. Return to life. Live, Nicodimus. Live. Live!”
Slowly, she lowered the heart into his body, positioned it carefully, and took her hands away. “As I will, so mote it be,” she whispered.
She sat back on her heels and waited, watching. She stared until her eyes watered, willing his chest to heal, his body to accept and embrace its heart. But nothing happened.
Tears once again stood in her eyes, but she angrily blinked them away. “It might take time,” she reminded herself. “That’s all. Just time.” Nodding hard in affirmation of that belief, she gently eased Nicodimus’s body onto the waiting sleeping bag, and folding it over him, zipped it up. One by one she snuffed the candles, and packed them away. She attached the empty jugs to the sides of the backpack. She scraped the earth back into the empty grave, and the bits of rotted silk along with it. Then she folded the shovel and put that in the pack, as well. She packed the basin, the soiled cloths, the flashlight. All that remained was a length of rope. This she tied to the sleeping bag at either side of Nicodimus’s head, then looped the rope around her waist, and set off.
The journey back to her Jeep seemed endless. His weight behind her seemed to increase with every step, and even with her tremendous immortal strength, she grew tired. Not physically so much as mentally. She wanted the journey over. She wanted him safe inside, out of sight. At last her vehicle came into view, just as the first blush of purplish predawn light painted the horizon.
Nicodimus was heavy, even for one with her power and strength. But not too heavy. She wrested his body into the car, closed the rear door, and leaned against it for a moment, sighing in relief. It was done. Or all but done.
But would it work? Would he awaken?
And if he did . . . what then?
With a sigh of resolution, she vowed to deal with that when the time came. Climbing behind the wheel, she started the engine, and drove over the rutted track and down into the village of Stonehaven; to the cottage that sat on the site of her onetime home. The place where she’d been born. Where she’d lived. Where she’d found her parents brutally murdered.
She had returned here several times over the centuries. Drawn back like a moth to the candle’s flame. She had come back to the memories; the pain, the hurt, the loss. As if testing her resolve to feel none of it anymore. She had purchased the lot on one of those many visits, and had a modest home built there. She rarely visited it anymore—simply paid a local resident to see that the place was cared for, kept up. But somehow, she couldn’t seem to let it go. It was as if that place was her one remaining connection to the mortal, headstrong girl she had been, and the happiness she had once known. It was as if selling it would be cutting herself off at the very root.
The house was a simple, two-story structure, with clapboard siding painted white, and black shutters at the windows. Closed now, those shutters. All of them. It wouldn’t do to have anyone peering in just now. The house had two bedrooms and a bath upstairs, and one bedroom below, in the back. That would be Nicodimus’s home, for now.
She peered again at the paling horizon as she shut off the engine. She’d best hurry and get him inside before the villagers began to wake. Quickly, she moved to the rear of the Jeep, opened it, and tugged him out. She paused only long enough to shut the doors, then dragged him quickly over the flagstone walk to the house. His body bumped up the three front steps to the door, and she opened it and pulled him through. With a surge of relief, she closed the front door, and turned the lock.
“Almost done,” she whispered. “Perhaps it’s good you’re taking your time about waking, Nicodimus. I doubt you’d like being dragged around by a female.”
She peered down at his pale face, but saw no change. Trying hard to keep disappointment from consuming her, she dragged his body across the living room floor, and through the door at the back, into the bedroom there.
She let him lay on the floor alongside the bed, while she hurried back to close and lock the bedroom door, just in case. And finally, she tugged back the covers, opened the sleeping bag, and with no small effort, maneuvered his limp form into the bed. Only then did she look again at the wound in his chest, eager to make sure his mighty heart hadn’t been jostled out of place. It hadn’t. It remained precisely as she had placed it. Was there more color to the pale, steadily beating heart than before? Was the tissue around it pinker? Or was it only wishful thinking?
No way to tell. Patience, she must have patience.
Drawing the covers over him, tucking them gently around him, Arianna finally slumped into the chair beside his bed, where she would wait . . . for as long as it took. Much like a funereal vigil, she thought. Only . . . in reverse. In times of old the bereaved would sit up the night through with the recently deceased corpse, the idea being to remain until the soul had surely left the body.
Arianna’s strange vigil was the wait for Nicodimus’s soul to return. If indeed, it had ever been gone.
The silence of the room seemed to expand as she sat there. Until she could hear the beating of her own heart, and his, and no other sound.
Arianna drew Nicodimus’s hand into her own and held it. The hours passed slowly, endlessly, and after more of them than she cared to count, she lost her battle with exhaustion and closed her eyes as sleep crept in to pull her under.
* * * *
I EMERGED FROM a state of nothing, to a state of everything. Every part of my body burned. Every bit of my skin sizzled. My head felt as if a spike had been driven through my skull, and my chest, as if it were about to burst. The gasp I dragged in was noisy and painful. And then, just as suddenly, I went limp. Weak. Terrifyingly weak.
I opened my eyes.
A woman rose to her feet from where she’d been sitting in a chair beside the odd bed in which I lay. A beautiful woman. Her hair was cut oddly short, but like cornsilk in hue, and her eyes were as wide as all the world, and brown as a doe’s. She clutched my hand in hers. And I felt it. I. . .I felt!
“Nicodimus,” she whispered. And one trembling, very warm hand touched my face. I thought I g
limpsed teardrops dampening her eyes, but she blinked those away quickly enough, and leaned closer. “Nicodimus,” she said again. “Can you hear me?”
“Yes.” My lips formed the word, but the only sound that emerged was a rasp of air. I closed my eyes in frustration. The name she called me by–Nicodimus–yes, it was familiar to me. But my mind seemed lost in a fog I could not explain, and that my own name would seem so strange startled me. Who was I?
A coolness touched my lips, whilst a soft, strong hand lifted my head. A drinking vessel, made of glass and filled with water. I sipped from it, then drank deeply, closing my eyes once more. The liquid felt good on my parched throat. So good.
When the water was gone, the woman lowered my head again to the softness that pillowed me, and set the vessel aside. “How do you feel?” she asked me.
I had to think on that for a moment, for so many feelings were coursing through my body that it was an effort to identify any one in particular. “Weak,” I finally answered. “Heavy. My head. . .” I tried to lift a hand to press to my temple, where a dull throbbing sensation lived, but found my hand barely moved. It rose slightly only to fall again, limp and useless at my side. I believe my eyes widened in alarm.
“It’s all right, Nicodimus.” She took my hand again in hers, and lifted my arm, bending it at the elbow, then lowering it again, bending, then lowering. Over and over. Then she began moving my fingers one by one. Her touch as gentle as a caress. And slowly, more sensation returned to the arm, the hand, though the rush of it was tingling and intense to such an extreme that it made me grimace. She then moved to the other side, manipulating that arm, that hand. By the time she finished, I found I could indeed move. Slowly, weakly, but my limbs were at least functioning now.
She moved lower, to my legs, tugging the covers aside, and as I lifted my head with great effort to glance down at her as she worked them, I saw that I was naked.
“Lady,” I whispered, in a voice so choked and raw it was unfamiliar to me. “You might at least leave me covered.”
She met my gaze and smiled very slightly. “I’ve never known you to be shy before, Nicodimus.” But she tugged the covers over me from the lower part of my waist to the upper part of my thighs.
She knew me, this woman. That smile had triggered a reaction in my mind, but it was a reaction so fleeting I could not identify it.
“Who are you?” I whispered. “What has happened to me that I am so weak?”
She’d been massaging my feet, wriggling my toes, drawing the feeling back into me as if by magic. But she paused at my question, looking up slowly this time, her smile gone. “You don’t remember me then? Or anything that has happened to you?”
Staring into the huge velvety wells of her eyes, I searched my mind, but found nothing. I shook my head slowly.
“Try, Nicodimus. Try to remember.”
I closed my eyes, strained to find the information in my brain, but to no avail. “I am sorry. I cannot.”
She nodded slowly, returning to her station at my side. “Would you like to try sitting up?” she asked.
I nodded, and her warm hands slid underneath me. She eased me upward, into a sitting position, but dizziness spun my brain in circles, and this time I did press my hands to my head.
“It will pass,” she whispered, still holding me. “Easy. Take it easy.”
I clung to her voice as if to a lifeline. And I knew I would have tilted right off the bed had her hands not been my support. But in a few moments, the rush of dizziness passed. I lowered my hands, lifted my head tentatively, and opened my eyes. Yes. It was gone now.
But her hands remained at my shoulders.
“I . . . it is better now. Gods, what ails me?”
She drew a breath, and I sought her face. Small, with an elfin, turned up nose, and wide full lips. Eyes wide set and almond shaped, cheekbones high and sculpted. And yet she did not answer me. And it occurred to me then that she was very oddly dressed.
“It would be better,” she said softly, “if you could remember on your own.”
I frowned at her.”
“Then you’ll tell me nothing?”
“I’ll help you to remember, Nicodimus.”
“Then do so, woman! I did not even recall my own name until you spoke it to me!”
“Calm down.” Her hands on my shoulders moved higher, to the tops of them, and began a smooth, rhythmic motion of pressing and easing and moving in circles. It sent the breath rushing out of me, made me to bend my head forward. Her touch . . . it felt good. Soothing.
“Look at your right flank,” she told me, still rubbing. Her hands slid behind me now, her thumbs pressing against the base of my neck, then lower as she rubbed the unbearable aching from my back.
I looked where she told me and saw the birthmark I bore. The berry-colored mark of the crescent moon. Something sparked like a near-dead ember in my mind.
“We all bear a similar mark, Nicodimus. I bear one just like yours. Now, look at the pentacle you wear around your neck.”
Lowering my chin, I did. A pendant, with a crescent moon on one curve of the circle that surrounded it, and a woman—a Goddess-reclining there.
I lifted my head, and eyed the strange woman’s neck. She wore a pendant just like mine.
“What are you, Nicodimus?” she asked me very gently, those eyes probing mine.
“I . . . I am a witch.” The words rolled off my tongue without forethought. “I am an immortal High Witch.”
She nodded. “Yes. As am I. You see? It’s coming back to you.” Her voice was so soft, so encouraging to me. “Now, tell me, if you’re immortal, how can you die?”
I frowned, searching the murky, blackwater depths of my mind. “I . . . my heart. I can only die if a Dark One takes my . . .” Alarm flashed in my mind then, and I found myself instinctively reaching to my side, for what, I did not know. A weapon. Yes, a dagger.
“It’s all right. I am not a Dark Witch, but a Light One. Do you know how to tell the difference?”
Eyeing her warily, I nodded. “The crescent appears on the right flank in the Light, the left in the Dark.”
Nodding slowly, she reached down to the odd fastening of the breeches she wore. Blue, they were, and of sturdy make. Yet they hugged her body obscenely close. The fastener slid lower, an ingenious device with teeth of metal, and she pushed the breeches down, revealing a scrap of shiny, flimsy material underneath. A minuscule pantlet that covered her perfectly rounded backside, and concealed her woman’s charms from me, though not by any great degree. Turning, she showed me the mark on her right flank. Then turning again, she revealed the left, as smooth and flawless as satin.
“You see?”
I blinked, but could not take my gaze from her body. “Yes. I see.”
She pulled the breeches up again, fastening them. No modesty, I thought. Not in this female.
“Someone took your precious heart, Nicodimus,” she told me slowly. “A Dark Witch. I found him. He’s dead now. In his home, I found countless journals filled with secrets of our kind, which he spent centuries compiling. From him, I learned that it is possible to restore the life to one who has been killed in this way. By retrieving the heart, restoring its power, and replacing it in the body of its owner.”
As she spoke, she pressed her palm to my chest.
“I . . . I was dead?”
“As good as dead, yes,” she whispered. “But now you are alive.”
I was not certain I believed this far-fetched tale she told. And yet, were it true, I owed her a great debt. Far greater than I would ever be able to repay. “I . . . thank you.” I shook my head. “You are a stranger to me. I do not even know your name, and yet you did this for me?”
Her smile wavered. “I’m not a stranger to you, Nicodimus. We knew each other once. But you’ll remember, in time. My name is Arianna.”
“Arianna,” I whispered. “Arianna.” There was something about the name, but my mind refused to tell me what. I gave my head a shake, fr
ustration eating at my gut. “Tell me, Arianna. Have you performed this feat before, on others? This raising of slain immortals from their graves?”
She held my gaze, shook her head, “You are the first. But that other one, he had done it many times.”
“And were those he restored this confused, this weak and dizzy, when they awakened?”
She averted her gaze from mine as she spoke. “All awoke confused and weakened. Some to greater degrees than others. But it passed, in each of them. And I’m confident it will in you as well.”
“Yes, but when?”
Her hand, trembling slightly, stroked my hair. “I cannot say when. Be patient, Nicodimus.” She offered me a smile that was meant to comfort and reassure. “Come, try to stand. See if you can walk at all.”
I was hesitant, but I turned obediently when she pulled me to the side, and my legs dangled over the edge of the bed. Then she came to stand in front of me, wedging her thighs between mine to get closer to me. Her arms slid beneath mine, and around to my back. “Now slide toward me,” she instructed.
I did so, wondering at her lack of shyness in pressing her body against that of a near-naked man. I felt a stirring of awareness in my loins, but my body did not respond in any physical way. No hardening took place. And what I felt was, I sensed, but a faint shadow of true desire. Not because she was less than desirable. She was very desirable. My mind knew that. My body simply seemed slow in acknowledging or reacting to the information.
My feet touched the cool floor beside hers, and my body straightened slowly upright. She held my chest tight against her, waiting, as I tried to get my balance and test my legs to see if they would support my weight.
I was shocked at how much effort this cost me, how weak-kneed I felt. Yet I managed to stand. She moved to stand beside me, rather than in front of me, all without letting go, but the change in her position caused the cover she’d placed over my body to fall away.
She ignored that. And I decided if she were not offended, I would not worry over something so insignificant as modesty. It was, I knew, the least of my troubles just now.
Eternal Love: The Immortal Witch Series Page 57
