‘O stop your whining, would ‘ya? All day long… did you have to chop the wood, or get the water? No! And you’ll probably have a hot meal tonight! Just sit there and shut your guff.’ He walks into the front room. His tone of voice changes to a sweetish demeanor.
‘May I come in?’ he says, and then he sees the Witch, there, slumped in the rocking chair, passed out, looking thin and as lovely as Domina, herself.
‘O festering boils! Would ‘ya look at that… Get up!’ He pulls up her eyelids.
‘Clean out, you mere disaster. He won’t pick you! All this for what? To be seen around town with me?’ The troll yells into the Witch’s ear, ‘Wake up!!’
The Witch startles and sputters out a wittily grumble, looking just like Domina otherwise, ‘Mm, hmmm, ummm, uh.’ She looks at him. She looks at the smashed jug on the floor, and then she suddenly comes to, realizing what must have happened.
‘Zusty diggins!’ she swears and tries to sit up, ‘Did the potion work? How do I look?’
‘Just like that lazy sack a bones we have a-sittin’ in the back room on that wooden stool. Is that what yer wanted?’
‘Just like?’ the Witch asks. She totters up to standing.
‘Well, here, help me with this, here in the back -’ she turns, ‘the zipper! Get the zipper you numb little oaf!’ He’s coming tonight, you know, summoned him all day, yesterday. Has to be here tonight.’
‘If you ask me-’
‘I didn’t.’
‘he’s the devil’s own to keep her in a tower like that under an ogre’s care,’ the troll (rightly named Tyranomous) exclaims.
‘He ain’t coming for you!’
‘O, I’ve got my ways. Just you wait and see,’ the Witch insists.
‘I’d rather not. I’m going out. But don’t you come a-cryin’ to me when he ain’t showed and you done all this to go to town and be laughed at,’ Tyranomous says and begins to walk toward the back room as a troll rarely exits through the front door of his house.
‘Eeeeeeeeee!’ the Witch yells and throws a knick-knack at him. He ducks and hobbles out the back door, past Domina, muttering as he goes.
‘You hear that?’ Tyranomous mentions as he passes by Domina, ‘he’s coming for ‘ya. She can still summon, but you won’t know. You’d just better not be here when I get back.’ He slams the back door behind him causing the shovel to rattle against the back room wall.
‘Aaaaahheeee!!’ the Witch yells, again. Domina quickly begins to untie her feet. The she hears the Witch complain, ‘You didn’t get my zipper! You wretched little beast!’ Domina stops, looks toward the half-closed door from where the Witch’s voice booms.
‘My goodness,’ Domina thinks, ‘please don’t ask me.’ She sits quickly back into the wooden chair, and places her arms behind it, as if they were still tied.
‘I’ll have to ask the harriden in the back,’ the Witch resolves and stomps to the back room. She opens the door just as Domina sits up straight.
‘Do me a favor…’ the Witch asks in as sweet a voice as a witch could muster, then adds in her usual tone, ‘you dumb cat. Zip me up!’ She turns around, points to the zipper, while Domina quietly grabs the shovel off the wall. The Witch turns to look sharply at Domina just as the shovel whaps the Witch, hard, across the side of the head. The Witch falls to the floor with a thud and a slight puff of a hollow exhale. Domina drops the shovel and quickly gets right to work, tying the Witch into the wooden chair. She then grabs a rag off the the pegs where the shovel had been and ties it around the Witch’s mouth. Tyranomous, the old troll, just then, opens the back door. He looks at Domina.
‘Forgot my hat,’ he says to her as if she was the Witch. He grabs it off the hook and plops it on his misshapen head of not even one single hair. Domina, caught off guard, at first by the ease of this exchange, mimics the last thing she remembers about the Witch: she picks up another knick-knack and throws it at the wall near him with a yell.
‘Eeeeeahh!’ Domina imitates. He ducks his head into his hat and quickly slams the door. Walking off, past the window, he curses her in words and utterances, ‘An extreme displeasure, you are. Vicious she-devil from an eternal flame of rodent fur and burned britches…’ Domina almost laughs. But instead, she turns and hurries into the front room, near the kitchen where she eyes the open book of spells and check the clock.
About an hour later, Domina sits at the table with the book open to its ‘Carriage from a Turnip’ page. There is a turnip in the middle of the table. Domina is surrounded by little bottles and jars from off the shelf behind her. Ingredients colorfully labeled and freshly stacked around her, but instead of stirring, she is crying. She has flour dust on her cheeks and her hair has slipped from the bun she has tied it up in. All at once, there is a knock at the the wittily hut’s front door.
‘I almost forgot!’ Domina utters. She picks up a long, sharp pair of shears that sit next to her as she stands, smoothes her dress, and readies herself to answer the door. Sounds of the Witch beginning to stir from her whacked out slumber can be heard from the back room.
‘Humhn, hmm,’ the Witch groans and grumbles as she wakes. Domina wipes her hands, and places a piece of fallen down hair behind her ear. There is another knock, insistant this time, upon the door. Domina places her hand holding the shears behind her back as she opens it.
‘O my, to what due I owe this surprise?’ she asks the elegantly dressed visitor, Nostramadeus, himself.
‘I’ve been summoned,’ he says. His mannerisms imply that he is in a bit of a rush.
‘What business do I have, here, girl?’ he demands loudly.
Domina remarks, ‘It’s cold out, come inside.’ She covers her underclothing in a shawl that she picks up off of the Witch’s chair. ‘Come in. Let us talk, at least, inside where it is warm.’ L’Onormichaelis Nostramadeus steps over the threshold of the unkindly, little hut.
‘I do not appreciate this interruption,’ he says, but walks in after her, all the same, his boot heels sounding-out loud clicks against the wooden floor. On the back, the Witch begins to hmm, mnm beneath the gag Domina has tied around her mouth.
‘Behind your back, there, is that a weapon?’ the great vampire questions but he does not ask as though it is one. Domina laughs, embarrassed. She pulls the shears out from behind her back.
‘These? No, no. I was just cutting up,’ she points to the covered table, obviously in the middle of a project, ‘um, turnip greens. Yes. Turnips. Can I get you anything?’
Nostramadeus reminds her, ‘I expressed that I’m in a hurry.’
‘Yes, you did. So let’s get to it. You need to get out of here… so do I,’ she says. The Witch becomes louder than before, causing thuds of wooden chair legs against the floor. The gaze of Nostramadeus hardens at the sound of the interruption.
‘I had you in the tower,’ he remembers, ‘how did you escape?’
‘Correction!’ Domina walks to the back room’s door and throws it open, revealing the Witch, tied to the chair, looking more like Domina at this moment than Domina herself, ‘You had HER in the tower!’ He gazes upon the Witch in the chair, her dress, her hair - everything that, at this moment, Domina’s is not. The Witch struggles for a moment sending him quite a pitiful look. The vampire looks away and back at Domina. Domina closes the door. Sounds of the Witch throwing as much of a fit as she can against the gag and wooden chair seep through the door nearly ruining sweet Domina’s appeal to the daunting vampire’s enchanting and gentlemanly side.
‘I’d like to go with you. Escape. She tried to kill me.’
Nostramadeus sets his jaw and hardens his stare. Disbelieving he presses her, ‘And yet, she is the one tied up and you hold the shears? I think that I will duly entitle one escape today, as requested at my being summoned here.’ He swishes past her and all-at-once throws open the back door. He cuts the Witch free. All during his rescue of the Witch, Domina stands behind him uttering sounds and arguments in complete protest of his unlikely-and-unnatural choice
.
‘What?! No! Not this Witch!.. I mean, um, not this woman you had in the tower. No! It isn’t her… she’s not the one. I mean, take me, I’m better! I’m best… what ARE you Doing?!’ The great vampire picks the Witch up, into his strong arms and bids Domina farewell.
‘Good-bye to you, dismissed MissDistress! Good riddance. As if I couldn’t see a fair lady from a witch who summoned me here. It’s there, all over your table, you’d bleed the truth and lie to Me?! Not a chance going!’ he hurries himself and the Witch to the doorway and turns back to face Domina.
‘In fact,’ he says, ‘it’s written on your face! You are NOT to be tolerated. Think twice before you conjure - or whatever it is you do - call on, me again. And this one,’ he lifts the Witch just slightly higher in his arms, who gives Domina quite a pitifully, and rather sweet for the old hag, look. Then, right before all of their eyes, he sprouts large, bat-like wings and steps out of the doorway.
‘This one shall rest with me, in eternity. To the tower!’ he says. He wraps his sweet Domina - he thinks - tightly in his wings and then he and the Witch are instantly gone, away from the Witch’s hut, out of Domina’s sight.
Domina yells after them, ‘How do I get out of here?!!’ Silence is her only response. They are both gone. Domina sits down with a dumbstruck look upon her face, for one quiet moment, and then a thought sinks in, awakening all her features to a near smile.
‘To the tower?…’ she repeats, and then suddenly she decides she may not have made out so badly after all. She turns back and takes a good, long look at the Witch’s little house.
Chapter Four
The illustrious vampire, L’Onormichaelis Nostramadeus, sits at a table drinking from a fine, red goblet with ornate gold embellishments around the stem. It is a table set for two, flames from the candles of a candleabra in the middle of the table dart back and forth as darkness grows outside causing the shadows in the room to grow while the wind whistles outside in a moonless sky. His wings are nonexistent and he is freshly dressed, once again, in fine clothing. The Witch, looking as much like Domina as Domina, herself, walks into the room wearing a new gown, and staggering toward the table.
Nostramadeus raises his goblet, “Domina! Pardon me if I don’t stand, you look lovely. Feeling better?” The Witch, in a witch’s voice, pulling at the tightness of the new, silk dress exclaims, ‘It’s awful! And the color is all wrong!’ The vampire tells her, ‘Sit. You’ve had a harrowing experience. You need something to calm your mind. Here, the first course. Succulent truffles from the land of Tombucctou and strawberries from a field in Asia where no one’s ever walked before. Here, taste.’ He begins to reach across the table with a large, delicious looking strawberry, but as he touches her lips with it, the Witch sucks the entire thing into her mouth and spits it hard, right back at him, hitting him right square in the eye.
‘Vociferously vile! Darling, stop that!’ He stands up, looks out of the window trying to maintain his composure while he wipes his eye and his face with his napkin. His eyes are watery when he turns to look at her.
‘What have they done to you? Sweet Domina. Perhaps you are not ready for dinner with me, here. I will show you the most beautiful sight you have seen of this city, and we will have dinner brought up to us, there.’ He snaps his fingers and motions to the waiter telling him to set them a table atop the tower’s stairs.
‘Come with me,’ he holds out his hand for the Witch, expecting quite a fight, considering the last time they, supposedly, ‘did this’; but the Witch merely grumbles as he takes hold and follows him unknowingly. He rolls his eyes at the sounds she makes - quite unlike any ‘darling’ he would choose at all!
‘This has become a pain in the neck, Domina, please come along,’ he implores her, gently yet with an edge that one more faux pas and he just might lose his temper. (You don’t want a vampire to do that!)
‘Bodhaire, bodhraim, velvet mite and yellow vejovis… hocus!’ the Witch murmers.
‘What are you saying, darling?’ the patience taxed but tempered vampire asks her.
‘Spider…,’ the Witch mutters, ‘on your hand.’
The vampire looks down, ‘Ah! Get it off!’ he shakes his hand. The spider falls to the floor.
‘I hate those!‘ he complains, shaken. He stomps on it and smashes it. The Witch chortles. L’Onormichaelis Nostramadeus looks at his near bride, strangely.
‘Domina, perhaps you need some rest. I think I’d like to go out, too, while you rest. You could take a short nap while I’m away. Let’s think about this, upstairs.’ He motions to the long, winding staircase for what, he thinks, will be the last time.
‘Ladies first,’ he says.
At that first kill - the spider - the Witch’s Domina-like appearance ever-so-slightly slips and begins to fade - starting with her toes.
Back at the Witch’s hut, Domina has gone back inside and is beginning to sweep up the flour dust, which earlier she’d spilled onto the floor. Deep in though as she sweeps, she thinks about her circumstances, then right out loud she wonders, ‘Now what to do about that incorrigible little man.’ Just as she sets down her broom, she sees - through the open door - the lady across the street walk out toward her garden gate. Domina smooths the Witch’s frock she has put on, readjusts her hairpin, and walks out the door to greet this lady, slight beneath her huge hairdo, the likes Domina has never seen before.
Back in the underworld castle, the illustrious - and now turning ominous - vampire and his disguised darling - the Witch - have just reached the top of the tower. The renowned Nostramadeus, at the window, attempts to enchant his fair maiden - a thing he happens to be good at and has never failed to do - but, this particular fair maiden is having none such involvement, until finally, he reaches out his hand to grasp the back of his captive maid’s neck. The Witch backs away. He holds his hand against his own throat and turns away to look out the window. Gazing at the shimmer of night city lights through mists of dark clouds that float by, he decides to lessen his grave disappointment and give in to a ravenous feast.
‘I’m afraid this night, Domina, has come to be a real drain, if you know what I mean… and I know you don’t. Could you come closer, most beloved? I’d like to show you something… this wonderful view… please look with me, now, darling,’ and then at the lack of her reponse he turns to his assumed Domina who hauls off and, raising her leg swift and strong, kicks him in the groin with a curdling cry that startles him almost as much as the swift boot that swings toward him.
‘Hah!’ he exclaims catching her leg in his hand - mid-air - just before impact. He looks at her boot.
‘Witch shoes!’ he exclaims, ‘Only a witch won’t change her shoes! I thought you for a nasty taste, only half-fooled me, you did… I should have known.’ He pulls up the long dress a few inches to reveal the yellow and black striped stockings and the witchiest of all witch boots.
‘Fooled me for the fair Domina. And to think I almost drank your acrid pint, unnourished as I was.’
‘Let down my leg!’ the Witch shrieks.
‘On one condition, you hate-filled mongrel!’
‘Never like a vampire? I won’t!!’ the Witch exclaims.
‘You take your disagreeable corpse outta my sight and outta my house, forever!’ the notable vampire demands.
The bad, little hex-caster puts a finger to the side of her tooth, ‘That’s it?’ she asks wearing a pitiful expression - one of attempted innocence that she thinks Domina might wear at just this moment.
‘As far as I can think of, yes,’ the vampire replies.
‘Agreed!’ the Witch shrieks. He lets go of her leg. She backs away three steps, almost to the staircase, but keeps her eyes, unblinking, on the vampire whose evil truly - although not as unruly - outdoes her own.
‘You forgot to mention your sweet Domina. Aww! Did you?… in your terms for me, forget her? Or are you just as bitter as the wormwood in which you sleep?’ she asks, but does not wait for him to answer.
‘
Ta-de-ly-da! Toodly-do, and so forth.’ She turns and runs down the long, winding staricase and out the underworld castle as fast as her witchy shoes will carry her.
‘Just dreadful! And to think I almost drank from that rotting well!’ L’Onormichaelis Nostramadeus sighs and a look of complete exasperation comes across the usually staid and emotionless vampire’s face.
Across the street for the Witch’s hut, the hairdo’d woman opens her gate.
‘Greetings!’ Comes sweet Domina’s voice from across the lane, ‘How do you do?’ She opens the Witch’s twiggly gate - appearing as though it is made from sticks and brambleberry branches - and crosses quickly over, almost startling the lady. Domina rushed over and holds out her hand.
‘I’m Domina. Pleased to meet you.’ The hair lady looks at Domina’s outstretched hand for several long, uncomfortable seconds, during which Domina exhales an nervous half-laugh and half-smile, causing the hair lady to reluctantly touch her hand with a quick shake, then returns it to the handle of the basket she is carrying.
‘How do you do,’ the lady of astonishing hair replies, curtly.
‘A bit rough, actually,’ Domina starts in - to explain her dilemma; but, the hair lady simple adjusts her basket and begins to walk away, back toward her house almost shutting the gate on Domina while mustering up some rather feeble condolences.
‘Sorry to hear it. Well maybe…’ she tries to shut the garden gate.
‘O please don’t go,’ Domina says, nearly wedging her foot inside the gate, ‘I’ve just got to talk to somebody about how to get out of here. I’ve got quite a story to tell. Please, won’t you sit and talk with me awhile. You could come over and -’ she points back behind her to the Witch’s feebly hut.
Legend of Stygian Downs (Vampire DeAngeliuson Book 2) Page 4
