by Wood, Lynn
Melissa tossed restlessly in her sleep and slid seamlessly in and out of her dreams until she could no longer distinguish between the two. She drew comfort from the warmth of the fire she rested beside, the fire she vaguely recalled she dare not risk lighting. Her mind fumbled over the contradiction even as she leaned closer towards the flames to warm herself. Her stiff, freezing fingers reached greedily towards the blaze only to be met with a blast of icy cold. Pain shot through her hands all the way to her shoulders. In her feverish state, Melissa struggled to make sense of this new torture. Had the Normans captured her then? Was she in a prison of some kind? The fire beckoned again but now it was so unbearably hot she backed away from it, afraid it would consume her in its fury. She tossed again restlessly in her sleep and wrapped her cloak closer around her. She peered back at the fire just to make certain it remained a safe distance away from where she lay.
She knew she must be hallucinating because now she thought she saw an old woman seated around the blaze warming her hands. Melissa thought she recognized her from somewhere and wondered if perhaps after she dozed off the enemy condemned the old woman to share her cell. But how could a fire burn inside a prison cell? She lifted her head and peeked cautiously around. There were no walls, no bars, and no door to bar her exit. All she could see beyond the shadows of the fire were the walls of the cave she remembered taking refuge in and the light from the new moon casting eerie shadows across the entrance from low-hanging branches of the nearby trees. She turned her focus back to her companion and noted the older woman, no longer concerned with warming her hands by the fire, was watching her now. Melissa struggled into a seated position and warily faced her.
“Are you real or am I imagining you?”
Her companion laughed at her nonsensical question. Melissa didn’t really blame her. She accepted the fever ruled her mind now. Still, the woman’s expression was not unkind when she replied, “To your eyes, no doubt a little of both.”
Melissa’s brow furrowed with the strain of solving the riddle of the woman’s words. “I don’t understand you. I’m ill. I’m not thinking very clearly.”
“Yes, I know. That is why you summoned me.”
“I summoned you? How did I do that? How could I? I don’t even know you.” Melissa hoped her fractured mind would eventually be made whole if and when she recovered from her illness.
“You know me, daughter, but we have not met in this life.”
“In this life? Where am I? Did I die then?” Melissa felt panic rising in her chest as she struggled to make sense of what she was seeing and hearing.
“Not dead, no. There is no death. But the life you remember is slipping away. You now spend as much time on our side of the veil as you do in the physical world your body still clings to.”
“Is this hell then?” Melissa asked fearfully, remembering the way the fire seemed intent on swallowing her up.
An amused smile curved the other woman’s face. Melissa realized for the first time it was a beautiful face and her companion was not as old as she originally believed. Older than herself definitely, but she couldn’t accurately guess at her true age. If she existed beyond this world did age even continue to have meaning?
“No, not hell. You may consider your current experience purgatory if you must place a label on it. That is probably the closest word for your present, limited understanding.”
Melissa knew she must be sick else she would have taken umbrage at the implied insult behind the other woman’s otherwise gentle explanation. Remembering the fire and ice she asked, “Are my sins being burned away or frozen away?”
Her companion shrugged. She imbued the movement with such grace Melissa was slightly mesmerized and only with an effort drew her focus back to their odd conversation. “Both likely. What did you see before my arrival?”
Melissa recounted her earlier experience around the fire.
“Each soul experiences such cleansing in a unique fashion. The how of it is not relevant as all suffering purifies the soul.”
“What am I being purified for?” Melissa wanted to know.
“That is up to you.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You have yet to decide. When you do everything will be made clear to you.”
Melissa wasn’t certain if the older woman was deliberately being mysterious in her responses or if in her weakened condition she was inventing puzzles where there were none. “What decision are you referring to?”
“There is only one decision that would lead you to this place. Life or death.”
“That is not a decision. Everyone dies.”
“Well to be perfectly clear, no one dies, but let us not become bogged down in such minor distinctions. Some are granted the gift of deciding when they will pass through the veil separating your current experience of life and the next. You are one of the chosen ones.”
“I’m sick.”
“Yes, your body is sick, but your condition will resolve itself one way or the other once you make your decision.”
“I don’t know if I want to stay here any longer. Everything’s different now. Everyone I love is gone.”
“You will learn to love again, child, if you but open your heart.”
“I am not certain I want to open my heart or to risk learning to love again. It is too painful.”
“Then your decision is already made.” There was no judgment in her companion’s voice, only compassion and regret.
“Then I will die in this place?” Melissa was unsure if it was her intent to seek confirmation of her pitiful conclusion from the old woman with her query, but it still came as a shock when it was granted her.
“Yes, the refusal to love is the precursor to death.”
“How much longer do I have?”
“That is up to you. When you make your choice you will either recover from your injuries and the illness afflicting your physical form, or your spirit will depart this life and return to its source. As long as you waver in your decision, your soul will cling to your physical body and you will remain in this world.”
Melissa longed to question the woman more closely but her hallucination disappeared as suddenly as she appeared. Unfortunately so did the strange fire she brought with her. Unpredictable as it had acted towards her initially, the flames behaved themselves as long as the old woman lingered. Melissa was grateful for the light it brought to her dreary surroundings and the welcome warmth from the flames that was even now seeping from her body into the cold, hard ground she rested upon.
She lay back down and supported her head on the curve of her bent arm she used as a pillow. She felt a renewed strength coursing through her. Accompanying it was a peace unknown to her spirit since the beginning of the war. Even if the old woman was only a hallucination summoned by her loneliness and feverish state she was grateful for her visit. It was cold on the unforgiving ground of the dank cave, but not as cold as it would have been out in the open. It was dark too. So dark she could barely see a few feet in front of her face as even the uncertain light of the new moon was lost to her amidst the cloudy wisps drifting along the night sky. Yet as she glanced around her hiding place, she was surprised by the sense of gratitude she felt at having found this tiny cave in the mountain to burrow into for the night.
She smiled at her own foolishness, recalling how more than once in her prior grand life she turned up her nose at the soft pallets she rested on during what she referred to as her Salusian summers, when she visited her grandmother’s people. She treasured those times when she was free from the restraint of the constant rules and reminders she was a duke’s daughter, and expected to conduct herself at all times like a lady. Among her grandmother’s people no one expected her to behave as a lady would. Not that the Salusians were uncivilized. In fact, Melissa considered them far more civilized than some of the lords and ladies she encountered in the supposedly more civilized world she grew up in.
She had always loved the summers and always dreaded the appr
oaching autumn when she would be forced to return to her father’s estate and dress in cumbersome gowns and underthings and wear her hair piled on top of her head. At home at Heaven’s Crest, she was forbidden to leave the keep without an escort and could not stroll around with a dagger openly strapped to her arm. It was the last decree she resisted most fiercely, which was why she adopted the habit of wearing her dagger strapped around her thigh, hidden beneath her full skirts.
Sighing regretfully, she acknowledged it was unlikely she would ever again fly across the hills on the back of a Salusian stallion. She could even regret she would never be given the chance to discover whether or not she could have fallen in love the way Michel predicted she would when the right man came along. She laughed weakly at the notion there was such a thing as the right man. For her at least she’d seen no evidence of his existence. Maybe if God had seen fit to duplicate her twin she might have been tempted. She could smile now at the lengths she went to in order to avoid her suitors and put off the more persistent among them. It was not so very difficult. Most men recoiled at the prospect of wedding a woman who carried a warrior’s dagger strapped to her thigh and who could defeat them in most physical contests.
Still, all things considered, she could be facing a more unpleasant end than the one confronting her of simply drifting off to sleep in her little cave. The thought of such a passive surrender to death disturbed her conscience somewhat. She was a trained warrior after all. She should die with her blade in her hand fighting her enemy to the last of her strength, but Michel’s gift was a useless weapon in her current struggle. Perhaps the old woman was right. Melissa wasn’t certain she cared to continue living in this new Norman-dominated world so she wasn’t making much of an effort to see to her injuries, or her fever. There were herbs in the surrounding woods to relieve the symptoms of both. Whether in the end they would make any difference to her deteriorating condition was neither here nor there if she was unwilling to summon the will to try.
Perhaps when a new dawn broke over her lonely shelter her spirit would have already departed this dreary place and she would awake to a new life in the light and beauty of heaven. She sighed as the pleasant dream engulfed her and she drifted peacefully off to sleep.
Chapter Six
“Melissa, shall I kill him for you?”
The whispered question penetrated her dreams and so stunned her Melissa was drawn from a troubled sleep to seek its source, but when she opened her eyes and looked around her dark sanctuary, she saw nothing. She thought it an odd question for the old woman to ask her. How could she kill anyone? Who was she offering to kill anyway? Sighing, she whispered back, “No, of course not. There’s no one here. I don’t want you to kill anyone for me.”
“As you wish.”
Melissa’s lips curved at his polite agreement to her request, particularly considering his offer was blasphemous one. At the same time her brow furrowed at the contradiction of her thoughts. It was a masculine voice she heard now. A familiar one. The one she imagined chastising her for her foolishness when she was tossed into the sea. Unwilling to give up the comfort of his familiar voice, even if it was only a hallucination brought on by her fever, she asked with a lighthearted grin, “Who were you planning to kill for me anyway?”
“Him.”
An icy chill shot up her spine at his whispered response. Darkness enveloped the cave, closing her off from even the uncertain light of the moon. Her thoughts drew into sharp focus and she recognized immediately what must have happened. The demons she sensed were stalking her for the past several days and nights of her journey discovered her hiding place here in the side of the mountain. Or perhaps she was simply imprisoned in some dark nightmare she was unable to fight herself free of. She couldn’t be certain.
While she was distracted by her thoughts the demon must have left the entrance of the cave and moved towards her, because he loomed over her now, so close she could feel his hot breath brushing her skin. The darkness of his black soul assaulted her spirit making her think he had only just been freed from the dungeons of hell. His eyes glowed black fire, like Satan, his master.
“Wake up, whore. You have a new client to serve. We’re going to have fun tonight.” Raw horror overwhelmed her at the sound of his sinister voice and the foreshadowing of what he intended. Her limbs were frozen in place so she was unable to raise even the smallest defense when he kicked her to gain her attention, assuming she must still be asleep, or perhaps already dead.
At her muted cry of pain, and contained within it the confirmation her enemy sought that death had not claimed his intended prey prematurely, his menacing laughter filled the cave, surrounding her, bouncing off the close cave walls until all she could hear was the sound of it filling her, tearing down her defenses, stripping her of the will to fight him. Suddenly his hands were everywhere at once, tearing her gown, grabbing at her breasts, and feeling beneath her skirts. His insane laughter was an echo of his evil soul. Stunned by the swiftness of his assault Melissa tried to fight him off with her waning strength, but when she raised her arms to struggle against him, he slapped her face hard and laughed with pleasure at the sound of her anguished cry. Her distress was apparently so pleasing to him he slapped her again and again until Melissa tasted her own blood in her mouth.
In her dazed state she felt his strong, icy grip on the soft flesh of her thigh. When he cursed under his breath she realized in her vague thoughts that he must have been pricked by Michel’s dagger. She smiled at the thought even as she watched him through the slits of her eyes draw his hand back and lick the drops of his own blood from his palm. Then she saw nothing but darkness when he threw her torn gown up in a furious motion until it covered her face. She couldn’t move because his greater weight pressed down on her and his knees anchored her arms against her sides. She felt his hands probing her leg in the darkness, knew when his hand closed around the hilt of Michel’s dagger.
From some as yet untapped well within her, rage boiled up inside at the thought of the demon’s filthy hand on her beloved Michel’s dagger. Fury pulsing through her she screamed her outraged denial and bucked beneath him.
“Noooooo!!!”
Her strength surprised them both. Off balance and cursing in his fury her attacker was thrown off her and Melissa scooted fearfully back towards the deepest recesses of the shallow cave. In the darkness they were both blind. But after many long nights spent in the dark she was used to it and drew comfort from it. Her assailant bellowed his rage and lunged blindly towards her.
“Bitch! I’ll teach you proper respect. You should be on your knees groveling before me for the privilege of serving my pleasure. Not I doubt there will be much to find in your scrawny, filthy, whore’s body.”
Melissa clenched her lips down on her instinctive wrath, realizing her attacker was having trouble seeing her in the dark. She evaded his lunge in her direction, and summoning the last of her failing strength, ran for the entrance. Along the way she scooped up Michel’s dagger from the floor, drawn by its jeweled hilt glinting in the uncertain light streaming in a narrow band through the entrance.
Her attacker’s rage at her escape dissolved into laughter in anticipation of their new game. He pursued her through the cave entrance. Melissa fled heedlessly into the night and soon found herself trapped at the edge of the sheer drop into the gorge below. She originally chose her resting place in the narrow cave because of its inaccessibility. What she deemed an advantage was now her undoing. Her attacker cackled with glee at her predicament and with no hope of escape, she swung around to face him. Seeing his evil intent reflected in his smug expression, she retreated a cautious half-step towards the edge of the gorge. Suicide was a mortal sin, but she decided God would surely understand. She could read her death written in the demon’s black eyes, but she also saw a greater evil lurking there that frightened her far more than the release a swift death over the edge would bring to her pain.
The demon that walked this world in the guise of a man halt
ed his approach at her retreat, obviously loath to end their game too quickly. Instinct and long years under her brother’s intent tutelage had Melissa plotting her options through thoughts that for the first time in long days and nights cycled clearly through her mind. She noted the dagger in her hand was already braced in attack position. She calculated her odds, recognizing her enemy’s far greater strength. In her current fragile state she conceded he would likely prove faster as well. There would be but a single opportunity for her to use her blade against him and she could see his predator’s eyes gleam in anticipation of their struggle. Certainty of the outcome of their contest resided in his. Melissa feared his confidence more than she worried about the odds arrayed against her.
She took another cautious step backwards until the heels of her soft leather boots rested on the very edge of the precipice. She was beginning to think the ledge was not so great a disadvantage after all. Surely a quick plunge to her death would be preferable to the prelude followed by the agonizingly slow death she could see written in her attacker’s eyes. She chanced a quick glance behind her over the ledge. Hard, sharp rock lay beneath her, gleaming almost invitingly back up at her and promising a swift, merciful end. Since death was intent on claiming her regardless, she preferred the mercy and surety of the ravine over the fate awaiting her at the hands of her enemy.
The demon, sensing her intent, lunged for her as she shifted her weight back. He caught her in mid-flight and hauled her back up to the surface, but not before her already bruised body slammed hard into the rock face, causing a stunned moan to erupt from between her lips and useless tears to blur her vision.
Seeing the evil grin on her attacker’s face, and hearing his triumphant laughter at denying her an easy end sent fresh waves of terror coursing through Melissa’s battered body. Her will challenged in what it sensed would prove a final life and death struggle, she summoned every remaining scrap of her warrior’s spirit and fought with the ferocity of a wild animal with its back against the wall facing a larger, quicker predator. There would be no other opportunity for her to control her own end. She would not submit to the base lust she saw even now rising in her attacker’s eyes at her struggle. One of them would not survive this fight. In the heat of the moment, she didn’t care which of them met their death. And that was surely her singular advantage over her opponent. He was stronger, faster, even more skilled than she at close combat, but he sought a different outcome to their contest. He wanted to survive. As important to him apparently, he wanted her to live as well, otherwise the blood pouring from his arms and face from where her dagger met flesh, would be for naught.
