The White Sorceress 2
The White Sorceress (version 2)
by Almerissa White
The cool gray mist rose apon the twilit sea, shading the rocky cliffs, obscuring visability. It searched the curretns of air in lazy drifts, billowing about, forming puffs and streaks. I breathed in the brine, filling my nostrils with its overwealming acidity.
My hair tried to escape me, like streamers on a kite or flag, lifting and falling in sad attempts to follow the wind like a tired nudge or beconing to return to my chamber, tugging at my scalp.
Alas, these were but thoughts in passing, for I no longer lingered on my own state of being, but my mindfulness turned to follow the wind, tripping about, backward, through my recent past.
Icy hands of remembering gripped my shoulders forcefully, tore at my chest with talons of detail, choked my throat with the force of a flood of thoughts. I stared, shocked, dazed, into the wisps of cloud, still being attacked by the flashback. I saw but a face, then blood, then shrouded in the waves of the sea, a terror, as deep as a soul. As fathomless as the water. Borne in blood, condoned by kings, unholy yet unhelpable. It was recurring, the deadly and sinful trap, the curse was coursing through my veins, renewing the wickedness of its heredity.
Demonic profiles, grinning malevolent faces, emerged from the fog as it thickened to an evil shroud. Then their bodies joined them, and they began to move. Dancing, singing, eroticism at its worst. I clenched my teeth, and I tried to force my mind to distraction, but the twisted faces persisted, shifting as though they were alive, from one expression of malice to another of jest. Among them was one face even slightly humanoid, but even more evil than the rest.
"Join us," mouthed it. I turned from the enchantments in fear, tensing to run.
"Sorceress....Join us." This time the voice was but a whisper on the wind. A chill tightened my spine and I bolted inside, for the shelter of my symbol in my laboratory.
I huddled inside it, evoking the powers within my mind, and its connection to the symbol. A wall of strength arose at my invocation, and I found myself safe enough to cry. Choked with sobs I did not call for more aid, nor did it come from god or angel of its own accord.
I slept in my symbol and my bubble of safety that night, for terror did not allow me to leave it. My rape of the night just past caused a deep fear in me of the one to come. My sleep in my protective triangle was uneasy at first, then I thought I had naught to fear, and fell into a deeper slumber.
Later that night, dreams haunted me, reliving the rape. My brother entered my sleeping chamber, he being also my husband. We were recently married, and he was much kinder in the consummation of our marriage then in the followup. I protested his intrusion, and he forced his way in. I clawed at him, and he grew more insistant. In a fear of panic, I realized that his strength was demon-borne. My thoughts and dreams shattered, and I awoke within my bubble of fear, my symbol of helplessness.
A scream tore itself from my sob-parched throat. I stared down at the triangle of my power on the floor. I reviewed each stroke of paint and its meaning. Too much healing, too little protection.
In a fervor, I broke the seals and stepped forth. The face within the clouds which knew my name haunted me. I pulled a bottle of mineral-spirits from the shelf of paints. My people mostly worshipped demon-gods, and I had taken the path of my mothers, following the more peaceful and aloof gods. I was a healer, using potions and inner energy to chase ills and hurts. I had to change the purpose of the symbol, thus showing the change within me.
My rag wiped the spirits onto certain lines, changing the runes within the triangle. I then wiped off the spirits, and went to the shelf. I chose colors of paint I had never used before. I opened the tome of magic my mothers had always used. I looked for powerful protections, and found very few. I stroked one into my symbol delicately, carefully, and very true to my art. Then I looked for one of strength. Fortitude. Yet I found none. I turned to another book. Perhaps within one more neutral I could find one.
Unfortunately, I was unable to find any suitable symbol in any of my volumes. I stepped carefully into the triangle, avoiding the new paint, and meditated on it.
There was a strangeness to my symbol now, a drastic difference. The difference between confidence and fear. I meditated upon how to bring the confidence back, and the spell fell apart at the seams. Daylight began to spill into the room. Again, I broke the spell, and stepped out of my symbol. I closed it behind me, and I stood beside it, gazing at it, and called out with my magic to my gods, asking for aid.
No reply.
I turned in anger from my gods' silence, and strode to my ladder, and decended into my room.
There, upon my bed, sat my brother. I stared in shocked silence at him, and the rune on his arm. A demon-mark.
"White, I'm sorry. Please forgive me."
"Son of a demon pig!" I cursed. I turned from him, and strode to my vanity. I carefully painted white facepaint over the bruise on my cheek and arm, blending it with my fair skin around the edges, and applying black mascara to my white lashes, to make my black-as-coal irises stand out.
He came up behind me, and I could see his face, more tanned than mine by far, and his black hair down to his shoulders. Three scratches across his face from my left hand, and that was all.
"I hope you're satisfied. I hope you're happy," I spat.
"I've never seen you angry, White! What can I do for you to forgive me?"
He reached out to touched me, and I clawed at his hand. He pulled out of my reach. I laughed, cold and angry. "I should worship your gods with your blood, as you do with mine!"
I had never seen my brother shocked, or sorry, but he began to get a tearful glaze in his eyes.
"Will you continue to beat and rape me until I've given you your two children, then beat me until you tire of me and finally throw me from the balcony?"
The lash of my words stung him, for it was what had happened between our parents. They were siblings, also, and ruled by the family curse as we were.
"Never, White, not ever."
"You lie. Begone. Take your reeks-of-demon-conjuring body from my chambers." He figited with the black cote-hardie he wore, until I screamed at him. Then he fled my chamber, through the white door.
I stripped down in front of the full-length polished-platinum mirror. Probably demon-forged, I thought. I looked at my very thin, long body, with its white pubic hair, white skin, and pink nipples. My hair cascaded to the floor, white as clouds. My eyebrows were also white. None of my ancestors looked as I did. The product of too much inbreeding. Next generations might be retarded, or sickly. Maybe they would be albinos. I couldn't tell. I couldn't let it happen. Naked, I walked up the ladder to my laboratory. Exitless, except for the balcony and the ladder, I closed and locked the trapdoor. I stepped to the balcony, and the wind ripped at my hair. It was warm on my skin, but cooler than I was used to, living right over the boiling sea. I watched the water foll and boil, on the edge of chaos, but so regularly chaotic to be almost lawful.
The clouds, however, were much as before. Faces smiled, and winked at me.
I shut the door to the outside, closed the white curtains.
I opened the symbol, and stepped into it, closing it behind me, and sitting cross-legged within it, I used my most powerful spell to call upon my gods.
"The White Sorceress," I announced, "calls upon you to witness. I have been wronged. I have been born into a curse not of my making, and trapped in a circle. In the terms of the curse, I must bear two children for my brother-husband, a boy and a girl, they also much bear two like children. The children are to be borne of rape, not love. My brother was demon-bound last night and took me unwillingly, in the terms of the curse.
"I propose by oath, here by your witness, to break the pattern, to stop the curse. I call apon your wisdom, I must know any and all ways to do this. I beg to be filled with this purpose."
A single white rose appeared before me, and I knew I had been heard, and was thus sealed. I picked it up.
A single thorn pricked my thumb, and grew within me. Pain tore its way through my hand and wrist. It traveled to my head and heart, and I felt an awful wrenching, as though my brain was being torn from me. Slowly it occured to me, what to do. I must leave my old ways. I must begin to like, I shuddered, being raped, since the children could only be concieved if I was unwilling. If I were willing to be raped, I would not concieve.
But the first child could be within me, I reasoned. The pain remained in my head. I could divine if it was though, and act upon it.
Editor's Note: This story remains unfinished, obviously. Hopefully our body (carpal tunnel syndrome) will allow her to finish it one day.
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