The Dark Blooded Duchess. Ep1

Darkness had swallowed me before I could do so much as take out my divination tools, which Donny had brought along with my other belongings, and set them out in the closet that lines the far inner wall of the room.

I wake with a start and words ringing in my head. Talo’s words.

What were they? I sit up and cross my legs in bed.

I take a deep breath and focus, I know Talo came to me in my dream, what did she say?

A few breathing, focusing, praying minutes pass before, in my mind’s eye, I see Talo’s face awash in soft blue light.

‘You have to stop it’ she says in a voice that echoes with otherworldliness. Then her mouth keeps moving but I can’t make out anything she says.

I summon more focus and breathe a little slower.

Fragments of sentences become clearer while other pieces fade away. Talo herself glitches like a dying soul from hell that’s fighting to hold on.

‘They will all die!’ …

‘Six days!’...

‘Save them. Please... ’

‘... not what they seem’

‘It isn’t their fault…’

‘Come on!’ Frustration burns white hot through my veins. ‘Give me something!’ I feel, if however slightly, energy surging to me, through me.

’Find the truth - glitch- yourself’ says Talo in a smooth voice, her face becomes clear and flashes again, she frowns ’find -glitch- and you can save us.’

Then she’s gone and I’m left with a pile of frustration and what the fuck nows.

‘Perfect’ I sigh, rubbing my aching temples ‘that was super helpful, thanks.’

One of the healer aides walks in then with fresh towels. She’s a petite thing with pale blonde hair and deep brown eyes.

She’s about to open her mouth to greet me.

‘You’ I say in my best dutchess-commands-you voice ‘could you get me paper and something to write with?’

‘Sur-’

‘Now, please’ I say and her eyes go wide. She nods and turns on her heels clumsily, almost knocking herself out against the frame of the entryway.

Once she returns I thank her, ask her to leave me be for 10 minutes, and continue to write down the words and details that I remember from the dream spirit visit.

This particular type of dream hasn’t happened to me since my early teens but it still leaves me cold, breathless, and with an endearing need to help those who appear to me.

Of course, in hell, there was a powerful sorceress who had helped me block that particular gift of mine. This makes me wonder how and why it has resurfaced now.

If it has?

It could very well be residual energies from the portal and adjusting to earth. Because I’m certainly doing a hell of a job at that.

Yes, perhaps it’s that.

But just in case, I very slowly and carefully retrieve my sachet of runes from the closet. I try my best to ignore the fact that they’d dressed me in a rag like Talo’s whilst I was asleep.

My runes are small, smooth stones that I gathered from various places in hell. Like the river of blood, for instance, I then carved my own magical sigils into them.

They are seriously powerful. Yet, I never had been very skilled at divination. It just does not seem to agree with me.

I flatten the fluffy blankets into a workable surface and sit with my runes in hand for a while.

I tell them about my troubles and ask them for guidance.

There’s only a fraction of the energy I usually feel from them, and I grudgingly wonder if everything is just less magical on earth.

I close my eyes. ‘Please’ I plead with them before releasing them from the bag.

But what they show me is the last thing I want to see. So I throw them again and again and by the third time I have to summon every last drop of self-control not to throw them out of the window.

I stare down at the infernal stones, wishing my gaze could turn them to ash.

Out of the fifteen runes, less than half of them are right-side up, indicating the answer that I loathe to see.

The first is a stick figure in a semi-circle, the second is the witch’s knot, the third is the winding road rune, and three more runes that I have no idea how to interpret cooperatively with these. I scribble the reading on the paper as well and fold it up.

I sigh, the first three are most important and their meaning could not be more clear.

‘Might I come in now?’ the aide says from the entryway.

‘Of course, apologies for my rudeness, er, what was your name?’

‘Name’s Peggy, lass’ she smiles ‘and no worries, you seemed ta have been in a right state'

‘Yeah’ I agree, trying to smile in the least threatening way I possibly could ‘I was trying to remember a dream that really rattled me’

‘Och’ she says, as she busies herself with Talo’s bedding ‘that’s a tough one’

I get lost in the meaning of the runes then, trying and failing to decipher the last ones.

‘They say you’re not from around here’ says Peggy over her shoulder.

I lift a brow at her. ‘By they, do you mean Healer Hannah?’

Peggy turns away then ‘ay’ she says, slowly. I knew that grey-haired gargoile had been spying on my conversation with Donny.

‘You have no reason to fear me,’ I say, ‘if I meant anyone harm, I wouldn’t still be here trying to find a way to save officer Talo here. And none of you would be here to witness it.’

‘’Course’ she says, clearing her throat.

I meant it to be reassuring but judging by the near-tangible fear seeping from Peggy’s pores I gather that my negotiation tactics may need some fine-tuning to the earthlings’ specific sensitivities.

Shit.

A pang strikes my gut and I realize my shadows would have counseled me on what to say and how to say it.

‘Say, Peggy’ I say, as I carefully put my runes away ‘you wouldn’t happen to know of anyone who does’ what do they call it? ‘fortune telling around here, would you? I need help with some things that I don’t understand.’

Peggy is on the other side of the bed now, facing me.

‘Mmm,’ she frowns, ‘I don’t know of fortune telling per se, but…’ she looks at me like she’s told me something she wasn’t supposed to.

‘But?’ I smile, amused.

‘I couldn’t say’ she looks down with blood-red cheeks, fluffing an already fluffy pillow.

‘Come on,’ I say gently ‘you know where I’m from, there’s nothing you can say that would be as bad as the things I’ve seen growing up. And I sure won’t judge you.’

She looks at me and I make an innocent face ‘Please? I’m all alone here. I’ve got no one.’ And as I say it, it rings true. I have to fight the urge to sob like a baby.

‘Oh, lass’ she says, putting her hand on her heart, or at least I think that’s where her heart is.

A few tears do come.

‘Alright,’ she near whispers. Then she looks around and deems it safer to come to my bedside where she tends to my decidedly non-fluffy pillows.

‘Don’t look at me, just listen,’ she says from behind me.

‘There’s a wise woman deep in the woods, we call her the crone but her name’s Agatha.’

‘She’s a witch?’

‘She says as much,’ says Peggy as she moves on to change my linens ‘though in not so many words. We go to see her when there are problems that we…’ she searches for the words ’aren’t allowed to solve’

Aren’t allowed to? What in Lilith’s name does that mean?

‘She gives us magical remedies for things, guidance, protection from- ’ she catches herself ‘anyway she could help ya, I’m sure of it.’

‘Where can I find her?’

‘From the south guard house, you’d have to find the stream in the woods, cross it, and walk towards the darkness. You can’t miss it, the darkness is not of the natural sort and t’will feel like you’re freezing inside but just keep going. Her house has always got a chimney smoking like old uncle Fergus.’

‘Uncle Fergus chimney got it.’ I say

She frowns at me and I grin. ‘Och, you’ she says scooping up the dirty bedding.

‘Thank you Peggy’ I say.

She nods.

‘Oh hey, when can I take this bandage off my leg?’

She looks at the digital clock in the left-hand corner in the biggest window of the room ‘Healer should be by any minute’

‘Oh’ I sigh, her ‘thanks’

‘Divinity be wit ya’ she says as she walks out the door with a huge white ball.

Divinity? What does that mean?

Then again, maybe I really don't want to know.