Prophesy: The Immortal Witch (15)

Part 14 at: https://www.abctales.com/story/marandina/prophesy-immortal-witch-14

It was an unholy union and yet, in time, the creature came to care for its minion. A fondness founded on ambiguity. As capable as she appeared to be to commit unspeakable acts, it detected a sense of self-loathing for being an aide to deeds of propagation.

It listened to the strange melodious messages that echoed from the arcane entities that called to her, their entreaties rippling across sandy wastelands. The inner conflict was constant.

Seasons came and went, the world turning on its axis, the duo roaming the wilderness in search of camps and settlements. Most abductions were done quietly without anyone noticing until it was too late. The incidence of youngsters going missing had been spun into folklore, an old wives’ tale told over black cooking pots. It was said that the miscreants were a witch and her familiar in the form of a devil from the bowels of Hell itself; spewing forth from billowing sandstorms unseen to steal away offspring.

It was doubtful whether the creature needed support at all. It preferred assistance when finding fresh victims in the darkness but, like other chiropteran, it did not rely on sight to find its way around. It was a curious symbiosis, one of deception and depravity. It was as though it sought witness to its deeds; a lesser soul to pay homage to terrible powers.

True to its word, on the thirteenth occasion of another productive nocturnal raid, in the aftermath, a desolate location was found to enact a ritual to grant longer life. A rolled up parchment contained an ancient invocation, concealed as it was wedged in a crack on a rock face inside an obscure musty cave. A location that the beast knew from instinct, an inner guidance built into its senses.

The invocation was slow, timeworn text carefully enunciated to ensure clarity. It was a ceremony conducted betwixt two individuals thrown together by the exacting hand of fate.

With the pact concluded, the winged-one abruptly dismissed the witch with a waft of a talon. Turning its back on the woman, it drifted off in the opposite direction. Defiantly, Jezebel followed and watched as the beast flew upwards serenely. Adjusting her eyes to the gloom, after a few seconds she could see a faint outline hanging upside in a high-domed, dark chamber within the cavern.

It had returned to a state of dormancy, one she had long suspected of being the reason for the lengthy interludes between them. Peering into the half-light, she stood transfixed at its motionless form. To all intents and purposes, it could have expired by the lack of animation but she knew it still lived and would return in due course with a withering sense of inevitability.  

It struck her that there was a possibility that she would become like the creature - only able to go outside after sundown. There was an even worse transformation that she might have to endure but that was unconscionable.

She prayed that this was not her actuality now that a normal span had been consigned to the past. There was no certainty that she was to truly live longer; there was only the beast’s word for it. Somehow she knew it to be true even allowing for her patriarch’s propensity for trickery.

There was much to consider. Should she try and go back to her village? This notion seemed unworkable as, not only was she an outcast, but should her lack of aging became apparent, it would simply underpin the fact that she had been branded a witch. If not, the only other options were to either find a new group and hope to be accepted or to wander as a hermit and live a bleak lonely existence. She chose the latter.

Days became weeks that turned into months then years. The very thing she wished not to become she did. The furnace heat of the sun finally started to pierce her skin, blistering, smoke rising from the wounds. Only the shadows were now viable.

It was on a winter day where white desert daffodils and purple wildflowers coloured the flatlands that she found herself loitering outside the perimeters of a cluster of huts in the twilight. Olive trees gave shade as dusk fell.

Propped against the bark of a tree, she watched keenly as a young woman worked a plot of land, a child playing nearby. Jezebel tracked their every move, searching inner musings, wondering whether the sight of the youngster might affect her in some carnal way. Perhaps she would adopt the yearnings of the creature. Maybe its craving for children would be the final transition.

To her relief, she felt nothing, only the ever present hunger that came with being a dweller of the desert. If she was to turn into the very thing that she abhorred it looked like could yet avoid that fate. For this she was grateful.

Turning to leave, her path was blocked by a towering figure looming over her. The winged-one had returned.

Centuries passed, sand slipping through metaphorical hourglasses, drifting on soulless zephyrs, wind stirring up unseen dust devils in forsaken canyons. The pattern continued relentlessly, a cycle of abduction followed by hibernation and renewal. The reluctant witch lost all track of time, her life a meaningless homage to a demi-god with one disciple.

The creature’s privation would invariably end so as to allow for the established number of infants to be taken before Jezebel’s unnatural span came close to ending. She had challenged the beast on why it didn’t simply take all the souls it needed in one foul swoop. Its reply was that the methodology was established in the scrolls, capturing new quarry restricted by its own unique requirements and limitations. Like other animals of the wild, it only took what was required - no more, no less. It had added that to take so many all at once would create unnecessary suffering for those left behind. No, better to do it in an innocuous way. Jezebel found this reasoning cold, contradictory and lacking in genuine compassion; notwithstanding the dark absurdity of it all.

Jezebel pondered a perpetual hopelessness.

Thoughts of ending things circled her head again; thoughts similar to when she had nearly been destroyed by desolation. The sensation of despondency was back. It had never really gone away. There was little point in carrying on like this. Was the despair she felt the same despair that had led to the demise of those that had gone before? The same cycle of devastation that served no one other than the beast?

Before she could act on her feelings of self-destruction, the voices of the demons berated her for thinking this way. They argued and chastised, whispered and cried out. The witch found them beguiling in their requests, unrelenting in their desires.

Jezebel convinced herself to wait until the creature was back. Maybe she would take her opportunity later albeit her head swam with confusion. How she craved to be in control of her own destiny once more, released from the expectations of others. It wouldn’t be much longer before the beast returned. She waited and waited, expecting it to show up like a thief in the night but its absence continued.

The creature did not come back to her as expected. She had to know why. To live the rest of her days looking over her shoulder was too much to bear.

Jezebel returned to the cave where she had first encountered the creature. Padding through the firmer ground inside, each alcove and recess was a possible resting place. After searching for a while, she stumbled on a heap curled up in the darkness, wings folded around itself making it look like an ugly mass of leathery chrysalis.  

Approaching with caution, she prodded the inert figure expecting a reaction. When none came she felt braver and started to peel the body back into a straighter shape. The onset of rigor mortis made manipulation difficult.

Signs of life were sought with the most rudimentary of examinations. Limbs lifted dropped back down again upon release; an ear to a chest revealed no heartbeat. There was no hint of breathing at all. It was limp and inert. A cadaver. The winged-one was dead.

Conflicting emotions tormented with the revelation that her persecutor and carer was finally gone. She had come to love and revile the ancient beast in equal measure over the long years.

Jezebel was free of the accursed covenant.

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