Soup
By rosaliekempthorne
- 1173 reads
Her fingers began melting.
Stay calm, she willed herself, stay focussed.
There was no easy focus to be had, not with the chaos going on in the streets above her. Agritha didn't need to go out there to know it. She'd seen enough in the days before. They were coming: with their blades drawn, with their fires stoked, meaning business.
Stay calm. She tried to keep from lookng down at her hands, from seeing where the flesh began to liquify. She could feel it on her upper lip as well, the near-dripping sag at the end of her chin. Her heart fluttered in imitation of anything but calm. A blast in the streets above: it sounded like condensed thunder. Those were the fire spells brought back from Jisinghale, she'd heard about those, what they could do. The sound made her jump.
Up there: some once-living soul, some stranger – or maybe some distant acquaintance, some half-known face from the street – torn in half by that sound. Blood and burning in equal measure. Humanity reduced to meat. Hadn't that been the promise?
#
“They might not come to the house,” Jegan had suggested, his eyes almost wet with hope. Young. Trying to bury his fear in groundless optimism.
Shengla, reaching across the table to take his hand: “They'll come to every house. That's their way.”
“Should we go then?”
“Where?”
“Anyplace.”
A shake of her head, sad and shadowed. No. There was no ground high enough to escape this tide.
“What do we do then?” Courage trying to cling in his voice, failing in the last few notes, a tiny chatter of his teeth letting slip his fear.
Shengla, resting the bridge of her nose against her fingers: “Nothing. Only wait.”
#
Almost nothing.
Agritha loved her aunt and cousin, she had for as long as she had memory, but she'd known for just as long that she was not entirely like them. She had her mother's remembered golden-brown hair, and her coaxing blue eyes, she had the tilting chin and the rose-hued cheeks. But she'd taken something from her mysterious father as well. It was more than the long bones of her wrist and forearm, more than the length of her legs, and her oddly twisted feet. She'd inherited some trace of his abilities too.
Was it wrong to train in them? She hardly knew.
She knew there might be some out there who whispered under their breath about witchcraft, who talked behind their shoulders, cast dark eyes, knowing looks. But she didn't feel any evil in it, it felt more like a homecoming, like stepping into a parlour to have it smell of warm, fresh bread; of new butter; cinnamon.
She'd had only her instincts to teach herself, only trial and error and bullish optimism. She was too poorly trained in letters, and she feared seeking openly for a teacher.
Nothing. Only Wait.
She'd sat quietly, hearing that. She reached an arm around her cousin's waist in comfort. But her mind had churned on, reaching forward, seeing the days ahead.
Footsteps in the streets. The orderly running of armed and trained men. But it wouldn't stay orderly for long. She was old enough to know that much.
A blast of fire-spell.
A sharp, shocked, choked-off cry.
A word of protest slashed short with a whip's crack.
That was the here and now. Agrith stirred the cauldron, running the ingredients through her head as she worked. She looked down at the concoction, bubbling purplish - sometimes black – pockets of reddish-yellow, sometimes bursting across the surface. And she couldn't help, as she looked down, seeing how far her hands had gone: some of the skin melted fully into the fat underneath it, the whole thing sludgy like porridge, smearing against the long-handled spoon. The image of
bones shining through, all blue-shadow, and themselves beginning to warp now.
Stay calm. Stay focussed.
Hard to do when your whole body's melting under you. Hard to do when you can feel your legs growing weaker. This: so far beyond anything she'd ever done before.
She rested the spoon against the rim of the cauldron for a moment as she ducked towards the shelves. There were round-bellied jars set out in neat rows along them, colour-coded more or less – magic-coded really, but the petty street-magics she'd picked up seemed to correspond so neatly to the world's colours. Not chance, that. Or so she'd figured. She reached for one of the jars, shaking out some pitted wax. Add to that the tail-bone of a winged tryrixx. A mouse's ear. She tipped from the bone jar, sorting through the vertebrae, the fingerbones, the teeth, the exotic ridges and delicate ribs. There were the traces of such a collection of creatures here, some of them so rare and astonishing, some just imbued with their own clever, common magic. No less because of it. And these she'd worked long years to collect and experiment with. Claw from a domestic tabby cat, a few locks of its hair. Red thyme for luck.
She shook them into a metal bowl – not trusting what remained of her hands.
The magic was melting her down fast, and her breath caught, fire-stained – barely holding herself above panic.
#
“Imagine if you'd been properly taught:” Jegan, with his jaw rested lightly on his knuckles, leaning forward, readily impressed.
“Properly taught?” she'd cautioned.
“Oh you know what I mean! What if you'd gone to some fancy arcane school, and had tutor and a mentor, a soul-guide. What then?”
“I don't even know if a human can take a soul-guide.”
“I bet you could have. And I bet you'd have learnt everything!”
“Wish, wish. Get's you nowhere.” Or so their grandmother had always said. Wish, wish. Trade it for fish. At least you won't go to bed hungry.
Jegan, fidgetting in his chair, hugging at his knees, tapping his toes against the rim of his seat. Jegan: “Just imagine what you might have learned if you'd had all that magic and all those books and whatnot all right there at your fingertips. If you didn't have to teach yourself. You might have ended up so powerful...”
“Hush.”
And the new girl, the serving girl, Tensik, echoing her caution: “Be mindful what ye be saying. Ears all about.” She came from the East Quarter, where the bloodlines were hard and salty, belonging across the Rye Sea. Witchcraft had a darker reputation there, dyed in blood, and the wrong words lead quickly to the fire.
And Agritha, nodding: “This is only talk for our four walls.”
“Oh, I know.”
And Tensik added: “Quiet-ish”
#
Tensik now. There was no time to be quiet. She was poised on the stairs, leaning down over the railing. “Agri, they'll be coming in! They be swarming the neighbourhood. They's like insects!”
Agritha hoped the dark would shield her intent. She wondered what Tensik would think when it unfolded, if there'd be fear or gratitude or a burgeoning hate. Her people must have drilled these lessons into her.
“Agri!”
“They won't come in.”
And the dark didn't shield her very well at all. The shadow of a low roof wasn't enough. Agirtha thought it was as well they could not afford a mirror, because Tensik's face was mirror enough, and it was ghastly: wide-eyed with sudden realisation.
“I have to,” she told the girl.
Tensik stared.
“They'll take Jegan. They may or may not cull some of us women. But Jegan, him they'll take. And we both know he wouldn't survive.”
She tried to imagine what the other girl must be seeing. By now, her face distorted; a burned down candle. Eyes that seemed wet and shimmery, sunk into flesh that grew too weak to hold them. A mouth that sagged, lips that sat too loosely against her small, white teeth. She must be a horror, Agritha realised.
Tensik – braver than many would be – lingered at the railing for a moment. “What'll happen?”
“Stay inside, maybe close your eyes.”
“T'ain't fair that you have ta die.”
“What makes you think I will?”
She only gestured, helplessly: what else could come of what you're doing?
“Warn Aunty.”
“She don't know?”
“She might have stopped me.”
#
The potion boiled clear.
Up on the streets the army was marching freely. There were the first scents of smoke as some houses were torched – those belonging to rebels and their families. There would be blood on the paving stones by now – plenty would resist the culling: of course they would. Their time would come early; their brothers would go to war, chewing on metal hate, determined to avenge their kin. Not even knowing it as their hate was ground into the war-machine, as it became a part of its blood.
Agritha dipped her hands into the cauldron – even knowing she would drink her own flesh. She scooped the clear liquid up to her mouth. She steeled herself: calm, calm, calm. But there could be no calm. She felt her potion burn against her tongue as she swallowed, brought her hands away to see that they were only bone.
Above her the screaming began. A small group of men. Wrong place. Wrong time. And she felt a little bit sorry for them, their skin turning glue-ish, bits of it coming off on their weapons, sticking against their clothes and armour. Only minutes until it would trickle like sweat; then a few more minutes, and chunks would come away from the bone – boiled tender, wet like soup. She watched her own hands as the bones drooped, as the marrow boiled up from inside them. She knew she must be feeling pain, but she'd placed herself beyond that. She held her hands up to see them thicken, to see the skin harden, darken, to see a decade or so of age crease into them. Bigger hands. Men's hands. She touched her face, feeling the difference, shrugged new shoulders. She turned her hands a full circle on her wrists, feeling the new power in them, the flexibility of blood magic, the heady strength of it. The strength of five men – and added in there the strength of their poor, unwillingly given souls.
But done. Too late to think of them now.
Agritha picked the shirt up that had been her father's – she tried it on over her new body – her composite, birth-wet new form. So here it is, then.
She walked up the stairs and towards the front door.
END
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Comments
Enjoyed the tension you
Enjoyed the tension you created within this story.
Jenny.
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Fantastical but not too
Fantastical but not too removed from reality to be unbelievable. You struck the tone well here. Really enjoyable read.
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I enjoyed the nods to
I enjoyed the nods to witchcraft in this. A smooth read, too.
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I usually avoid the genre of
I usually avoid the genre of horror and fantasy but this is so well-written, I was compelled to keep reading.
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Well realised world and
Well realised world and skillfully drawn characters. You've caught the physical and emotional horror so well.
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