Witch Saintess

Chapter 5: Spirits

I watched Silvera carefully as she sat still, being checked up briefly, before the monk that acted as a doctor confirmed what I already knew. I knew she was fine, just flustered from embarrassing herself, I could have told this monk that, but it escalated everything.

I walked Silvera back to her room, making sure that door shut. I could hear if she opened it for any reason, now I can hear it.

I walked into my room, taking off my shoes. The floor is nice and cool, despite the outside heating to terribly high temperatures today. I lie down, the cool white sheets still kind of smell like Silvera, so I lie on my back.

I close my eyes and start counting backwards from fourty. I'm asleep pretty quickly.

I wake up from a dreamless rest. Silvera hasn't woken up yet, so I get up to go to the bathhouse. The warm water is mostly sun heated, but I clean myself quickly, then rub some lemon peel infused oil into my temples and shoulders. I've let them get so tense recently.

I'm back in my room, and the cleaned set of robes from yesterday having been left outside. I dress myself, and I feel a flutter in my chest. In the crucifix. The spirit is dying. I can almost feel my power swell as the spirit shivers, and its minuscule life is snuffed out.

The chords of power wrapped around my fingers disappears, and I stumble, clutching at the cross. Like a support has been ripped away from me. My power level plummets, shifting angrily in the vacuum of my chest. It's just gone.

As small as those powers are, they make all the difference. I have a slowly melting flashback of the spirit's gifts to me, and I realize how reckless I was today. I grabbed the cross at the same time she was knocked over. Leon is a witch-hunter, he could have noticed.

I need to get a new one, something more subtle, stronger maybe, that will give me more control. I grab a bigger piece of paper, a whole sheet, rather than a strip, and I start to write.

Writing partially helps me lose focus, partially to provide a conduit for the thing I'm about to summon.

I manage to slip into a sort of trance, and I'm not looking for anything particular, so I let the weaker threads slip by, shimmering in the fabric of the world. The actual spirits won't reveal themselves yet, not until I force them to.

I grasp lightly at folds of the world, and a few strings shiver away from me, weak things that fear witches, as they should. I trawl away for something better, like a glimpse of a pearl on the sea bed, stroking my fingers through silken fabric of space and time.

I'm searching with my whole mind, and I see a glimpse.

A jerking, swirling ribbon, not a thread. Almost as thick as my arm, darker than ink or coal, or midnight's soul. Like a dark comet streaking in contrast to the grey, cottoned world. 

I reach out my fingers, and without even touching it, I feel a draw on my power, aching through my arm. Like a leech, suckling on my power, draining heavy gulps of Forest and Earth pulled away from me. Forever.

I need to have it. Whispers something inside me. I need something like that.

I grasp it tight, trying to cut it off, and it reveals more of itself. It's like a hideous eel, slicing spines, jagged teeth like a drawer full of carving knives with the lumpy body of a leech, and a fan tail, sharp at the edges. Like a rough rope of ink, cutting into the world like a hot knife.

I hold onto it like iron, and it looks like it might bite. I feel my pulse flutter, like it's being oppressed. I realize, this thing is a leech, it could take my life, and it doesn't feel like my power will come back.

I scribble down something, winding the spirit's ribbon around my arm. It looked like a tapeworm as it tried to escape, but I wrapped layers of ink, drawing and writing around it, trying frantically to keep it from swallowing all my power in one go.

I wrap it tight around the paper, but I have to bind it to me, something stronger. I start to use my power of Forest to tie it tight around my hand, paper alone will not hold something this strong bound, and I cannot afford to be called a witch.

The eel-leech looked me dead in the eyes, recognition in it's dull eyes that I had it bound tight. It snapped weakly, then silently dissolved, still there, just not able to be interacted with. The tightly folded parcel of paper dropped into my lap.

It was in a four pointed star shape, about the width of my palm across, way too big for the crucifix. I panic immediately. How am I supposed to hide a slowly burning piece of paper like this! I can already tell this one could last upwards of years.

I take a breath, as I feel it stir in the spirit world in a circle, lazily watching me with one of its colourless eyes. I don't have the same feeling of power over it as I do with the spirits that came before.

I feel like it's a match with me, that I'd have to give my concentration to control it, and that scares me. Like being in a cage with some dangerous creature, I felt vulnerable for the second time in my life.

But this time, this spirit was very different, I felt connected. A tether, around my heart, pulling tight on my own lifeline. Two strings, tied end-to-end, pulsing around my heartbeat. I could feel the thing constantly, pressures on my skin and chest, from where our cord of our attachment shifted.

It was unnerving, and unnatural like permanent goosebumps. Slipping over my skin like chilled silk, I can't properly hold it for long. I want to rip it out, but it's already settled, like metal, and I can't do anything.

So stand there, letting the thing circle me, letting the goosebumps grow under my robe as I stood uneasily in my quiet room.