All Your Fates (Currently editing/updating)

Chapter 35: Witchy-Poo ~ Carrie Cutforth

Holda, a name I would not dare call her by, bid me to strip down. I acquiesced as her maidens purified my body with heady smoke.

I finally sat opposite of her, naked, outside the sacred geometry drawn in shadow and light. She peered into my soul with striking eyes of ice. I calmly submitted to inspection. I had passed the naming ceremony before so understood how not to succumb.

“Well,” she finally spoke in a caw. Her hooded maidens stood behind me, standing guard on either side of the tent.

I said nothing. There was nothing to say now but to admit my failings – and what good would that do any of us now?

“You have the woman?” she inquired. It was not a question.

I nodded.

“You understand that she will destroy us all?” she said. Again, not a question.

“I plan to use her as a bargaining—“ I started but she cut me off with a small throaty laugh of a warbler.

“You fool. Not that one. You know which I speak of, don’t you?” she demanded.

I reluctantly nodded my head. The Volva knows all.

“The Creatrix is displeased…This one…without fate,” Holda said measuring each of her words.

“Is she The One?” I asked in a gasp without catching myself. Bad form, David, I cautioned myself.

Holda reached into her robes and pulled out a small leather satchel. She tossed its contents onto the ground between us, divining the future, past, and present in the disarray of chicken bones on the tarp.

“She is, and she is not,” Holda said, forgiving my disrespect with a maternal shrug as a mother forgives a child, “She is a disruption in the Sacred Cloth. The Spider is seeking her now. She will tear down the entire web to find her. Root her out, and destroy. And entire worlds along with her in the search. ”

I felt a sudden coldness spread down my spine.

“To weave anew,” Holda smiled with crinkly eyes: a cold comfort assurance. Perhaps next time in the next life, I won’t have failed so miserably.

Holda then regarded me with smoky eyes, “You’ve felt the presence before.”

I nodded in remembrance.

Holda began to chant, her maidens joining in with her. I tried to have the faith I had as a naïve child, but removed from the spectacle, the echoing din of the caves, it felt only like three weak women babbling. Finally, the flames of the candles started to lengthen, and the shadows on Holda’s face grew hawkish.

A sudden gust of wind and the flames were crushed. There was no light but that drawn from the embers of incense.

Holda started to speak in a foreign tongue to spectres only she could see. Her attention was soon divided by three different corners of the tent.  She seemed to quarrel with the empty presences before turning her attention back to me as the candle flames reignited to a sultry glow.

“You are the anchor that tethers her soul here,” the Seer said. “Yet, there is another one. One that she resists. He is also David. Do you understand?”

I nodded, even though it wasn’t clear. I could feel my power drawing away from me.

“A sacrifice must be made,” Holda said in a quiet whisper, and then drew her hood back on to cover her hair and face. The visitation was over.

I made the Oath. Dutiful soldier as I was. Sometimes feelings don’t enter in to it.

I was then given a pouch of herbs by the maidens to steep in my tea to drink and commanded to sleep before war came, and just as I was waking to war, I found myself here.

Pepper regarded my tale with sullen eyes. She was so like my Paprikash, but not. This world, however, was so different. So clean and metallic and shiny. So quiet from the respite of bombs and detonations. I looked around the room full of strange shiny objects. Would he take over this world as he had ours? I wondered.

Pepper finally stirred and crossed her arms to interrogate me with cold calculation. Very much like my Pappy.

“Who is The One?” Pepper asked with a raised brow.

“No one knows. This one is and isn’t her. The prophecy is…open to interpretation,” I rambled. This body took such an effort to speak or sit upright in, it was so malnourished and tired.

“But This One/Not One chick…is it Emma, right?” Pepper asked and pursed her lips.

I nodded, “Of this world, I assume. She is not the Emma of our world. She is different. She is both kind and bold.” I cast my eyes downward as I thought of the touch of Emma’s hot flesh wrapped around my thighs in the ditch only seventy-two? hours prior.

“And so…if you are here, that means David, my David…the one of this world, is …there now…with…her.” Pepper surmised as sage as my wife back home.

I shrugged. The Volva spoke nothing of this, only in talking of correcting the pattern of The Great Cloth…but how or who…

“Mother fucking piss bucket,” Pepper cursed and I felt an uneasy feeling stir in my gut. I’ve seen that look of rage from a formidable woman before.