Wyrd: Book One of the Witch War Trilogy - WATTYS 2018 WINNER!

Chapter 14: In Which Sky Meets Will's Mom, Again

Then Meryl's eyes fell on Sky. Will was about to introduce her, but the change was so sudden, so immediate. Her eyes glared towards Sky and the atmosphere was charged with crackling fury.

"OUT! DO NOT TOUCH THEM. YOU CANNOT HAVE MY CHILDREN!," she yelled. "I won't let you take them away from me. Try and I will eviscerate you!" She stood up on the chair and her hands gestured threateningly at Sky.

Nothing came forth. Sky glanced at Olleander, at his pained and guilty expression, and realized he must have found a way to bind her powers. A witch without her full faculties was dangerous when she had no control over her magics. It was smart, but it likely caused poor Meryl a great deal of inner pain. To have something that's part of you, caged and locked away, would be torment, Sky knew.

"Meryl," Sky said, looking into the woman's eyes compassionately. "I'm not here as a Valkyrie. Not like with your husband or with the soldiers. Your children are very much alive. I do not need to take their souls to their next destination. They're safe and fine," she said, trying to calm the woman. The last time she had seen Sky was over a battlefield, as the Valkyrie lead her husband to his afterlife. Her presence would be a jarring experience, one perhaps she should have spared the woman.

"Liar!" the frail woman wailed at the top of her lungs. "Liar! You are trying to take them away from me! You're taking them away. That's why you're here, isn't it? That's why, because you're going to bring them back to Htrae and lead them to their death. You should die! Decide! Are you a Wyrd, a Valkyrie, or a bringer of doom? You don't get to do it all, to meddle with my children's lives in every way conceivable! NO. I say NO, NEVER! Wither up and die you hypocritical hag. Shrivel into nothingness. Be expunged from existence!"

And then she started howling, angry and violent shrieks, complimented by erratic jerky arm flailing, that had the nurses running into the room to deal with the outburst and her visitors looking up at her, alarmed.

"Nah, sweetpea. Go on get down from 'der," a Jamaican nurse said in thick Patois. "You gone got yourself visitors and now you decide to act like a true mengkeh? Hush sweetpea. Hush."

Meryl looked back down at the nurse, bewildered, and she stopped yelling instantly, as if she'd forgotten why she'd been yelling in the first place.

"May I have some blue flowers?" she asked the nurse. "I like blue flowers." She smiled conciliatorily and the nurse smiled amiably back at her. Meryl looked over at her children. "Who are you?" she asked Laina and Will.

They both flinched, hurt by the sharp blade dealt by madness, the caustic ephemeral quality of memory and the thin tether between nonsense and reality that shifts so quickly, with no care for the feelings of those who can only helplessly watch.

"Now an you come lie here," the nurse said, patting the bed patiently, waiting for the woman to move from the chair by the window to the bed, to lie down and settle herself.

Meryl obliged, shuffling along merrily.

"What tings set 'er off?" the nurse asked, hands on hips. "She usually peaceful. We don want 'er to ova do it."

"Not sure," Ollie answered, "but we can handle it from here. Thank you. My daughter will be fine now. And we'll say goodbye soon."

The nurse nodded and hustled out and on to the next patient.

"I'm just going to wait outside," Sky offered, as she slinked out into the hallway, trying to keep herself out of Meryl's direct line of sight just in case.

When she was safely around the corner, Sky let out the breath she'd been holding and slumped into a chair nearby, miserable. A few seconds later, before she even had time to analyse her guilt, Will joined her.