David’s POV
Even in my bed, I feel her stirring miles across the plain and deep underground. Her lithe leg crossing over the other one, the metal cot groaning under her delicate frame. We are tethered, the two of us. I don’t understand how or why, just that I need to get the hell out of Dodge or the thread will never break between us. Distance, I need distance, I say to myself as Pappy snores softly beside me. I close my eyes, begging for sleep, silently begging for Pappy’s forgiveness…
A high-pitched whistle cuts across the night sky outside my shack. I grimace from my sorely needed bed rest: Gabriel and his armies have arrived.
And then…
A rush of novocaine swells the brain before my soul detaches from my spine as I'm sucked away from the body through a vacuum to another dimension …
So the Seer was right.
My spectre drops into his body like a cat twisting and landing on its feet. I straighten and face the Auspex of this world, my wife and mother of my child in the other. This body feels so weak, so fragile. Lacking all discipline. It is easy to command.
“Pepper, David needs your help,” I say to the woman with flashing emerald eyes and wearing a white coat in this lab of mistaken creation. A strange snowflake of sound vibrates lightning all around us.
There is too much to explain—where do I even start? How can I convince this woman of what she needs to do when I don’t even understand myself?
Start with the Witch, I tell myself. And so I begin.
***
The Witch bade me to see her only a few hours ago. I was surprised by the – invite is the wrong word. Obligation. You don’t deny the Volva.
But my world is in chaos. The resistance is broken. There are so few of us left. How could I make Hocus Pocus a priority while my men needed me? But going to see her might strengthen the resolve of the superstitious. Not going would signal defiance to Fate and surely bring bad omens – or so the few left would think. At least that is what Pappy advised. She is usually right in such matters.
I had been barely reunited with my wife and child in what can only be called a hovel hidden from those who seek us, the final enclave of guerrilla fighters. I was surprised to know the old woman still managed to cling to life. To hear of any survivors brought both joy and bitterness to my heart.
So I went, all the while being fed of the reports of the army’s advancement towards us by Joachim, our third. It was all bad news and more. I began to feel cursed like Job as we trudged through the encampment bustling with activity fighting fatigue: that buzz full of weariness and prone to mistakes. The final skirmish would only be hours away. We would not survive it.
I was led through the mud caked fields of the refugee camp, and felt ashamed this is where our Matron was housed: in a flimsy canvas covered tent, soaked through from rain, later in the night to be most assuredly drowned in blood.
I have failed everyone, I said to myself as I entered the tent and into the clouds of incense the old woman was burning in ceramic pots arranged to form a sacred mandala on a rolled out tarp floor. The Volva sat hooded, cross-legged in the eye of flickering candle lights, casting her shadow in multiple refractions on the canvas walls. Gone were the bundles of herbs, the stones, the chalices, the majesty of the magic woman’s show & tell. Instead, she sat swaddled cloth, a frail feathered bird with a beak as sharp as ever. Even stripped of all theatrics, she knew how to loom larger than life, her hair spun red gold spilling down over her shoulders whence she finally pulled the hood back.
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.