Marek (Buried Lore Book 1) (8 page)

*

The next day I felt restored and the gash on my forehead gone.
The old woman was still in the
chair in front of cold embers, and her eyes were closed. Both Zola and Celeste
were missing. Celeste’s shawl lay sprawled at the bottom of the cot.

I
pushed open the shuttered windows, breaking apart the frost that had sealed
them together in the early morning hours. The view was of dense forest and I
wondered how we came upon such a hut the previous night. I walked into the
early morning to greet the sun glinting through a heavy green cloud mass
nestled on the horizon. It would be a dark day.

There
were footprints in the earth encircling the house. At the back was a garden of
herbs and another with vegetables. An axe rested near the entrance, the blade
covered with a reddish brown stain.  Fresh skins hung over the chopping
block.

As I
turned back to enter the hut I was confronted. The old woman was pointing her
walking cane close to my face, her faded and filmy eyes boring into my own.
You
will be next
, I heard, even though her lips were still. This line was
repeated twice before I
realised
these were her
thoughts. I believe my confused expression at her words was what set her to
begin wailing uncontrollably. I tried to calm her but to no avail. Then she
continued in an even stranger manner waving her arms about her person as if
fighting an invisible presence, her bulging eyes roaming aimlessly around in
their sockets.

Something
in her step suggested she might strike me with her cane. I took a step back to
find Zola behind me. With several logs under her arm, she looked both rested
and striking in a full lemon skirt and silk blouse. She did not look like
someone who had spent the previous evening fighting barbarians. Zola locked
eyes with the woman and the effect was instantaneous with the elder lowering
her cane.

The
woman, by then submissive, was guided by the younger back into the hut and
placed gently near the fire. I could see from the woman’s hobble that one leg
was much shorter than the other. I did not get a chance to ask Zola why the
woman had been so hostile towards me.

‘
Celestina
is gone,’ she said. ‘She ran away in the night.’

I
retrieved Celeste’s shawl from the bed, thanked Zola for her help,
then
began in the direction of the footprints.

‘You
cannot leave,’ said Zola, the softness of her voice fragmenting, almost
brittle, before a sudden return of composure. ‘I tried to find her, but she has
been gone for many hours. It is probably for the best. She would have slowed us
down.’

‘It
doesn’t matter. I must find her. She will freeze to death, or worse,’ as I
remembered the treatment by the villagers.

Zola
stood in the doorway blocking my path. Her irises were shimmering pools, the
deepest blue on the inside, with flecks of green around the edges, reminding me
of the
colours
of
Gildoroso’s
waters. Her hair was even more vibrant in the daylight, and her lips sat
slightly apart to reveal long, even teeth. If we had been on my island, Zola’s
breathtaking appearance would have filled up every space in my mind, but the
old woman had unsettled me along with Celeste’s disappearance.

‘Zola,
I must go,’ and I waited for her to step aside.

‘Without
me you will not find Oleander,’ she said, walking away from me.

‘You
know her?’ Perhaps in my delirious state I had revealed this information.

‘She
has the gift like us. We’ve all been waiting for you to come.’

I
was both shocked and relieved that my quest was now validated, but why I was
suddenly so important was beyond me. ‘I will come back but first I must find
Celeste… I cannot leave her like this.’

Zola
looked at me, her head inclined curiously. ‘
Marek
,
she is just a girl, a mute one at that.’

I
could not explain why I was drawn to Celeste. It was an obligation that I had
taken upon myself to find her a safer place. My father had taught me to always
finish what I started, to see everything through to its natural end. My time
with Celeste was not yet over. She needed me.

As
if she had read me once again, Zola agreed to help find Celeste and then
continue on to see my half-sister; though, I detected that she was very
disappointed in this change of plans.

We
came to a clearing and Zola touched the ground, rubbing some soil through her
fingers. ‘She is going this way.’

A
well-used pathway wound its way through the tall forest pines and gloomy skies.
I hoped that we could track Celeste before she was lost forever and the cold
trapped within her bones.

‘Are
there really such creatures as the
strigoi
?’ The
incident in the village resurfaced as we walked and I found myself replaying
the event in my mind.

Zola
grabbed hold of my hand. Her hands were supple and clean for someone who
collected wood. ‘There are many creatures like us, born with extra skills.
Skills to heal, or read minds, move objects, so many, I cannot tell you all of
them.’ It did not fully answer my question. Was she talking about witches then,
or
strigoi
?

‘How
well do you know my sister?’ I asked her.

‘I
met your sister many years ago.’

‘It
is so confusing,’ I said. ‘I never knew of this gift growing up and do not
understand it, or where it comes from. I don’t even know how to use it.
Sometimes it just happens.’

‘That
is why you should be with your own kind. We can show you.’

‘Is
your mother a witch…?’ I asked referring to the old woman in the hut.

‘She
is not my mother,’ said Zola curtly. ‘I am just her carer.’ From Zola’s tone
she did not want to talk about her. ‘I do not live there. I live near your
sister but I came this far south to catch you on the way, to watch over you. I
promised Oleander I would.’

How
Oleander knew me at all was a mystery. Had she been watching me from afar? Even
more puzzling was how she knew I’d come on the word of a delirious hag.
Oleander herself was an enigma at the time, something not yet real in my
thoughts.

I
told Zola about my mother and she nodded her head as if she already knew.
‘Witches must have protection from their coven.’

‘But
I do not understand. We do not do anything bad. Why do people want to hurt us?’

‘They
are scared.’ Zola stopped suddenly. ‘She is not far now.’

At
first I thought she meant my sister and then I caught movement through the
trees. It was Celeste. ‘If she left hours ago how did we catch up to her so
quickly?’

‘We
move swiftly, though we cannot see that ourselves,’ said Zola. ‘It feels
perfectly normal. With your growing and unaccustomed powers, you have to be
careful when you walk amongst humans. They will notice our speed, but sometimes
we can move so quickly that we are not seen at all.’

I felt
strange when she said the word ‘humans’ as if it was a terrible thing. I could
not look at myself as anything else. At least I understood why Zola could visit
the reclusive old woman and take care of her when she lived so far away.

I
was sure Celeste had seen us and yet she ran with her face full of fear.

Zola

There
were moments after I scared off the girl when I thought of hunting her down. I
followed her for a time with improper thoughts of feasting on someone young and
sweet, instead of the human vermin of which there appeared to be an endless
supply. And perhaps if I had not sensed
Marek
awake I
would have acted on the urge to sample her scarlet nectar, to put her out of
her small, miserable life of sickness, hunger and a futile future begging on
the streets for every meal, before turning to more dubious means to survive.

It
had always been code amongst our kind to choose the degenerates over the clean
blood. Yet occasionally we would slip, should the opportunity
arise.
And, though it was not said out loud, Oleander turned
a blind eye to this especially when it came to Jean. The code wasn’t always so
loosely deciphered as it was in Oleander’s circle. Clean blood was once totally
banned.

Oleander
said ‘only
Marek
’ which is why I first attempted to
get rid of the girl. Though, I eventually saw that it was this insignificant
feline that motivated
Marek
more than his sister.
And, of course, there were other possibilities for her. Oleander would be
pleased if I returned with such a prize.

I
would
humour
Marek
as long
as I needed with my
pretence
of helpfulness. Not only
was he amusing me with his innocence, and pleasing to look at, it was also my
duty to Oleander and her circle. He was yet another of her whims, and another
distraction, like so many she had called to join her flock.

Celeste

A
hand shoved me hard in the back and I fell forward on the hard ground covered
with fallen thistles. When I turned there was
no-one
there. At first I thought I had imagined the touch. A few moments later, Zola
appeared and I knew it was her witchery that had done such a deed.

‘Get
up! At the first chance I will be rid of your soul for good. But for now you
suit my purpose.’

Zola
narrowed her eyes, and her mouth twisted into a vicious smile. She was
dangerous. I felt the evil back at the hut. She was a demon that moved faster
than my eye. They were perhaps both demons for
Marek
had used dark magic to cure me.

Marek
arrived seconds later and looked at me, his expression full of concern, so deep
were the grooves above the bridge of his nose. He had brought my shawl and
wrapped it around my shoulders.

Zola
helped me up straightening my skirts with motherly concern, yet I knew the
truth. We stared at each other both remembering what had happened early that
morning when the moon was still high.

Back
in the old woman’s hut I had been dreaming of falling from a high cliff. When I
awoke I was suspended in the air above my bed, hanging in unseen arms. I could
hear
Marek’s
heavy breathing from somewhere else
inside the hut and knew this couldn’t be him. I brushed at the air below me
frantically trying to return to the cot. All of a sudden, I was dropped back
onto the bed with a thud, the wind crushed from my lungs. Before I could
compose myself, more unseen spirit hands seemed to grab at me in the darkness,
pulling me from the bed. I grabbed at the cot pulling it from the wall without
success, my fingernails nearly torn back from their beds of flesh. I was
dragged across the floor towards the door by my legs, like a hunter dragging
his kill, as happened in that hellish village.

The
door swung back. As I looked behind I stared into the eyes of a demon; Zola’s
eyes gleamed in the greyness of the cabin. I reached hopelessly for
Marek
but was dragged outside, the door closing behind me.
Slipping and stumbling on the frosty ground, I ran as fast as I could for
miles, and far away from the cabin full of dark magic. I ran until daybreak
without rest, always looking behind me. Sometimes it felt like Zola was still following
me, that she was watching me from the dark shadows beneath the moon-tipped
trees.

That
fear gripped me tighter as I once again faced the evil witch in front of me.

Marek
put
a hand on my shoulder and I flinched.

‘You
must stay with me, Celeste,’ he said in his soft voice. I wanted to obey since
he was my master, yet I wondered whether he was part of the devil’s plan to win
my soul.

Around
the fire, when I was a small child and free, I would hear stories about witches
and covens, and blood-lusting beasts. They would talk about demons turning
themselves into man-like creatures, growing fangs, tearing hapless farmers and
travellers to strips, and stealing their hearts. ‘Never look into their eyes,’
one man said, ‘They can take your soul that way.’ Later when my mother put me
to bed, she would tell me they were just stories, that most likely the men
drank too much and only saw images from within their own minds, placed there
for their sins.

There
were nights when my mother would sleep with me and other nights that she would
sleep in other tents and tell me not to follow her. Those nights were the
worst, unable to cling to her when the nightmares came, or when I feared being
stolen by Satan himself. One night I ran to Sasha’s tent so that my mother could
stroke my head until I fell asleep. Taking my mother’s time from Sasha was
another reason he wanted me gone.

Marek
explained to me that Zola knew his sister and was taking us there. I knew this
was a trap and I shook my head angrily.

‘What
is wrong, Celeste?’

Marek
and
Zola were staring so intently that I had to turn away. I could not look into
her eyes lest she put a spell on me. It was too late for
Marek
.