Slave Woman's Grave Keeper Pt. 08

Dear readers, a cast of characters for this episodic may be found in my bio. Please feel free to ask questions if my descriptions are confusing. Your comments, questions, and reviews would help me improve my storytelling craft.

Previously:

A spirit tries to pull Zeigh into the ether. The only witness to Karma's burial was a bluebird, the familiar of a witch who likes to watch but not get involved. Karma asks questions that anger Ileana.

Karma has been buried for 3 days and 22 minutes

0 - 0 - 3 - 00:22 - Aife

"Why do we have to keep going to see these witchy people?" Zeigh asked as Aife led her down a dusty, windblown street.

"I'm at a dead end with physical evidence at the moment," Aife explained. "Searching randomly for more would be wasting time right now. So, for now we must try as many witches, mediums, and oracles as we can. Sometimes a pattern can be discerned from their collective skills."

Together, they continued through the market where women on leashes, scantily clad despite the cool temperatures, tempted shoppers with food and other goods, all the while working hard to ignore the woman in gray and her hooded castle slave companion.

The exited the square and turned down an alley, not quite so crowded where they passed a man pasting a poster on the wall:

Notice: Be Kind to Our Visitors from the West. It's the law! Unsanctioned interactions with the Metal Nomads will be punishable by death - By decree of the Queen.

Upon reading the sign Zeigh stepped up her pace to catch up with Aife who always seemed to be walking as fast as she could. Zeigh pressed the handle of her leash into Aife's hand. Aife turned to look at her, sighing. "Really?"

"Please," Zeigh begged.

Aife let out a dramatic breath.

They had just finished visiting a medium who specialized (supposedly) in possessing the bodies of the individuals being sought after as an observer. She claimed to have found Karma's soul and linked up to it, but when Aife asked about Karma's surroundings, the medium could provide no details at all.

"Just nothing," she had said. "No sounds. No sights... I feel her... She's alive... But, there is nothing."

As they walked away, Aife said, "Well, that was useless..."

"I told you she is still alive," Zeigh countered.

Now, Aife led Zeigh up to a small cottage and she knocked on the door. "This is where Bethesda lives. She specializes (it is said) in seeing things that have happened in the past."

Zeigh was rambling again: "...and people say that thirteen is an unlucky number, but once I saw a thirteen fall from the star-filled sky like a gift from the goddesses, so it can't be all that unlucky, can it? At least, I think that it was a thirteen. I saw it through a ventilation grill on the back side of the castle which looks out towards the western wastelands and I'd been crawling through the venting system for over a week by that time, cleaning out dead rat carcasses. It might have been a B, because have you ever noticed that if you smoosh the number thirteen together the one and the three merge to look like the capital letter B. So, maybe I was imagining the gap and it wasn't a thirteen. But, you know, with the similarities between B's and thirteens, it has to make you wonder if B's are bad luck too. It's a good thing that your name is Aife and doesn't have any B's in it. Mine doesn't either but B and Zeigh do rhyme, so there's that..."

"Come on in. Bring your slave girl with you," Bethesda said.

"She's not my slave girl," Aife said as she stepped into the cottage. It was not very big. They walked from the foyer into a room that served as both the kitchen and dining room. Besides cooking implements and glassware, there was one wall dominated by a large collection of crudely shaped wax dolls with various bits of junk randomly embedded in them.

Aife noticed that the window was open and a plate of bird seed lay on the window sill.

"Oh, cool! Look at the dolls, Mistress!" Zeigh said.

"Mmm-hmm," Aife sighed.

"These dolls are imbued with magic," Bethesda said to Zeigh. "I make them. Here, do you want see one up close?" Bethesda, pulled a featureless white human shaped mass from a lower cabinet and handed it to Zeigh.

"Hmm... Waxy... I never had any dolls, but once I found a piece of chain. It was heavy and about six links long. It had been used to hold handcuffs to the back of Prisha's slave collar, but they cut it off when they retired her. Anyways, I sort of slipped off with it and kept it in my cage. I called her Aroha and she slept with me for years. But then some of the other girls found out about it and as a joke decided to make me shove it up my..."

"Zeigh!" Aife said. "We don't want to take up all of Ms. Bethesda's precious time."

Zeigh tensed up for a second, but continued on, frowning. "Oh, well, it was quite difficult to retrieve my pet chain and after my visit to the infirmary, I never saw Aroha again..."

"Well, that's the saddest story I've heard all week," Bethesda said with a wheezing laugh that slowly transitioned to a hacking cough. After a bit of a recovery she pointed at the kitchen table and said, "Let's sit down. Take off your backpack, Miss Aife, and relax."

Aife sat down on a wood-frame wicker seat chair and dropped her backpack on the floor next to her while Bethesda lowered herself into her own tired seat. Zeigh sat on the floor next to Aife.

"It's OK for your slave to sit at my table, Miss Aife," Bethesda said with a smile.

"She's not my slave," Aife said. But before she could speak again, Zeigh jumped in.

"It's bad for your health to sit in chairs. All kinds of dangerous things could happen. You wouldn't believe the number of people who have died while sitting in or falling from chairs."

"I've found that it's best to not to... Zeigh doesn't like to sit in chairs. So, if it is OK, she'll just sit on the floor." Aife said, tensing up her back a bit. "Zeigh! Please don't lick the doll! I don't think that Ms. Bethesda wants your slobber all over it."

"Oh, that's fine," Bethesda said. "Yes. Let me put the doll away." Bethesda held out a bag and Zeigh dropped the doll in.

"Yes. OK. And what we would really like to do is to find out if you have any insight to a slave woman who disappeared about three days ago. She was one of the Princess' slaves. She..."

"Is," Zeigh said from under the table. "She IS one of the Princess' slaves. You said 'was'."

"She WAS supposed to have departed with the Princess to Joppa," Aife continued. "Her name is Slave Karma."

"Oh! I know!" Zeigh shouted. "Her name is Karma, which starts with a K, which is sort of like a B, but, you know, less... So, it's even more unlucky! When you break off the top and bottom parts of a B is looks a lot like a K... No wonder Karma has been having such bad luck..."

Aife looked wearily at Bethesda and held up a finger. "One moment." Then she slipped out of the chair and knelt next to Zeigh.

"Zeigh!" Aife said.

"I'm sorry, but I just thought that this should be noted in case it is important. And, I'm sorry Miss Bethesda, but your name starts with a B..."

"Zeigh!" Aife said again.

She slipped her right hand up and placed it firmly over Zeigh's mouth. Even still, Aife could hear Zeigh mumbling under her palm.

"You need to calm down, OK? We're here to find out about Karma... Karma... Shh..."

She lifted her hand away for a second.

"... amenable to using a gag. That's what worked mmm..."

"Shh. Zeigh. It's OK. It's not your fault. I don't have any gags. Shh..." Aife stroked Zeigh's hair, pulling disheveled locks and gently tucking them behind her ear. "We've been busy these past couple of days. It's stressful. After this, we'll go home. You can take a nap in your box. I'll let you eat another one of my candles and I won't yell at you this time. I promise. Shh."

Slowly Zeigh seemed to relax, she stopped mumbling, and Aife slowly removed her hand. "We're OK now?"

Zeigh shook her head, her eyes wide open staring at Aife, her mouth pinched tightly shut as if more words were threatening to pour from it.

Aife climbed back up into her chair. Bethesda was sitting patiently with her hands folded on the table. "Alright..." Aife said. "I think that we are good now."

"Let me explain what I can do for you," Bethesda started after clearing the phlegm from her throat. "I can see events that happened in the past. The events almost feel as though I am looking back into my own memories, so sometimes the wording may seem a little strange as I try to interpret the images that flit through my brain. Now, I get a little nervous, if people are staring at me, so I'd like for you to close your eyes and concentrate on Karma..."

Bethesda closed her eyes and after a moment opened them to check and see if Aife had her eyes closed as well. She ducked under the table and found Zeigh with her eyes closed so tightly that her forehead was creased with lines. She had both hands pressed tightly over her mouth. Bethesda glanced at Aife's backpack, trying to determine if she could easily stick a hand inside.

"Yes... Yes! I think I see the slave woman you are referring to. Three days ago, I believe. She is covered in gold... er... feathers or something. A man is plucking the feathers from her. There are multiple men... Two faces... The slave girl is screaming like she is hungry. One man is bent over her, but he's not regurgitating food into her mouth so she keeps screaming. He's lying on top of her, pressing her into an egg. A big egg. The other face is pulling vines from a tree it has constructed. The vine is used to close the egg back together. The last piece of shell is heavy. Now they are lowering her egg into the ground. Sometimes my memories move backwards, but not this time I don't think. They are going to let her incubate under the sand or something. They are throwing sand down on her egg. She's deep underground now. The men faces are packing all their sticks on the back of a round legged beast. It's puffing smoke. Rolling away. They are in the desert. I see the city in the distance..."

Bethesda stopped talking for a bit. "That's all I see."

"Were there any turtles?" Zeigh asked from underneath the table. "Turtles lay eggs in the sand."

Aife gently placed her hand on Zeigh's head. "So, the two men, can you describe them at all."

Bethesda chuckled for a moment. "They all look the same to me. Hmm.. dark hair, dirty, hairy."

"Is Karma going to hatch soon?" Zeigh asked.

"No," Bethesda said slowly opening her eyes and clearing her throat, looking with amusement at Zeigh. "Oh, dear. When I recollect a memory I have to work fast as they are fleeting. I describe the scene using the first words that come to mind. Now, we can sit back and interpret the memory. For example, to paraphrase what I just saw, apparently, two men in a truck drove this woman, Slave Karma, out into the desert three days ago and buried her alive."

"Can you describe the truck?" Aife asked.

Bethesda closed her eyes again. "I can see the truck pretty clearly... a flat bed... On the door is a sizable square design painted in bright yellow symbols on a red background..."

"Symbols?" Aife asked.

"Yes, symbols... maybe letters... But I can't tell..."

"In an egg?" Zeigh asked. "Slave Karma is buried in an egg?"

"Zeigh! Please... be quiet for a second," Aife said running her hand across her head.

"No. It was a coffin..." Bethesda explained. "But, not just a wooden thing. It was big and made of metal and concrete. It looked more ceremonial. A sarcophagus."

"Alright, Mistress Aife, let's go dig her up," Zeigh said as she began to crawl out from underneath the table.

Aife frowned, then looked over at Bethesda. "Do you have any idea where this... this memory took place?"

"Hmmm... It was definitely in the desert outside the city walls," Bethesda said, rubbing her hands together.

"Yes," Zeigh said started to pull on Aife's arm. "We should go get her. She is probably lonely out there."

Aife looked at Bethesda who frowned and shrugged her shoulders. "Look, sweetheart," Bethesda said to Zeigh, "I'm not sure that your friend... your slave sister... I don't think that she would be able to get enough air..."

"Air?" Zeigh said with a confused look. "We have to go get her..."

"We don't know where to dig," Aife said as Zeigh pulled her to her feet. "It's like a needle in a haystack. We could dig for a hundred years and never find anything."

"No!" Zeigh continued to pull Aife's arm. Aife grabbed her backpack and turned to Bethesda, "Thanks! Can you let us know if you have any other memories? Anything. I need to get her home."

"I'm not going home!" Zeigh said as they stumbled out the door and into the street. "We have to go dig her up. She may be getting hungry. She generally never had a huge appetite, but except sometimes after she had a piercing session with the Queen's Witch she would return to our cell totally famished and you couldn't feed her enough food. She really liked meat... grilled... She's probably hungry... We have to go dig her up! Do you have some dried jerky?"

Aife grabbed Zeigh's leash and gave it a gentle pull. "Shh, Zeigh. Let's go home now. We will need to investigate more."

"No, the main gate out of the city is in the other direction. Where are we going?" Zeigh dropped to her knees in the dust of the street.

Aife quickly scanned up and down the street to get a sense of the people that may be watching She leaned over and wrapped her hand firmly around the leash close to where it connected on Zeigh's collar. "Get up," she quietly growled.

"We have to..." Zeigh looked up into Aife's eyes which had become cold and serious. "Buried starts with the letter B."

Aife pulled Zeigh back up to her feet. She leaned in close - her mouth right next to Zeigh's ear. "We are in danger out here in the streets. Always. You are drawing attention to us."

"But what about Karma?" Zeigh whispered. "And buried starts with a B."

"We cannot react to the statements of a single witch. We are looking for trends, remember? Maybe the next seer will tell us that Karma is dancing in a harem or - I don't know - soaking in a bath house. Because bath starts with a fucking B. So, shut the fuck up and let's get out of here."

Aife turned and pulled on Zeigh's leash, none too gently, yanking her down the road.

Zeigh stumbled along behind whispering, "Buried starts with a B. Buried starts with a B."

0 - 0 - 3 - 00:54 - Bethesda

Bethesda watched Aife drag her slave down the street, shaking her head and clearing phlegm from her throat. She closed, locked, and barred her door and returned to the kitchen. A blue bird had flown in through the window and was pecking around the plate of bird seed set out on the sill.

"Did you see all that?" Bethesda asked.

The bird let out a shrill whistle, apparently in reply.

Bethesda waddled over to her wall of wax dolls and pulled out a second blank one, laying it gently next to the bag which contained the first doll that Zeigh had handled.

"How easy that silly slave made my job... Sticking the doll in her mouth. Ha!"

Bethesda reached under the table and pulled out a small canister. She unscrewed the top and looked inside. "Excellent," she mumbled as she pressed her finger into a waxy substance inside. Bethesda had grabbed the canister from Aife's backpack as she was performing her "Remembering". It contained a balm used to protect her skin from the arid desert air. Most importantly, it contained a suitable sample of Aife's DNA. More than enough to create a doll. Bethesda began to smear the balm all over the second wax doll.

After suitably covering the doll in Aife's balm, the old witch pulled out a dark blue velvet bag and placed it on the table. She extracted a wooden spoon from the Dutch oven sitting on the stove - tendrils of a sticky white substance clinging to the end and dripping on the floor. She waved the spoon around the velvet bag, mumbling, for a couple of minutes.

The blue bird continued pecking at the bird seed- looking up every once in a while to observe Bethesda's progress.

Finally, Bethesda put the spoon on the table and reached into the velvet bag. "The slave first," she said to the bird. She pulled out a tiny bag from the larger one and loosened a drawstring from the top. She poured the contents onto the table - a collection of small twigs and tree bark.

"Ha! You'll like this one!" she laughed as she pulled out the doll representing Slave Zeigh and began to press the bits of tree into the waxy surface.

Next she reached into the larger velvet bag a second time. "And now the little warrior woman... Ooo! Gross! What do you think this crap is? Looks like snot!" Bethesda wheezed out a laugh to herself, while the bird hopped over onto the table, tilting its head back and forth.

Bethesda picked up the gooey mass from where she had dumped it on the table. It looked like there were some bloody looking veins embedded in the clear sludge. She used her hand to squeeze the gelatinous substance all around the doll meant to represent Aife. Bethesda scraped up some long white filaments which were clinging wetly to the table, winding them around the doll as best as possible.

She dropped the two dolls into a pot and placed a lid over the top. Then she paused and looked at the hand that she had used to scoop up the goop she had just smeared on Aife's doll. "Ow," she said, noting streaky red lines beginning to appear on her hand. "Ow! Ow, shit!"

Bethesda stepped over to the sink and dipped her hand into a bowl of water, cursing. "What was that shit? Some kind of fucking poison!" The bird hopped further away from the wet spot on the table where the gooey substance had been. "Yow!"

After a few minutes the pain seemed to be subsiding although the bright red streaks still decorated Bethesda's hand. She waddled back over to the table, grabbed her wooden spoon and began to tap the pot which now contained the two dolls, mumbling a rhythmic series of phrases.

Finally, she was done. She opened the pot and looked in. "Hmm... Oh, dear..." She used the spoon to scrape the dolls from the pot. The twigs that had been embedded in Zeigh's doll seemed more firmly rooted and small green leaves had begun to sprout from the exposed ends. She pushed that aside and both she and the bird looked more closely at the doll representing Aife.

The waxy surface had become more translucent and the bloody veins seemed to have wormed their way into the doll. The head however had taken on a gray color, the face covered in a dark black swirl of lines particularly where the eyes should be. "That does not look good at all. Very bad." She drew the pad of her thumb over the black scribblings carefully avoiding any of the remaining gelatinous residue.

The bird whistled.

"You should go keep an eye on them," Bethesda said.

The bird whistled again.

"Sure, I can see that... possibly! But why would I want to waste the materials? I mean, look at her!" Bethesda turned the Aife doll so its blackened face was pointed in the bird's direction.

The bird whistled again - perhaps with more conviction.

"Whatever... OK. Only one wrap though!" Bethesda pulled a short length of red yarn from a box of supplies and wrapped it loosely around the two dolls, avoiding any contact with the Aife doll, tying the ends together.

"Now, go and keep an eye on them! I want to know what precipitates her demise!" Bethesda began to chuckle. "And she doesn't even have a B in her name... That slave was funny in the head..."

After a rapid set of chirps, the blue bird flew out the window. Bethesda quickly shoved the pair of dolls into a wall cubby using the wooden spoon to avoid any contact with the Aife doll. Next Bethesda leaned down near the floor and opened a small cabinet. She pulled out a small wooden box and almost dropped it on the floor. "What the...?!"