wrote:Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- W.B. Yeats
Even with the best of recollection, her mind these days akin to a merciless steel trap, with little escaping it . . . . even with the best of recollections, the events that followed the death of young Lord Ivanhold remained murky. Shadows. The sounds of the tramping of heavy-booted feet. Shouts. Torchlight. Like most storms, it presage went unnoticed by most. The wind gently stirring. The troubled sleep of a young girl.
It is the slow intake of breath, held, before things obtain an inexorable momentum, a dismaying velocity, and events spin out of control.
A leaf moving about in a descending circle. Carefree.
Then, the whirlwind.
-o--o--o-
~before~
A shadow moving back and forth. The rhythmic creak of the wood beam above.
Derek Ivanhold. He swings back and forth like a ghastly pendulum, counting down the hours until . . . . until . .
"Until what?", she wonders. "What is coming?"
Her view nears the body, and the corpse's feet. Bare. Her view begins to rise up the otherwise unmoving thing the young lord has become.
"Oh, no. I don't want to look. Not there. No!".
She struggles in her dream, tries to pull back, to look away, all to no avail. Her gaze continues to rise, until . . . .
Derek's face, grotesquely bloated, his tongue sticking out, black with flies. They crawl over this appealing tidbit in their gladness at finding so great a feast. The rest of his face, purple and bruised. His eyes mercifully closed.
"Why am I here?" she wonders again. "I know he's dead. Dead is dead." Stripped of potential. The tree hewn. The sparrow fallen.
Then, horribly.
His eyes open.
Bloodshot and bulging, they rotate in their sockets, and fix upon her. No invisible watcher, she. They gaze at her with horrific intent. With hunger.
"Linda . . . my Linda . . . "
The young romani girl awakens, screaming. From nearby there is the sound of chairs pushed back, hurried footsteps. Christina, the mother, rushing to the side of the sweating, moaning young girl. Not far behind her is Gregori, his solid bulk casting a shadow over the stricken child.
"Linda! Oh, child. A dream – it was just a dream.". Christina makes a furtive gesture to one side, and Gregori complies, bringing a basin of water and rag and handing them to her. Christina dips the rag into the water and then begins to wipe the sweat from the brow of the trembling Linda, making soothing noises. Soon the young girl's distress is lessened, the attention, as well as the sight of the Sun steaming in through the nearby window, soothing her. Daytime. It was morning. Three days since that night, that horrible night when everything went awry.
At the sound of a cough, Gregori turns. In the next room, grim faces are gathered at a large table. They peer at Gregori, expectant, and some of them filled with apprehension.
The towering smith grunts, and nods his assent. Reaches out and squeezes his wife's shoulder. She nods. Gregori returns to the table of gathered tribal elders, quietly closing the door behind him. The solid oak muffles the conversation of the menfolk, but fails to mask the intensity of the talk that follows. The rising timbre of a voice - accusations. A comment sounding more like the hiss of a snake. The rumbling basso that was clearly Gregori's reply. The talk continues for several minutes, ending with some kind of accord. Then chairs are pushed back, and the gathering disperses, leaving the family's caravan. The door opens, and Gregori reappears, gesturing to Christina.
The mother turns to her child, her face carefully composed, appearing stern and impatient. Only her eyes revealing her concern and love for her only daughter. "Rise and see to your toliet. Then to your chores! The chickens, for one, need fed!". As Linda rises to comply, Christina and Gregori leave the room.
Closing the door behind her, Christina turns to her husband.
"So, it's agreed?"
"Yes" Gregori nods. "Preperations are already being made. We'll be able to pull up stakes tomorrow, at nightfall, so no one's the wiser. By this time two days from now we should be leaving Ivanhold lands."
She grips his hand and nods, sadness in her eyes. "We had a good life, here, for as long as it lasted. He may have been a stern, unforgiving Lord, but he held no prejudice for we romani. A rare quality amongst the lords of the Flanness. "
"Aye. Well. It is our lot in life to wander. We were here longer than I thought we'd be! Any longer and we'd actually have to consider taking up farming. ".
He snorts, and grins, Christina matching it. "Farming!".
The carvan's door creaks in quiet protest as the young girl pushes it open, the feed basket in her hands. Behind her, her parents continue their mild-mannered bickering. She smiles softly. Some things never change, she thought, as she starts to fling the feed about her, the chickens cackling and gathering.
Yet, deep inside, some sense of foreboding insists it has.
-o--o--o-
She is barefoot.
Beneath her toes the moist soil is cold and soft. Something touches her shoulder . . . . her arm . . . the top of her head. She looks up, just in time to see the moon appear from behind night's shroud.
The Moon is weeping, she thinks disjointedly.
About her the rain continues to gently fall as she walks through the Planting Fields. The mud squelches and pulls at her feet, and she automatically turns onto one of the clearer paths between the rows. Her nightgown, little more than a white, diaphanous robe, now clings wetly to her, revealing the lush young body of the developing woman, hiding nothing. A sudden embarassment and realization stirkes her, and she turns about, intending to retrace her steps back to the caravan, and the warmth of her family's homestead.
She is surrounded by trees. She stops, confused.
Dreaming, she realizes. I am dreaming.
She moves around the base of a broad oak, at first not recognizing her surroundings. About her the trees appear out of the mist, silent sentinels to her lone wandering. She rests her hand upon the rough bark of one of them as she passes, stepping between the glistening tree roots carefully, a sense of caution rising in her breast. Not wanting to disturb their quiet vigil.
It comes to her. Blackroot forest. Bordering the Ivanhold estate. Why does the dream lead me here, she wonders. We are forbidden to hunt or gather here. She shivvers, but not from the cold. That word, hunt, had some weight. Her sense of foreboding increases, and a feather-light touch caresses her spine, fear.
She turns again, then stops. The path behind her obscured.
I'm lost, she thinks.
She turns again. The only choice is to go forwards, she knows now.
Ahead, forming out of the mists of the gently falling rain, a clearing appears. She moves towards it, skirting the remaining trees.
A cold, slimy hand grips her shoulder, and she almost shrieks.
Shuddering, she twists out of the grasp of the mossy branch of the willow. A sob escapes her. The tree branch sways, as if seeking to reclaim her. To stop her.
I don't like this dreams, she thinks. Wake up, wake up! Darkness as she closes her eyes and clenches her fists, striving to leave this ominous place and return to her bed.
"Linda . . . my Linda . . . "
Her eyes pop open of their own accord. Standing at the edge of the clearing, rough shapes form out of the mist. Rising up from the ground, blunt wedges and spires. The nearest has some kind of markings upon it, she sees. At it's base, a wreath of dead, desicated flowers. To the other side another form appears out of the mist. A winged child, a cherub, perched upon the marker of another gravesite, one crumbling stone wing lying on the ground at it's base. Names take shape around her. Names, and histories, and sorrow.
Now she recognizes the place. Ivanhold Cemetary. Her fear becomes more pronounced, and she tries to backpedal, to retreat, to leave the dead to their sleep. All to no avail, her legs no longer under her command, and she continues to move fowards, the stones and gravesites now surrounding her on all sides.
Rising up before her, a door appears in the mists. Crumbling grey stone covered in ivy. The mausoleum of Family Ivanhold. A pair of ivory angels to either side, warding the entrance. Covered in ivy and stained green with moss, their appearance takes on a more ominous tone. A pair of witches guarding the entrance to a beast's lair. A sudden wind tossles her hair and obscures her vision momentarily. She slowly parts it, pushing a dark lock out from in front of her eyes.
The door shouldn't be open, she thought. Why is it open?
"Linda . . . you promised to meet me behind the store's tent . . . "
The voice behind her. She turns.
It is now, that, finally, she finds the voice to scream.
Then a pair of cold hands grip the flesh of her upper arms.
Falling to the ground in slow motion, the twinkling face of Pelor, the silver chain trailing it. It strikes the mud, and the face is obscured, turned away.
The dream world spins.
Darkness.
.