I knew the moment that King Eadwig died. I woke in the night with a sigh escaping me, as my heart felt faint. I felt him close his eyes just as mine opened. There was no one wail for him. Not yet.
“Osburga,” I whispered. She stirred next to me. “Osburga, he’s dead.”
She didn’t respond. I slipped from beneath the blanket, stirred the fire, set a few more logs in the hearth, and pulled my shawl around my shoulders. The sight had given me the knowledge of now. The problem was not that I could not see things present. The problem was that I was too afraid to see some things at all.
I watched the fire, trying to find my way back to King Eadwig. The sight showed me him easily, now that I had seen him once. His body was still warm. I pondered how long it would be before anyone knew. A servant had recently replenished the fire. It was crackling wonderfully while his body cooled in the bed. I shivered, watching his cheeks grow gray, his lips ashen. I listened, but his body made no sound. There was no life in the room at all.
But then I heard a faint whisper. The sight showed me a woman, a nun, praying. She was on her knees beside her bed, her habit slipping back, showing her brown hair. I listened until the words she prayed filled me.
“May his days be few; may another seize his position. May his children be orphans and his wife a widow.”
An odd prayer. A curse.
Osburga stirred in the bed and I startled at the noise. The sight left me.
“Did you find her?” Osburga asked.
My gaze flew to where my teacher was, now sitting up in the bed, the blank piled in her lap. “You did know where she was.” It was almost an accusation.
She shook her head. “I knew nothing,” she said, “except that you would find her, hunched over the fire like that.”
I stood, surprise moving through me, propelling me towards the bed. “You can see the future?”
She laughed. “Sometimes,” she said. “Only when I really care to know.”
This puzzled me, and I cocked my head the way a curious dog would. “Why did you care to know where my mother was?” I asked.
Osburga’s long hair was loose around her shoulders. She brushed with her fingers, gathering it into a braid. “It is good to know who the wise women are,” she said simply.
The sight came back to me, and I saw my mother end her prayer. She pulled the habit higher, covering her hair again. She smiled to herself, a coy smile, before she rose from her knees and slipped back into the bed. I felt her pleasure. The curse had worked.
A distant scream echoed through my mind. The sight took me back to King Eadwig, who was cold now, and stiffening. The maid standing over him was yelling, and soon the room was filled with men with lanterns, crowding around him, afraid to touch him, afraid of death.
“It was her,” I realized. “That’s why he was sick.”
Osburga raised her eyebrow. “Perhaps,” she said.
I swallowed down the fear that felt like a frog climbing my throat. “Do you think, if I go to the nunnery, she’ll remember me?”
Osburga stared at me blankly, for long enough that I almost looked away. “You are a wise woman now, little witch,” she said. “She will recognize you.”
Somewhere, far away, I heard a woman whisper my name. I closed my eyes. I’m coming, mother.
I lived with Osburga until the season started to turn, and the cold set in, the mornings frosty and the evenings holding a chill that crept into my bones. I had seen my father once, his eyes understanding, even if he was sad. He knew he couldn’t protect me. Only another woman like me had a chance of doing that.
Osburga didn’t teach me anything about the sight. We gathered herbs, and dug roots and chopped ingredients for soups and potions, and sometimes a man would show up and she would send me out of the cottage for a few hours. She slept soundly at night, thought I would wake at the faintest scratch in the forest. She said I would get used to it. As the autumn stretched on, I wondered if she was right about that like she was right about nearly everything else.
“You’re too careful,” she said one wintery morning, when not even the fire could warm me. She was sipping mead from her mug, and gnawing a hunk of bread, wrapped in a huge blanket as she sat at the table. I was crouched near the hearth, warming my hands, watching the flames, listening to the fire crackle. It reminded me of the snap of the horse’s leg.
“Don’t want to get burned,” I said over my shoulder.
“I wasn’t talking about the fire,” Osburga said.
I had known that, but I was afraid of her pushing me. This was not the first time that she had commented on my timidity. “How do I conquer the fear?” I asked, wanting more. The taste of something greater was within reach, but I couldn’t quite open myself to it. It had killed my gran, and driven my mother away. Why did I want it?
“You don’t conquer the fear, little witch,” she said. The term was endearing now, after months of it rolling off her tongue. “You accept the fear, and go forth in spite of it.”
“Accept the fear,” I echoed. My hands and face were finally warm. I stood and turned by backside to the hearth. I met her gaze as I tugged my shawl tighter around me. Osburga sipped from her mug without taking her eyes from me. I felt my throat tighten, and my mouth go nearly dry as I thought about all that I had seen of my mother’s journey from home. I had learned how to see her, to follow her path from our village to the forest, and from the forest to the open wild lands, and to a churchyard where she had met a nun, and then into a nunnery. The sight had taken me with her across these years. I could see where she had been, but I still did not know where she was.
“Perhaps she is still in the convent,” I said. Osburga and I had talked about this often. She knew that it was the last thing I could see about my mother. She went with the sister into the convent. She did not wear a habit when she went to prayer. That was all that I knew. “Maybe that’s why I can’t see her. I can’t see things that are, only things that were.”
Osburga was still studying me. She took another sip from her mug. The fire was roasting my rear, so I took a step towards her. She put the mug down on the table, and took a bite of the bread in her other hand. Saying nothing as I reasoned out a problem was Osburga’s preferred method of instruction. She said nothing, so I knew I had gotten it wrong.
“Accept the fear, ” I said again. Osburga continued chewing slowly. I sighed and crossed the room to the table, sitting opposite her. She tore off a hunk of the bread and passed it to me. I bit into it and methodically chewed along with her.
“Did you know that King Eadwig is ill?” she asked me.
A test. Osburga could see what was as easily as she could see what had been. She wanted me to accept the fear to see for myself.
A shiver ran over me, one that wasn’t related to the chill in the house. It was the kind of chill that accompanied a fever. Fear shook me. A fever could kill. I swallowed the lump in my throat, waiting for what the sight would show me. I closed by eyes, slowed my breathing, and felt the fear in my belly like a stone. I focused on it, drifting down to meet it. I opened to it, and then suddenly, I saw him. King Eadwig was burning with fever, in a grand bed, nearly out of his mind with pain. There were men standing around the bed, observing, powerless to do anything for him but offer beer and wine. He was sweating, and his skin was pale, like death had already touched him. I pressed a hand to my face, feeling the fever in my own cheek.
“He’s dying,” I croaked, my throat tight with fear. It was not to be spoken. The King was anointed by God. To speak of his death was to speak a curse.
I opened my eyes, peeling myself away from the vision that the sight had given me. Osburga was smiling at me. “Do you think they will accuse a woman of bewitching him?” she asked.
I knew nothing about King Eadwig, except that Cynewulf was his ealdorman, and that Cynewulf had ruined my mother’s life. “If there is a woman near enough to him that has offended the wrong man, I suppose they will.”
This seemed to please Osburga. She finished eating her bread and picked up the mead mug again. She took another drink, her eyes shifting from the golden liquid to me. The blanket she wore tumbled off her shoulder, and she tugged it up around herself again with her free hand. I shivered, wishing I had stayed near the fire. I munched the part of the loaf she had handed me and waited for whatever it was that she was turning over in her thoughts to escape from her mouth.
“Are you afraid to learn the truth about your mother?” she asked.
It made me wonder if she had known all this time, and not told me. I pushed away the thought. You could go looking for an answer, surely, but that didn’t mean that the sight would give you one. “I am afraid that when I find her, she will be dead.”
Osburga nodded. “Use that fear,” she said. She finished the mead and placed the empty mug on the table between us. I looked into the empty vessel, trying not to imagine it as a metaphor for what I would see when I finally found my mother.
Osburga wasted no time with me. As soon as the offer to teach me bewitching left her lips, a powerful wind blew through my spirit. I gasped at its bite, the chill of it snaking along my limbs. But I held Osburga’s eyes until it passed. She seemed pleased with my tolerance and my stoicism. “Good,” she said. “You can feel the power and already have a respect for it.” She paused, tilting her head as she considered me more thoroughly. Her gaze was a test, though I didn’t understand what she was testing. My spirit was thrilled by her gaze, though I did not understand why. She smiled at me broadly. “And you have respect for yourself as well,” she said.
She rose from her place at the table paced to her door. She flung open the door to the outside air. “Come,” she said without looking at me before she disappeared outside.
I followed. There was no other choice.
We went on deep trails through the forest, going deeper and deeper until I had lost all sense of direction. Osburga walked two paces ahead. I imagined how we looked from afar- women determinedly marching through the woods, holding up their skirts to avoid snags and snares in the fabric as we passed by thorn and bur and branch. Two women, headed somewhere no one but wise women would go. We moved along without speaking, until finally Osburga came to halt ahead of me.
We were standing at the top of a small hill, and at the bottom of the hill ran a stream. Rocks littered the path down the hill and the stream bed. My eyes followed the flow of the water to an entrance to a cave. My heart leapt to my throat. “Are we going in there?” I asked, the dread settling in my bones.
“In the cave?” Osburga laughed. “No. No one can go into that cave.” She laughed to herself. “We’re going into the water.” Her laughter had a twinkling quality, like starlight. She moved down the hill and I followed her to the stream, crunching last year’s leaves underfoot. I followed her right up to the bank of the stream. I didn’t know how she deftly avoided slipping on the mossy stones. She was so light on her toes, while I could barely find my balance.
The stream pooled at the mouth of the cave before it ran underground. The pool was deeper than it looked from at the top of the hill. I peered into the depth, feeling the swirling power in the water.
“What do you see?” she asked.
I focused my eyes on the rocks at the bottom of the pool, which changed colors and shape as I stared. My vision swam with things of the past as I watched the rocks morph into the face of my mother, and the horse that carried Ealdred, that threw him to the ground when he tripped, the face of Cynewulf, leering in the dark of the woods. And there was my gran too, whom I had never met, hanging in the tree, as my mother watched her house burn. By grandad took her by the hand and led her away, swords pointed at their backs as they left the only home they’d ever know. I could see a long line of women, all the way back through the ages, each one’s face rise to the surface as the pool as they looked me in the eyes, smiling with magic and guile. No, stop it. I pleaded with them to go away, but I could not more stop the sight than I could stop my breath.
Osburga touched my shoulder, and the visions broke. I gasped, tears filling my eyes. I gulped in air as if I had been drowning. “I can only see into the past,” I cried, tears streaming down my hot cheeks. The stones at the bottom of the pool were just stones again. I wiped the tears from my face with the back of my hand. “I can’t see anything about now, or about the future.”
“Oh, it takes a great power to see the future, little witch,” Osburga said.
I whirled on her, feeling hot with anger at her words. “Goda said you could help me. But you’ve only shown me what I’ve seen before.”
Osburga crinkled her nose at me, as if I smelled like something she didn’t want in her house. “I’ve shown you nothing, Eadgyth.”
I calmed, her flat pronouncement of the truth registering as a indisputable fact. My anger cooled and I bowed my head. I did not want to meet her eyes. The wind rustled the leaves overhead, and for a moment, I thought I heard a call on the wind. It sounded almost like my name, but I pushed away the ridiculous thought before it could take root.
“Eadgyth,” Osburga said tenderly. She took my face in her hands, turning my eyes upward along with my chin. “To find your mother, you must first find yourself.”
My head felt as if I had drunk too much mead at the Easter feast. I pushed away the thoughts that threatened to creep across me. You’re weak. You’re not worthy of the power. You will never see anything of value. All lies. Told by the great liar, whom the priests called the Devil. But they called my mother and my gran of the Devil too. Why should I believe that the Devil didn’t speak to me as well?
Osburga frowned. It was as if she sense the thought that intruded into my skull. “You are thinking that this is not a gift?” she asked. “That it is too hard?”
I realized then that she didn’t know my thoughts; she had only guessed, probably based on what she had experienced when she had awakened to the powers she had. “They will call me names. They will cast me away, as they did my mother. They might hang me in a tree, as they did to my gran.”
Osburga dropped her hands from my face, only to take up stroking my hair. “Ah, they might, little witch,” she said. “Better then, that you stay with me.”
And the sight took me at her words. I saw the friendship blossom between us, and how she felt already like a replacement for the mother I had lost. I reached for her, wrapping my arms around her waist, and falling into her. She tucked my head against her shoulder, shushing sweetly as I let silent tears flow.
“I will help you,” Osburga whispered. “You will need protection from those who seek to do you harm.”
I shut out the image of the burning house, and the screaming horse that would not leave me. I looked for my mother among the images, but she was nowhere to be seen.
I peered through the bracken, staring at the smoke coming from the little cottage just deep enough into the woods that you couldn’t see it from the clearing. The mossy, rich smell of earth and wet leaves filled my nostrils as I crouched behind the fallen tree, mustering the courage to creep forward. I knew the woman inside the house wasn’t dangerous. My cousin had seen to her plenty of times. Goda came for love potions but I had come for something harder to find: answers.
My legs were cramped from crouching for so long, and the damp from the leaves was starting to take to the hem of my skirts. I rose unsteadily, clenching and unclenching my fist a few times to still my nerves. Then, I hopped over the fallen tree, and crunched my way through the underbrush to the front door of the house. Before I could talk myself out of it, I knocked softly three times. Goda said that Osburga, the wise woman, would answer from within before she opened the door. You had to tell her what you wanted first. If she didn’t like your reason for coming, she wouldn’t let you inside.
“Who comes and why?” Osburga called out from inside the cottage. I could hear the faint sound of movement towards the door. I closed my eyes, imagining her on the other side of the wooden slats between us, pressing her ear to the door just as I was.
“It’s Eadgyth,” I said shakily, “and I want to know what happened to my mother.”
The door creaked open slowly, and the woman who stood in the doorway was not as I had imagined from Goda’s description of her. She was tall, and she looked much younger than I had thought she would. Her hair was a rich brown that hung in waves to her waist. She was wearing a simple brown dress and an apron. Her eyes were kind, but there was also wariness there. I could feel the hurts she carried, for just a moment, a flash of the sight that had me seek her, to ask for her help in seeking out my mother. I shut my eyes against the vision that was taking me- a woman hanging in a tree, and a fire that consumed the place where she had lived, a horse screaming in pain, and a man who walked with a limp. I gasped at the clarity of it, but shook it away from me as I searched the eyes of Osburga, waiting for her to invite me in.
“What do you need me for if you have the sight like that, little witch?” she asked.
The dreaded word on her tongue stilled my heart. It was one of the only things I remembered of my mother. Witch. That’s what my father said she was. That’s all she was remembered for. “Please,” I said, not knowing what else to say. “I don’t know how to control it, and I know my mother would, but I don’t know where she is.”
Osburga opened the door wider, and stepped out of the door frame, to allow me room to pass. “You don’t control the sight. You learn how to let it not control you.”
I hesitated at the threshold, shifting my weight from one foot to the other. “Can you teach me?” I asked, tentative as a mouse, my voice barely more than a whisper. As if in response, the wind rushed through the trees around us, rustling the leaves in an eerie way that made my skin crawl. My mouth went dry, as the feeling of power moved through me. I shut my eyes again, stilling it, willing it away.
When I opened my eyes, Osburga was still standing before me, her hand resting on the door as if she had half a mind to close it on me. We stared at one another for a time before she finally asked, “Well, are you coming in, or not?”
I dipped my head in a bow to her, and ducked through the doorway into the dim cottage. She had a fire going in the hearth. Herbs were drying, hung from the ceiling along the walls. She had a stack of books, which astounded me. Only the monks had books. She smiled at me, as if she knew what I was thinking. She gestured to the table, shoved against the wall, next to a bed that looked too big, too grand, for a single woman alone in the woods. She had fabric over the windows, rather than shutters. I wondered how she kept out the chill.
I sat, and Osburga joined me. “Now, little witch,” she said. “Tell me why you’ve come.”
“I told you. I need help finding my mother…”
She interrupted. “You also said you want to learn how to control the sight.” She raised at eyebrow at me.
I swallowed hard as my hands began to sweat. This was a test. I held her eyes as she held mine. There was a spark of amusement there. She laughed after a moment, a short, pleasant sound that reminded me of an owl. I wondered what she would look like as an owl. A wise one, haunting the woods. It seemed fitting.
“Eadgyth,” she said slowly, as if she was savoring the sound and the feel of my name in her mouth, “you are a strange little witch.”
“I’m not a witch,” I protested. I thought I did not sound confident at all. “At least, I don’t want to be a witch.”
“Neither did I. But we don’t get to choose these things, do we?” Osburga reached for my hand, and she stroked my palm with her finger. She hands were weathered, the nails caked with earth. Her touch was light and soft. A smell of honeysuckle filled the air. I sighed with pleasure. Osburga smiled back at me, lovingly, like a proud mother. Like I had done something wonderful, though I wasn’t even sure I had done anything at all.
“How long have you had the powers?” she asked. She withdrew her touch from me, and the honeysuckles faded along with the pleasure.
Fear replaced it, a tightening across my chest and in my throat that threatened to have me squeaking out answers to her again. “It awakened in me before my mother disappeared… I was four, maybe five.”
Osburga nodded. She looked thoughtful, eyeing me as if to determine how old I was now. Would she know my age as she knew my name? Her eyes wandered to the hanging herbs. “Your mother was Wulfrun,” she said, her tone inquisitive.
“You knew her?” I asked.
“I know of her,” Osburga said. “They say she cursed the son of King Eadwig’s favorite ealdormen.”
I nodded, confirming the story that had propagated like gnats. “That is what is said of her.”
Osburga wrapped her knuckles across the table three times. “Tell me what really happened, little witch,” she said.
I wished she would stop calling me that, but as the sight took me, I knew I couldn’t argue. “Lord Cynewulf wanted her,” I said. The vision of my mother with Cynewulf was shadowy, the darkness of the forest at night, obscuring what had happened. I had seen this many times before, and the memory of it, though not entirely mine, lived inside me. I let the sight take me further into the dream. “She was gathering in the dark… something for her medicines. She did it at night so no one would see. Except he was there that night. And his son was there too.” I watched as Cynewulf and his son, Ealdred, confronted her, tried to persuade her, offered to pay her. She refused, and she had run from them to save herself from their violence. I felt the sweat begin to soak through the armpits of my shift as my heart raced. My mouth felt dry as a old bark.
Osburga touched my hand. I gasped in surprise and the sight left me. She leaned her face towards me, her eyes searching for something within, some kindred flame to which she was drawn. I could feel it too, our shared nature, as if we had been wrapped together in the same package once. There was a similar color to her soul, and I could smell on her the power that took hold of me sometimes. “I know Cynewulf, ” she said, her words like iron. “And his son would have been just like him, except for that fall from his horse.”
The horse had tripped over a stone. I heard the horse scream while I was darning socks. But the horse was not near at all. I saw my mother react to it too, dropping her knitting. I shook with fear, wondering, later, as I watched Cynewulf’s men carry Ealdred into the village on a litter, how I had heard it happen. Ealdred’s leg was twisted, he was screaming in pain. His cry was like the scream of his horse. Even then, the sight had me, even as young as I was. I had seen the horse go down, saw Ealdred fly from the saddle. The snap of his leg in the vision sent a shiver through me. His howling woke the dead. My mother had heard it just as I had heard it. I swallowed down the taste of his marrow that filled my mouth as I remembered. “They blamed by mother. Said that she had bewitched him.”
“Did she?” Osburga asked, her eyes now sparkling with mischief.
“Of course she didn’t,” I said, but the protest was weak, and grew weaker as I watched Osburga’s smile grow. “What do you know?” I asked.
“I know that if you are accused of bewitching, it usually means you have the power to do it.”
A shiver ran over me, as hair of my arms stood on end. “And… how would I know if I have the power to do it?” The question slid from me before I knew I was asking it.
When he came, I knew he was different than the other healers. Legion was afraid, and he was never afraid. His fear covered me like a sheet, hiding for just a moment all the rationality I had left. But he retreated so far into his own fear that I suddenly was free of him, just for a moment, and I dropped the rock that I had been using to slice open my arm again. I stood, the blood streaking down my forearm as I ran naked from the tombs. Legion’s fear overtook me again and I found myself in his control again, falling to my face at this healer’s feet.
I heard my voice, but the words were not my own. “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God?” I said. The other demons were stirring now, wailing, and their wails were also escaping my mouth. I pulled at my hair, and writhed at his feet.
“Come out of him,” this Jesus said. He said it with authority, with power. I could feel the demons loosening within me, being shaken loose from my soul. I laughed, the hope I thought was dead like a spring bursting from the ground. Legion shook me, my body flopping and bouncing hard enough to against the ground to bruise me. My arm was still steadily bleeding. I was not covered in blood.
“What is your name?” Jesus asked.
I tried to answer that my name was Dositheus, but Legion used my mouth to answer instead. “My name is Legion, for we are many.” The many others who inhabited me shrunk away from the admission. I grasped at Jesus’ cloak, in tears, nearly blinded with pain, feeling all the fear of each one of them as my own.
“Do not send us away!” Legion cried. I was weeping now, and the demons were also weeping, unable to resist the power of Jesus, this extraordinary healer, this magician, this Son of the Most High God. I wondered how Legion knew. I wondered if he had encountered Jesus before. But my mouth did not speak my own words. Legion cried out again to Jesus, this time begging, “Send us into the swine!”
Jesus stood over me, watching me writhe and wail. The power was flowing out of him and the demons could not resist it. They were slipping from me, but they were not yet gone. “You may go into the swine,” Jesus said.
The commotion had gathered a crowd. I screamed as the demons left me in a flood. It was agony. They poured out of me like oil, and when they were gone, I collapsed to the ground, weeping with relief.
I heard the swine squealing with rage. I had a momentary sense of pity for them, but the realization that they were no longer a part of me had me in tears again, this time of joy. I raised my head to watch them, swarming across the hill. The crowd watching was tense with surprise and fear. When the wine began to jump into the sea, the crowd went silent. I watched as the whole herd fled back into the sea from which the demons had first come.
I looked up into the face of Jesus. He was smiling at me. His eyes were kind and his smile was warm. “What is your name?” he asked again.
“Dositheus,” I whispered. I was ashamed of my nakedness, as I had not been in years. I did not rise from the ground, hiding myself from him and those who had gathered.
Jesus crouched next to me, and put his hand on my face. “Be well, Dositheus,” he said.
Someone tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned to looked, I saw my mother. I embraced her with abandon, openly weeping into her shoulder. She cradled me in her arm, like she had when I was young. She whispered my name over and over as she stroked my hair. “Dositheus,” she said. “My son.” Her voice was a balm. I could hear it so clearly now that Legion and the demons were gone from me.
I pulled away from her, wiping my face with forearm. Now instead tears, there was blood on my face. My mother kissed my forehead, and then lifted a robe over my head. She dressed me and pulled me to my feet. “Come, I will take care of you,” she said.
She led me away from the tombs, and I could see Jesus at the bottom of the hill, the crowd pressing in around him as he began to climb into a boat. My mother and I moved through the crowd, to the very front where Jesus stood. He had launched the boat into the water already.
“Wait!” I called, as the lake began to carry him away. “Let me come with you!”
“Go home!” he called.
The crowd began to disperse, their interest in this mysterious healer gone now that he was leaving. But I stood watching until he was so far out on the lake that I could no longer see him. I contemplated how the sea had brought destruction to me, and how it has also mysteriously brought my salvation. My arm was still bleeding, though the flow was not a fierce as before. I pressed a hand to the cut, trying to staunch the flow.
“Come,” my mother said. “Come home with me.”
I went with her, wondering why Jesus had come, and where he was going next.
I can’t get away from them. A multitude inside. Legion invites them and they come. Sometimes I don’t even hear myself screaming because the screaming inside me is so loud. I cut myself to remember that I am me. I wail to remember that I have a voice too.
You will never be free of me, Dositheus.
When Legion talks to me it is like death. It is like there is another me in the grave, and he has come to share his thoughts. Legion’s voice is my own, and he tells me where I can go, what I can do. I listen to him because I can’t refuse. Sometimes he controls me, and I disappear. It is not always so. Not when my mother comes to bring me food.
“Dositheus,” she says sadly. “Please eat, Dositheus.” She pushes the plate towards me. The demons inside me retreat for a moment. Legion is calmed by my mother’s presence. I am afraid that if I get too close to her that he will leave and go into her. She pleases him and I am terrified.
Eat, Dositheus. Do as Mother says.
I take the plate, dragging it across the ground with one hand, my eyes never leaving my mother. She smiles at me. I am still her son. She still loves me.
“Will you wear this?” she asks. She offers the tunic to me. It is fresh, never worn. She hold out the linen garment to me, her posture one of earnestness.
I look down my body- naked, scarred, dirty. “I can’t wear it,” I saw. “I’m not clean. It will stain.”
Mother smiles at me, a sigh of relief escaping her that it is me who speaks and not the demons. “I will bathe you,” she says, her eyes expectant, pleading. “Come home with me, and I will help you.”
I eat the food slowly, thinking.
We like it here among the dead. We will stay here, Dositheus.
“No. No. No,” I say. I repeat it too many times. I pull my hair until it begins to rip from my head. I spill the remaining food to the ground. “Let me be. Leave me alone.” The wailing begins and for a moment I don’t understand that it is me who wails.
My mother touches my arm. It shocks me from the screams inside me, the screams I offer. I catch her hand in mine. She has tears in her eyes. I let out a sob. She takes me into her arms like I am a child. I am a child. I am a child. A lost child. She smells like olive oil. She skin of her face as it presses against mine is warm. Her dress is soft. She cradles me until the sobs cease to wrack me.
You will not go with her.
Legion laughs at me. I pull away from my mother violently. I take the plate she brought and I fling it far from me as I scream. I rise from the ground and I scream into the sky. Over and over and over until I am hoarse and exhausted. I don’t know how long it went on. Too long. Too many demons. Too long inside me.
“And when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs, and no one could restrain him any more, even with a chain, for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces, and no one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always howling and cutting himself with stones.”Mark 5: 2-5
I was driven into this place by my family. The burden on them was too great, and so they released me. I live here among the dead because the dead do not disturb me. I am too disturbed already, and their silence is solace, unlike the living. Too many voices in my head. Too many. Too many. The voices of my family, of my old friends were loud amongst the chatter within me. The great multitude of being who have taken residence inside me.
I used to sit on the shore when I was boy, looking out across the water, wondering if I would ever see what was on the over side. That great chaos, full of wonder, mystery. And monsters. I don’t know if this was what invited him in. My curiosity. Stupidity! Or if it was something else- something I said, or did not say, or a curse placed upon me. Or perhaps the wrong person found out my name. Perhaps the one who calls himself Legion knew he was more powerful than me. And he came, and now I belong to him.
I was walking along the seashore when he came. He was a darkness on the deep, he movement barely noticeable, but his presence like a brewing storm. I flinched, convulsing as I went down. I do not know who found me. Perhaps a stranger. Perhaps my mother. I was just a boy. Small boy. So small. Too small for this. Weak. And made weaker by Legion.
I cried at night. My mother thought I was sick. She called physicians and magicians and healers and spirit workers from everywhere. They tied me when I thrashed, when I foamed at the mouth, when I lost my mind with rage. I felt inhuman. But my mother never looked at me like I was anything but her son. I am not. I am not. I am not. Not anything anymore. She kept me in the house against my father’s wishes.
“Throw him into the sea,” my father said. “Put the demon inside him back where it came from!”
The demons. The demons. There are demons. Many. Too many.
“No,” she said. My mother was kind to me. She believed I could be healed. She believed that someone would come to heal. She believed. I don’t believe anything anymore.
My father died. He grew ill after cutting his hand on a sickle. His hand withered, rotted. Then one day, he was dead. We mourned. The demons laughed.
He would have killed me. They all would have killed me if not for her.
“What do we do with Dositheus now?” asked my brother, as if I could not hear him from where they had tied me in the corner of the room. They had not let me out of the house to attend the funeral procession, or to mourn. Too wild. You have become inhuman. I stared wild eyed, crying, wailing. My father was dead. I was as good as dead.
My mother wrung her hands. “Untie him,” she said.
He did as she said. It was nightfall, and the demons always tormented the most when the sun was sinking. Sabbateus untied me, and I thrashed on the floor, wailing and pulling my hair. “Mother!’ I cried. “Mother!”
She held me, but Legion was too strong. I hurt her, pushing her over hard. I ran from the house. The little house by the sea where I lived. Until I came here. I don’t know how long I have been here, among these tombs. I will die here. I am already dead.
Sabbateus came for me, found me rolling on the seashore. I was hungry and thirsty but I could not ask for what I needed. He led me home. They bound me again. My mother fed me. Legion was calm sometimes when my mother was close. She quieted the chatter, the banter, the constant fighting within me. I loved her. She loved me despite what I had become.
“You are my son, Dositheus,” she said, wiping my chin. The cool water she offered me had been dribbling down my chin. “You are my son, and I love you.”
But love could not heal me. Love could not keep her safe from me. When she untied me, I hurt her, though I didn’t want to. It was Legion! It is always Legion who does it.
I grew, and the demons inside me grew stronger as my body matured. They found a blacksmith to bind me with chains. They shackled me in the house. Legion used to beat my hands against the floor until they were bloodied, trying to break the chains apart. He always did. And when we escaped, he always took me by the seaside, looking out over the water. But he never let me die. I wanted so badly just to die.
My mother still comes to see me. She can’t stay away, when my wailing drifts through the night air. She leaves me food. I eat sometimes, especially if she is near. Legion likes my mother. He leaves me less clouded when she comes near. I let her touch me, although I am afraid to touch her. She strokes me cheek and my hair as if I were still a small boy. She leaves me clothes, but I don’t need them. I am dead. I am waiting to die.
The stones are my only friends, as are the dead. No one comes but Mother. No one will ever come for me here. I am alone with Legion and his many minions.
I phoned Kathy Jo before I went to bed that night. We’d gotten that phone put in only about three years ago. Daddy always asked what we wanted it for, we could just talk to each other if we wanted to talk. But Momma had convinced him we needed it in case of emergencies, and to check on Aunt Annabelle when Uncle Alvey was in a bad way like he got from time to time.
The phone rang twice before Kathy Jo picked it up. “Hello?” she said lazily.
“Kathy Jo, it’s me, Peggy June. Listen, I know where to go, but we gotta go tomorrow.” I was rushing. I didn’t want anybody to start eavesdropping after the dishes were all washed up. Momma didn’t make me help because I’d been up to check on Mr. McCaffree that afternoon, and it was rule that you didn’t do dishes if went to check on him. That’s how she got us to agree to visit with him.
“What? Tomorrow? No, Peggy June. I gotta work at the store!” she protested.
“Listen! Momma’s gotta take Mr. McCaffree to town tomorrow morning. Tell your daddy to tell my daddy you’re sick. Then go out like you’re going to work once he leaves.”
“That’s not gonna work. If I tell Daddy I’m sick, then Momma’s gonna wonder why I’m going to work.” I could almost she her crossing her arms, wearing that smartypants smile like she knew so much better than me about everything just ’cause she was older.
“Come on, Kathy Jo! Figure out how to make it work. We gotta go tomorrow!”
She huffed into the phone. “Alright, Peggy June. I’ll figure something out. But you owe me for this.”
“Oh, I know. I’m gonna owe you a long time I think,” I said, grinning at my own joke. “See you tomorrow.”
Momma left the house next morning about 8:30, to give her enough time to get all the way to the hospital with Mr. McCaffree. Daddy said he was going down to the store early, so he left around the same time as Momma did. I pretended I didn’t feel good, just like I’d planned, and as they went out the door, I thought they might have suspected something was up. They didn’t say nothing to me about it though, just gave me that stink eye look as they went out the door, Jenny Kate and Mary Sue in tow.
“If you start feeling better later, you better find a way down to the store to help out,” Daddy said. “It’s stocking day.”
It sounded more fun that it actually was. Calling it “stocking day” made it sound like Christmas, but it was only when we put new cans out on the shelves. “Okay,” I said weakly, pulling an old afghan up to my chin as I hunkered down on the couch. I pretended to drift off to sleep until I was sure everybody was gone. Then I popped up and waited for Kathy Jo to come get me. It was like watching water boil- worse actually. Most boring morning of my life, watching out the window for Uncle Alvey’s car to come rolling into the drive.
When it finally did, I was so excited I hollered. I flew out of the house at lightning speed, making for Uncle Alvey’s old Ford as quick as a thoroughbred. I yanked open the door of the truck and climbed up onto the bench. Kathy Jo looked a bit nervous as she eyed me from behind the wheel.
“I sure hope you ain’t gettin’ us both in trouble with this con you’re pullin’ on your momma,” Kathy Jo said. “I didn’t exactly lie to mine, but I didn’t tell the truth neither, you hear me?” She lectured like she was grown. Irritating, since I would be just as grown as she was in a few years. She was looking over her shoulder as she backed down the gravel driveway.
“She’ll never know, Kathy Jo. Just hush up,” I said. “Just take me up past Mr. McCaffree’s place. He told me yesterday you gotta just keep on going until you get there.”
“That’s the way to everybody’s place,” Kathy Jo huffed. But she did as I said without any further comment on it. I held my breath as we rolled back Mr. McCaffree’s house. Of course nobody was there. He’d gone with Momma to town, but it still made me nervous. That irrational part of me was thinking all kinds of horrid stuff like “What they never left, and she sees us?” Silly, really. Momma would never let Mr. McCaffree miss his appointments.
We drove for longer than I thought was right, and I was just starting to wonder if maybe Mr. McCaffree had gotten it all wrong somehow when we turned round a bend in the road and I saw it- the Chew Witch’s old rickety bucket of a truck parked outside a rough looking house. I saw rough looking because the wood was rough and unfinished. There were web all over the outside windows. The roof looked like it might have leaks in it, and some of the gutter was hanging off the side of the porch. The porch was nice looking either. It had a big hole in it near the stairs. As we pulled in behind the Chew Witch’s black truck, I could see that somebody had put a couple cinderblocks on top of each other to create a makeshift stair case that avoided the rotted out wood.
Kathy Jo killed the engine of the Ford and we sat in silence for just a minute, staring at the house. My palms were all sweaty. “Well,” I said, trying to find my courage. “You gonna come with me?” I asked.
She sighed real heavy, and then shrugged. “Why not. I came all the way here.” Kathy Jo hopped down out of the truck and I followed quick behind her. But we went slow up the cinderblocks and across the porch. This place looked as good as abandoned and it gave me the creeps. I knocked on the door anyway to show Kathy Jo I was braver than I felt.
The Chew Witch didn’t answer. I knocked again harder. All I heard in return was the calling of birds up in the trees. I looked up at Kathy Jo. “What should we do?”
Kathy Jo frowned. “Well, she’d gotta be here. Her truck is here.” She stepped up beside me to the door and turned the handle. It wasn’t locked. The door creaked open, and Kathy Jo called inside, “Hello?”
From somewhere inside the house we heard a thumping, real rhythmic, but also frantic, like someone was trying to get our attention. All my hair stood on end. “Mrs. Mabry?” I called, louder than Kathy Jo had called. “Are you home?”
The thumping sound grew louder. Me and Kathy Jo followed it, winding through the house until we found the room where it was coming from. The door was only closed over, and we could see the footboard of a bed. “Mrs. Mabry?” I asked again. And this time we heard a human noise, like a whimper almost. It was a horrifying sound, but also one that made you wanna spring into action to help. Kathy Jo pushed open the door of the room so we could see all the way inside.
Mrs. Mabry was lying in her bed, still in her nightgown, but her face looked all wrong. She was thumping her arm against the headboard. She didn’t turn to look at us at all, she was just staring straight up at the ceiling. The way her mouth drooped on one side filled me with dread. I’d seen Kathy Jo’s granny like that once, before she died. I didn’t know exactly what it meant, but I knew we had to get her help.
“She’s having a stroke, Peggy June!” Kathy Jo ran over to the bed. “It’s okay, now,” she said tenderly, grabbing Mrs. Mabry’s hand to still it. “Hey, hey, you just hush. We’ll get you some help, ok?”
Mrs. Mabry sounded like she was trying to talk back, but it was just a jumbled up mess, like her mouth was filled with marbles.
Somehow- and I still don’t know now- me and Kathy Jo managed to carry Mrs. Mabry out of her house and put her in the bed of the Ford. Then Kathy Jo drove as fast as she dared down the mountain to the grocery store. Before the truck even stopped rolling, I had flung open the door and went running and yelling for Daddy. He came fast, practically running up the store aisles himself when he heard that distress in my voice.
“Peggy June!” he exclaimed. “I thought you were sick, child!”
“Daddy, you gotta call an ambulance,” I said, not wanting to waste any time.
“What?” he asked, his confusion rooting him to the floor. I could see the phone right next to the check stand. I started to move towards it, but Daddy caught my arm. “What’s going on?” he asked, all stern, but also looking mighty scared.
“Daddy, Mrs. Mabry’s in the back of the truck. Kathy Jo says she’s had a stroke you gotta get an ambulance here to help her!”
I was so glad that he didn’t ask any other questions of me before he picked up the phone and called 9-1-1.
The White Stone, a short story I published on The Quick and the Dead in 2022 has been lengthened into a novel, and is now live on Kickstarter. The campaign runs until October 31 at 6 pm EDT. If you enjoyed reading The White Stone and the companion stories published on this blog, I encourage you to check out the full novel. Use the the embedded link below to make a contribution to the campaign and select your reward- either a hardcover or softcover version of the book. Issa Brown has beautifully illustrated 14 characters from the novel which will be included in color in every print copy. My pie-in-sky stretch goal is to narrate an audiobook of this story along with two of my friends.
Thank you for reading my work. I hope you enjoy The White Stone.
The Quick and the Dead 