Black Body by H. C. Turk

Author:H. C. Turk [Turk, H. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: witches
Publisher: H. C. Turk
Published: 2017-02-26T16:00:00+00:00

Book III: Wales

Chapter 21

Poison In The Land

The witches gained Bournchester with enough daylight remaining to find an empty portico for the night’s sleeping. Nothing fearful found us, Bournchester seeming no more than an edge of London. As I slept, I seemed in a dream because my dead sister had returned, my greatest desires were being manifested, and the extremes of my beliefs in the reality of the world were found limited; for when had last a dream come true that was not a nightmare?

Up with the sun and the earliest sinners, Marybelle and I walked until finding a carriage out for its day of work, whereupon we sought passage to our next goal, the city of Oxford. Why, this man’s very company would take us that far, though not in this local buggy. Conveyed to the driver’s office, Marybelle made arrangements while I avoided sinners. Walking nowhere as we waited for our next conveyance, Marybelle and I discovered a woman selling produce from a cart, and feast we did on cucumbers. Glutted on natural food, the satisfied youth could not resist chatting about previous theater.

“If acceptable, I would know of your living since that last instance on the sinners’ boat when I lost you.”

“From that instance shall be a gap in my telling, for the task of losing the rock and gaining land is one I cannot describe. When thoughts of that journey come, I pray God that they leave. Yet because I did gain land again, at times I feel I have complete power over God’s waters. At others, I feel the first drop will kill me.”

“No more shall I inquire of that wet journey, for I have a similar sense of water’s terror, and can imagine your survival no more than you can describe it. But I will ask of that following era, wondering how again I became part of your living.”

“This tale I will tell, in that you are either the center or the end. Once out of the sea, I continued with my old living. Peace I had, but not lasting, in that a blight on the sinners’ potato growings came which they believed was caused by witches. Many sinners and most witches of the island were killed thereafter, and this was the devil’s stroke to tell me to leave. Thus, I became a demon, the type you and I call sinner. I became a thief, and thieving is an act of sinners. But steal I did in Jonsway until with enough money to buy passage across the sea. In greater England, I deemed London the best place to go, for there lived Rathel, and you. No other witch was known to me. Poverty was ever my way, and I lived between buildings, seeking the smell of criminals. In London is Penstone Place and the thickest part of criminals. There I lived.”

“I know of Penstone,” I confessed, not mentioning my own thievery.

“The criminals have their own society. They found no interest in me. Well they know their wares, not bothering to steal from those who have naught.

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