The Waiting Usurper by A M Vivian

Author:A M Vivian [Vivian, A M]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781916216815
Publisher: Walter's Writing Emporium
Published: 2019-10-23T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter 41

I BLOW TOO HARD and too fast into the flames. They fight back, feeding off the heat of my fury. There’s only one person I want to see tonight: the woman whose fault all this is. I chuck the herbs and dried flowers at the fire, some missing it completely and getting lost amongst the dirt and ashes. My incantation rises and dips as I struggle to remain in control of my breath. I’m shouting, demanding: my voice is loud enough to carry from the forgotten graves into village homes and worry dreamers. It should. It should get into the mud, beyond the mud, beyond the horizon to wherever the dead dwell. They killed the nursemaid. They were sent by the gods. I’m as sure of it as I am the ground, hard and cold beneath my knees.

With the First Queen comes the odour of decay. Her mouth hangs open, jaw gnawed at. Her eyes are blank sky.

‘What was that covenant for?’ I demand, too angry for patience, for reverence.

Her smile is enigmatic, even with her jaw half hanging off. ‘Whatever you wanted. Whatever was in your heart.’

‘Onnachild stopped, the battle stopped, you know this. No more death.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Yes. You know that’s what I wanted.’

Why is she still smiling at me, even as pieces of her jaw keep disintegrating and dissipating into the stormy night? She’s becoming as dense as the rain clouds, a green tint coming to her form. Pond green. ‘Then that is what they will do.’ There is sarcasm in her voice.

‘Stop being so evasive. Mantona said something had been let out. What?’

She laughs, crudely, a mimicry of Vill’s laughter and puffs of noxious smoke spurt from her mouth. They surge at me, turning into small naked people with grotesque features as they convulse around my face.

‘Mating,’ she burbles. ‘Mating, mating, fucking.’ Her face rushes at me. I flail backwards. She’s growing denser and bigger, claiming the very edges of the horizon. The smell of burning flesh fills the night. It gets in my eyes, smarting. It gets in my mouth. My cut is bleeding.

‘Don’t,’ I scream. ‘Tell me. What will they do? How do I undo the covenant, stop them?’

‘He’s handsome, is he not? He makes you pant, does he not?’

Then she’s gone. My questions unanswered. The fire burns and smoke continues to spiral up to the sky, formless. I scrub in the mud for the herbs that missed earlier and then throw anything and everything onto the fire but it is smothered. I shout for my grandmother, for Aelius, for the gods. I shout at the stormy sky, ‘Leave Eldini alone. No more death. No more death. No more.’

My words are not louder than the thunder. The flash of lightning is a mockery of a fire I can’t control. Chilling whites, blue, black, a strip of red across the sky is what’s left. I tip onto my hands and knees, lower my forehead to the mud, and whisper prayers into where we all must return.

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