Chapter 39.

 

Darkness can be lonely.

 

Tal found herself,

Her authentic self alone in the pitch ambience of the occasion.

The numerous glossy eyes of Joro stared back at her, as she took a glimpse of her reflection, though terrible it was.

This place now stood Barren, melancholy and necropolitan,

As a brisk wind hailed them and chilled the very marrow of their bones. Candles flickered, and the broken glass that littered the floor bit spitefully into Tallulah’s’ skin.

There she lay in a heap, weeping, like a crippled animal who coveted a release. Only to be denied any consolation of mercy by the uncaring hand of fate.

“pull yourself together,” whispered the cuckoo-bee-spider from her corner, “I still need you,”. She said almost pleading as she hobbled about on her seven and three-quarter legs. Tallulah’s rage peaked and turned towards Joro.

She would have gnashed her teeth and wailed in contempt, but she could scarcely make eye contact, even in anger as it seeped from every pore. The prospect of confronting her true reflection mocked her in every eye that was unflinching, cold and as black as coal.

 

Until, finally, she spied her effigy, an abomination.

“there’s no time!” said Joro “not now!!!” with added dramatic flair.

“Nooooo!!” she shrieked. “IT’S NOT FAIR!!!…I… I want to feel normal again,”. She sobbed her heart out as Joro could feel the upset in her voice.

As she sank into a stupor, crestfallen.

 

She re-arose moments later, as the crying subsided like an evening shower.

Sighing, she dusted the fragments of shattered glass from her person as the coarse emotion imploded and abruptly became absent.

 

Inky tears fell invisibly down the arches of her cheeks that no one saw in the dark. Only the amber of her eyes persisted, burning out of a black silhouette that itself was consumed in blackness. Even the heartlessness of Jn Joro abided some small sympathy for her plight and wanted to console the wraith… but did not know how too.

“be careful what you wish for,” said the now unnerving whispers of the maître d in calcination “what’s normality for the spider is chaos for the fly,”

“WHAT!!!!” snapped Lullah

 

Jn Joro almost didn’t want to ask the next question, because what if the answer were unthinkable “Where’s Elkie?” She inquired through tight jaws most cautiously. Tal glanced back at her. She had been too preoccupied with her affairs to have committed a moment’s pause. Let alone concerned herself about what may have become of her sibling Grozette.

A mystery.

Was she still alive, they wondered?

 

——-

Of course, she wasn’t! She was a ghost, after all!

But at least for now she was away from the danger.

The Hungry Ghost wandered through the murky fog, beyond the columns that almost appeared like trees through the gloom. It was not so black that she couldn’t see moonlight through the unoccupied spaces that once-mighty windows inhabited.

Alas, they now stood deserted and hollow as the wind whistled and shook the tapestries and the curtains. Advancing almost blindly, it was like gazing through a funerie veil.

 

Passing a fallen candelabra, she inhaled the bouquet of hot Casper wax that seeped onto the white marble and gold flooring. She saw broken candlesticks lying awry like toppled skittles. It made her eerily uncomfortable as she trudged on and identified another light, far off in the distance.

It perked her curiosity and tugged at her navel and like the flicker of a ghost moths wing,

She was drawn toward it.

 

There was an anomaly that seemed to be mimicking her. It was no coincidence. The hungry ghost became cognisant of someone or something else haunting her, pursuing her as she heard heavy footsteps, breathing and the distant voice of Grozette say “there you are!”

she turned around to see.

The Sorceress looking beaten down. Shrapnel lacerated her handsome face, and her flowing locks of slate seemed unsettled and soaked with blood and sweat.

She seemed somewhat traumatised.

As she hugged her and witnessed pain flit across her face. “are you ok?” She inquired warily, but no answer came back.

Just a soft “ugh!” which is all she could manage.

 

Now United, the two of them looked towards the shining in the distance, “what you suppose that is?” asked Grozette, finding her voice. “don’t know’!” answered Elkie curiously.

“I guess we’ll find out,” announced the Witch as they proceeded on their course with heavy legs.

—-

Life is like a reunion.

 

The chance to return to yourself.

 

There she lay. Alone. A treasure, the perfect wish personified.

 

The Brownie opened her wide eyes. She was as cold as a stone, but her head burnt with fire as her pupils dilated in the low intensity of light. Her mouth felt parched. She reminisced on a dark memory that led her to here and now. “no, no,” She whimpered and held her delicate hands to her breast, in grief as she greeted sadness and caressed the smoothness of her hide. It was unblemished. She gulped hard, a mouthful of Incensed infused air in distress. It left a bitter taste in her mouth.

 

Sitting up was painful. She felt the cold kiss of marble against her rump, as she Swayed her silky legs over the side of the altar carelessly into the coolness of the night and the unknown.

Releasing her raven locks, she plunged them down, down over her mysterious face as she shook off her paraesthesia.

 

 

“Googlee,” she said as if something had punched her in the gut, like a battering ram. She searched herself for the memory that was a bitter pill to swallow, as she held herself and grieved for her fallen ally.

There was a ghost of a light about her. She shone in the darkness, like the silver moon on the crest of the river Ylla, a pale blur, like the white of her gown.

Now, she felt a peculiar irritation in her snout and sought to suppress the sensation of sneezing.

Clinching two fingers underneath her nose. She could not stifle it.

Atchoo!

A small bead of light ejected and seemed to swirl across the torrents of the air. She followed it around carefully with her warm brown eyes as it appeared to orbit her head.” Eulin is that you?” she asked curiously.

She perceived the faint and far off answer return, ” Jussi,”

“it…. is you…!” she corroborated in half a mind and a slight flicker of promise as she secured what remained of her confidence?

She took comfort that Eulin was still with her in some sense.

 

It was then she beheld the radiance of her skin, she looked upon the henna type tattoos that had sprouted from nowhere, they had painted her arms in sleeves. Bright and vibrant, until she felt incandescent. As she peeked beneath the neckline of her bodice. Only to find inscriptions of illumination there, too.  It reminded her of finely stitched silk.

 

In contrast, she watched out over the dark seeping all about her whispering, encroaching, an infestation as she gazed around the environment. All she could recognise were the benches and the aisle that lead to a denser shadow — not your usual darkness. Thick, inky blackness, like oil in water that didn’t mix, didn’t belong here and was wholly alien to this place.

A sickness that was turning the sanctity of the ground fallow.

The little sprite found herself reciting something in a foreign tongue that seemed older than the stone that built the temple. It had a reassuring ring to it.

 

Is cuideachta an saol,

is mar sin a chas mé leat ar dtús

Casfaidh muid lena chéile aríst

nuair a bheas ár súile tuirseach,

leath istigh is leath amuigh idir na spásannaí.

 

As she looked upon the veil of metastasising gloom.

 

It appeared to be ebbing away from her. She arose and stroked the white silver hem of her camise as she weaved a few paces to the left and then diagonally a few paces to the right.

Eulin hovered above. The cold tiles lay beneath her bare feet as she stood provocatively in the centre of the aisle with her ankles wrapped in white latticed silk. Gawping deep into the dark, until she saw two figures gradually develop from the gloom. Was it friend or foe, she worried as she held her breath? To her relief, it was Grozette and Li Elkie.

 

There she stood with bewilderment etched upon her face.

Elkie looked upon her.

Is this real, should she pinch herself, she asked?

Was this some new devilry?

She searched herself as a wave of emotion overwhelmed her and shuttled off her feet like a chariot. ” sprite!!!! ” she called out wildly as she hugged her intensely with her slight childlike stature.

“oh, I’m so glad you’re.”

Silence chased her words like a runaway train as the little sprite seemed somehow changed.

“it’s me. Your Elkie. Don’t you know your Elkie?”

The Brownie smiled though she seemed to conceal an ounce of misery, “of course, how could I ever forget one so vibrant as you Li Elkie… how would I have got this far without you,”

“I will be sad when we part,”

“what I… I,”  Elkie couldn’t find the words to convey her sadness “never!” She resounded in denial.

“Listen to me! you’re going to get what you deserve,” she promised as if she had weighed up all the variables and it was somehow indeed feasible but unfathomable.

“I’m not sure I like the sound of that,” she said rhetorically.

The little sprite smiled and embraced the hungry ghost once more “you will, you must, go where I cannot,” she spelt out in broken Meese alluding to something positive.

Yet, Elkie felt much poorer for it.

“How could I want something different for you, I love you,” said the Silk Faery as she spoke about the affection, she carried with her that was deeper than even a mothers and child bond.

“but that is not for now!” She cautioned as she turned towards Grozette.

“Hello Windwaker,” she uttered as if she were better acquainted than she had let on.

The wizardess replied through her cracked lips, “Hello Silk Faery!”

As she took both of her hands and bowed her head. “your eminence,”

There was no call and no echo of singing.

This space was empty now, only the sound of the restless filled wind remained.

In the next breath, the little sprite said flatly. “We must prepare ourselves in readiness for this final stand,” as the Brownie led them toward a bare wall with exquisitely rendered murals of the night sky and astrology of ancient depictions. She drew her finger in the shape of Aries. The wall moved sluggishly into another white room. There stood mannequins of armour in just the proper proportions for each of them.

 

—–

Esmie once documented that in the material world about us, as in every sphere that roams the heavens. There was ambrosia, and the antithesis of ambrosia was pernicious manna. In consequence, there were those grains that were determined to be good. Then there were those that were presumed to be tainted.

 

Seeds like deeds often are invisible; they sleep deep in the heart of the earth’s darkness until someday they are corrupted with the desire to be.

 

The Knightmare Hung in a disembodied cloud retracting into denseness until he reclaimed his old form the form of a man, that was almost a man in the very loosest sense of the idea.

 

There he stood, both notorious and terrible as he lingered inside the heart of the rotunda. Too late to be reconciled with Grozette and her companions, but too driven by destiny to turn away defeated.

Manoeuvred by the madness of the one wand. He loitered and skulked about, looking for clues left by the devious band of thieves that had stolen away from his blessed property.

 

Until he found signs of their whereabouts and their moving’s and drew his plans to desolate and destroy, he looked on with his crimson eyes; there would be no more sunrises for Lyness one way or another.

 

 

But he was not alone. Two of them watched on from the shadows they had been watching closely with anticipation.

 

Joro calmed herself, “my Temple” she muttered aloud. a coarse whisper, was all that remained of Tallulah’s voice asked, “what does he want?”

“what all men with madness want, Power and vulgarity,”

The big spider simmered as she let her more personal sentiments slip one by one like knots on a piece of the fine cord “chain me to a pillar like a pet in a menagerie…. leave me to die, would you?!'” She said in expressions of contrariety

“you know we have the element of surprise,”  said the Wraith as she intimated with a nod.

“do not let him speak, he will seek to bewitch us,”

“Aye” replied the nebulous shadow.

 

Cloaked in shadow, she made herself a huntress stalking her prey, like a she-wolf deadly and beyond detection?

The Spider. Used a more sophisticated approach, a more refined predator of a primordial sort, archaic and terrifying? She crawled up on the wall and disappeared into the black void that was the eaves of the grand hall? Death waiting to pounce from above a tender trap, a double bluff ambushing an ambush.

 

would it be that easy?

—

Inside the White chamber, they rested; it seemed almost too bright as it bleached all the colours in the room.

Elkie could not make out where the source of the light came from, or where the walls started or ended, or even the corners. Maybe there were none, she thought to herself ominously. There resonated an inaudible hum, a quaking very subtly.

Another odd emotion.

The discarding of the clothes.

The garments she had died in. It was slightly underwhelming. She had longed for the day of changing her frumpy two-piece gown. Not that she wasn’t overly prude, she supposed it to be symbolic, nevertheless.

Now she stood, a legitimate warrior at last, in her armour an inch taller in her boots.

All grown up, yet she was much older than her appearance seemed to tell.

She wondered if her mother and father would’ve been proud of her as her smile waned, and her sadness showed.

“I wanted to be a dancer…. not a warrior,” she said with a frown. She suddenly ground to a halt and settled her hand on her heart.

Silence, even the hum had dissipated.

She remembered the wisdom of Tumjai, who once told her most old stories were really about one thing: saving your father from the underworld, though she didn’t realise what it truly meant.

Passing a cursory glance towards the little sprite who seemed to be basking in the glory of Elkies transformation. Her smile radiated infectiously and somehow made her mood lighten. It was then she recalled the strange key with the painite ruby, that she had kept in good faith.

“Sprite, I have something that belongs to you!” She said as she unleashed the garland from her collar and held the curious gold & platinum key in both hands like she was giving alms.

 

Li Elkie placed it around Brownies slender neck, as if she were awarding a key to the city, for deeds yet unknown but held in high esteem as good collateral.

 

It was as if she were now complete the last step trod on a greater journey which led back to this moment.

As the two of them shared memories in silence.

“I understand, now… Why they call you, a Silk faery,”

 

She looked over her bare skin and saw strange markings daubed upon her pelt.

 

Grozette approached them. She appeared somewhat better as she sheathed ivry in its holder and finished fitting herself in the armour that was meant for her.

 

“its time,” said the Wizardess

“Are you sure?” she asked on a cryptic note as if there was a kernel of truth that had been omitted but was known amongst them.

She smiled sombrely and just said just above a whisper “remember me,”

“well then, let’s not keep everyone waiting,”

As she continued in a voice that almost seemed grander than any mortal should possess. “Whom so ever has eyes to see and ears to listen? Hear my voice, open the last portal before that of the spirit, the mariners’ gate, and whatever fate befalls… know this, we stood against evil itself… to return home no more.” In a blink of an eye, they were gone.

 

The light in the room changed, and as if by magic or science, they found themselves standing somewhere else.

 

In the great hall, staring at their enemy.

 

The Knightmare.