Chapter 14: Beldren What we Deserve, Part 6

Beldren woke the next day to a chunk of bread and dried meat. He ate so fast that he retched the food back up. A second meal appeared near dark. This time, though his body screamed for speed, he kept control and chewed and swallowed slowly. When the sisters returned he endured another round of feeding, and another visit from Ismene's mental prodding.

With each day and each meal, Beldren's mind grew clearer, but the nightly blood loss kept him physically weak and too exhausted to fight. The air grew chillier. He smelled autumn on the wind. He didn't know how long he'd been there, but thoughts of escape had long fled. He thought only of staying alive for another hour, another day, as though something wondrous might happen if he could only last that little longer.

The infection started in a bite on his arm and spread to others. His skin around the wounds grew red and puffy. Puss oozed down his shoulder and he picked the maggots out of his elbow. It was just as Mabel said; their provisions always died. That was what he was; a provision, a meal. Livestock.

It was only Mabel who came to him that night. "Ismene has organized a party to cheer her dreary mood. She has bled a slave, so we will not be coming out."

"You are here," he murmured.

"Yes, for I snuck out to make sure you were well. Ismene doesn't like us to come without her." She crouched in the hay in front of him and frowned. "You are ill, sir."

He nodded.

"'Tis a pity. Of all our guests in this ghastly colony you have been my favorite. There is no civilization here, no manners or gentle wills. All are brutish and rough with short tempers and uneducated words. I miss Europe. London and Paris. Have you been there?"

He nodded again.

"I thought you had, for your good breeding shows, even in these conditions. It is why you have lasted so much longer than the others we have kept. Tell me, was your father a lord?"

"Have you not walked in my mind as Ismene does?"

"No. Thomasin and I come from a different master, and so our gift is not the same as Ismene's. We do not wander thoughts, but instead can bring someone into our dreams. Would you like to see?"

He wondered vaguely what a witch dreamed about, and nodded again.

She smiled, then suddenly the barn, the hay, the smell of sweat and dirt and filth disappeared. He half lay on a hillock of green grass, his back propped against a stone wall. An ordered flower garden spread out before him. Heavy headed blossoms bobbed in the breeze and the sun warmed his skin.

"Where am I?" He tried to stand but invisible bonds pulled him back.

"Your body is still in the pantry," she explained. "But your mind, your senses, they are here with me. This is my secret garden, where I go when I miss the light and the life I lived before." She straightened and moved to a flower bush. "Poor Thomasin cannot come into her own dreams, only give them to others. I find that sad." She bent to sniff a flower, then gave a soft smile. "Though this moment is not as real for me as it might be for you. I have forgotten what the sun feels like, and the flowers' scent, and so they feel like nothing, smell like nothing. Perhaps it is because I know that this is not real, only a fancy. Ismene calls these illusions, and says that Thomasin and I are Illusionists, but I prefer to call us dream weavers. The title holds more beauty, don't you think?"

The garden faded and Beldren was back in the shed. The dark and filth that he had accepted over the slow weeks was now made unbearable by the short reprieve. The small taste of sunlight, of fresh air, had given him back his craving for escape, for life, for freedom.

At any cost.

He kept his voice light. "How did you receive this gift? Did you and your sisters summon this demon? Or did he choose you?"

"Demon? There was no demon, only another of our kind. She took my blood from me and gave me hers and I became like she; a walker of shadows who must drink blood to sustain my life. Thomasin was with her already, but our master's depressive nature and fits of rage were disconcerting. When our fifty year debt was paid we left her and meant to make our way in the world alone. Then we found Ismene and so formed our sisterhood."

Beldren's mind clicked through her story and the implications. "You call your debt a fifty-year debt, but surely you cannot mean actual years? You are a maid of no more than nineteen unless my eyes be deceived."

She giggled. "How you flatter me, sir, for I am more than two hundred years. With this gift comes another, that of immortality. I will walk the shadows until Judgement Day, as will all of my kind. Neither sickness nor the decay of time will ever touch us. I was on my death bed, you see, when she came to me and plucked me from the mortal world and into this one. In her blood was life immortal."

Beldren was nearly giddy with the possibilities her words opened. Had he been told this a year ago he'd have never believed it, but now, after everything he'd seen, everything he'd been through, it sounded real and sane, and desirable. "You say another of your kind gave you their blood and so healed and saved you to live forever?" She nodded. "And you could do the same? Give this gift to another?"

Mabel's brows arched in surprise. "Yes, I imagine. I have never tried, but there are no impediments that I know of. Excepting I would first require Ismene's permission, as the master of our coven."

With those words reality crashed back. Ismene would never allow her to make him one of them. She would leave him in the shed to die of infection, as Patrick had died. "I find it interesting that you must always ask Ismene's permission, as though she has a superior intellect and needs to approve your actions."

"Sir, you misunderstand. It is not that she finds my intelligence less. She is the master, which makes her the head of the coven."

"I apologize. She simply does not trust to your intelligence."

"Ismene trusts us." Despite Mabel's words, her voice sounded unsure.

"Of course she does. That is why she allows you to come and go as you please, such as to the pantry."

"Ismene worries that we will release the provender. Thomasin did so once. It was a young boy of nine or ten that reminded her of her dead son. Ismene was angry for months over that rebellion."

"Rebellion. Yes, because doing something that was not approved by Ismene would be the same as rebelling against a slave's master."

Mabel looked aggravated. "You twist my words, sir."

"No, you twist their meaning in your mind because you love Ismene and do not wish to see the ill in her, though you do see it, regardless. You see it in the way she barks orders at you, in the way she cuts off your words, in the way she must always feed first, enter and exit first, while you and Thomasin follow, as slaves do their master, as do citizens who are of a lower class than their lord."

"That is not It is not so."

"Of course not. My mistake. I know only what I have seen. No doubt when you are away from the pantry her treatment of you changes; she is kinder, gentler, listens to what you have to say, what you think and want. Allows you a say in all things governing the household."

Mabel's frown deepened. "Not precisely. But should I want something deeply, and say to her that I must have it so, she would not object."

"As she did not object to Thomasin freeing the child? Ah, but you would know Ismene better than I. She is your master, to whom you owe a debt."

"I owe her no debt," Mabel snapped. "We have sworn loyalty to her, but such a union may be dissolved at will. We stay because we choose to do so."

Beldren swallowed hard, his mouth and throat dry with fever and so much speech. "Then you are free to do as you wish, and as such do not need to ask Ismene's permission, since she is not your mother nor your owner, but your equal. One does not need permission of equals."

"Perhaps," Mabel said slowly.

He managed a rough chuckle. "I must disagree with such notions. I fear if you were to do something she did not approve of for instance to pass your gift to someone without permission she would show the face of a tyrant and exact a severe punishment. But come, if you are happy in such an arrangement happy to be ruled then who am I to say anything?"

"Ismene is no tyrant." Mabel glared. "What she does, she does for our own protection and betterment. Should I wish to bring another into our circle she would not punish, but welcome. I would never be happy to be ruled, to be lorded over."

"And if Ismene showed you wrong, if she proved her tyrannical nature and revealed the truth of her opinions? For example if she were to destroy one whom you had given the gift to?"

"Thomasin and I would leave! We would never stay with one who would murder our own kind, or who would dictate such things to us without care for our own wants and desires."

Beldren relaxed, the challenge gone from his tone. "And so I believe you would, for you are brave and do not need Ismene, only stay with her out of love. I would hope she returns the same love to you."

"She does, and I will show you."

"How?"