Dark
A thin haze hung suspended between the buildings like an exhalation waiting to dispelled; as though one deep breath from the living city would clear the alleys and passageways. Droplets permeated the fabric of her long wool coat making it chafe against her skin.
She stepped over puddles as though she was picking her way through a graveyard which was fitting as the burden she carried should have been committed to the ground weeks before. The dead child’s limbs were bound at knee and wrist by ribbons. Another lay across his sightless eyes like a blindfold.
Predators watched her pick her way down the street, her progress slow and deliberate. The footpads, robbers and bandits lurking within the gloom were drawn and repelled by the lone figure, this tragic woman dressed in black. An air of finality clung to her like a phantom of death, her movements unhurried and deliberate. Any one of them could have stepped up to her and not have been noticed; she was far more concerned that her shadow was never caught by the mirrored surfaces that had gathered in the dips and depressions of the cobbled street. Her hollow eyes kept looking down upon the cradled form, adjusting a shawl about his blued limbs, each time checking where their shadows fell. Each thug in turn recognised that the woman had nothing for them and turned their backs to her passing, even those who traded in misery realised that there was no transaction to be made.
Denial kept the rotting body of her son with her, unable to release him to an earthly chamber without trying everything to bring him back. He shouldn’t have died; it wasn’t his time. He wasn’t that ill, a sniffle. Nothing more. But he was as still as lifeless as moment she found him all those days ago.
There were ghosts that walked with her that night, reaching out from the water wanting to claim the young soul. Superstitious times these, but as long as their likeness didn’t fall into the water she knew that they couldn’t be trapped.
Vapour rose from the collected rainfall before her like serpents, blocking and preventing her from taking the most direct route. Hissing and coiling from the ground like sentinels barring her passage to the Black Seer; Lord of Death and Necromancers. The watery wraiths had nothing against her resolve, their toothy maws leaving nothing more than beads of water upon her overcoat.
She was close.
Her destination was a shack at the end of an alley, more makeshift than constructed, debris and rubble that had been arranged in such a way to form a hovel.
Water and soil clung to the Dark Seer’s beard clumping the strands together into rat’s tails, small bones -- finger bones -- tied into his facial hair rattled together as he acknowledged her presence. He held out his hands, almost paternal, for the limp bundle, and he took the boy carefully as though the child had simply fallen asleep.
He gazed at the still form, almost lovingly. The title and reputation of this feared sorcerer melted away with his gaze as he held the child, becoming just a man rather than the myth that had brought her here.
Unsure of herself, she wavered on the threshold.
The seer placed the body carefully onto a makeshift table and placed his hand on the blindfold where the boy’s eyes would have been.
“His spirit has not moved on,” he stated. A thrill, like a lightning strike shuddered through her body. Was it because of what he said that she felt something, or was it her imagination that she could feel a presence, not quite life, but something fragile trapped within the unmoving shell? It had to be her son. “You can bring him back?” Solemnly, the seer shook his head, “No, not here, but somewhere close. That is, if you can pay the price.” This puzzled her. Not really able to comprehend what he had said. How close was close? Frantic with anticipation, she said without thinking, “I can go to him.”
Her vision closed in, unable to focus on anything but the fading light in the seer’s eyes. As they sank into his face like burning coals within a tangled mass of briars, she too was drawn into the void. A spider crawled out of his beard and seemed to vanish into a gaping hole where his eye had been moments before. His voice also changed, assuming the timbre of the graveyard, each word like a spade striking stony ground. “You know that death is a one way door?” “Help me.” She whispered. Then more quietly, “I love him.” The spectre said, “Come to me then, and I can give you what you ask, or walk away and leave your son here.” He opened the folds of his robe. The hand by his side unhooking a curved blade from his belt, while the other outstretched, beckoning. The seer’s face was no longer his own, but a grinning skull. What choice did she have?
Darkness descended; an encompassing blackness that consumed all. When the veil parted, tendrils of vapour streamed away from the very stones. There was no water in the streets, though the hiss and roar of the rain seemed to overwhelm every one of her senses. Buffeted and taunted by a downpour she could feel but not see, she looked around. The world had moved on.
Pulled and stretched, the buildings seemed skewed, eroding before her eyes as though thousands of years were passing every second.
There were shadows around her, ghosts lurking between the shifting passageways that moved without substance. Their flitting touches left frost upon her skin. The seer’s abode had gone, and she was out into the open streets again. Had she been drugged? After all she had been through it had come to this. Losing the one thing that mattered to her. The charlatan had managed to make her give up her son where her husband and brothers had failed. Bitterness swelled up from within, tears falling swiftly down her face. How? How had it done it to her?
The last she remembered was his tight embrace, smelling his musty smell and feeling the edge of the table, where her son lay, pressed against her back. The alley was gone. The seer’s house no more.
She was stood in an empty square beset by ghosts. This wasn’t the city she knew. It looked different, smelt different. All the landmarks she knew were gone.
Lost, without purpose she stood there, crying. She pulled her coat tighter about her frame. There was nothing here for her anymore.
Wait.
Only a child’s voice calling for his mother.
