Difference between revisions of "Anju the Curst"

Revision as of 19:54, 29 September 2017

The Making of Anju

Mother told me nothing of my making. No, that is not entirely true, she told me facts, little snippets of the horror that is my existence, but she didn't really tell me ABOUT it, only slipped details that she immediately tried to take back.

But the truth, the whole terrible truth of it all, that she would not give to me. That is why I had to take it from her. I will not be sorry for that, it was her fault for keeping secrets. It was MY secret too, not just hers and she should not have been so cruel in hoarding it. I am sorry that she is dead, but I will not feel guilty for it. She should have just told me.

It was the fat little green frog that gave me the key to Mother's puzzle. I have always been good at catching frogs in the garden, even though Mother told me not to trouble them. I never hurt them, I mean that I never meant to hurt them. Sometimes when you grab you have to squeeze and sometimes you squeeze too hard, but mostly I let them go, just not in our garden.

But this frog, this one was different. I knew it the first time I saw him. He didn't act like a frog. I never saw him come or go, only be there sometimes and not be there others. His colors were wrong too, his green too bright and the red markings around his eyes too much like fire to be an accident. This frog I could not catch, not with all of my skill. Yet he haunted my steps. I would feel him looking at me before I saw him, and always behind me.

In time I started to talk to him just to salve my ego. I called him Fatso and I told him all of the things that little girls whisper to their imaginary friends. None of the other children would play with me and even if they wanted to their parents were not about to let their precious bundles anywhere near the witch's daughter with the wild hair and the strange eyes. They didn't understand that Mother was just a midwife and a cutwife, that she wasn't some evil thing, that she was helping people who really really needed her. The boys would call me Witch Baby and throw rocks at me and the girls would run from me like I was going to turn them to stone with my scary eyes. I would have if I knew how, the awful tarts…

It must have been more than a year of talking to Fatso when he decided he was ready to answer me. At first it was just slow sibbilant hisses when I called him fat, or lazy, or ugly. I thought it was just a very odd croak of his, but when I listened I was sure he was saying “Sssstupid”. “Are you calling me stupid, Fatso?” I whispered it in case anyone might hear me talking to a dumb toad.

“Yessssss”

I knew that there were people with the gift, that could talk to beasts, but I never expected to be one of them. They were always more the soft bunnyhugging type. Still, if he was going to answer I might as well have a conversation. What could it hurt?

“You think you are so smart, Fatso?” I casually reached for a rock for when the conversation got boring.

“Sssssmarter than yoooooouuuu” Fatso said, smiling. Can frogs smile? I was pretty sure he was smiling, and also that he had pointy little cat teeth instead of frog lips.

“Okay mister smarty frog. If you are so smart, then what is Mother's secret?” I rolled the rock in my hand, finding a good throwing grip.

“Ssssshe won't tell me but sssssshe will tell you.” Fatso was definitely smiling now.

“No she won't, she never tells me anything good.” Enough of this crazy magic frog and his empty head. I brought my hand to my face to ready a throw.

“She will if you ask her right.” There was no hint of a slur or a lisp or even a froggy tone to his voice now. That voice didn't come from the frog's mouth, it was straight into my mind. I dropped the rock.

Fatso told me how to get anything I wanted from Mother. The key to it all was that Mother would talk in her sleep and if she was far enough into her dream to talk, she would answer little questions whispered into her ear. I could only get quick answers but if I asked right I could find out all kinds of things. Mother would wake the next morning not remembering anything. She wasn't untouched by it though, she was paler than normal and she would shake with tremors and be on edge the whole day, irritable and terrified of noises and shadows. I felt bad, but there was so much to know I couldn't stop.

I learned so much. I learned that I was conceived at harvest, but also that I was born at harvest and that I was so big by that time that Auntie had to break her pelvis to get me out. That explained why Mother didn't walk right, why she needed two canes even though she was barely forty winters.

I also learned that Auntie was not my aunt, but my sister. I learned that Auntie was sired by Patricius Elphonse and that it was his protection that kept the villagers from burning Mother at the stake. I learned that the night that Mother was taken by whatever my father was had also been what the townsfolk called Devil's Night and that nine other people had been burned alive in their homes that same night. I also learned that my father's name was Ghaal.

I didn't understand how Mother could know the name of her attacker but I couldn't find a way to get more information. Mother would only answer direct questions and even these she would sometimes resist, cry out until Auntie (I couldn't come up with a way to stop calling her that) would come to her bed and comfort her “wicked dreams”. I was nearly discovered once and had to stay hidden so long that I eventually caused a panic when I wasn't in my bed and had to sneak out the window and be “found” fetching water in my nightdress. When I could find no way around Mother's desperate fear, I went to Fatso again. He told me that I could not be told any more, that I had to see for myself. He told me that I was ready to learn the incantation, a ritual that would show me the answer to everything. But he said that the ritual had a price.

“I must have your blood.” I wish I could say I was shocked but really I was just hoping that he wanted gold or something. A childish hope.

“You mean like I cut my thumb and you drink?” I was hoping again, trying to offer with my questions.

“No. You must lay my mouth to your breast and I will drink my fill.”

“Never!” I was almost a teenager and no squeamish frilly thing, but the very idea repulsed me.

“Then you will never know.” I could tell that he knew I would relent. He had strung me along the whole time just for this moment.

I found a way to push through my disgust, to set aside everything in me that screamed out not to do this and I fed that awful thing. His teeth were daggers and his spit burned horribly as it flowed into me. It felt like forever before I passed out and when I woke up I was sure that he would still be latched on to me but the only thing on my chest was the ritual scroll.

The ritual was nothing more than a simple chant. I waited until the darkest hour, making sure that Auntie was well and truly asleep before starting. I repeated the chant six times, feeling more foolish each time and each time more certain that I had been outsmarted by a damned amphibian but after the sixth time the walls of the cottage fell away and I was alone in a black void with Mother glowing the only light, her eyes open but unseeing.

Fatso had told me what to do next. I raised my voice as commanding as it could be at eleven. “Show me the Devil's Night of Anju's conception!” The ghost Mother screamed and exploded in light, and everything changed again.

I saw our cottage, less tired and old. I saw mother kneeling before the cookfire, not in the hayfield as she had told me but naked and covered in some kind of grease before a too-orange fire. And she was not alone.

She was holding hands with another, a man, also naked and also glistening with grease. Their hands ringed the fire and they chanted. The man was slim and cleanshaven, only the nobility shaved in our village so he had to be important or foreign. I focused on the chanting to draw my attention from the nudity, and it was clear to me that not so much the exact words, but the manner of speech was the same as the words on Fatso's scroll.

The realization hit me immediately. Mother WAS a witch! Then I noticed that the speech had changed, that now Mother was chanting names, familiar names. Goody Tuppold. Goodman Tuppold, Pastor Vinchus, these were the names of the people who died that night! Each of them spoke a name in turn, until eight names were spoken. Then the fire went black. Not out, but with foul black flames that lit the room most strangely in hues of purple. A voice emanated from the heart of the fire.

“What price?”

Mother spoke first, shouting “My blood!”

The stranger responded “A child taken in your name!” Mother looked panicked by this. The stranger looked cruelly pleased.

Mother released the stranger's grip and yelled into the fire “Your child by my womb!” This caused the stranger to start shreiking into the fire “Three children, five children, nine virginal girls!”

The voice from the fire responded “The price is accepted. Choose your final name.”

Mother's voice was so quiet it was almost a whisper. “Baronet Julius d'Fleur” I could tell by the look on the stranger's face that it was his name.

The young Baronet lunged for Mother, but the fire engulfed him first and the howls of the burning man are something that will never leave me. When he was little more than a burnt husk the fire shot out the window like an angry ghost and I could hear cries from the village as the burning commenced.

In the dark I could still make out Mother and I could hear her softly sobbing “Stop now. Please stop. Please don't.” At the time I thought it a strange thing to say, now I realize that it was not coming from the memory.

As the screams from the village proper faded, the black fire returned to orange and Mother made to stand. As she reached for her smallclothes, a horrible cracked laugh came from the charred heap and she froze in place. The burned mass stood, not looking like it should be able to bear its own weight but standing nonetheless. The thing cracked out “Time to pay our price.” and lept at Mother.

Since I left home I have seen what others might call horrors, pitched ship battles and the pillaging of Northmen and even once a pack of dogs set upon a chained bear, but nothing I have seen compares to the absolute ferocious monstrosity that set upon my mother that night.

When I finally remembered that this was a memory, that I could not console the broken girl on the floor that would one day be my Mother, I released the spell and saw once more our cottage as I remembered it. I looked down at my sleeping Mother, her presence a comfort to me that she had survived that atrocity but when I looked at her face I did not see dreaming slumber. I saw her eyes open, staring at me with full recognition and tears streaming down the sides of her face.

I ran from that house, stopping for nothing. Fatso found me in the woods and he told me what to eat to stay alive. He told me to steal some proper clothes and sign on to a merchant ship as a cabin boy and for a time the life of a sailor was enough for me. It was a deckhand who told me the story of the Witch of Frog Hollow and how she had murdered her devil child Anju and hid the body where it would never be found before hanging herself in her cottage. After that the sea brought me no quiet so I decided to make for the Great Cities to the east with a thirst for knowledge and one name on my lips: Ghuul.