zondag 27 december 2009

Sun, Moon and Star (part 1)

Moon and Star belong together,
but both are nothing without Sun


When Moon and Star were parted, Moon cried a great deal. It seemed to her as though the night would never be brightened again. She had, for once and for all, lost her Shining Star.
Star’s shine diminished, although he didn’t want anybody to see. He grew silent, somber, and eventually chased Sun away. And without Sun, both Moon and Star lost their final shimmer of happiness.



Fire in the night sky

The sun was setting over the desert, colouring the sky a bright pink. The caravan moved slowly, tired after a long day in the hot sun.
Moon gazed into the distance, trying to look at the disappearing sun as long as she could. She missed her very own Sun, nearly as much as she missed her Star. Her heart still carried a jagged edge, which would never become a clean, even scar. They had simply loved each other too dearly to be so easily forgotten.
Star had been her lover, and Sun had been her brother. The three of them had been inseparable before fate struck. It had made Star tumble out of the sky and had made Moon hide behind the sun forever.
The caravan came to a halt when the sun disappeared. Torches were lit and tents put up. The torches wandered about the camp like little stars that had lost their way, until eventually all torches died out and the darkness moved in on quiet feet. Moon gazed up at the stars that she knew so well. She immediately sought out the star she’d always be longing for, the star who would guide her back towards the East. It became less clear every day.
Danger crept closer in the dark. Suddenly bright, fiery arrows ripped the night sky apart.


Star sat on the porch of the pavilion, his bare feet on the wet grass. He carefully touched the first snare, then the next. Moon’s song weaved itself underneath his fingers. The song spiralled, ducked, rose between the trees and finally reached up to the sky, where the moon was waiting.


Sun waded through the corn field. The corn nearly came up to chest height, blocking his way and sweeping at him when he pushed forward. Sun carefully parted the corn sticks, making a nigh invisible path.
It had been a very long time since he last came here.
And yet, nothing really seemed to have changed. The corn had been here before, just as he had made his way through it before. And there, at the edge of the field, was the Tree.
Sun greeted the Tree like an old friend. He put his hand on the stem to feel its rough bask. His gaze, however, went up to the branches overhead.
They were still there.
Two ribbons, waving in the evening air. White and blue.
Sun smiled. It really seemed as though nothing had changed.
If only nothing had.
Sun gently undid the red ribbon from his hair and tied it around the branch.
Three yet again.

Snow part 1 & 2

The singing softly tugs at my consciousness. The wind swirls around me and takes the sound with it – sometimes loud, sometimes soft. The song drifts away as the wind turns.
I struggle to open my eyes. It’s like I’m fighting something big that’s pushing me under with all its might.
The first thing that comes back to me is touch – although I realise with a shock that I’m numb.
Then comes the cold.
I’m so cold I can’t even feel my hands. My body somehow seems to stop somewhere around my knees. My face feels strangely rigid, as though it has frozen into place. With some effort I move my hand and place it on my chest, just to feel the reassuring beating of my heart. I’m still alive.
Finally I succeed in opening my eyes. The white sky overhead seems to spread out in all directions and flows into the white of the snow around me. If I couldn’t see the branch heavenly loaded with snow above me, I would have assumed the world had ceased to exist and had turned into one, bright white essence instead; as if it were the waiting room to heaven itself.
A place surely I will never go.
I blink, trying to ignore the disorienting effect of all the white, and try to sit up.
At first my body refuses any cooperation, but then I manage to sit up. My body feels very wobbly and out of control, but I’m lucky to be alive after a night in the snow. My clothes are soaked. By sitting up I give the wind the opportunity to cool me even farther down – something I thought should have been impossible by now. The wind blows right through my wet clothes and makes me tremble uncontrollably.
I need to get moving.
I roll over on my side to move my legs under me. If I didn’t see my legs move, I’d think my body had ignored the order – I don’t feel a thing. Finally my legs are underneath me. I try to stand up, but my legs fail me. All I do is work myself deeper into the snow. I scan the area around me, looking for something to support me.
The first thing I see makes me freeze into place. Down a short slope, the façade of a church sticks out of the snow, white air swirling behind its empty windows. It has changed dramatically since the last time I saw it, but the forms are still there. Saint Peter still stares down from his place above the double doors.
I made it. Unbelievable, but I made it. A wave of relief sweeps through me at the same moment the stress kicks in. I need to get down there now.
I wade through the snow on my knees and manage to clutch my arms around a tree. Grunting with the effort I pull myself up until I’m standing.
A row of monks is walking towards the ruins of the church, their singing hardly audible. So it was them I heard earlier.
The monks are something I didn’t take into account, although I could have guessed they would be here. After all, this day isn’t only of importance to me. It has been a year now since the church burned down.
A year since he died.
I sweep the hair out of my face before the monks notice the movement of my dark hair in the wind and tug it with some difficulty under my coat. I’m grateful for the numbness now, but I’m not looking forward to the burning pain when I’ll eventually warm up.
I try to go down the slope as silent and invisible as I possibly can. I keep my eyes on the monks. Incense spirals up into the air where they pass. It wouldn’t be good if they saw a girl that is supposed to be dead.
Thomas and I were in the church that night. We learnt things there unimaginable to those monks below me – but not unimaginable to the Inquisition. Thomas stayed in the fire, after hiding his one valuable possession in the one place those hounds would never look. He forced me outside, into the same snow as is covering the ruins now. Quite frankly he saved my life, although I have done my fair share since in trying to stay alive. The Inquisition doesn’t give up once they’re onto your scent. It is a good thing I collapsed so close to my destination.
I move from tree to tree, trying hard to not let the monks see me. No sudden movements and they won’t look up from under their dark hoods – but my body is wobbling about clumsily. I’ve never been so bad at stalking as now, the moment when it matters most.
Finally I’m down the slope. The church is close now, but I have to stay hidden between the trees until the monks halt at the façade – otherwise they will immediately see me. I wait impatiently, my heart hammering in my chest. I’m uncontrollably shaking with cold. I just want this to end now. Disappear from the surface of the earth, leave the Inquisition behind me for once and for all. Be safe.
The monks stop circling around the ruins and group together before the façade.
My turn.
I run towards the ruins as quick as my legs will carry me – it feels more like stumbling than running. There’s not much left of the church. Both the façade and the back are still erect, but the sidewalls have tumbled down. There’s only a layer of stones left as high as my waist. I duck through the hole where the side portal used to be and crouch, using the low walls as cover.
It is the strangest thing to be back here. I always thought I’d cry, or at least be upset, but instead I just feel this hammering panic. I need to get out of here as soon as possible.
The wooden benches have all disappeared, and at the end of the church lay two deformed metal shapes where the bells came down. They struck a crater in the old flagstone floor, which miraculously is still there. So are the covering stones of the graves.
Thomas whispered to me, at the moment the fire started to spread, that the one place where no-one would go looking for dark magic was in the home of the dead.
I crawl over the floor, staying low to the ground. I hardly feel the cold flagstones under my knees. I knew Ian had a favourite dead. All those times we sneaked into the church when we were little, and Thomas told me about Lord Montgomery – the only person who ever made it out of the village. Beside the Lord thing, I’m pretty sure that’s why Thomas liked him so much. We were all stuck here.
Montgomery is still there. The covering stone is charred by the fire, but the inscription is still visible – not that I can read it. I always wondered where Ian had learned to read, but he would never tell. I have to swallow hard when I brush the dirt off the stone.
I screw up my courage and squeeze my numb fingers into the crack between the covering stone and the flagstones around it. I pull as hard as I can and then the stone gives. With a screech that gives me goose bumps and makes my head jerk up to check if I’m still alone, the covering stone moves out of the way. I let go of it as soon as there’s enough room to put my hand in the dark hole underneath. I hope Montgomery isn’t literally still here.
My hart is beating wildly while I feel around in the hole. Suddenly my fingers stumble upon something and I jerk my hand back in a reflex. I breathe deeply in and out and lay my hand over my hart. My hart is beating like mad, but the feeling calms me. I close my eyes for a moment and sigh. I definitely did not touch the skeleton. Definitely not.
I reach out my hand and feel under the stone. My fingers touch the same thing again – something strangely smooth and soft. I clutch it tightly and pull back my hand.
And there it is. Thomas’s book, which he always hid so carefully, is lying in my hands. The brown leather still looks exactly the same as the last time I saw it. I sigh in relief.
Suddenly a big hand clutches my shoulder painfully tight.



Caught

I suppress a scream and swirl around. Towering high above me is a man in dark clothes. His dead eyes seem to lit up as they meet mine.
‘Walked right into the trap.’ His face contorts into something like a grin.
A scream escapes from my throat as I recognise him. I try to free myself from his grip in panic, but he grabs my shoulders with both hands and holds me in an iron grip. I struggle to break lose, screaming, kicking, scratching. All I get in reply is a hoarse laughter. It is met with a softer chortle. I freeze in shock and look up.
Surrounding me are five men in black cloaks. One is turned with his back towards me, so that I cannot miss the white cross stitched onto the back of his cloak.
I freeze inside. The Inquisition has found me.
And I know what that means.
In a panic I try to squirm out of the grip of the man behind me, which is only met by more laughter.
‘Enough!’ says the man behind me imperative. ‘Let’s end this.’
One of the men surrounding me steps towards me and hits me hard in the face. My head flies back, hurting the muscles in my neck.
I feel how Thomas’s book is taken from my hand before the darkness swallows me.

The pain wakes me up. My face, my hands, my feet... My body seems to be alight with a scorching fire. Then the memory comes back to me and my eyes fly open.
I’m lying on a bench, which is covered in expensive purple velvet. All I can see are the wooden sides around me – the sides of a coach. Only now I notice the rocking movement. I struggle to sit up, but my body hurts so much that I quickly stop my efforts. I feel a rope scrape over my wrists. My hands are tied behind my back. Everything hurts and the burning pain is excruciating.
I carefully turn my head to see who they have given me as guard.
My breath comes out in a hiss when I see him.
Sitting on the opposite bench is the leader of the gang who held me down in the church. He doesn’t look up from the Bible he is reading. To him I am just another heretic, one of the so many he hunts down each year. I am nothing.
‘I believe you must be in some pain now, aren’t you, Katherine?’ he says without looking up. His voice doesn’t betray any emotion, not even contempt.
I don’t give him the pleasure of answering yes. Yes, I am in pain. Yes, I have never been this wet, freezing and yet burning with pain at the same time. But this is nothing in comparison with what the Inquisition still has in store for me. We both know that.
But how does he know my name? Who has he been talking to?
‘You are merely atoning for your sins. And we’re here to help you with that.’
I gladly believe him. Whatever they think I have done, they will make me pay for it. A quiet panic creeps up in my stomach. Whatever they’ll do to me, I won’t survive. They won’t let me live.
‘It has been a long time since we last met,’ the man continues in an uninterested tone.
‘Doesn’t seem that long to me,’ I hiss. I haven’t talked in such a long time it comes out in a croak.
‘Ah,’ he replies. ‘Does it?’
I remember my first encounter with him very clearly. I have been running from the Inquisition ever since that night a year ago. I stole from people, however sorry I was for taking the little they had to spare, to keep myself alive. I snuck into barns, houses, shops, whenever they were abandoned or somebody was looking the other way. I believe I lived off raw eggs and oats for quite a while, until I reached Inverness in the Highlands. I somehow persuaded an old, childless man, to take me in as housemaid. And gradually, foolishly, I began to feel safe. Nobody had seen me; I had travelled at night, and whenever I entered a city I draped my scarf over my head so that my face was hardly visible.
Yet they found me. One day, there was a knock on the door. As I opened the door, there he stood before me. The same man that is now sitting opposite me, reading the Bible as if I’m not even here. He had grinned at me strangely, and immediately I had known that this was very wrong. I had thrown the door back in his face, but he caught it before it closed and barged in, shouting “Inquisition! You are under arrest!”. Out of nowhere, more men in black had poured through the door. I had scavenged back into the house, until I was standing with my back against the wall.
And what broke my heart, was the way Donnchadh MacFearchair, the old man I cared for, had looked at me. It was a look of total despair.
It was also the look that made me fight. There was no way I would win a fair fight against the Inquisition, and I knew that. Luck had it that I was standing next to the fire, with a pot of hot stew hanging above it. Without thinking, I grabbed the pot and swirled into the faces of the men in front of me. It hit one in the head and temporarily blinded another.
For a split second, the men of the Inquisition were distracted. I took that split second and ran. I didn’t stop running until I was far out of town and my legs gave in. I hadn’t run far enough however, not to see the black smoke billowing from the village behind me. Nor could I forget the screams of the old MacFearchair as I was running away.
Normally the Inquisition sets about its job quietly. No shouting, no witnesses, no traces whatsoever. The Inquisition wasn’t even supposed to be anywhere outside the Habsburg empire.
This was a warning for me.