Epilogue Elsebeth
Epilogue
Elsebeth
When I was a little girl, I saw three witches burned.
As the flames fed on the third witch, she managed to wrench loose from the ropes that bound her to the pyre and jumped in the air.
She caught my eye as she hung there for a moment, suspended, and she smiled, as if she saw something within me that pleased her.
At the time, I knew not what that might be. I knew only fear.
Now, I know she saw that I was already damned and would one day be as she was.
For I am a witch now, my soul pledged to Satan. In return, I have been given the power of necromancy, which I have used so far only once: to bring Ursula back to me.
Ursula believes she may yet save me. For this reason, and because we have the care of the bones of a woman who wishes to die but cannot, we have taken to the road again.
Ursula says we must visit every shrine, every church and chapel, that she may be aided by the power of the reliquaries there as she prays for my sorry soul and for that of the necromancer’s wife.
Mayhap there is a saint who will intercede for us.
I cannot enter these holy places anymore.
It’s as if there is a wall between them and me, and for all that I have powers now, I cannot move through brick.
When Ursula goes inside to pray, bringing the bag of bones that is all that remains now of the poor necromancer’s wife inside with her, I sit at the border and wait for her, my eyes bound with a bit of cloth.
Those who see us think that I am blind, and that Ursula prays for me so that my sight may be restored.
The truth would scare them: My sin is writ in my eyes, there for all to see.
Yet I mind these snake eyes of mine less than I thought I would, for they keep me safe, and Ursula also.
No one will try to harm a girl who so clearly enjoys Satan’s protection.
Even bands of marauding soldiers, their names written in Satan’s book as well as mine, even if they don’t know it yet, will run in fear when I turn my gaze upon them.
Three years Ursula and I have been on this quest for salvation and found none. Still the war rages on around us. I wonder often if it will ever end.
Mayhap ours is a fool’s quest, and mayhap it is not. But even if I shall be damned for all eternity, I cannot feel sorry for selling my soul, not when I have my Ursula. For as long as I am with her, Earth itself is Heaven.
I love her.
I love her.
I love her.