Chapter 37
Blackness.
Blackness and onyx darkness, as black and dark as the liquid I had just consumed.
I wasn’t sure if my eyes were open. Although the strain I felt behind them suggested they were. I realised I was lying on my back and so I forced myself to sit down, or at least I thought I did. It was impossibly tenebrous. Too silent, too empty.
“Hello?” My voice reverberated around me, each passing echo sounding fainter, distant. I blinked once, twice, forcing my eyes to adjust to the stygian surroundings. I tried to coax my vision into responding, but nothing. Not even an outline.
Was I blind?
I blinked again and when my eyes opened, she was there.
I wasn’t sure what was worse, the thought of being blind or the sight of her.
The Seer’s ghastly face was a mere inch away from mine.
Her pale ivory skin against that gloomy void pained my eyes.
I looked into her own, amber, snakelike, slitted eyes.
She smiled at me. A wicked smile that showed me her carious teeth, surrounded by black gums and lips as dark as ash.
My whole body went still in shock. The mere glimpse of her had me catatonic. I could do nothing except steal a sharp breath, and even that I ended up regretting. The reeking smell that oozed from her mouth entered and burned my lungs.
She snickered. A short, screeching cackle that scraped my temples.
“For what reason have you come to me, child?” Her voice sounded hissed; it slithered into my ears.
“I have questions, and I seek answers,” I managed to choke out.
“Tell me your name, child.” Another hiss.
“I’m…Cordelia Wildheart.”
“Cordelia.” She said it in a long whisper. Then she asked, her voice a low rasp, “Do you know what Cordelia means?”
“It means heart,” I bravely replied.
Her face disappeared—blackness—then reappeared at my profile, to my right.
Another screeching laugh came out of her dark mouth, threatening to burst my eardrum.
She disappeared again. Then she was to my left.
I watched her from the corner of my eye as her sloped nose sniffed at my marked neck.
Her nostrils flared with each breath and she giggled.
“And do you seek answers about yourself or about the deceitful prince just promised to a princess?” The Seer’s tone dripped with infuriating mockery.
Her venomous laughs turned muffled. Blackness.
“Liar. Deceiver. Manipulator. Traitor of hearts.” Each derisive word came in heart-stabbing flashes that proved her omniscience.
Hurt replaced fear, turning my tone demanding. “I want to know who I am.”
The Seer gleamed with excitement. She looked into my eyes and I watched her black, slitted pupils widening.
Then the whole of her sclera turned murky white, cloudy, a storm seen from afar.
The Seer’s head shook vigorously. She held her ears with her pale, slender hands, digging her nails into her skull as she let out a painful screech.
She choked, “I cannot see, I cannot see.” But then she stilled, her mouth curling into a cruel, sneering grin.
“Wait.” She took a deep breath in, then disappeared. My lungs turned tight.
Blackness.
Then she reappeared before me. But she was far away now, so far, I could see her whole body.
She was so slender, her collarbones, her sternum, they peeked through pale skin visible beneath a thin, white, tattered dress.
No muscle, no fat, only skin and bones. Her dark locks of hair danced on her head like a serpentine crown.
She lifted a skinny arm and pointed a long finger towards me.
I listened to her painful attempt at a song—or rather, a screeching lullaby.
Her lips remained unmoving as she sang to me, tilting her head eerily.
“By the power of the lune and the main,
Nothing but the second shall remain,
All else hidden never to unveil,
Only when death is near,
A fragment shall reappear,
Ephemeral, soon to disappear,
And when the intention is to claim,
And when blue sea meets green terrain,
Will the hidden truths be unchained.”
Her head remained tilted, her finger still pointing.
“What does that mean? Who am I? Can’t you tell me who I am? Who they were?” In a heartbeat, her face neared mine. Black tears now rolled down her pale white skin.
“You ask too many questions, child. You may only ask me one.”
Demanding words rushed out. “Where will I find who I am?”
“Who you are?” she breathed, before letting out an eerie laugh.
Her words turned to whispers. “To find who you are you must go back to where you used to laugh and play with your many horses. Then you must venture beyond. You must venture where no one else dares to.” She cackled.
“Haste, child. Haste. Or you might already be too late.”
“Venture beyond where? Where must I go?”
I saw her juxtaposition of emotions—crying, laughter—in strobing flashes.
Then she shrieked. I grimaced, cupping my ears.
Her tears stopped running. They stopped midway along her cheeks and ascended against gravity, finding their way back into her eyes, turning her milky pupils as sable black as our surroundings.
She blinked. For the first time, she blinked, and her snake eyes returned—amber with black slits.
Then she rasped, “Beyond the falls. Beyond the depths. After all, it’s where you were first meant.
” She came to my left and whispered to me, “But, child, I am the one who knows all. I am the one who knows what your deepest desire is.” She reappeared to my right.
“I can offer you what you truly want. I can give you something more, something better, something that your heart truly longs for. Them.” Her tone ended with an excited rasp.
“Come, child.” She hovered backwards, her brittle feet unmoving, and she gestured behind her.
A small cabin appeared. “All those lies, all that deceit, all that betrayal. Aren’t you tired of it all?
I can make it all go away. Come with me and you shall be forever reunited with them. ”
“My—they’re in there?” I whispered, my eyes prickling.
“Yes, child, and they are beyond excited to see you. To explain what happened. The accident. They are waiting for you. Don’t you want to see them, too?
All you have to do is walk down that path and open that door.
They’re inside that lovely cabin. It was your home once, you know? It could be your home once again.”
Each of her words crawled deep into my mind. They broke my mental barriers and settled themselves as truth.
“Do you promise?” I asked, my wobbling lips catching the salt in my tears.
“I promise.”
I pushed myself up from the presumed floor and allowed myself to adjust. My weight shifted from one leg to another.
I dragged my feet towards the path, but as soon as I stepped onto the first tile, the whole world shifted, and I found myself in front of the cabin’s door.
I could feel her presence behind me. “Open it,” she said, in a whispered slither. “Open it.”
I reached my hand towards the round doorknob but hesitated when I felt warm wind brushing against my face.
I could smell the wind. It smelled…familiar.
More familiar than the cabin before me. Another warm whiff fanned around my face, the scent of hay.
Then I felt a tickling sensation across my face, smooth and wet.
Another warm whiff.
Cinnamon.
I drew back, retreated a step, then two.
“Open it!” the Seer persisted. I couldn’t tell where she was, she wasn’t behind me when I whirled around. She was nowhere, yet her grating voice echoed from everywhere. “Open it!”
“No!” I exclaimed. “No.” I stumbled backwards and fell, but there was no floor to catch me. So I fell and I fell and I fell.
I watched the Seer hover above me, snarling as she reached out her arms. She grasped and clawed at my face, her black lips sneering as I fell away.
My eyes snapped wide, finding the silhouette of Cinnamon’s face. Dusk. Gods, how long was I out?
I crawled to my knees, gulping down the warm air that once again surrounded me.
Then I heaved and emptied the contents of my stomach.
Black. I dragged myself towards the nearest water trough and immersed my head in it.
With my back slumped against the trough and lungs heaving, I scanned the shadows of the stable for her.
Cinnamon wasn’t at all happy with what I’d done to myself.