27 - Iona #2
“Don’t wander too far,” Jacira says, “and stay out of the water.”
The river’s ever constant gurgling is a comfort to her, until she is reminded of a similar refrain.
All of that blood… it had taken so much sacrifice to construct the tower.
She imagines Moira and Xiomara have taken painstaking measures to ensure the carnage was seen as some awful plague or battlefield, so the humans will not suspect magic was the true cause of the devastation.
A prickle of awareness goes down Iona’s spine.
She stops short, scanning the trees for any sign of movement, then looks out across the river and gasps.
There floating above the water is a woman draped in white.
She is nearly translucent, as if she were made of the finest mist. The sun shines brightly on her and creates a thin rainbow that arches out and into the water below her.
“Iona?”
She flinches, spinning around to find Ariadne standing there, clad in a simple black gown, a portal closing behind her, and Aster sitting at her feet. When Iona looks back at the river, her great grandmother has gone.
“I know you do not wish to see me,” Ariadne says, a slight edge to her voice, “but I felt your distress this morning and wished to ensure you were unharmed. Did you have another nightmare?”
“Yes,” Iona says, “but I am well now.”
Ariadne studies her. “Good.”
“And I am glad to see you,” Iona says, truthfully. Their mere proximity is an immediate balm to her afflicted nerves.
Ariadne’s eyes glimmer with hope, and she goes to speak, then thinks better of it.
“Ari,” Iona sighs, but a hand brushes down her spine. She blinks.
“When are you coming back?” Ariadne asks brusquely.
“Pardon?” Iona asks, then winces and brings a hand to her forehead when a sharp pain radiates in her skull. Wisp jumps up against her and licks at her other hand, chirping with distress.
“I know you claimed to need time apart, but it’s been nearly a month,” Ariadne clenches her jaw. “How much longer do you intend to stay?”
Iona stares at her with wide eyes. “But…”
“Tell me because I cannot… I cannot sleep without you and…” Ariadne’s voice breaks. “Just tell me so I might have hope-”
“But I’ve not been gone that long.” Iona struggles to comprehend her.
Ariadne scoffs and angrily holds out a package wrapped in blue paper. Iona looks down at it, entirely disoriented, then reaches out and takes it.
“Since you wouldn’t return for your birthday.” Ariadne looks anywhere but at her. “It’s a book.”
Cold dread seeps into her despite the heavy warmth of the jungle.
She rips open the paper to reveal a leather-bound copy of Shakespeare’s sonnets, the title embossed in gold leaf.
There is a lavender ribbon dangling from within its pages, and when she pulls at it, the pages open to Sonnet 29, a poem describing the joy that comes when thinking of your beloved.
Her hands tremble as she beholds it, still struggling to understand where she is, when she is. All she does know is that her birthday is the twenty-fourth of September, but Ariadne claims it’s been a month since…
“You don’t like it,” Ariadne says.
“No,” Iona says. “No, I love it. Truly, I do, but… What day is it?”
Ariadne regards her quizzically. “October the twentieth.”
Iona’s mouth falls open in horror, and her head pounds with a pulsing ache, her chest constricting. She puts a hand over her rapidly beating heart and would have sunk to her knees if Ariadne were not there to catch her.
“Iona?” Ariadne cups her chin when her head droops down.
Her heartbeat races as sweat coats her brow and her breaths come in syncopated gasps, until she thinks she might faint.
“Something is… very wrong with me,” Iona gasps. “I am not remembering…”
“Did you lose track of the days?” Ariadne asks.
“I’m losing time…” Iona says. “What is happening to me?”
“Losing time?” Ariadne’s eyes widen with her realization. “This must be the Crone’s doing.”
Iona trembles as she mourns all that time lost. Who could say what had happened to her in all those weeks, what had been done to her when she was mindless and vulnerable. Wordlessly, Ariadne pulls her back onto her feet, pressing a steadying hand against her back while creating a new portal.
“Where is that?” Iona asks, as Ariadne pulls her through.
“Andorra,” she says, then explains. “Aunt Xiomara told me in her letter that she would be here at Uncle Raul’s house.”
They approach a manor of grey stone with mullioned windows; the walls covered in ivy. Iona vaguely recalls Raul mentioning Andorra, a small country between Spain and France where he was born. There is a cool breeze that makes Iona shiver, but soon they are inside, and hasten down a long corridor.
It is Ariadne’s tense reticence that unnerves her the most, so uncharacteristic for one so prone to outbursts in moments of stress.
She would almost prefer it to this awful void of silence between them.
Ariadne takes her to a room with a high ceiling and equally tall windows left open to invite the chilled air.
Xiomara sits at a desk of cypress wood reading a grimoire that looks older than time itself.
“Aunt Xiomara,” Ariadne says.
She looks up and smiles, “Oh, Iona, how good it is to see you again. I trust your travels have been rejuvenating.”
“I’m afraid not,” Iona says.
“We need your help. The Crone has done something to her,” Ariadne says with impatience.
Xiomara frowns and sets her book aside. “Tell me everything.”
They explain it all as best they can. Iona tells what she can remember, the odd moments on the solstice and equinox, and the last memory she had before waking up after weeks of unawareness. Ariadne has a great deal more to say, having been cognizant of the time Iona had lost.
“She wouldn’t look at me or hardly speak to me when I visited,” Ariadne says, her voice thick with stifled emotions.
“I’d assumed it was anger that compelled her aversion, and thought nothing more of it except to give her the time she required to pardon me, but the days turned to weeks and…
” She clears her throat. “This morning, I sought Jacira for guidance, but she claims not to have seen Iona in weeks.”
Iona is taken aback by this revelation, as is Xiomara. The skirts of her white gown brush against the stone floor as she approaches and takes Iona’s face in her hands to inspect her.
“Are your memories distant like a fading dream? Or can you not remember a thing?” Xiomara asks.
“Not a thing,” Iona says.
Xiomara drifts tender fingers along her brow, pressing them into her temples, and captures Iona’s gaze with a penetrating stare. The tension in her shoulders slackens, her vision blurs, and her thoughts scramble until her mind goes blank.
“I cannot sense anything out of the ordinary,” Xiomara muses, removing her hands. “Whatever it is must be deeply obscured.”
Iona blinks rapidly and wavers on her feet.
“It must be a memory spell,” Ariadne says.
“To take weeks of memory at once…” Xiomara’s expression is grave. “I suppose it’s possible. Are there any recurring signs that preface the lapse of memory? Or perhaps a sensation afterwards that indicates the spell’s effects?”
“My head aches afterward.” Iona strains to remember. “I cannot recall anything before…”
“Here is what I can best intuit from all of this,” Xiomara says, “As a newly appointed champion of Morgan, the Crone must have anticipated your interference in her affairs, and rightly feared your knowledge of her activities, and so she is harassing you in particular. It makes me wonder if my mother once fought her as well, before she’d gone into hiding, and so she recognizes the pendant bearer’s potential to vanquish darkness.
This is precisely why we choose to keep our work a secret, or otherwise these devils would be our constant tormenters. ”
“What can be done?” Iona asks, hoping it will not require a drastic solution.
“We should perform a cleansing ritual,” Xiomara decides, giving her a reassuring look. “We shall remedy this somehow.”
“Breathe in,” Xiomara says, her voice lulling Iona into a sense of calm.
She inhales deeply the smoke from a bundle of smoldering juniper branches, coughing at the burn in her lungs. Xiomara rubs her back until the coughs subside, then moves the branches so the smoke touches her arms, her torso, her legs.
“Védeni,” Xiomara murmurs over and over, ghosting a hand over the crown of her head.
“Will it work?” Iona whispers.
“Only time will tell,” she says.
It is oddly comforting to hear. Iona has no use for placating lies.
She takes another deep breath and admires the peaceful waters of Lake Avernus.
They’d traveled here at Xiomara’s behest because the waters are considered sacred, pooled within the crater of an extinct volcano, which can augment a Zerynthos witch’s magic, as they garner power from magma, the earth’s blood.
Xiomara cups Iona’s face in her palms and closes her eyes. “Védeni.”
The back of Iona’s neck prickles with goosebumps from the distinctive warmth emanating from Xiomara’s palms.
“Now, bathe in the water and cleanse yourself,” Xiomara says.
Iona eyes the lake, its waters frigid from the autumn chill, endlessly dark without a moon to light its surface.
“Go on,” Xiomara says with an encouraging smile.
Steeling herself, Iona strips down to her chemise and approaches the lake with careful steps, not wanting to cut her feet on the sharp rocks. Placing one foot into the water, she flinches at the cold. Her every muscle tenses as she inches her way deeper and deeper until she submerges herself.
Unable to escape the sting of the freezing water enveloping her, she centers herself and finds that the cold forces her into a state of calm. She cannot worry, cannot even think beyond its icy grip. She lingers there longer than she thought she would, until she thinks her lungs might burst.