Chapter 12 - Abigail
The woman stood up. She looked around. She didn’t know who she was, or where she was, or why she was in that damp and noisy place. She only knew she had a deep pit of disquiet in the pit of her belly, like she’d done something she shouldn’t have, and punishment was around the next corner.
She stared at the backside of the waterfall for a long time, contemplating the feeling and what it could mean.
When it did not change, she tried to dismiss it and looked around at her surroundings.
She found the way out and followed a path near the rock face, until she walked near a bubbling river. It was daytime, and she was… here.
Her mind worked fluidly, feeding her words and information about everything her eyes landed on, but none of it felt personal to her.
She had nowhere to go and nothing to do and no reason to do it.
The ground shook and she stopped for a moment, holding her hands out for balance.
It didn’t happen again, so she continued on her meaningless way…
following the river. It would lead somewhere.
It led to an encampment. The place felt familiar, and yet it was not.
The people were like her, and yet she did not fit in.
She hunted and foraged for food, living near them but not with them.
Eventually she chose a name—Abigail. She married the first man who asked—a middle-aged settler by the name of Jediah White.
He gave her a home and put several children in her belly.
One of them shifted into a fox pup shortly after birth and Jediah shot him in the head, then buried him in the garden plot.
Abigail crept out during the burial, picked up the discarded gun, and shot Jediah in the head, then buried him next to his son.
Abigail married Jediah’s younger brother, Spenson White, and had more children, and when he died, she married the last remaining brother—Felnix White.
Two more of her children shifted into fox pups.
She hid them when they were small and urged them to forget the ability and never use it.
She had 11 children in total, and most of them had many children of their own.
Some shifted into fox pups, reviving the family legend and scandal, which sometimes caused adults to shift who had never shifted before.
Always, Abigail urged them to never shift, to hide who they were from everyone.
She lived long and watched her family grow and expand.
Strange things happened to her many times, including family members being stolen by a horrible creature that all of them knew better than to speak about.
Abigail was somewhere near 90 years old when she went out foraging with one of her grandsons and his new wife, and ended up near the waterfall where her life had begun as a young woman with no memories.
Abigail picked a berry and put it in her mouth, the sweet and tangy taste exploding on her tongue.
She moved slowly, her knuckles gnarled, her hands frail and thin.
She followed the fattest, darkest berries, wandering away from her grandson, moving closer and closer to the waterfall, wondering if there was a way to get behind it.
Nearby, something moved in the bushes. She turned that way, her hand dropping to the knife on her hip.
Too quickly, whatever it was jumped at her, pouncing on her, driving her to the ground.
It attacked her at the very top of her head, and a strange sense of entering filled her, like something was coming back to her, falling into place.
Abigail lay prone on the ground. Her animal and the sense of being Adil re-joined her—she was the daughter of a demon, and also a foxen!
She could shift into a red fox, if she chose to, but she never, never chose, no matter what, because—she rolled onto her back and opened her dress at the collar, peeking at her burning chest, where the mark of the demon was upon her.
The mark had not been there a moment ago, but now it ached and weeped fluid, cutting through her sensitive breast tissue in a perpetual sore.
Memories and ideas and concepts fell into her head, merging with what was already there, making her dizzy.
Along with the memories and persona of Adil came the power and health of youth.
Her skin plumped and tightened. Her muscles lost their stiffness.
The feeling of agility overcame her, and she jumped to her feet.
The eye of the demon turned her way from the Pravus.
The feeling froze her, pinning her in one spot.
Run! Her body screamed, but she could not move, all she could think of was that she had separated herself from her animal once and she could do it again, but this time she would not walk off without it for 70 years.
The beginnings of the plan calmed her mind and allowed her to think clearly.
The demon had already noticed her but hadn’t surged for her yet.
Adil-Abigail cupped her hands in front of her belly, speaking words of dilution and travel, which thinned the reality between the Ula and the Pravus, creating a tiny mind-gate.
Through it she called vvyst to her. It came like an obedient pet, and she grabbed and yanked, pulling hand over fist, coiling a rope of hazy, misty power at her feet.
Some of it sought her body, climbing up her feet and ankles, entwining with her legs and dress, while piles of it grew on the ground.
When she had all she could carry she wound the power around her, stuffing the ends in her apron and dress, then she ran, heading away from her family and away from the demon.
She moved fast for an hour, getting miles away to a fur trading stand, the demon’s evil gaze her constant companion.
Biding his time in the Pravus, he followed her passage through the Ula, possibly waiting for the best moment to strike.
When he was close enough, he would cross over and grab her…
or maybe he would just follow until she finally slept.
She could not stay awake for years like he could.
She had to do this now or be pulled back into the Pravus.
Crouching in some bushes at the edge of the forest, she could see the fur traders and the traffic coming and going.
She pulled the vvyst out of her apron and absorbed all that she could, using it to go dim—deeply, biologically dim, in a way that could not be taught, only discovered by each individual.
She used the rest of the vvyst to spin a layer of protective magic around herself.
It would keep the demon from sensing her for a time.
Virtually invisible, Adil-Abigail moved unnoticed into the loose collection of wagons and stands covered with animal pelts.
People shopped and haggled and shouted all around her.
She ignored everyone, moving lithely through them, her eyes on the pelts, until she found the perfect one.
An intact red fox, with beads for eyes, but with real teeth and tail.
She picked it up and hurried off. No one noticed the fox pelt float up, then disappear completely, as Adil-Abigail wrapped it around her shoulders and cloaked it with her magic.
When she was far enough away, she found a quiet place in the forest. Wrapped in vvyst, she knelt on the ground and removed the fox pelt from her shoulders. She examined its coat and ears, then pried its jaws open and reached down into its belly. All was smooth and satisfactory.
“This will do nicely,” she whispered to the forest, then she flipped the body of the fox over her left shoulder and pressed the open jaws of it to her renqua scar.
On instinct, she gave a short, trilling whistle, calling her animal essence to the surface.
It surged up, and out, and she was empty… empty… empty.
Abigail dropped to her knees and the fox pelt fell to the ground.
Slowly, she recovered. She stood and looked around, unsure where she was.
Last she remembered she’d been berry-picking with her family and heard an animal in the bushes.
She bent and picked up the fox pelt, turning it over in her hands.
Where did it come from? Why did it feel so…
heavy and important? Abigail clutched the thing to her chest, realizing her back was no longer stiff.
And her hands! She held one out in front of her.
Her fingers were straight and her skin clear.
How?
How?
Abigail White looked around, asking dozens of questions with a mind that felt suddenly as sharp as it had been 50 years before. She looked at the sky, and without knowing what had happened or how, she accepted it. Her life had always been strange. This was not new.
The ground shook in a tiny earthquake. Abigail ignored it and slung the fox pelt over her shoulders. She began to walk, picking a direction at random. After a while, things began to look familiar, and she turned toward home.