Chapter 1 #6
The men rounded the corner of the house and gaped at her, her hair sweaty and undone, the laces of her simple gown loosened so she could breathe as she ran.
“What is it?” asked her father. “Why are you screaming?”
“The well!” Elana stumbled into her brother’s arms as she collided with him. “The well—” she gasped for air, “—is open.”
“Open?” asked Marcus, confusion knitting his brow. “What do you mean, open?”
Clearly the entire concept of the well being without its cover was so foreign to her brother that he couldn’t begin to comprehend it.
Elana swallowed, catching her breath. “It looks like lightning struck the cover. The boulder and cover are completely gone and the stones are scorched black.”
Her father blinked, stunned. “Shadows damn us all,” he whispered. He reached for Marcus. “Go, boy! Run, and get the head priestess!”
Marcus didn’t hesitate, just turned his feet in the direction of the temple and disappeared.
“Why were you at the well, Elana?” her father asked, turning his concerned gaze on her. He was well acquainted with her proclivity toward the well in general, and had been a part of the family fight to keep her away from it from the time she could crawl. “You know you’re not allowed at the well.”
Elana swallowed again, this time not due to breathlessness but to the sour taste of disappointing her family yet again. “I didn’t mean to,” she lied. “I just went for a walk, and like usual my feet carried me there. I’m sorry.”
Her father looked like he might say more, but instead he clapped a thick hand on her shoulder.
“Perhaps it’s for the best anyhow. At least this way we know it’s open and can get help right away.
You did the right thing.” He gave her a gentle squeeze and a fatherly shake, and then disappeared around the side of the house once more, back to whatever chores her proclamation had interrupted.
Elana stood, numb, in the middle of the yard, waiting for Marcus to return, all the while still fighting the easterly tug of her attention.
Figures appeared in the distance. First Marcus, with his broad shoulders, white work shirt and black suspenders, shining under the sun like a beacon. And behind him, six grey-hooded figures, hazy with heat and distance. Elana knew them to be the priestesses.
She was thrown back to being ten years old, when her wandering toward the well had taken a turn for the worse. Her family wanted her to understand why she must not go, why she must not show her desires to anyone else, so they had taken her to the temple to witness the abandonment of a wanderer.
Inside the dark temple, seats rose in a ring around a central table. Elana and her family slipped inside the dark hush, their noses filling with the scent of incense.
On the table lay a young girl. She couldn’t have been more than five years old. She shivered in her little white dress, sniffling back tears. Four priestesses circled her, each swinging a dark gold thurible from long, delicate chains, each one pouring sickly sweet smoke. It even made Elana sleepy.
Nearby, a man and woman clung to each other, openly sobbing, their gazes pinned to the girl on the table. They looked afraid. Elana wasn’t afraid, because she’d been promised a suncake if she behaved through the ritual, and Elana loved suncakes.
“Do you bring your daughter here of your own free will?” a priestess asked the girl’s parents.
The mother let out a noisy, gasping sob. The father cleared his throat and nodded, but the priestess waited. At last, he said, “We do.”
“And why do you offer her to the temple?” the priestess asked, her voice flat and incurious. She knew why the girl was there.
“Because she is a wanderer,” the father said. “She cannot stop walking to the well.”
“We accept her as our charge, and will use her malady to better understand our plight.” Not a word about caring for the little girl.
Feeding her, or making sure she was warm and clothed and loved.
Elana’s heart had shrunk against her ribs as if it could hide from the reality before her.
If her own family hadn’t been so brave in protecting her secret, she could have very well shared the same fate as the little girl.
Elana snapped from past to present as the priestesses walked by, Marcus in front, them trailing behind in their dark grey cloaks, hoods up, bell sleeves hiding their hands, waves of cloth hiding their shapes.
Elana watched them go, digging her fingernails into her palms, gritting her teeth to stop herself. But in the end, she couldn’t. Her feet lifted from the ground as if by their own accord, and she followed.
When she arrived at the well, breathless and longing, the priestesses had circled it. Marcus stood outside of the ring of women, watching them closely but not daring to insert himself into their proceedings. Elana settled herself next to him and watched with eager eyes.
They leaned over the well, their grey robes fluttering against the stone.
The sound was a susurrus against Elana’s ears, one that drove a shiver over her neck and threatened to push her whole body into the ring of women.
She wanted to see what was down there. She wanted to know if her reflection would show like it did in her dream, no longer obeying scientific laws of light and reflection, as broken as the physics of the valley, moving on its own.
She wanted to run her tongue along the dripping insides of the well and taste the sweet clear water she smelled while she slept.
Instead, she wrung her hands, desperate, watching.
When at last the priestesses drew back, their faces were blank.
“Set a day watch,” demanded the head priestess. “From sunrise to sunset, there will be a priestess of the temple here to witness any emergence of the shadow monster. And bring a shadowed one along, for the presence of their shadow on the ground may draw the monster out, if still it exists.”
“But,” interrupted a pale young sister. “Shouldn’t we set a watch for all hours, including the night?”
The head priestess scoffed. “There is no light to cast shadows by night. For what reason would the monster be drawn out in the dark?”
Elana wanted to argue. What about the light of the moon?
But she held her tongue, biting her cheek until she tasted the metallic tang of blood.
If the priestess was right, and the monster was gone, maybe the well being open was a good thing.
Maybe with time, Elana’s mysterious desire to go there would wane.
Maybe she could be released from her nightly binding.
Maybe the skin around her ankles could finally breathe.
But as the weeks passed and the heavy heat of summer faded into the cooler evenings of fall, Elana’s desire to go to the well did not dissipate in the slightest.
If anything, it grew.