Beneath, part 6

The morning arrived without pity for the late night behind the weary travelers, nor did it shed any sympathy on them for the tasks ahead. The three young men, Nathan, James, and Bryan’s oldest son Daniel, carried the thatching tools as they tread behind the two women, and the sky threatened rain. The young men talked candidly with each other and their grandmother. Daniel was one of the grandchildren due to be married in the fall. All he could seem to talk about was his bride-to-be. She was by all accounts, perfect, and he was not shy about saying so. Sasha listened to him go on about the girl’s beauty, her wisdom, all her various endowments, and could not help but smile at the joy it brought him. His brothers had terrible sport at his expense, but it did not lessen his admiration for the girl. As they walked the sky only grew more and more angry. Sasha paid it no mind, but her companions became ever more agitated. It was merely tolerable before it started pouring rain, and thunder boomed above the wood.

Sasha’s fellow travelers stood looking up at the clouds. She looked back to see them all huddled closer together. She looked up into the broad face of the sky trying to see what they saw.

Daniel shouted up to her as she scanned the heavens, “If you were a real witch you would stop this blasted rain!”

The rain never bothered soldiers on the march. If anything it made the work safer, for it hide their marks from the enemy, it threw off unskilled archers that aimed for you, and it broke the spirits of the King’s conscripts. Sasha loved the rain. But seeing the displeasure it wrought upon her companions she waved her hand against the sky without a second thought, and the rain ceased immediately. She looked back at the young men that stared up in disbelief as they towered over their grandmother. Sasha turned away unable to meet their eyes. She was not supposed to be this way anymore. She was supposed to be an ordinary girl. She felt Old Demy’s hand upon her arm as the old matron continued past towards her hovel. Demy looked back at the young men as they returned to their masculine strides. She took up behind them as they passed. James trailed behind next to Sasha.

“That was incredible,” he said. She nodded, but said nothing. “Were you taught such magic, or were you born with it?”

Sasha thought about the question. No one had ever asked such a thing before. It was always assumed that she was born with the gift, which might have been true, but she remembered being taught how to use it.

“I am not sure.”

“You must teach me,” he said emphatically.

Sasha shook her head, “You don’t know what the gift means. You would be forced to give up too much.”

“I think I should be the one to decide that…”

“I will not give you the choice,” her declaration was punctuated by a loud crack of thunder.

She marched up towards Demy as James was left looking up at the sky, bewildered.

Old Demy watched as Sasha strode past almost entirely forgetting her limp and applied peasant demeanor. When she wasn’t trying to hide it she regained much of her regal persona, it had been driven into her for too long that she was above everyone, and it could not be easily given up. It wasn’t until she was significantly ahead that she remembered the reality of her position. The pain, realizing it once more had control, seized her body and took all of her wind. She tried to struggle a few more steps before it completely over took her and she stumbled. She stopped and fought back a cry at the stabbing of pains throughout her body. Nathan ran up to her side. She tried to hide her suffering, thinking it impolite to inconvenience her hosts, but some pain is too evident to try and conceal.

“What’s wrong?” he asked cautiously watching as her eyes fixed onto the distance.

She struggled to find words. It had been so long since she had lost so completely the control of her pain, “Nothing,” she offered up through the fog that clouded her mind.

By that time the others had caught up. They all wanted to know what had happened, but at once Old Demy recognized pain. Demy knew much about pain, having suffered from rheumatism for more than a decade. She shooed the boys along, urging them to hurry if they were going to finish her roof.

“What’s ailing you child?” she asked in her kind warm voice.

Sasha simply shook her head and again said, “Nothing.”

Demy looked the girl over and noticed her hand clutching at her left leg. She could remember the slight limp the young woman sported. “Were you injured deary?”

Since Sasha had so little control of herself she could not help but nod because it was true.

“Is it an old injury or current?”

Sasha couldn’t think to remember. So she just shook her head slightly. Demy took a gentle but firm hold on the girl’s arm and led her down the path.

“We’ll try to heat up a nice bath for you,” she said as they walked.

In the fog that Sasha traveled the remainder of the journey time seemed completely meaningless. It could have been minutes of walking or days, she wasn’t sure. All she could seem to fathom was that eventually the walking stopped. The next conscious realization she had was sitting in old Demy’s little shack. The boys had set to work on preparing to thatch the roof. Demy herself had already begun heating water.

“The tub is out the door around the back,” Demy told her, “So I have to make sure the water is boiling hot before I take it around, otherwise it gets ice cold before I can fill it.”

Sasha just nodded as she sat nearly comfortably in the kitchen. It was taking so long to recover because she had to rebuild a mental tolerance that had taken nearly a decade to develop. She carefully cultivated the layers of protection, protections not only from the severe physical pain, but also the crippling mental devastation. The darkness still haunted her, and she had fallen back into that familiar prison cell, if only for a moment. She pushed her way from that darkness with a strength the likes of which none of her armies had ever seen. It took more force of will to conquer the dark hopeless place than even the most fearsome of enemies. She opened her eyes to see there was light in this place. There was no darkness at all, only the bright, shinning day that looked so new it could not be the same thing she left behind when she was put in the terrible dungeon.

Old Demy smiled at the poor girl as she made her way once more to the large bath. Sasha limped after not feeling the same crushing blackness that had nearly consumed her moments before. The bath stood barely half full and already grew cool. Sasha looked at it and thought of the last bath she had taken. It was after they had exhumed her from the earth and again brought her back to the land of the living. That experience as pitiful as it had been had not made her feel any cleaner.

Sasha put her hand to the water and its level began to rise. Demy watched in astonishment as the tub reached the point of nearly over flowing in a matter of seconds and the water let off a satisfying steam from heat. Sasha looked at the water as it rippled and reflected the shining light of midday. She ran her fingers slowly through its pristine depths.

“You’ll have to fill one for me when you’re done Deary,” old Demy told her as she walked back into the house to fetch a drying cloth.

Sasha smiled as she watched the old matron disappear through the door. She quickly stripped away the now ratty thin shirt and trousers that had been her only clothes. It left her bare to the nearly imperceptible cold that clung to the air. It also left her scared body visible for all to see. She had been raised as a warrior, so scars were common to her, but there was something fantastic to the criss-cross of elaborate and brutal marks that covered her body. She had scars from blade and arrow point, whip and cudgel, but also burns from magical bursts and bolts. Some were old from simple sparring, others from actual battle and imprisonment. There was the brand of her order upon her left arm and the prison brand upon her right. She slipped her battered body into the warm water and let the relaxation fill her veins. It had been so long since she had felt fully warm. The cold could not bite because there was no warmth to bite at, but now there was warmth in every pore and crevice. It was as thought she had been clad in ice for years and only now had begun to truly thaw.