Cursefell (8 page)

     I couldn't see, but I could hear just fine as a slow shambling sound inched closer to the wide flung door.  Drag.  Pause.  Drag.  That was the pattern that wormed its way around us in the acoustic cavern.  And again it repeated.  The grey stone floor did nothing to muffle the sound and I imagined some great malformed monster eyeing us hungrily from the unseen part of the cell.  It was toying with us by dragging its heavy feet.
     Galead widened his stance, hand resting on the hilt of that polished dagger he carried as the sounds drew closer.  I could see the tension in his neck and shoulders.  Tense but not panicked.  On the other hand, I wanted nothing more than to bolt from the room and put as much distance as I could between myself and Isabel.  I didn't want to be a party to this any longer.  But there were questions needing answers and I felt I owed it to my mother to get them.
     Drag, pause, drag.  Slap.
     Isabel's hand slapped the wooden frame to pull herself to the edges of the light.  She hovered there, half shrouded in shadow, swaying and materializing then fading like some ghost at the edge to her cell.
     "What do you want?" she croaked in a parched voice.
     The mermaid's voice carried the frail state her body displayed.  In the dimness I could just make out her chapped pink lips, edges of puckering skin starting to stand up in jagged dry totems.  Even shading her eyes, Isabel could not hide the dark wrinkles ringing them in.  The hand itself showed the fading health her short imprisonment had brought.
     My flashlight inched up her body.  There was something else that could not be seen by the flaming illumination, as much as I strained.  My light crept upwards.  The once soft skin shone lusterless and flaking.  An odd pattern began to form the more that was revealed.  It was as if her skin sat layered in tiny plum colored diamond shapes one overlapping the other from wrist to elbow.  A patch similarly shaped and cut below her eye refracted the shine from my light.
     The flashlight fell from my trembling fingers.  The patches looked like the dried skin around the scratch on my thigh.  Only it wasn't skin I realized.  They were scales!  I might have believed her claims that I had some tie with Medusa.  I thought I had made peace with it and the voice in those dreams.  But awake and forced to face it with the physical proof instead of just the abstract view struck me with its full force.  She wasn't human.  And if she wasn't, then neither was I.
     "Oh, it's you." Isabel wet her lips with a swollen tongue, unable to raise her voice above an airy level.  "Have you come to gloat?  To curse me?  No, to take your revenge, right?"
     "We are here to talk.  So be good or I will have to put you back in the cell," Galead said, motioning to an alcove at the end of the chamber where sat a long table.
     "I need water and something to eat if we are going to talk."
     "After," he told her, taking Isabel's arm to help her as she shuffled across the floor.  She sat where he placed her, while I seated myself across from her.  Galead remained standing behind Isabel, defensive and guarding.
     We stared at each other for what could have been as long as eternity.  Neither of us spoke.  Her eyes were unreadable.  I tried to make mine hard and cold.
     "So.  Do you want me to say none of it is true?"
     "No," I told her.  "I know it is true.  I can hear my blood speak to me.  I feel it inside.  What I want to know is why."
     "Why what?" Isabel rasped, the unexpected acceptance making her wary.
     "Why did you attack us?  You know, being family and all." I wasn't having much luck keeping the scorn from my voice.
     "For you.  To bring you with me and keep you safe."
     "To keep me safe?  Safe from, say, someone trying to kidnap me?  Oh no, that was what you were trying to do.  So not safe from you then."
     "Seriously, cousin?  You carry the blood of Medusa in your veins, the first cursed.  You are the key that we all need," she spat.
     "Key to what?" I asked, leaning close to hear her failing voice.
     "Hope."
     I saw Galead stiffen over her shoulder.  His face was dark and unsettlingly troubled.  What she said meant something to him, of that I was sure.
     "What does that mean?" thoughts of my father came and went like so much wind.
     "Ask him." She jerked her head at Galead before a dry, hacking spasm wracked her body.  Her once lustrous hair fell over her shoulders in a patch of brittle briars.
     "Water.  You promised."
     "Alright.  Stay here and we will be back with some water," he told her, motioning me to come with him.
     "And food."
     He didn't respond as he led me back up the stairs and into the kitchen.  The light was too bright at first, my eyes trying to adjust, but not quick enough to help him fulfill his promise.
     "What's wrong with her?" I asked Galead as he filled a large jug with cool tap water.
     "Isabel, in her human form, can come ashore but she needs considerable amounts of water to keep her shape.  To keep her alive actually."
     "Do we need to add salt to this then?  Since she lives in the sea?"
     "No.  That is a common myth-stake.  She can live in any body of water, salt or fresh.  The ocean offers her and her pod the greatest protection, but once they traveled the rivers and lakes in many lands.  Once, long ago, they had no more need of protection than any other person."
     "You know about her.  About them.  What about me?"
     The cold clear water sluiced from the corner as Galead fumbled with his grip.  Slowly and deliberately he turned off the flow from the faucet.  I knew he was stalling by the way his jaw was clenched.  I would do the same, I supposed, in his position.
     "What do you know about the story of Medusa?"
     "She upset the gods with her beauty so Athena cursed her.  Athena turned her into a woman so ugly and frightening that her gaze would turn anyone who looked in her eyes to stone.  She had snakes instead of hair and was half snake herself." He urged me to continue.  "Perseus cut her head off to turn another monster to stone to save a princess.  He used one monster to kill another monster." I paused, thinking of what I had just said.  If Medusa was a monster, then what was I?
     Galead avoided looking in my direction, fiddling with the top of the container before speaking.  I imagine he was thinking the same thing.
     "Is that story true?" I asked hesitantly.
     "A thimble of truth mixed in a jar of lies," he said, slamming a palm down in frustration.  "I know much and more about you, Thera.  About Medusa too.  More than I am allowed to say.  Beyond what the modern fables say.  Many claims of truth are no more than a new mythology created with feigned authority."
     My voice quivered as I asked the question my soul dreaded the answer to.
     "Am I a monster?"
     "You are whatever you wish yourself to be.  No, I don't see a monster.  I see the heart of kindness beating within you.  I see a soul glowing behind eyes of emerald gems.  I see the strength that only the good can wield carved in every fiber of your being.  You are far from a monster, Thera.  You are the warm hope future days command for those lost in a world of monstrosities."
     I wished I could believe him.  My mother had been attacked and wounded.  My cousin turns out to be a mermaid trying to kidnap me.  Galead was a mystery.  And I had used Medusa's curse to turn two men to stone.  Hope was not a word I would have used.  Happy endings seemed like dreams that would forever be far from reach.  This was not how a girl imagines her life will go.

*

     Crisp cool water cascaded over Isabel's head, running rivulets of micro-rivers down the length of her body, as she emptied half the jug over herself.  Very little liquid reached beyond her bare feet as every drop was absorbed into her skin before it could puddle.  Her body rippled, dry patches of scaly cells fading into the smooth skin she had worn before.  The transformation was completed in a matter of minutes.
     I tapped Galead's shoulder once I was able to stop staring in transfixed wonderment at that unbelievable scene.  He had stood nearby, but turned his back to avert gazing until the whole process was completed.  We took up seats at the cell's solitary table once more.  He took a seat beside me this time.  He laid his dagger on the table with a loud thud as a warning to the captive.  I thought it was unnecessary, but as Galead had said, Isabel would be strong once she had been rejuvenated and he wasn't going to take any chances with my safety.
     "A man of his word.  I like that.  Better hold onto this one, Thera.  Good men are hard to find and all that," Isabel taunted.
     I wasn't taking the bait.  She would have to try harder to distract me.  Besides, Galead and I were not a real couple no matter what my friends believed.  It was just a front.
     "What did you mean earlier about me bringing hope?" I asked.
     "Your good sir knight didn't tell you?" she teased, winking Galead's way as she said it.  "Just what took so long with the water then?"
     "Isabel!" Galead growled at her, bringing his palm down hard on the old wood.
     "Alright.  You don't bring hope, but you are the key to our hope.  There is a spell that will end the curse forever.  No more hiding in skins we do not belong.  Never again being hunted by those afraid to see us as we truly are.  No more living in a prison without walls.  The power of the Circle will be broken.  We will take back what was stolen when the curse was placed on your ancestor, and on mine."
     "What was stolen?" I was confused.
     "Our lives.  Our humanity.  We are being punished for something our ancestors did countless years ago.  We have been robbed of our life by those holding power, those with the magic to shift the balance and profit by it."
     "You mean the Circle."
     "The Grey Circle.  Grey being the neutral balance between light and dark and in all things.  What lies they speak.  The Circle is merely the figurehead for the elite power of a small few at their corrupt center.  Those hoarders of the power magic buys them will continue to savagely reign unless we end it.  For that, we have a spell, and for it to work we need you."
     "A spell.  Magic.  But I'm not a witch."
     "We don't need you for the casting of it.  We need the curse you carry.  The power derived from Medusa's curse flows from her to you, in your blood.  Without you there is nothing we can do to break it at its source."
     "What do you mean by we, Isabel?  Who else is involved in this?" Galead interrupted, wary.
     "An old crone versed in magic.  She will cast the spell," she reluctantly told him.  "To work this spell we need you, Thera."
     "You need my blood.  Like a drop or..."
     "Not any from you.  We need Medusa's pure blood.  Only you can get it for us."
     "Her actual blood?  But she's dead."
     "She means her head.  She wants you to bring them the Aegis of Athena," Galead told me, the color draining from his face as realization hit him.
     Galead curled his hands into tight balls as he pushed away from the table to pace the floor.
     "When Perseus used her still living head to save a woman, he gave it to Athena for safe keeping afterwards.  Athena made a shield of it, her Aegis.  Anyone not related to Medusa who handles the shield or looks on it will be turned to stone or struck dead.  At least according to the legends," Isabel explained.
     "Absolutely not!  Thera will not help you," Galead declared from behind his clenched teeth.  Anger, no it was rage, lurked barely contained behind those grinding teeth.  A rage born in part by grief if I could read him well enough.  Tears welled in the corners of his eyes as well as in the undertone to his voice.  He did not see me now as he held a look that said he was drifting far and away.  Galead walked a few steps deeper into the flickering light cast by the torches, staring into nothing but the bleak shadows.
     "You are probably right, Galead.  I doubt I, let alone you, could protect her from those that would want to see us fail.  She might be able to hide, for awhile.  Maybe even live out her days isolated and alone.  Exiled.  For that is the only way she would have a chance to be safe," Isabel said in a subtle sing-song voice.  "The harpies at the very least might not be happy to see the curse broken.  They might decide to end the threat she could pose no matter what she does."
     Galead rounded on Isabel.
     "Do not think you can use your charms on me so easily.  Your voice is not the first Siren's Song I have encountered.  Do you even know what you are asking her to do?  Do you know what you are really doing?" he leaned over the table, ashen and tired from the outburst and a hidden weight I could not help him bear.  Even Isabel looked abashed to have caused him pain.  I wanted to say something, but I was so far behind what was really happening that nothing came to mind.
     Just then Wayne's voice called down for him.  Galead shouted back with a flat sounding promise to be right up.  He looked at each of us before he left, saying,
     "That accursed item carries suffering with it like snowflakes upon the wind.  Destruction follows its use as if it were rainbows come after the storm, only dark and dripping in its wake.  A shield that protects nothing.  It has nearly faded from memory and that is where it should stay.  Find another way if you want your curse broken.  Leave the Aegis out of it.  Leave Thera out of it."
     He left in a fury, not waiting for me to follow.  Isabel looked at me as I looked at her, his words a clear warning that even she found serious enough to give her pause.  I broke the silence first.
     "You healed my mother." I found it hard to say the words, but a relief when they were out.
     "As much as I could," Isabel guardedly replied.
     "Why?"
     "I hoped it would earn me a bigger cell.  I don't know if you've seen the other cells, but the one I've got now is a total upgrade," she said, mocking me until she realized I was going to demand an answer.  "I didn't want another memory to regret."
     I nodded, unable to talk through the stupid lump suddenly forming in my throat.      
     "I'm so sorry, Thera," she said, reaching her hand out to grip my arm.  "I did not mean for anyone to get hurt.  Truly, I didn't."
     We said nothing further to each other even as I mounted the first step on the staircase, casting one more backwards look.  Galead had left Isabel free of her cell, but not the cage the curse was forcing us to live in.