Red Twilight the Weaver chapter 18

Chapter 18:

the Second Coming

Jessica awakens from the spiritual climax she encountered and finds she is facedown in water a scepter on the ground alongside her twisted and scorched crafted from red heartwood with an effigy of a bird on one end. Jessica takes up the staff and pushes herself upright/ the room has grown dark and Kari in nowhere in sight, the songbirds are gone and only the water running through the room remains. "Fourteen days." Kari's voice whispers in her mind

"deliver the sermon."

Jessica touches the wand to the door of her cage, and the cage door turns to sand flacking away. Overpowered momentary by the Avatar weapon she welds, it pulls her through the dungeon and into the courtyard a knight approaches her proclaiming "what!" Jessica holds one hand forth in a claw-like mime, as if a crushing weight fell upon him he falls silent collapsing. The sound of birds starts to call again. The door to the fort pulls itself open for Jessica. Jessica retakes control of the staff locking it out of her mind.

As Odidimus and Monty sit at the table sipping a drink. A bird lands on the window twenty feet overhead and calls down to them " I, Baba-Yung, hand of Kari call to you! Behold! The Voice of God Comes! Jessica Avatar of Tamriel! The King Has Spoken!"

Wind wholes and the door to the dining-room brakes open. "Jessica?" Odidimus asks as she walks in tapping her staff to the ground.

"What sort of game is this?" Monty asks

"Leave Graywall Keep!" Jessica orders "This place is cursed! Take all you can carry and accompany me across the ocean."

"Guards!" Monty calls

Baba-Yung flaps her wings enraged, she flies around the room threateningly. I ten-foot long viper forms on the table staring down Monty.

"Jessica stop, please." Odidimus whisper.

"Kari demands this place be offered as a sacrifice. Any whom do not leave become a part of that sacrifice."

Monty hides behind the King as he taunts Jessica "Foolish milkmaid, it is no mystery that you are a practitioner of the Ancient power, you are no proper Kari worshiper and have no calling to the name of Avatar. This is nothing but childish magic."

Odidimus reaches around himself to take Monterey by the hand "use your magic, make the snake vanish."

Baba-Yung flaps her wings "You are the fool if you think Kari's will can be overwritten! Kari has spoken!"

Trembling Monty walks out from behind Odidimus; he watches the snake dances as he reaches for his staff, as he lifts the staff it falls limp in his hands, Monty looks to his weapon only to find it too is now a snake. Baba-Yung laughs incessantly. Monty throws the snake atop the table.

The snakes tangle themselves around the lags of Odidimus thorn. Odidimus picks his feet up hiding atop his chair. Jessica pleads with him "I harbor no anger for anything that has happened. Please make no mistake; I am a messenger sent by god, this place, this town of yours is dammed. Kari has given us fourteen days to run as far from here as we can. Please, my love, make it so."

Baba-Yung calls down "Your heart is as empty as Kari's! He will not hear you! Tonight, all milk in Graywall will turn to sand! So, let it be done!" the hand of Kari jumps out the window flying away as she squawks defilingly.

Jessica places her hands to the head of the two snakes, and they fall asleep at her feet. "is this so my dear Odidimus? Are you not convinced I speak the truth?" she slides her walking stick down her back and places her hands on Odidimus sides.

Monty gads a knife from the table and reaches around Jessica threating to her life. The Snake that was Monty's magic wand open's its eyes and jumps up grabbing his hand in its teeth, Monty howls and throws the snake and his knife with all the force he can muster, the snake turns to wood as it dies on the ground form the trauma.

Jessica looks back to Monty "I am sorry." She looks at the wound on his hand "wrap your arm in sheepskins at once, then soak your hand in cucumber juice and fermented water with apples, or your blood will run yellow before dusk, and you will be dead by sunrise." She reaches around Odidimus taking his belt off. She ties it around Monty's arm "Go! Run! Now, if you value your life." Monty runs away.

"Jessica." Odidimus stands up. "things aren't as simple as all of that. What we have here is not so easily picked up and moved as a box of parchment…"

"if you cannot find a way, Kari will become only more cruel in the coming days." She offers Odidimus a kiss then walks off. "I will be around. I will be sure to tell you when the next plague will come."

"Milk to sand?" Odidimus whisper to himself

** *

Half overwhelmed with anger, and sadness Jessica walks into the town, one hand wrapped around her eyes she hardly takes an upwards glance. When at last she looks about she has found her way to a fallen tree off to one side of the town. The stump is shaved down to make a platform, a stack of rocks makes up steppingstones leading to the center stage. Jessica places one hand on the fallen tree and walks around it swimming in memories. An elderly woman watches her dropping her workload to do so. The older women flip the basket of cloth she had held upside-down and seats herself atop it.

Jessica finds a bronze plate mounted on the ground the reads "Tree of Tales." Jessica gasp a moment, she climbs onto the fallen tree and walks around the stump, she then outstretches her arms looking to the sun. The old women calls to Jessica "Read the 'Prince and the Flower' If you can please! Haven't heard it since I was a yearling."

"this tree, it was my podium, I have read atop this stump hundreds of stories." She whispers to herself.

The old women nob to her "I was here for most of them."

Jessica looks at her "you have no eyes. Are you Theea Masa, The stenographer?"

"that is what they called me when I was a girl. Today I am Mama Masa, the crazy old women that talks about the old world day and night. Only other thing anyone remembers about me is I'm the mother of Vector the walking messenger." She giggles.

"The career?"

"Yep."

"I see."

"Do you remember 'The Princes and the Flower'?" Theea asks again.

"I do." Jessica nods

"Read it to me. Please"

** *

"In a time long since passed in a place far from here lived a man that was without fear for he lived with a mountain. His pantry was never bare, and his cellar overflowed with wine. He was tall, and his face was clean like a marble stone. Never was he in want. One day the man in the mountain was visited by an old beggar, the night was frigid, the wind howled like hungry wolves and ice caked the countryside. The beggar pounds at the princess door and pleads 'It is ow so cold out do you have a bed I may lay on.'

The princes looks the beggar in the eyes 'I have no beds you would find fitting.'

'my mouth is dry, do you have a sip of wine we can share.'

'I have wine enough, but I fear there are no chairs for us to sit at and drink, another time vagabond.'

'my satchel is feeling ever so light. can I trade you this flowers for some bread?'

'I got barely enough bread ready to fill myself, so I must wish you goodnight.' And with that, the princes closes the door on the beggar. But the princes hardly steps away before there is pounding at his chamber door again. He opens the door hastily and yells out 'what more do you have to say, vagrant?'

But it is not the traveler this time but is Kari that stands before him, the princes cowers before her loveliness. Kari pushes the beggar's flower into the prince's chest and kisses him 'dear old princess, your heart is as empty as mine, and so I shall give you a hunger to match. Until such time that you lie with one that loves you and to who you love equally you shall live as the flesh-hungry animal you are.'

And so his back bend and his fur turns blacker then sand and his eyes fill with the yellow silver of moonlight and his hands become like stones, the princes becomes a giant. For years to come the princes of the beast would hunt the valley around his home until such time a young maiden would see past the black magic and turn him back to a man."

** *

soon the word of the Weavers return will find its way across the land.