CHAPTER SIX: A FAVOR GAINED
MARIE
The wails reached me all the way in the small room that passed as the bathing chamber. The bathtub was half the size of a normal tub, the detachable shower head fixed against the wall, offering only the bare essentials for someone to clean themselves.
But that was fine. Soaking in a tub was something I did in the past; now I associate the experience with near-drowning and panic. Even a simple shower had become a mammoth task.
It hadn’t always been like that. In the beginning, when I had left and everyone believed that I would return - that I simply needed time to cool down, the element had let me be. For two years I was able to continue as normal, until suddenly I couldn’t. I couldn’t go near water without angering her - without her lashing out at me, and I knew that she had taken my transgression personally, had recalled my whispered words of promise that I had allowed Julian to shatter.
But I couldn’t force myself to remain in that relationship - in the simplistic setting of the village, even if it meant forsaking the element herself.
I shut my eyes, bracing myself for the harsh sting of the droplets as the shower rained down upon me.
But it never came. For the first time in years, the water beat gently against my skin, almost soothing in her caress. It seemed that she had taken the Demon’s bargain seriously, which only served as an additional problem in the ever mounting doom I had found myself in.
I stepped deeper into the spray, still on guard should the element turn on me. She had lulled me into complacency before, only to turn her droplets hard and vicious, beating bruising marks against my skin.
The harsh rain of droplets never came, instead, she remained gentle, plastering my hair down my back in an almost loving - caring gesture, and her touch was my undoing. That small sliver of kindness saw me break apart in the shower as I allowed myself to mourn the death of my grandmother, alone.
The tears started off slow, the emotion leaking out of me after having been suppressed for so long, but it didn’t take long for my shoulders to curve and for my body to shake with the grief I had held at bay for so long.
In the end, my grandmother hadn’t chosen me - even after Julian and his petty betrayal, she had expected me to stay, and not simply remain in the village - remain with him.
And I couldn’t do that because staying with him felt like a betrayal to myself, and so I did the only thing I could - I fled.
For years, the importance of family - of heritage - of community had been drummed into me, and yet when I needed her - my only relative in this place, she didn’t support me. She had accused me of abandoning the village - abandoning my responsibilities. In turn, I had accused her of abandoning me.
That was our last conversation - the final words I had spoken to her, and even as I was presented with her death, even as I stood beneath the shower with sobs wracking through my body and the sound of wailing cresting my eardrums, I couldn’t regret my words - my actions. Because even in her death, I believed in myself more than her archaic traditions.
Even as the water collected in the bathtub, seemingly hesitant to drain, there was no malevolence to her touch, and somehow that only made my sobs shake through my system harder.
I wasn’t certain how long I stood in the shower, with my element my only source of comfort, but by the time I stepped out from beneath her spray, the sun had set, a full moon glaring down in its place. The wails had turned to song, and I wondered what stories they were swapping about Jeanne des Montagnes, and if I featured in any of them.
I slid into the bed that smelled of lavender, not bothering with clothing. Once I had unbottled my grief, it seemed almost never-ending, and now that I lay here, my eyes burning from all the tears I had shed, exhaustion seemed to take over, blanketing my body.
And despite how tired I was - how sad I was, sleep did not come, and so I was forced to lay there, listening to the revelers, their sounds carrying on the wind, taunting me with the life I left behind. I could do nothing else except relive the memories I had fought for years.
My earliest memories entailed me playing on the banks of the river, whilst my grandmother looked on, always engrossed in conversation with others. Some may call it neglectful parenting, but those were some of the best years of my life - the ones where I ran barefoot, digging my toes into the earth, learning to ground myself in the most natural setting possible. I made up songs with the wind, singing to the rustling leaves, imagining her response as I danced between the trees, dragging my feet into the muddy earth.
And when it was time to finally head back home, I had sat stoically, dangling my feet into the river, washing off my play into the fresh mountain water. The water here was always cold - numbingly so, but my formative years had forced me to build up a tolerance to it, and soon enough I learned to embrace the coldness that personified water herself. My grandmother had taught me to thank her - to thank nature - to thank the goddess herself, and as long as I was respectful of the elements around me, I would always be protected.
I wondered if her now non-corporeal body was stamping against the earth with the others, rejoicing in her own crossing over, or if she would remain in the village, guarding them bitterly until the very end. I wondered if she had thought of me over the years - if she was proud of the Witch I had become, proud of the fact that I never stopped learning, never stopped bettering myself when it came to Magick.
And then, just as easily as those thoughts rose to the surface, fury replaced my melancholy because I was suddenly angry at myself for thoughts - for this burning need for her approval that seemed to still remain despite her death.
In any other situation, I may have called Zoey or even Brenna, would have allowed myself to lean on them. Charl had turned out to be of no use, his sensibilities warped by his bond with the Demon. But when it came to my grandmother and everything I had run from, I guarded my truth close to my chest, unsure of what to say or how to say it. So, instead, I had told Charl the bare minimum as I moved myself to the United States, choosing to reside closer to my new family, leaving me alone to deal with the village, my grandmother’s death, and the demon.
I didn’t deal with Demon’s frequently, preferring the art of Blood Magic, combining it with various natural elements, but that didn’t mean that I didn’t know how - that I wasn’t the Witch in the Tarot Club that taught the others how to summon a demon to do your bidding.
The nights near the lake that my father sent me to each summer always seemed so much hotter than when I spent summer at home. Julian and Carla complained about the heat each time I returned, but I was certain that the cool mountain air couldn’t rival the moggy humidity of the summer camp I attended each year.
We huddled around a campfire that sat near the water’s edge, but in this heat, it seemed redundant, still the others piled near the flames, seating themselves on discarded logs. We were, supposedly, in the heart of nature, and yet this place tasted of artificial syrup and cinnamon. The lake was too warm compared to the icy streams that I played in back home - even the wind somehow seemed different, and yet my father thought I would be happier here amongst kids my own age, breathing in an American summer.
The contained redhead seated herself next to me, and I watched as she smoothed down her sweatshirt, ever conscious of her appearance. Brenna and I had traded notes on what it was like growing up in a community that encouraged Magick, but whilst there were some similarities in how our families ran their households, our experiences were vastly different. Brenna had to attend the American schooling system and was labeled a heathen from a young age when she arrived at Kindergarten with sigils drawn on every item of her clothing, whereas my education was decisively French, and while we studied and took our grades seriously, I knew that my future did not lay in formal education. Besides, everyone in my village knew about us and turned a blind eye, fearful of angering my grandmother in any way. Max - the sullen girl with the jet black hair - sat cross-legged on the earthy floor, leaning against the wooden trunks that others seated themselves on, and seated to at the very end, almost as if she were removed from the group, was the pretty little rich girl, Corinne. I was certain that my father and her parents ran in the same circles, but I wasn’t about to raise the subject of our parents - not when each mention of hers had her tensing like an animal awaiting a beating.
“Tonight, we’ll be summoning a Demon.” Charlain stepped into the middle of our circle, his shadow obscuring the flames, and I had to suppress an eye-roll at the fanfare he seemed to elicit from our group. Jessie, a dark-haired beauty, seemed to huddle into herself at the mere word ‘Demon.’ Charl and I had gone over this before, and what I would be doing today was summoning a low level Demon - the equivalent of a puppy who’s only command it could follow on pure instinct alone was ‘fetch.’
The day I woke up with my first menstruation was the day my grandmother had taken me down to the riverbank and taught me how to summon a Demon using Blood Magic beneath a hazy moon that seemed to be only there in half-attendance. It was a right of passage in our village amongst Witches, and I was proud to stand on that riverbank, naked in the moonlight, using my own blood to summon a demonic beast that had the intelligence of one of our cattle.