ANOTHER SACRIFICIAL LAMB – IOANNA PAPADOPOULOU
(CW: violence, body horror, blood, sacrifice, forced abortion)
The first thing she felt was the rope digging into her flesh. Biting into her wrists, her neck, her knees, her ankles, her belly, tightening each time she moved. The more conscious she became, the clearer the pain got, and she felt each of her fingers’ absence.
“The bastards,” she cried, twisting her head backwards. She only saw the chimney smoke which merged with the mist. “You beasts! You will pay for this!” she screamed but there was no response. The culprit of her misfortune was long gone, hiding in the village, waiting desperately for their weak lease of safety to be renewed.
For Fevronia to accept their offer.
Despite knowing it was a waste of her energy, Matrone tried to wriggle out of her binds. She flapped about on the cold stone, like a fish outside of water, in a fit of near-death spasms. The rope tangled worse, biting harder against her neck.
If she died, the offer would be invalid. Fevronia had no interest in corpses.
She liked the idea of dying by her own hand, thwarting their plans, preferring to kill herself than be eaten. But a rough cough started before she could decide. The rope tightened and she was choking. Her eyes felt like they would pop out. Her throat clenched and unclenched with each inhale. She gasped in pain as her lungs protested the lack of oxygen and her unborn child its own unfair sacrifice to the demon.
“Fevronia,” she croaked the demon’s name out. “Fevronia!”
As if she was waiting to be called, the black-haired woman, clad in a red robe appeared, walking amidst the moving obelisks across the wasteland surrounding them. Her touch was cool as she loosened the rope. “It isn’t often that I am called.”
“I was choking,” Matrone explained.
“You tried to fight your destiny and it led you closer to death.” She turned to look behind her. “Come on, Rigas, move your legs faster!” Matrone saw a short man. “This must have been painful.” Fevronia turned her around. “But nothing compared to the loss of your fingers.”
“My fingers are nothing compared to my child.” She looked straight into the demon’s eyes, expecting glee at her misfortune but instead she saw fire and anger, baffling Matrone.
“They threatened you?”
She shook her head. She moved her dismembered hand over her belly indicating their unborn status.
“May I?” Matrone nodded, taken aback by the request. Fevronia placed her hand on her belly and smiled. “Oh, you are going to have a boy!” she exclaimed, surprising at her seemingly genuine joy. “I don’t take children, have refused them before and always will, and if I take you now, I have taken two magical lives. I made a deal for one, not two. Go back and tell them to send someone else.”
The demon woman stood up to leave. “Wait!” Matrone called. “I can’t go back. Without my fingers, I can’t work. I will starve to death,” she pleaded, certain that her son would be a future sacrifice. His only chance to was for the village to not know she was his mother.
“What happens in the village isn’t my concern.”
“Wait!” Matrone called again. “Please! We are not at the village. This is your land.”
“These are all my lands. The village is my land, despite what you like to believe.” She looked at Matrone again and then turned to Rigas, who had stayed silent by her side. “Go and tell them I expect a new offer tomorrow, or our deal is broken.”
Matrone pleaded but the demon didn’t return. She stared at the village, her spite for it growing. She remembered the villagers’ prejudice but also their glee when her magical gift was revealed, and they realized she was their next offering to Fevronia.
The wounds at her knuckles had a thick crust of blood. She imagined the yellow-white puss forming and bloating all over the wounds, an infection. Without her fingers, she was powerless to survive. All her abilities of spellcasting were woven into her gone bones and flesh. What was the point of her now caged magic?
Matrone wrapped her arms over her body. The mist thickened around her. She lay back on the cold stone and sobbed, delaying her decision whether she would walk back to the village and announce Fevronia’s rejection. If she claimed ignorance about the reason, she could try to hide her pregnancy. But she knew no one would help her. The shock and terror on their faces when she returned would be a short-lived pleasure.
When she woke up again, it was day and the mist had vanished.
She had to decide. She had to do something. It wasn’t like her to avoid acting but the pain was pushing all other thoughts away. Each time she tried to ignore it, her hands pulsed in agony and burnt, the worst pain she had ever felt.
A soft breeze began, moving the wasteland’s red sand. A whimper leaked out as some of it touched her wounds. “Fuck you, you bastards! Fucking bastards.”
When she woke up again, it was cold, dark and the mist was back. She had lost the time to obey Fevronia but despite risking the demon’s anger, she felt calm. Matrone preferred death by suicide or infection than starvation.
The mist settled around her, like a dancing cloud. She didn’t want to give up. She wanted herself and the baby to live. But it wasn’t going to happen. Even if she gave birth to the baby, without her fingers could she even hold him? Even excluding the loss of her spells, without fingers, what work could she do?
She momentarily considered the father, but she shuddered at that option. She wouldn’t have her child be raised under his wife’s jealous gaze.
The Mist was cool against her wounds. “Thank you. You are so very kind,” she muttered. In between pangs of pain and drowsiness, she saw a Mist creature forming. She smiled at it, uncaring if it was a hallucination or a real entity.
“You are still here,” a male voice was heard. She turned slowly and the Mist made way for him. “She will not be pleased.”
Matrone, too tired to answer, focused her eyes on the Mist, which gained a face again. “Thank you,” she repeated.
“What are you talking about?”
“You are so very kind.”
“Who are you talking to?”
“Hush, Rigas,” Fevronia said. “Whoever she is talking to, we cannot see. She didn’t return?”
The Mist danced around all three of them. The pain was so strong and present, she had lost all ability to cry and scream. Bodily agony, and permanent loss were her new ways of being. “Shall I go and tell them we cannot take her?”
“We cannot do anything, I cannot take her,” Fevronia said. “But if I don’t, they will die for nothing.”
“They need to know. To make another offering.”
“That’s not my problem.”
“Can I make a new contract with you?” Matrone asked. Her throat was dry and she couldn’t speak clear enough for the demon.
Fevronia went on her knees, trying to catch Matrone’s words in between her insistent cough. Matrone, out of habit, tried to bang her chest. She crushed her hand and saw as much as she felt the wounds leaking blood.
Rigas approached too, standing by Fevronia’s side. “She wants a contract.”
Fevronia’s eyes stayed on her and then she slowly brought her hand over her. It was a beautiful feeling as her chest and throat cleared. “Better?” the demon asked.
Matrone nodded. Without much thought or care for the consequences, she brought one of her mangled hands and placed it over Fevronia’s healing touch. Blood oozed out of it, trickling down Fevronia’s body, staining her clothes and fingers.
The pain was still there, a dryness in her throat and the pulsing throb of her knuckles. “So, you want to make a contract?” Fevronia asked and lifted her fingers, with spots of Matrone’s blood on them, and pressed them against her lips thoughtfully, leaving a small red spot on her lips.
“Yes,” she said. “Time, please.”
Fevronia lifted her eyebrow. “Time? That is very vague.”
“Time to give birth and then I offer myself as a meal.”
The demon tilted her head. “And the child?”
Matrone hadn’t thought that far. “I will find someone,” she said. “But it deserves to take at least one breath.”
Fevronia stared into Matrone’s eyes, making her feel weak and small, but not panicked. The Mist went still. There was utter and complete silence. Even the rocks around them had stopped their ritualistic wandering. The demon lowered her head and took one of Matrone’s hands, lifting it towards her mouth.
Matrone imagined Fevronia opening her mouth, biting into her wounds, and sucking the blood. She expected something vulgar and violent but all Fevronia did was kiss them. Her lips were dry as they touched her fresh scabs. “I accept,” she whispered. Her breath entered inside Matrone, creeping through her blood and infected flesh, mixing with the puss gathering under her skin.
She woke up smelling bread and cinnamon. She opened her eyes slowly, feeling a thick crust of eye mucus over her eyelashes. She brought her hands to rub her face and was surprised they were wrapped. She tried to flex her fingers and, as she failed, remembered their loss and instead, used the inside part of her wrist to rub them open.
She was in a room with an open fireplace in the middle, burning low. On top of it, a metal rack held a full pot. She pushed the blanket off her, and stood up, exploring the room. When she reached the door, she found herself trapped. Without her fingers, she couldn’t open it. Curious as to where she was, she moved to the window, and using her teeth, pulled the curtain open.
She let out a cry of wondrous alarm.
The colours were so bright and vivid. She was surrounded by trees and plants. She had never seen such strong and overwhelming nature. She gazed outsize and saw Rigas tending the garden. She banged with her elbow the glass until he stood up. Matrone lifted her right hand, with the bandage slightly unwrapped and spots of blood leaking through the white cloth and waved.
When the door opened, Rigas approached her and crossed his arms. “Where am I?”
Rigas put a finger in his ear and scratched the inside. Matrone resisted the urge of making a face and, by habit, tried to cross her arms. One of the bandages unwrapped and blood dripped on the floor.
“Oh, I have to clean that now,” he complained. “Stay still,” he ordered and moved about the house, getting a new bandage and a bucket with a sponge. He wrapped her hand again, far too tightly. His fingers glowed slightly and the fabric was secured.
“You are a magical creature, too? Are you a demon?”
“No.” Rigas dipped the sponge in the bucket. As his hand entered it, water appeared in a swirl inside it. He pulled the sponge out, dripping with liquid, and started scrubbing the floor.
“I am sorry,” Matrone said. “I didn’t mean to cause you more work. I would do it myself,” her words trailed, not wanting to verbally admit her inability and feeling awkward as he cleaned around her feet. When he finished, he threw the sponge into the bucket and took it outside. Not wanting to be trapped again, she jumped over the washed floor, and followed him.
The house was built in a green patch of land, surrounded by trees. “What is this?” she asked Rigas, who poured the water out. “I have never seen so many,” she failed to find the word to describe the natural element that surrounded them.
“It’s called a forest,” Rigas explained as he came back to her. He looked at her toes and then let out a loud huff. “You need shoes or you will make the house muddy and ruin the sheets.” He went to a wooden crate in front of the door and presented her a pair of leather boots.
She admired the stitching, noticing a name embroidered over them. “Who is Cosmas?” She asked as he helped her put them on.
“Someone who died long ago,” he explained. “Best not to mention him to Fevronia. She doesn’t like to remember. It makes her mope and then I have to hear her moaning.”
“Are you her husband?”
Rigas’s lips twitched and then barked a loud laugh. He bent forward and loud spasms of laughter escaped his mouth. “Stop making fun of me.”
“Sorry,” he said, but still bursts of laughter exploded out of his lips. “It’s just so funny to think us married. Tell her that, she will pee herself laughing, the old mare.”
“The old mare? How do you talk about the demon like that? Aren’t you afraid?”
“She will do nothing to me.” He inhaled deeply, closing his eyes and despite the small twitches of his lips, managed to not laugh again. “I am her, for lack of a better word, charity case friend.”
“That’s not one word,” she pointed out.
“Smarty ass,” he said. “She will like you.” He put his hands in his pockets and without saying anything else, he returned to his gardening.
The land around Fevronia’s house included the garden Rigas was working on, a shed and a table. She turned her attention to the house, an old wooden building with a dark red brick roof and a chimney in the middle.
Through one of the shed’s gaps, she saw Fevronia sitting on a rocking chair, wearing a plain brown dress with a red shawl over her shoulders and knitting. She looked older, less monstrous.
“Can you open the door for me, please?” she asked Rigas when she finished exploring.
He got off his knees and, simply by looking at the door, he twisted his hand and it opened. “Take your shoes off, before going inside,” he instructed her. She obeyed him, using her feet to push each boot away.
She returned to the bed and placed her bandaged, fingerless hands on her belly and searched for the magic which had led her to that house. Unable to find it, she panicked.
Thoughts of the baby having died flooded her mind. Her belly clenched at the thought and, as her stress rose, the magic of the baby boy, if Fevronia was to be believed, pushed against her skin in annoyance. “Sorry,” she apologized and, using her wrist, caressed the spot. “Just wanted to check on you, that’s all.”
She woke up hungry. Her hands itched under the wrapping. The smell from whatever was cooking was strong and, looking through the skylight, she knew it was night. She was hungry, thirsty, and wished she could serve herself food.
Another lost ability because of her fingers. She walked to the window, using her teeth to pull the curtain open again. Rigas was nowhere to be seen and neither was the demon. The trees surrounding the house had grown darker and bigger under the moonlight. She squinted to see better but her breath fogged the glass. She wiped it with her arm and tried again.
After three unsuccessful attempts, she gave up and paced around, frustrated at her own inability to do anything and, reviewing the choice she had made. She promised herself as a meal to Fevronia so she could give birth. But what would happen to him once she was eaten?
The door opened and Fevronia entered. The glow from the fire hugged her face, making her light brown skin have tints of orange on it. “Hello,” she greeted the demon.
“Are you hungry?” Fevronia asked. She walked to the large cauldron and opened the lid. She unhooked the large spoon hanging from a poll alongside other utensils and filled it with the soup inside. She lifted it up so Matrone could see and then let the soup fall again.
She was painfully hungry. “It is carrot and sweet potato soup, right?” she asked as she analysed the smell.
The demon nodded. “Sit on the bed and I will help you eat. Do you want some bread too?”
Matrone wanted to refuse the demon’s help. Yet, what was the point of such a decision? Her life was already in Fevronia’s hands. Why not let the same hands fatten her up before the demon devoured her? She returned to the bed and watched as the demon woman took out of her cupboards a metallic bowl, a wooden spoon, and brown bread. She returned to the cauldron to fill it with soup and then, holding the bowl in one hand with the spoon in it and the bread on the other she walked to Matrone. She sat by her and placed the bread on her thighs before she lifted a spoonful of the soup towards her face.
Before Matrone opened her mouth, Fevronia blew on the soup to cool it. The taste was beautiful and sweet. She closed her eyes in appreciation as she swallowed. “Tasty?” Fevronia asked.
“Very,” she complimented the demon.
Fevronia ripped the bread in pieces and soaked them. It was an odd feeling as the demon’s fingers touched her lips and guided the bread pieces over her tongue. Once the soup and bread finished, the demon wiped Matrone’s lips with her sleeve.
The maternal act surprised Matrone as much as the careful and confident feeding did. “Thank you,” she said. “It was very tasty.”
Fevronia smiled and walked away from the bed without a word. Matrone, using all her body strength, managed to get under the blanket. The warm feeling of fullness made her drowsy and sleepy. She closed her eyes as her head rested against the pillow.
“One more thing before you go to sleep,” Fervonia said. She approached with a metal glass and Matrone drank the fruit flavoured water, quenching her thirst. The demon moved the blanket over her shoulders. Matrone wasn’t sure if it was an accident or her imagination, but the demon’s hand lingered over her and moved as if with the intent to caress her.
“But what about the village?” Rigas asked. His voice clearly worried. Matrone drifted out of sleep as she registered the words. “They will be worried and...”
“I don’t give a crap about them. Neither should you, after what they have done to us, to her,” the demon woman said. “They have turned their penance into another excuse to torture.”
Rigas let out an annoyed growl. “The past doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me,” she interrupted him.
“All I am saying is that we need to tell them that the lease needs another offering to be renewed,” Rigas snapped at her. “You shouldn’t have accepted the second contract with the girl.”
Fevronia didn’t answer him. Matrone tried to keep her eyes open and remain awake to hear the demon’s response but no matter how hard she tried, her eyelids closed. She heard the demon speak but whatever she said, Matrone didn’t understand.
The next few weeks went slow but Rigas and Fevronia were never again in the house at the same time. She wondered if their fight continued, curious about their past. Growing up there were various stories about Fevronia. How she had dug herself out of the ground, bringing the wasteland with her. Or that she was a dead woman who came back as a demon and entrapped their village.
None of them was about the village having wronged Fevronia or them paying penance.
The demon’s gentleness surprised Matrone, examining with care, assuring her the baby was healthy and telling her she was nearing five months of the pregnancy. She created creams to soothe her stretched skin and even held her hair up as she vomited, rubbing her back.
Rigas entered the house suddenly, snapping Matrone out of her thoughts.
He closed the door behind him with a loud noise and she watched him magically barricade it. Her entire body sensed the danger. She had felt like it once before, when she was approached in her garden, in the village. “Rigas?” she called his name and slowly got out of bed. There was nothing she could do to fight him. Without her fingers, she was powerless. “What’s happening?”
He walked closer to the fire and picked up the spike used to stir it. Its metallic edge glowed red with heat. He pointed it at her. “I really don’t want to do this, but she is not seeing reason. She will not let me go and warn them that the lease hasn’t been renewed.”
The villagers. Matrone swallowed her saliva and kept on staring at him. “I can talk to her, if you want,” she offered, even though she suspected her words would have no meaning.
“It will not matter. You should have never asked for a contract. That first night, you should have returned to the village and told them. It would have been easier that way,” he said. His eyes went to her belly. “If that baby never gets born then she will not be bound by your contract and she will be able to take you as payment for the lease. She will not be able to refuse.”
Matrone stepped away from him. The baby, sensing her panic, kicked her. Her eyes fixed on Rigas. His hand held the spike hard, getting ready to attack as he approached. “Please, no,” she begged him. “Please.”
“I am sorry,” he said and dashed towards her. Matrone ran around the fire. She knew it was pointless with her swollen belly but the same instinct which had made her ask for the contract forbade her from accepting her fate. She had to fight, to push everything to its limits. Rigas was by her side. She kept trying to evade him.
“Fevronia!” she screamed the demon’s name. “She will be angry with you,” she tried to reason with Rigas but tripped over her feet. Her belly crashed against the floor. “Fevronia.”
There was wetness in between her legs as the baby panicked inside her. She didn’t dare look, afraid of seeing blood. She pulled her body away, still feeling the unstoppable instinct to keep fighting.
“Fevronia,” she gasped the demon’s name again as Rigas’s boot was on her side. He used all his force to roll her, exposing her belly to him. “Fevronia,” she muttered the demon’s name, powerless to do anything else. She had reached the end of the line of her fight. She had failed to save her child. She had failed to punish the village for butchering her fingers. All she managed was to live an extra few weeks.
The heat of the spike was over her belly. “Look at me and do it!” she spat at him in a venomous tone. “Be better than those bastards in the village and face me,” she dared him.
He paused. Their eyes locked and he pressed the rod over her belly, burning the fabric of her dress and then her skin. The pain was sharp and sudden but for a moment all Matrone registered was the smell and the baby’s magic, which pulsed desiring to live. I am so sorry. She thought. Her mouth was only able to scream. The pain engulfed her.
She saw the flame’s reflection on his knife as he lowered it against her. It pierced her burnt skin making an incision, big enough to put his hands inside her.
“Fevronia!” She repeated her name, like a chant she hoped would summon the demon to, if not save the baby, at least witness his death. The blood was all over her as she felt Rigas’s hands tearing her apart. The fading power of the baby, Rigas pulling its incompletely formed body out of her.
Blood oozed out. She had been butchered twice, like an animal, like a piece of meat that had no right of bodily autonomy.
Rigas placed his hands on her and she watched in envy as his finger mended her skin, patching her up to hide his crime. The baby’s magic was close, as if he were somehow still alive. She tried to reach him, to hold on to him once so he could feel something else but fear and pain during his short life.
“Fevronia,” she muttered the demon’s name again.
There was a bang on the door at that final summon. “Rigas!” the demon said.
Matrone didn’t stop looking at her child, afraid to leave him alone at his first and last moment of life. “Fevronia,” she muttered again.
“It had to be done, Fevronia!” Rigas said. “You left me no choice. It had to be done,” he said and continued healing her. “Just a bit longer and you can come inside.”
“Rigas open the door now!” the demon demanded.
Matrone kept trying to stretch her body to reach the boy. She needed him close to her before it was all over. His magic was fading but, somehow, the baby tried to live. Like his mother, he refused to make his enemies’ plans easy. He and she were made of the same will, the same rebellious desire to fight against the entire world and never take no for an answer, even if losing was inevitable.
There was a loud scream and the sound of glass breaking. A thick Mist entered the room and slipped under Matrone and her son, enveloping them in a cool cocoon of safety. “Him, choose him,” she begged the Mist and, it took on many faces as it wrapped itself around his little body. His magic was faint but as the Mist curled around him, it became static. He was on the brink of death but somehow the Mist froze time and trapped his life, right before he died.
“Thank you,” she told the mist. “You are so very kind. You always are.”
There was a cold breeze and she turned to see Rigas opening the door to run. “Take her and renew the lease,” he begged as he vanished out of the house.
Fevronia didn’t hesitate. She smashed her hand mid-air and the door closed and locked. With another hand gesture, the window fixed itself. She turned to look at Matrone and the Mist-covered baby. “He will not live, right?”
The demon pulled her in a hug and placed Matrone's head over her thighs as she started healing her. “Hush and sleep,” Fevronia ordered and Matrone, no matter how hard she tried to resist, shut down.
She woke up outside. The Mist was all over the house and Fevronia poured dirt over a hole. “He is not dead,” Fevronia said before Matrone managed to form a thought. “He will be born but not of your body. Help me and I will explain everything to you.”
She didn’t hesitate, even though her mind warned all she was ending her child’s life with her own hands. All she understood of the world told her she was killing him. She ought to question Fevronia. All her life she had known of her as a monster. But it was others who had cut her fingers, who had left her to die and Rigas who had tried to kill her. She used her elbows to push the dirt. Inside it, she saw the bundle of mist and felt the faint life of her child.
Once they were finished, Matrone lay on the ground exhausted. “So, you want my story?” Fevronia asked. “And why we did this?”
She nodded. “All the stories I grew up with were wrong, right? That you rose from the ground as a demon and such.”
Fevronia sighed and brough her legs in a semi bent position, resting her hands over her knees. “That is partly true,” she admitted. “I am not a demon. I am a witch, or was. I used to be the wisewoman of the village many, many years ago. It was when the village was still part of the world. There was an illness that stroke us, and some of the villagers decided to kill and bury those of us afflicted. I was pregnant, like you, when they did that.” Tears rolled down her face. “Something, someone, I don’t know, helped me and my son, Cosmas, live and a few months later, I dug myself out of the grave. I was cured, there was no disease and my wisdom had turned divine, into magic.”
Matrone listened. “I became again the wisewoman and raised my child. For the first few decades it was all fine, but I wasn’t aging and was the only one with magic. I am not going to go into too much detail, maybe another time, but this caused issues and the same people who buried me in their youth, came and demanded I share my power with them, that I owed them. They called Cosmas, a young man then, a demon too. That he was unnatural. So many accusations. Threats.”
“I can imagine,” Matrone said as she had experienced the same behaviour all her life.
Fevronia smiled weakly. “Yeah, you can,” she muttered and waited a moment before continuing. “It was so long ago, and I don’t remember much of the details, but they buried my boy, saying that he never ought to be born. Buried him alive. A few days later, he dug himself out, and was changed, magical like me. Everyone hated us afterwards. They wanted to burn us, to dismember us, made stories of how even the earth spat us out and we were demons. Everybody turned on us and I was afraid. I used my gift only to help them and they did all these things to us. I took away from the ground all life and, created the wasteland. I turned all the adults to stone, the obelisks, fulfilling their wish to be magical and undying like me.” She wiped her tears. “All but one.”
Matrone’s eyebrow was raised at the exception. “Who?” she asked, even though she guessed the answer.
“The one who warned me they were coming to burn me. He told me to run away but I decided that enough was enough and this place was mine. My land. It fed from my body and my son’s and gave rise to me as this new creature. I decide, I thought, and I declare the rules. So, they all paid but Rigas, who tried to help me.”
Matrone looked at the ground, under which her child was. “And the Mist? What is that?”
Fevronia shrugged. “It came about a hundred years after I took over. It stayed away from me, and I stayed away from it, until tonight when it came to your rescue. Don’t know anything else.”
“Rigas said that Cosmas died a long time ago.”
Fevronia nodded. “Yes, he aged and died.”
Feeling that there were too many unanswered questions, Matrone moved her body closer. “I don’t understand. How is Rigas then alive?”
Fevronia looked at the ground. “I buried him, and he dug himself out and, like me, he doesn’t age and doesn’t die. He was old when I did that, very old, and maybe that’s why the power he dug himself out with is so weak.”
“And the lease? How did that start?”
Fevronia looked at her and then stood up. “That I don’t want to say,” she said sharply. Before Matrone was able to say anything else, Fevronia left for her shed. Matrone, more confused than before, lay on the dirt and placed her ear against the ground. She heard him, her son, her miraculous child, as his magic fought on.
“Thank you,” she told the mist under the ground, an oxymoron thought. “Keep him safe,” she whispered.
Each time Matrone tried to ask more questions, Fevronia walked away, refusing to even acknowledge their earlier conversation. She created levers around the house and Matrone was able to use them to open the door and windows, enjoying her newfound freedom.
It would have been the first day of the ninth month of her pregnancy when she first dared to knock the door of the shed, where Fevronia spent most of her time. She used her elbow to bang against it. The door opened and Fevronia exited the shed quickly. “I have a question. A few weeks now,” she declared, and the other woman crossed her arms in anticipation. “What is happening with our contract?”
Fevronia groaned. “I don’t care about it anymore,” she said.
“But don’t you need to eat?” Matrone asked her.
The woman lifted her eyebrow and crossed her arms. “You don’t need to worry about your life. Leave me be and stop asking questions I don’t want to answer.” She re-entered the shed, shutting the door behind her, leaving Matrone confused. There was a secret Fevronia refused to let go but Matrone had no right to probe and demand for old wounds to be scratched open. She knew enough and owed Fevronia more.
Fourteen days later, the earth trembled, like when the obelisks moved too close to the village. The trembling grew stronger and she saw Fevronia exit her shed. “I think it is the obelisks,” Matrone told her. “We used to feel them in the village,”
Fevronia turned to look east. Matrone followed her gaze and saw the tops of the trees shake as something approached them. “Get into the house.”
She stayed still, watching the trees move and the ground shake. “I said, get to the house,” Fevronia barked the order again and that time Matrone obeyed. She dashed to it and closed the door. She used her elbows to push the large metal barrier over the door locking herself in. Then, she went to the window but was only able to see the edge of Fevronia’s brown dress. The earth shook and the entire house trembled. She wanted to help Fevronia, she felt her magic bubbling inside her without knowing a way to let it out. Staying by the window, she waited.
The shaking suddenly stopped. Annoyed she couldn’t see what was happening Matrone pressed her face against the glass, her eyes focused on the visible edge of Fevronia’s dress but the old woman walked ahead, and out of sight. Her heart thumped in a mix of restlessness and annoyance at not knowing the threat they faced. Nothing was happening and then, as Matrone contemplated exiting the house, the Mist leaked out of the ground. It took the form of a snake, floating low through the grass.
Something was wrong.
The shaking resumed and three large obelisks appeared. In between two of them, she saw the body of Rigas crushed. The odd twitch of his body betrayed he was still alive somehow. Despite what he had once done for Fevronia, he had been a villain in her story and she found it hard to feel sorry for his miserable crushed state.
She moved away from the window and paced around the room, trying to decide what was the best course of action. She felt her magic wanting to be used but she didn’t know how to without her fingers. The moment she thought that the Mist entered the house through the tiny gap between the door and the floor. She went on her knees to examine it. It crept closer to her and, like a snake, it moved around her body holding onto all her limbs. It moved her hand, as if the white mist materializing all over her was a continuous string meant to control her. It tested how to move her hands and legs and then spread further to her still bandaged hands and sneaked under the white wrappings. She winced at the cold feeling and then she saw the mist coming out of her knuckles, taking the form of fingers.
They weren’t her fingers. They weren’t the right size or shape, but they were fingers. She tried to move them and, with just a moment’s delay, they obeyed. She pointed her hands over the door and used her magic to open it. Her magic, although distrustful of the foreign body attached to her, gave in, and jumped out of her and the door barricade shifted open.
“I can do this,” she encouraged to herself as she exited. She watched the obelisks move in their dance, completely unaware of her. She walked around the house to find Fevronia’s body on the ground. She put her mist fingers over her body feeling her broken bones.
“Fevronia,” she said her name. “Can you hear me?”
The old woman let out a growl. “The baby,” she managed to say.
The Mist hovered over the woman’s body and she felt her magic flicker in her fingers. She returned to the front of the house and watched the three obelisks circling around her child’s birthgrave. “Get away!”
Rigas’s face twitched. Half of his face was completely crushed and gone in between the obelisks but the part of him that wasn’t completely ruined had one eye which turned to her. He tried to speak using what was left of his lips and teeth but only blood spat out. She wondered if he said a warning to her or to the obelisks. He let out a shriek and then the third obelisk moved with alarming speed at her. The mist took over and she evaded the oncoming onslaught. There was another shriek from Rigas and the obelisk attacked again.
The moment she evaded it, she placed her hands on the ground and let her magic reach the rock, which tried itself to evade her magic’s reach. She chased the obelisk until it was away from the other two. The farther away it was from Rigas, the slower it moved and Matrone managed to capture it, turning the ground into mud and the obelisk started sinking in it, until it was buried, immobile, under it.
She turned to the other two obelisks, with Rigas trapped between them. The moment she was a few meters away from them, a magical push sent her flying. The mist, controlling her body, eased her landing but the crash sent pangs of pain all over. She didn’t mind it though. She had experienced such excruciating pain. A cracked bone was nothing. She stood again on top of her feet and approached again, this time preparing her magic to hold her body to the ground.
Rigas screamed as the obelisks, if she was correct, used his magic to attack her, but this time she stood her ground. The earth, with her son’s power feeding from it, wrapped around her feet and she withstood the hit. She needed to separate the obelisks and disconnect Rigas from them. Her loose plan of attack.
“Fevronia told me who you are,” she told the Obelisks, unsure if they could hear or understand her. “That you once were people, full of jealousy. Is this your revenge? If so, you took it, she is broken and dying.”
Rigas kept screaming as they tried to push her away, but the earth and her son held on to her. He tried to speak. She managed to approach them and placed her mist fingers over the closest stone. She started pushing its substance apart, making it break from the inside. She brought forth in her mind the feeling of how it was when she was torn apart and Rigas put his fingers inside her. She focused on that feeling and pushed with all her magic, all the land’s magic.
The obelisk trembled, shook in its place as she penetrated it. Rigas screamed as they tried to use his magic to hurt her, but she was too close to fail. She was nearly there. She dared to open her eyes and saw the many cracks that had appeared over the stone and kept trying.
It didn’t break. The obelisk, afraid of whatever it would become if it broke into pieces moved away, accepting defeat. She watched it slowly, without magic, move away and Rigas body falling on the ground. The sight was horrific with some of his bones visible though pierced skin and most of his face completely gone.
“Go!” she ordered them and lifted her hands. The nearly broken obelisk, clinging to its miserable odd material life, started moving away, shaking the earth as it escaped. The other stood still. She watched the fallen body of Rigas, waiting to see if any magic residue was left onto the remaining Obelisk. “I said go!”
Then the Obelisk started shaking and she saw Rigas was touching it and, like she had done to the other, he used whatever magic he had left to crack it. He shook and more blood spat out of his mouth as pieces of the rock started falling. They resembled sharp cuts, like a stone mason would do as he carved. Long and clean.
She didn’t watch long the obelisk getting dismembered. She went to the ground and started digging the soil with her mist fingers. The closer she got to the child, her mist fingers grew weaker. “Come on!” she begged. “Just let me get to him,” she muttered and dug with more ferocity and speed until she saw the bundle of mist. Her fingers joined it and she was left unable to pick her son up.
She shook her head. She was able. She needed to be creative. The mist started disappearing and her son’s face came through. It was dirty. He needed a wash. She used the crook of the inner side of her elbow to push him towards her body. He cried as the Mist left him completely and he shivered. She used her other arm to hold him onto her torso. “Go to her, please,” she begged the Mist, which again assisted her. She saw it dash towards Fevronia. She held the baby over her body and, using her legs stood up. She went on her toes and managed to push him over the ground.
His cries filled the air. “Just a moment,” she promised him as she used her elbows to start climbing up again. She fell more than once and had to start over, scratching her body but eventually she managed to climb out and lay with a ragged breath next to her son. She moved her body close to him and rolled him onto her torso. His magic and hers mixed and they both relaxed.
She felt the twitch of Rigas’s magic from where he lay. He looked as if he tried to speak but she refused to look at him. Instead, she held with her elbows and arms her child tightly and walked to where Fevronia and the mist were. She was encircled in a thick white cocoon of mist. It let her enter the protective bubble. She placed the baby by Fevronia and smiled at her. “I thought I can name him Cosmas, as he was born from the ground to this world, like your boy.”
Fevronia didn’t say anything. Matrone watched as the older woman’s lips twitched and she smiled at Cosmas. “We need to bury you again,” she told the woman. “To help you heal like before.”
Fevronia shook her head. “But you will not survive,” Matrone protested.
“another… moment ... Cosmas,” she begged.
Matrone moved her son closer to her and then, determined to repay the help the old woman had given her, left him by Fevronia’s side and went to the house, opening the door with the lever. She grabbed her blanket with her teeth and returned to Fevronia.
The woman was in pain when she rolled her over the blanket and then placed the baby over Fevronia’s torso. Using her teeth, she started to pull the two bodies towards the already dug hole. It was hard. Her teeth shook in her mouth. The baby cried in distress for hours, but she knew that if she stopped, she would never start pulling again. She persevered until she reached the hole and then she opened her mouth, fearing her teeth would fall out from the strain.
She moved Cosmas away from the blanket and, using her legs, pushed the older woman in the ground. Her body crashed against the ground. Matrone then started using her arms to push over Fevronia. The mist left the ground as she did that. She saw it linger over the obelisk and Rigas. She wanted to beg to let both suffer and die.
She didn’t. The Mist, which had kept her alive for so long wasn’t her servant. It saved who it pleased. It had saved her and Cosmas for no reason. She wrapped the baby with the blanket and held him onto her body and returned to the house. She kicked the door closed and then went to the bed.
She lay with the baby next to her, far too tired to think or do anything else.
Ioanna Papadopoulou is a Greek author, currently residing in Glasgow. She studied Art History and Heritage Visualization and has worked in museums, libraries and community centres. She is currently on a Museum studies course. Her work can be found at places like Hexagon Magazine, Idle Ink, Piker Press and Nymphs.
Follow Ioanna P at: http://twitter.com/IoannaP_Author