Authors Note: This is my first story I publish and guys, I'm excited how this will work out! I'm not even a native speaker of the English language (actually I live in Germany) but I thought it'd be interesting writing in a foreign language. So if some words don't fit, tell me!
Hope you enjoy and review! :)
England 1362
Withered Blossom Hill was a silent place full of memories and dark secrets. Secrets everybody has once in their lifetime: the milk jug filled with pound notes instead of milk, prostitution as payment for a repaired window, pagandom in the house of the Lord, the lie about the wife who did never return from the journey to the city and not to forget, the skeleton in everybodies closet.
The little village was surrounded by pines, alders, firs, spruces and larches. It was wreathed in shadows and darkness most days, even though built on a clearance which once, in a long forgotten time, was a holy sepulchre of a now unknown tribe.
On top of the highest spot of the hill stood the church, built with the wood of the overleafing trees, whitewashed; the color was spalling after years of rain and snow and heat – revealing the darker face of the building. To every full hour the bell rang, awry and groaning. Rigour wasn't meant for the church in this particular place. This church, in which all the village people fit – which nobody could know at that time – was only good enough for them when the fear and terror were as dark and clutching like deaths claws. There was no decoration whatsoever in that fane, only the altar was blazoned with a crimson cloth, there the old and withered bible lay with its yellow pages nobody had turned for ages.
Around the church there stood not more than thirty little houses, each filled with at least five people of every age. Those houses were made out of wood – just like the fane – but not whitewashed, exposed to every weather, so they fell prey to ruin, rotting every year a bit more. Most of the gardens lay dry and scuffy, weed was sprawling like a slowly worsening sickness over the ground, like an illness it was sucking the life out of it. The little vegetables the people were planting were stale or already rotten. Life seemed to retreat from this village just like the contact to the outside world ran low.
The residents of Withered Blossom Hill were neither all too faithful nor interested in science, they lived by some older religion – a religion in which monsters and gory creatures were deities.
They wanted nothing more but to till their gardens, care for their stock – mostly in the cold months, at any other time those animals would care for themselves just perfectly – and conceive children.
In those days of late summer, which was grabbing for the long lost heat just like a dying lover is snatching for the memories of a forgotten affair with this long, cold and misty fingers; children and animals were uncommonly restless and churning. And this behaviour should last until winter.
One of the houses was built by a man who was now living there with his son, his daughter-in-law and their two girls. That house had been repaired several times but one cannot flee from decadence, not by just hammering new wooden boards against holes in the walls. This year the roof was to be repaired and the granddaughters had been willing to do so.
The younger one was called Eileena and with her nineteen years she was already too old to be unmarried. Her long and straight dark brown hair looked like dry blood in the autumn sunshine, her fair skin enhanced the seafoam greenish blue eyes – the people in the village sometimes talked about Eileena as an undine, for only her dark hair contradicted this assumption. Anything else of her appearance matched for that mythical creature which actually was kind of a female and beautiful water sprite.
Her two years older – and also unmarried – sister went by the name Canace. She was gifted with very long, curly red hair which looked like flames in the sun. She and her sister had just little in common when it came to their looks. Canace had slightly tanned skin and very intense yellowish green eyes which stood in a strong contrast to her hair. Just like her sister she was not very popular, some villagers feared she'd be a witch for her looks and the fact that not a single young man of Withered Blossom Hill wanted to marry her.
The parents of Eileena and Canace, Alasdair and Elizabetha, were ever since faced with trouble; and all the skepticism and unkindness which was directed towards their daughters were just more sorrows for the pair. They wanted nothing more but a normal life, full of hard work and some warm nights. They had never expected that their children could become the reason for some kind of ejection from the other villagers. Both had been born here, as well as Eileena and Canace, they didn't understand the accusations.
As the days became shorter and nights darker the first snow fell over Withered Blossom Hill. The winters were always harsh and severe for all of the villagers and they kept on helping each other in order to survive. Only once – mostly on the most icy and stormy day of the year – the pastor from London came by to hold mass. Every month one of his priests visited the village to collect the taxes, which consisted of eggs, flour, wood or milk. Not many of the men went into town for work and those who did had died a few years ago so the church had to take what it could. And if it was food then it shall be so.
In this winter the pastor came and did something he never did before. He visited every single household in Withered Blossom Hill and started asking around for supernatural or just suspicious incidents or persons.
It was then when Alasdair and Elizabetha sat in their little kitchen, trying to keep the fire in the small chimney burning as Alasdairs dad came by and sat down.
"Dwennon, you should be sleeping by now", Elizabetha said a bit surprised. She hadn't expected the old man to show up so late, the moon was now on his highest point and the stars were shining coldly. Usually the old man went into his room after nightfall and would not come out of it before sunrise.
"And you, Beth, should give an old man the chance to be a good one", 86-years old Dwennon answered. He had never been too earnest about life or etiquette.
"But you are a good man, pa", Alasdair grinned – like father like son – and patted the old mans hand. "Or did you have a nightmare and just can't tell us young folk?"
"Nightmares don't happen in your head, kid. They happen outta it." Dwennon sat back, feeling the ache in his back and limbs. "And I tell you, that religious idiot is a nightmare."
"Dwennon, please. A nightmare for who? For us?" Elizabetha, always easy to frighten, sure knew she had to take her father-in-law seriously. He had a feel for things like that. And what he said did not really sound good.
"No – not us. Not the old ones. But for the young lasses you produced." Also, the old man did not want to be unclear in his speech.
"Do you mean Eileena and Canace?"
"Do you have any other breed working around the house?"
"Father!"
"What? Can't I tell the truth in my own house anymore?!"
"Alasdair, let your father talk. Why is the pastor a nightmare for our daughters? They didn't do anything that could offense the church." But at the same time she heard some of the elder villagers whisper undine and witch.
"Do? No. Not do." He threw a glare out of the window into the night. "It's not what they do, it's what villagefolk's telling that religious idiot. But I know how that works, God yes I know. We have to hide them on Sunday."
"Why on Sunday?", Elizabetha asked rather confused. Why should anyone of the villagers tell lies about her sweet and bountiful children? And what was Dwennon talking about anyway?
"The mass." The man with the reddish hair turned to his wife. "Whilst mass usually witches and pagan beings or humans are burnt. On a stake. Or they are drowned – depending on what's nearer to church."
"What do these folks call my granddaughters?", Dwennon asked Elizabetha, for he didn't really know, just that they called them.
"A witch and an undine." It's merely a whisper of Elizabetha, but it was loud enough for the sharp ears of the old man and her husband. "They're going to kill our girls."
"Not if you listen to ye old Dwennon", the 86-year old man quite grinned.
As they went into church, the whole family felt the tension and fear in the air, it was so thick and heavy one could try to cut it through – and who knows, maybe successfully. Eileena and Canace were told to act just as every year. Dwennon was the first of them to enter church, after him the young girls and at last Alasdair and Elizabetha. He womans' hands were shaky and wet with cold sweat, her body vibrated with fear for her children lives. She tried to keep everything about them in mind if their plan would fail.
Eileena wore a brown skirt, dirty and wet, a beige linen shirt and leather shoes which were almost used up – She definitely needs new ones, Alasdair has to buy some when he comes to town next time. Her hair was covered with a white earflap cap. The cheeks were rosy and her eyes shimmered in the light of the torches inside the church, revealing not a single feeling of the young woman.
Her older daughter did wear linen shoes, filled with straw, a black skirt – nearly brown with mud and gray with ash – and a gray linen shirt. On her red hair was nothing but snow, the tip of her nose was red as well as her ears. She walked as determined like she had waited for this day all year long.
"I don't know what we're supposed to do here", Canace hissed but smiled at some of the older women in the church who already sat in the first row. Yes, she thought, you ought to do atonement, since you call me a witch, old crows. But it'd be sinful to say such things out loud.
"We're supposed to do nothing here", Eileena whispered unnerved. She did not know what this was all about or why her parents seemed to go totally insane every minute but one thing was for sure: She hated mass and she wouldn't kneel in front of that black dressed parson, who thought he could make her do so.
"Now, follow me, lasses. But be quiet." Dwennon came up to the girls and tipped on their shoulders. The mass wasn't on for twenty minutes and this rash action of their granddad bemused the two young females.
"Granpa, what's so important?", Canace asked but followed the old man. He was up to nothing good, that was clear. "You need to pee?"
"Shush! You unlucky girl. And you!", he turned to face Eileena, who had trouble following up since some of the children had begun to sleep on the floor at the beginning of the mass. "Faster. But be silent."
They followed him into the coldest and darkest corner of the church, where nobody was sitting. Which was, after all, an advantage for the intention Dwennon had in his mind.
"So, what are we doin' here? You need to pee now or not?" Canace never thought about her speech, if it was rude or mellifluous. She could chance it within a second.
"I don't need to piss", her granddad sighed and padded with his right foot on the floor. "It must be here somewhere."
"What the hell is granpa doin' there?"
"I don't have an idea."
Eileena and Canace looked at each other, wondering what the old man was up to. Or why.
"Now, my dearest grandchildren, you have to leave us for a few hours", Dwennon suddenly said and opened a trapdoor just a few inches away from Eileena. "The villagefolk's talked to that old and greedy pastor. And when I know something I know the ways of church. And after all I saw and heard I know he want's to burn you after mass."
"A trapdoor?!" Canace was shocked. Why on earth should someone built something like that into a church?! Who would be stupid enough to hide something in such a place?
"Burn us?" Eileena had apparently other priorities. Her gaze rested on her granddad. "What for?"
"They think you're an undine, my pretty child. And your sister is looking like a witch for them. Enough reasons for those religious idiots to roast you alive." Dwennon pointed into the darkness. "You have to hide down there. But be careful. There is one thing, a mirror which you must not look into. It shows you a life in the far future, a life for your souls but not your minds." And all of a sudden, the old man looked old. Wrinkles, darkness, fear and strain made him seem like a hundred years old, not only eighty-something.
"How do you-" But Eileena didn't come to finish her sentence, Dwennon already did push her and Canace into the dark room underneath the church and with a silent "pof" the trapdoor closed over them.
The sisters were faced with absolute darkness, stinky and stale air. It was cold down there, colder than outside and the girls frowned, rubbing their arms in that murkiness.
"I can't believe he did that", Eileena mumbled and leaned against the ladder which led the way up. But she was sure her granddad would put something onto the trapdoor to ensure nobody would check if something hid down here. And who the hell would anyways?!
"I can. What a disgusting place. And no light at all. How should we not look into that mirror if we can't see it? Gosh, I hate Sundays!" Canace, feeling cold and betrayed, started to walk around.
"What are you doin', Ace?"
"Just walking around, I don't want to end up like a goddam icicle! And you should move, too, Lee."
"Move – are you joking? I can't even see my hand in front of my eyes. How am I supposed to walk around? I could stumble!"
"And I could, too. Problem?"
"Course you, Canace, you and your family."
"Which includes you, Eileena." The older one had to grin about her sisters outburst. She had her hands stretched out in front of her to feel her surrounding, if there was a wall or just nothing. But then she felt something chilly, cold and smooth. "Come over here."
"And how should I come over here?"
"Would you mind following my voice while I ask you a second time to join me here? I think I found something interesting." She waited for her sister to arrive and as she felt the presence at her side she grabbed Eileenas' shirt. "There you are."
"Now I'm able to pity blind people even more. But what have you found?" The younger one couldn't be mad with her sister for long. Eileena was too curious, and it was all too mysterious for her taste, she wanted answers. Other than her sister, Canace, who was all into doing and getting her tasks done.
"That mirror is huuuge!"
"Where are you going?" Eileena hated to be left alone in dark places. It never happened to her before and she didn't like it! "Don't leave me!"
"I'm right back. But gosh, that thing is at least three meters long! And as tall as John the Sailor!"
John the Sailor had been living in Withered Blossom Hill until his early death and he had been tall. Very tall, about 6.6 feet high. Or higher.
"Is it?" Eileena thought that was not so interesting. "And how does that help us?"
"I don't have an idea, but that is insane! Who would make such an enormous mirror and hide it down here?"
"As granpa said, it's a mirror filled with black magic and I don't like you touching it."
"You don't like me touching anything I think is interesting", Canace said easily and patted her sisters head. "So, now we shall not think about that thing anymore and-" She stopped talking.
"What?"
"Did you hear that?" The redhead turned to see something, without success.
"Hear what?!" Eileenas voice sounded higher than usual. Caged down here – and now her sister heard something? Something that had been in this room for weeks maybe? Months or even years? She felt an uneasiness crawl up her spine like a fat and slow spider would walk towards a victim, cold and determined, and tried not to shriek as she heard her sister sigh.
Canace regretted saying anything, but she had heard a sound, like a really fat rat walking by. Not running, more like walking but with a whooshing sound after it, as if it'd bring wind with it. A foul and rotten wind. She sighed and felt her sister nearly jump at that sound.
"Nothing. Don't mind my ears." She tried to smile while talking, but a cracking sound behind her proved she was about to lie. The sound rose up, accompanied with an ugly splintering noise. Both turned and realized too late what it came from.
"The mirror!"
It was Tuesday when Dwennon wanted to look for the girls in their hideout, but as he opened the trapdoor the room had been empty, but the mirror was untouched. He did not know how to tell that Elizabetha or Alasdair, something so quite unexplainable. He had given his only granddaughters to the darkness of the black magic which filled that room.