Part II: hidden in the death of sleep
"So I assume the fact you're sleeping with that book, is a yes to my little request?" Priscilla asks Lizzie.
This time in their dreams, they are sitting together in a boat across a body of unknown size. Priscilla sits in front of Lizzie in a navy blue lose fitting chemise of a dress, with golden necklaces with pearls and diamonds draped around her neck and bands of gold on her arms. She looks as if she comes from another time. The small rhinestones sewn into her dress sparkled like stars in the night sky, to make up for the fact that the sky before them was empty and black. There is not a moon in the sky to be seen and no light reflects from the black surface of the water that reflected the nothingness of the sky above. Nothing can be seen on the furthest edges of the horizon, and the water before them is endless as it is colorless. In the darkness, neither Elizabeth nor Priscilla can see the water rippling on the edges of the boat, but the gentle swaying motion means that they are there, gently guiding them through the waters.
"I"ll help you get your own body so you will not take mine," Lizzie conceded readily to Priscilla's need for a new body, for reasons she could not fin or understand. She felt almost compelled to help her, as if she wanted to. Yet Lizzie could not find a reason within herself as to why she would so readily give up so much of her time to this Priscilla-not-Priscilla.
"Oh please, you know that I could never take you... by force, that is."
"What do I have to do to help you get your new body?" Lizzie asked.
"Murder, to put it bluntly," Priscilla said. Lizzie gasped in surprise and nearly clutched the pearls around hr neck in shock. Her? Murder? Another person? She didn't know enough of demons and furies to expect murder first and all other possibilities second.
"What?" Priscilla raised an eyebrow at Lizzie's confused and disgusted expression. How could she have ever expected something different? "You heard me. You think you can create a body from nothing, well you can't. It needs a certain amount of sacrifice."
"Why don't you just kill someone yourself, hm?" Lizzie responded, putting up her defensed immediately, as if putting a wall of ice between them wouldn't melt in the white hot hands of a fury, whose soul burned so fiercely.
"Oh I can't touch them with my hands until the final sacrifice. They must be pure and die pure, if one mistake were to be made, such as the mistake that treacherous mongrel made, it would ruin the entire ritual and put me back to the edge of nothingness."
"I know exactly how to put an end to things, should you get out of hand." Lizzie said, a smirk was plastered on her face. She did not know that she could smirk, but it felt nice. She felt like she could be equal to Ciel, and take on a role similar to his, and that she did not have to be a simple sidekick, unknowing and unquestioning. The idea was liberating but the unfamiliar liberation frightened her.
"Well, I give you credit for figuring it out quicker than those halfblooded idiots," Priscilla said, doling out complements to the pretty blonde girl before her. Oh, how the fury had misjudged her as stupid and more and more it became alarmingly obvious that Elizabeth was not stupid. She was just afraid to be anything else than the mask of an idiot that she put on. Unlike Priscilla, Lizzie had yet to learn that power does not sit idly between the paws of men, and that womanhood, in its own right is as powerful. In the hand of the fury, she is a deadly weapon.
"I'm not stupid," Lizzie said with her tone full of indignation. She knew she was not the pristine untouched person that her aunty always told her to be, nor was she the prudent, controlling woman that her mother told her to be. No, she was someone else entirely and the thought that she could be something other what she was ordered to be was not an idea that flowed to easily with what society had taught, not taught but forced, into her.
"You do a good impression of a stupid girl, let me guess, you're a trained killer too?" Priscilla laughed at her, her tone was patronizing, and Lizzie shook her head. Lizzie did not reply to her.
"Well, let me give you your first mission task: retrieve me some apples." Priscilla said.
"I don't understand why you would need them." Lizzie admitted.
"You better get reading some more then, my dear lamb!" Priscilla waved Elizabeth goodbye.
Elizabeth awoke in a pool of sweat, her hair stuck itself to her forehead and the back of her neck. Now she was entirely sure that she had just been enlisted as the single knight in a questionably ethical army for an inhuman beast that required ritual sacrifices, and for whatever reason, apples, to live. It's been a pretty heavy week so far and for Elizabeth, it's not even Wednesday yet. It was time for her to once again crack open the old spell book that was most likely cursed. She wondered for a second why she would help Priscilla, the more she got to know the fury, the more that she detested her. Lizzie could have pitied her for her misfortune, but she wondered if Priscilla didn't just bring it upon herself to make others hate her with her attitude. Perhaps not even intentionally.
She thought about the servants that Priscilla had, and how she had not seen them since that night where she had gotten into the accident that Ciel oh-so-carefully covered up. There were the servants that she kept around her at all times. They could have been servants, in human ones, which Priscilla drew in to serve her because she could not force a human to do the kind of work that she wanted done. The two french ones that worked under Priscilla as her 'personal chef' and her 'maid', who Lizzie could tell hated Priscilla and made it no secret. Those two looked miserable, as if they were waiting on the bedside of a dying, vengeful monster. They looked so cheerful on the outside, but their smiling eyes were dead. They reflected nothing but despair.
There was Eisengrid, who Priscilla lavished over, calling him her faith 'pet', and how she was given him as a 'gift'. He was tall and mysterious, radiating an attitude and feeling not different from Sebastian. His sanguine colored eyes and white hair made him look as if he was a foreigner from a world that was not our own. Priscilla made an emphasis on treating him as if he was nothing but an obedient puppy to do her bidding. Lizzie had dismissed it as careful play between lovers, but she recalled something else. The ways that Eisengrid looked at Priscilla when she was not looking back. He never looked happy, but when the blonde turned her head to face him, he always put on a smile, but his crimson eyes had never moved from their mournful positions. Did Priscilla know? Did she care?
"Oh you're so lucky, Lizzie! I haven't even started a courting a man, much less taken up residence in his manor. Earl Phantomhive is so rich, and he spoils you, " Lizzie's friend, Clarice says as they have elevenses in the courtyard behind the Phantomhive estate.
Of course she has not begun courting a man, because only a really desperate man would ever date a girl who looked like her, despite her family's wealth. The largest dowry wasn't enough for the men gentry to consider a homely girl, they were superficial to the core. Even Lizzie herself wouldn't have stood a chance on the open market, it was 'lucky' that she was engaged to Ciel. He was sickly and had one eye, so he probably wouldn't be able to find anyone himself, for that matter. Clarice was one of the few that bothered with Lizzie, for they were in the same boat. Rejected by he other girls in their social groups, but for different reasons. Clarice was homely, had teeth that stuck out at odd angles, and it was clear that her mother drank during pregnancy. Lizzie was engaged to someone who everyone was criminal sociopath, and she herself was a killing machine trained in murder from birth. How funny, how ironic, how the things that brought them together would turn out in the end.
"Well, our marriage is arranged since his birth, so we're very familiar. He does not mind if I invite over friends, he trusts me completely." Lizzie said. She wore a light dress that was clearly inspired by Jane Austen, and oh the irony of the situation that was stuck in a marriage that she never second guessed. Ciel was her Mr. Darcy, or at least he tried to be, and his performance was truly disappointing.
Together they sat in the garden, talking about idle objections that Lizzie had no emotional investment in. She smiled as Clarice prattled on, munching at a green apple that Lizzie asked Maylene to provide for their small meal. Clarice has this blank expression on her face before she falls over in her chair and hits the grass with a thud, her expression is blank as Lizzie drags her through the outside cellar door into the wine cellar where Ciel keeps all of his parent's liquor that he claims that he has 'never touched'. In the cellar, she has already provided the pentacle and the apple earlier. Clarice was not conscious to feel this, Lizzie reminded herself. She would not feel this. All the pain is the pain that Lizzie inflicted on her soul by killing someone so close to her. She's not awake to feel this. She's not awake to protect herself as Lizzie runs the silver dagger through her heart. The blood of a virgin runs over the circle binding her to Priscilla. She is no longer innocent, but the energy of her soul polishes off some of the tarnish of the soul of the fury's. The silver is pure, the apple signifies the betrayal of the sacrifice in favor of serving the purposes of someone darker than god.
That night as she leaving the Phantomhive manor, poor Clarice, poor, poor dear, she was in a carriage accident. An accident, the paper says. That night, the wheel of the carriage slipped on the unpaved private road just outside of the Phantomhive manor. Clarice was an up and coming young man with so much potential, they all say. That night, she had gotten into a horrid accident, how unfortunate for her and her family. Her best was truly bereaved for her loss. The carriage had slipped and oh, how it went straight into a ditch! Clarice was thrown out of the carriage and was sadly impaled on a piece of a wood from the carriage. She died instantly, they said. The coroner said that she must have been awake during the accident, because of the apple that was in her mouth and the half eaten apple found near the wreckage. Lizzie makes it look like an accident, oh, the tragic accident that poor Clarice had gotten into. She drives the carriage herself and jumps off the horse as the carriage rolls over a large indentation she made in the road. It topples over, and Clarice is thrown out of it. Lizzie takes a piece of wood from the smashed carriage and stabs it straight through the already existing stab wound in her chest. Oh, the poor, unfortunate Clarice, and the sad 'accident' she had gotten into.
"You're wonderful!" Priscilla beamed in Lizzie's dream. They are in a palace of crystals. This Priscilla wears a dress hat is sheer and a nearly white shade of blue adorned with crystals around the hem that reflect the sparkle of the dream scape they are contained in. Lizzie can not believe her mind can create this, so she assumes that is Priscilla's magic. It is all an illusion that Priscilla creates using Lizzie's mind like a tool, and uses her energy like petrol.
"I feel dirty." Lizzie admitted.
"You can't be, my dear. The ritual works by draining the victim of her innocence and imbibing it to me, and to a lesser extent, through you as well."
"I'm speaking metaphorically." Lizzie said.
Oh yes, human are friends with metaphorical speak, aren't you? I'm afraid we immortal creatures of the night are a more literal breed. When we say something is killer, we mean it."
"I see that." Lizzie says, She stares at the crystal floor that reflects her face back at her. She does not want to see herself, she does not care if she looks ravishing in a dress that matches Priscilla's. She can not think of herself positively.
"Talk to me, what has you all bent up?" Priscilla asks Lizzie, as she is unaware of her suffering. Priscilla can tell that something is wrong but she does not understand why Lizzie seems so distance and so miserable. After all, Priscilla does not realize that she has done anything wrong.
"I just killed someone."
"You were good."
"I don't know how to deal with what I have done."
"Four more, lamb. Four more and you will have done something greater than murder, you will have created a new life," Priscilla said. She reaches up one of her black nails and brushes away one of the tears falling down Lizzie's cheek. She kisses her gently, her soft lips pressed against Lizzie's wet cheek for a second where Lizzie let out a sob that was quieted by the fury's kind action.
"Does it get easier?"
"That depends on your attitude." Priscilla said. She realizes that to Lizzie, all of this seems very, very wrong. Just now, Priscilla too, realizes that what they are doing may be considered immoral.