Lies Become the Truth
Chapter One: Of Revenge Gone Sour and Drastic Changes
Author's Note: Thanks for everyone's support with this. I'm really excited about this, for some reason, and I'm really enthusiastic. So read on! It's kind of more dramatic than the others, but I promise you, the humour and random idiocy will return very shortly.
Previously…
"We wandered deeper into the woods where the trees were thicker and the sunlight had a hard time penetrating the leafy canopy. I wasn't worried, for I was never far from Fezzik's amiable whistling and the thuds and cracks of the trees he preyed upon. I had gathered as many sticks as I could carry and was heading back to Fezzik when suddenly I saw something that frightened me so much I dropped my armful of wood all over the ground.
There was a pair of evil scarlet eyes staring maliciously into mine from between two saplings."
-----
I recoiled automatically, my heel catching on a tree root and almost sending me flat on my rear-end. Through some miracle, I managed to remain upright, and continued to retreat backwards as the owner of the menacing ruby eyes advanced forward out of the shadows.
She was even more frightening than I'd remembered. Jocelyn was still beautiful, her hair falling in lustrous raven tresses around her shoulders and her skin still flawlessly smooth, but she had changed. Her eyes hadn't been that colour before, I was sure. She'd never quite looked normal to me, but now she was downright inhuman. Those petrifying eyes still held that wild, untameable look of pure hate, but the new cherry-coloured hue only intensified the fear she stirred within me.
Her skin had changed too. I remembered her being pale, almost ivory-coloured, but not like this. She looked drawn and pallid, like she needed a good nights sleep, and her skin was so pasty she was almost translucent. All of this put together made her rather look like she was made from a smooth, white stone, like chalk. She'd lost weight too, and her frame looked so delicate it was easy to believe she'd dissolve in water.
She looked like the walking dead.
"Alright," she snarled. "You've had your fun. You've lived out your witch fantasy. Now give me the pentacle and I might let you and your friends live."
I clutched the pendant. "No," I murmured. As strange as it seemed, and as much as I missed my family and lots of the modern-day comforts I was used to, I didn't want to leave. I liked my life here. I'd made a bunch of worthwhile friends who looked out for each other. That was a rare event back home, where almost everyone was a snake in the grass. I'd found my place in the world, and now Jocelyn was trying to take it away from me. I was not going to let that happen without fighting it to the best of my ability, although this new, stone Jocelyn looked so invincible she could snap me in half with one hand.
"I'll ask you again," she said, over-pronouncing every syllable, clearly trying to stop herself from ripping me to pieces. "It's this –" she pointed at the pentacle. "Or your life – and theirs." She nodded towards the makeshift camp. My thoughts flew to injured Inigo, and young Westley and Buttercup – so much ahead of them, and I was killing them with my selfishness.
"No," I whispered again, horrified, but I wasn't defying her. "Please. No. Do what you want to me, just don't hurt them."
A slow smile spread across her evil, angular, beautiful features. She had found my weakness. "Then give it to me," she said.
This was excruciating. I'd never be able to live in the twenty-first century, not after tasting this life. It would kill me, not knowing what had happened to them. Crazily, I wondered how they'd be without me. Would they miss me…?
That was beside the point. Jocelyn was getting impatient. Despite my terror, my fists clenched in anger. She was asking me to make a decision that would kill me anyway. She'd never let me survive. Even if she was lenient and sent me home, she probably engineer fate so that I was hit by a car or something. She couldn't leave me alive, because I knew too much.
The anger rose in waves across my body. "You'll only kill me anyway," I ventured. "I might as well die honourably."
Her nose turned up in derision. "Don't play the hero, you're far too unimpressive," she bit. I clenched my jaw, staring intently into her garnet eyes, all fear gone. She'd insulted me; that meant cowardice. I felt more fury bubbling up inside me like a pan about to overflow.
"Why?" I found myself demanding. "What is so important about it? It's a cheap piece of jewellery that cost two pounds from your poxy store! You could get another one. It's not important!"
I was extremely surprised she didn't kill me there and then. The whole forest suddenly seemed very tense and quiet. I couldn't hear Fezzik anywhere. He must have forayed deeper into the woods in search of better logs.
"Because," she hissed, her voice low and dangerous. "It's my pentacle. The source of all my witch powers. The source of my life. If I'm far from it for too long, my powers disappear, I go like this –" she gestured to her brittle frame. "And then I die. You're the one killing me, not the other way around."
Suddenly, she didn't look so invincible. She looked fragile, like an ancient old woman. Her skin looked sickly and sallow, and her eyes no longer looked scary, just woebegone.
My breath caught in my throat. I didn't want to be a murderer. I managed to utter, "Then why did you sell it to me?"
"I didn't know until later that day when I came to see you and this…accident happened. I knew something was causing it, something within the shop, but I had no idea what. Some objects just naturally appeal to the gifted, and the pentacle has always been one of them. I should have figured it out earlier."
"But why this one?"
"That I'll never know. I just looked at it and it was like I was seeing the sun for the first time. I didn't know why at first, but I figured it out a few hours later."
"So I'm just downright unlucky to be involved in all of this? Either that, or I'm very very lucky, depending on how you look at things."
Jocelyn rolled her eyes. "So childish. I can't believe I thought you were an elite witch who sensed that the pentacle held all my powers and so deliberately took it away, to remove the competition, if you like."
"Witches have rivals?"
"Everyone has rivals."
"I don't."
"You're naïve."
"I know." I paused, collecting my thoughts. "This pentacle appealed to me too. Does that mean I have witch potential?"
Jocelyn heaved a sigh that shook her frail chest. I almost expected to hear her ribs crack. "No, that just means you like shiny things," she said, back to being her sarcastic self.
"That's no way to persuade me into letting you live," I said. The tables had suddenly turned. I had the power. Without even meaning to do it, I had drawn enough information out of Jocelyn to give her the disadvantage.
Her eyes widened in shock as she realized what she had done. She reached out to snatch the pentacle from around my neck, but I was too quick. I dodged out of the way and set off running. I could hear her footsteps pursuing me, but her weak frame would not move fast enough to catch up with me. For once, I had the upper hand. Over a log, through a mud patch – nothing was going to slow me down.
Then the ground just disappeared.
I was on the edge of a woodland cliff with nowhere to run. I peered over the edge. It was really dark amongst the close-packed trees, but I could make out the shimmering of deep water below. Triumphantly, I held the pendant over the edge.
I hadn't realized how big a lead I had opened up against Jocelyn, for it took some time for her to catch up. When she finally heaved to a halt a few yards in front of me, her eyes grew as big as saucers.
"No," she whispered.
"You leave now," I commanded. "Or I throw this pentacle, your powers and your life deep into that lake."
"You can't -"
"Wanna find out?" I let the chain slip a little through my fist.
"No!" She cried.
We were at an impasse. I couldn't run, and she couldn't hurt me, but she refused to leave. From somewhere seemingly very far away, I heard Fezzik strike a massive tree with an echoing boom.
"Please," she begged, all dignity gone. "You couldn't live with this on your conscience."
"Maybe not," I admitted. "But if you killed my friends, I would die too, and for some reason, your death is more appealing to me than theirs."
Fezzik struck another tree, nearer this time. I heard him laugh uproariously to himself, completely unaware that his life was at stake.
"If you give it to me," she pleaded breathlessly. "I swear no harm will come to any of you. Hell, you can even stay here, if you want to!"
"You're lying!"
"I'm not!"
"I may not be a real mystic, but I'm not stupid."
"You are stupid!" She spat. "You've no idea what you're messing with! My friends are no match for you and your little outcast posse! We'd crush you to dust! We'd –"
I never found out what Jocelyn would do, for at that moment Fezzik felled another tree, a giant redwood, at least sixty feet tall, and it crashed to the ground, leaving a gaping hole in the otherwise opaque canopy. The sun streamed in, golden and glorious, shining off the glassy water below us and illuminating me.
Something strange began to happen. The light caught the silver pentacle and glinted off brightly. A warm feeling began to spread up my arm, starting in my palm and increasing in intensity until it felt like a white-hot burn as it coursed across my skin. I froze, the pain too much for me to move. Jocelyn stared at me disbelievingly.
"No!" She screamed.
As the invisible flames of pain consumed me entirely, Jocelyn began to change. Her eyes fluctuated into her normal human colour and her skin turned solid and several shades darker. Her broken frame straightened up, and her figure was full and young again.
Although her eyes now looked human, and she was healthy, like she wanted, she still seemed livid with me. She lunged at me, obviously intending to throw me down the cliff, but an invisible shield intercepted her, sending her sprawling backwards in the leaves.
Slowly, the flames began to dull into a lulling throb in the centre of my body. I regained use of my limbs and my brain started to work again. I compulsively put the pentacle around my neck, seized by the desire to have it as close to me as possible. Wasn't this what Jocelyn had described? What had happened?
I regarded the woman that had previously terrified me. She now lay helpless on the ground, her clothes stained with dirt and her eyes looking tortured and outraged. "How dare you!" she screamed, and sprang at me again. This time, no force field blocked her, but I felt powerful and strange. Without even thinking about it, I swung my fist forward and punched her mightily in the nose. She flew backward, her feet not touching the ground, until her back slammed into a wide tree trunk a few metres away. Blood was coursing from her nose. I gawped in shock. I had never been a fighter. Had I really done that?
I was clutching the pentacle in my hand again.
Jocelyn screeched, her voice somewhere between despair and rage. "Look what you've done!"
"What have I done?" I whispered, staring at myself. I didn't look different, but I sure felt it. I felt like a goddess, a titan, an all-powerful being. I gasped in astonishment as I realized that I felt like a –
I had to breathe deeply for a moment before I trusted myself to think the thought:
I felt like a witch.
Jocelyn never responded, for she collapsed onto the floor and didn't move. I felt sick – had I killed her?
"Isabel!" A great voice called. "Isabel! Where are you?" Fezzik.
I turned to take one last look at Jocelyn – but she wasn't there. That meant, at least, that I hadn't killed her.
A few seconds later Fezzik was in sight. I ran to the giant, struggling to contain my horror.
"Hey, Isabel. I got lots of wood. Hey, what happened to you? Are you all right?" His concern threw me over the edge and I collapsed into a howling heap on the ground.
"Oh, Fezzik, what's happened to me?" I cried.
Author's Note: Yeah, I'm sorry for the lack of cannon characters, but this was just to get it started. I promise there'll be loads of them in coming chapters!
Also, my muse was imprisoned using a combination of awesome music, walks along French beaches and wine =) Oh yes, I love summer.
