Author's note: This chapter will be a little bit strange...hope you'll like it anyway!
When she had arrived she raised her hand to knock at the solid wooden door that was the entrance to Tia's lodging, but did never come as far as to actually execute the motion. The door was opened ere she could announce her presence, which was obviously superfluous since the other woman seemed to already know she was coming.
"You've called for me," remarked redundantly, not knowing what else to say.
"I did. Come in," Tia stepped back and motioned her to enter with her ever-present smile on her face that was a strange mixture of mischief of wisdom. Which one of those attributes was the dominating one, was hard to tell most of the time. However that her smile had a somewhat unsettling effect on people was undisputable.
Josephine entered Tia's quarters and couldn't help but admire the change that had taken place there. Only it a few days ago this had been a rather Spartan, almost sterile room. Apparently the voodoo priestess hadn't been able to resist the temptation of bringing some of her bizarre potions and jars along. They had been carefully arranged all over the cabin by what seemed to be pure chance.
"What are all this things for?" the young woman asked curiously. She reached for a jar that stood next to her on the table and held it up to her face eyeing its contents interestedly. It was hard to make out anything at all. The water that filled the glass container was milky and what she could see swimming inside of it could best be described as some kind of root. Josephine wrinkled her nose unconsciously.
"Ingredients….sacrifices to the gods…," Tia explained.
"Does it work?" Josephine put the jar down and turned to look at her.
"Does it work?" the other woman chuckled amusedly, "You've seen Davy Jones, haven't you?"
"I did, but…"
"But you haven't started believing properly, right?"
"No, it's not that. It's….just very hard to process all this at once… it's as if my mind isn't quite able to catch up with what has happened in the last couple of weeks," she sighed.
She had the impression that Tia was paying particular attention to every word that came from her mouth, which made her feel particularly self-conscious. The young woman didn't know what else to say and Tia was not very forth coming with providing a new topic of conversation and so the conversation came to a sudden halt. As the paused prolonged, the young woman started getting uncomfortable, maybe all those strange jars were to blame for that or the even stranger woman standing in front of her.
She clumsily broke the silence, "Well…you sent for me…wasn't there something specific you wanted?"
"Yes, it be time for your lesson, Josephine."
"I'm sorry I must have misheard you. My what?" the young woman stared at her incredulously.
"Your lesson," was the highly expectable answer.
"What is it I'm supposed to learn?"
"How to find what everybody's after…the heart," Tia Dalma explained patiently. "But it won't work unless you're a believer. Are you a believer, Josephine?"
"I don't know," the young woman gulped heavily.
"Then you better become one very quickly," she remarked a little less patiently after Josephine had failed to provide the desired answer. "And I think I know just the thing…"
"It won't require me biting of the head of a chicken, will it?" the young woman finally replied half jokingly, but the nervous grin on her face immediately disappeared when she heard Tia's answers.
"Only if you want to," she replied with a devious grin.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A fundamental part of Josephine's education had been to deeply ingrain the thought in her head that believing in the supernatural, ghosts, fairy tale creatures and their likes, was not also something highly insensible, but also immature. So it was particularly hard for her to engage in this new experience that was awaiting her without being cynical or judgemental.
She had been ordered by Tia Dalma to sit on the bare wooden floor with her eyes close and to prepare mentally for the magical ritual that was about to ensue. The young woman scooted around uncomfortably. What was the sense in opening her mind to the sensation that surrounded her anyway? Wasn't it always open, since she was hearing, seeing – well, not as of now, with her eyes closed – smelling and feeling everything, most prominently the uncomfortable floor underneath her bottom, on which she had been sitting for at least half an hour.
Suddenly she felt a touch against her skin. Two fingers smeared something cool and pasty over her cheeks and her forehead. Josephine opened her eyes, thanks to the unexpected sensation. She came to look Tia Dalma directly in the face. The other woman proceeded unflinchingly with her application of what seemed to be some sort of blue muddy substance, of which Josephine preferred not to know what it was exactly. After a while she was done and started rummaging, apparently searching for some particular object. Her eyes gleamed triumphantly when they spotted a gourd lying amidst the strange array of objects that decorated her table. Tia held it out to her and Josephine had no other choice but to take it from her hands.
She swivelled it around curiously and had the impression of hearing the gurgling of a fluid inside of it. When she took a closer look she discovered it was closed with a cork. She removed it carefully and briefly sniffed at the makeshift bottle. The smell that invaded her nostrils was extremely repellent so she automatically held the gourd a little further away.
"Drink," Tia Dalma ordered her monosyllabically and underlined the force of her demand with a nudge of her head.
"It's not poison, if that's what you be thinking," she added as she saw Josephine still hesitate.
Josephine made a face, but slowly brought the bottle closer to her mouth. The smell was already creeping into her nostrils again, but she would not make the same mistake twice. She held her breath and brought the bottle to her lips. The liquid started pouring down her throat and left a pleasantly warm sensation there as if she had just drunk a hot cup of tea. She could hear a monotonous singsong in her hears. Whatever language it was in, it was unknown to her. Its long stretched vowels seemed to echo in her ears. Only after a couple of more seconds it occurred to her that it was Tia's voice she was hearing.
The bottle slipped from her fingers and rolled over floor. Its movement was trailed by a smear of colour that only retracted into the confinements of the object, when it finally lay completely still. She blinked lazy then decided to close her eyes. Must be some kind of drug…was a thought that momentarily flashed in her inebriated mind, but it was quickly drowned out by Tia's chanting. It seemed harder and harder to concentrate on forming coherent thoughts. 'Funny, I don't even believe in this,' a voice inside her head muttered.
Then Josephine opened her eyes again, or at least she thought she had opened her eyes, because when she looked down she could see herself sitting on the floor. It was as if she was hovering at least half a meter above herself. Panic took a hold of her. Tia had lied, it had been poison after all and now she was dead! Her soul had separated from her body. Or maybe this was all an illusion, an intricate trick she had not yet been able to understand. She would immediately stand up and walk away from this. This had already gone on for too long!
She tried to command her legs to stand up, but failed inevitably. She was no longer confined to her body and since she had no actually limbs, though she still imagined she could feel them, walking away, let alone standing up was completely out of question. She soon came to realize that the attempt alone was in itself usuless, maybe even a bit stupid.
Josephine wanted to scream in frustration, but she had no mouth to scream, no vocal chords to make the sound, no lungs to provide the needed air. A fresh wave of panic hit her together with something else: the feeling of absolute freedom, of being able to go wherever she wanted to, but just as she wanted to give into this urge, she sensed something akin to a pull.
The chanting suddenly stopped. All of a sudden she had the strange sensation of falling deeper and deeper. At first she spiralled downwards like a feather, but soon the soft hovering turned into a panic striking dive towards the ground. Josephine swayed forward and her reflexes kept her from landing head first on the floor. She blinked in disorientation.
Everything was still a blur, but she could doubtlessly feel that her hands, that had stopped her fall and now rested against the rough wooden surface of the floorboards. Still her head refused to stop spinning. She perceived the world as if through a veil. The shapes of objects were distorting and overlaying. Her stomach contorted and a sudden nausea hit her. She was not able to repress it and had to throw up. When she was done she felt a sudden chill creep over her skin, but on the upside the world had gotten into focus again. She was still in Tia Dalma's quarters.
"Blimey!" she managed to get out with a creaky voice. What she had just experienced could not be expressed by a more sophisticated choice of words.
"Do you believe now?" Tia Dalma looked at her curiously from the other side of the room.
Oh, she did believe alright.
