Chapter 21
Things You Don't Understand

The day I finally lost my splint and crutches was the day school got out for the summer and the next day I would begin my apprenticeship.

I all but skipped the entire way back home, humming and bouncing off of my feet with utter delight.

I was so excited to start working again. Being stuck within the boundaries of the wall was torture and by now I had suffered a great deal of cabin fever. It would be nice to be back with the trees and my game trails, plus I was eager to get back to the island again and see Vanessa. I wondered how it was doing after so much time away.

The moment the splint was off and I was free of the crutches I ventured over the wall to investigate, accompanied by Enid who was just as eager to see the island as I was.

She and Dad had kept their promise to maintain it while I was away. The house though, seemed to be a bit disorganized since the last time I was there. Enid, like me, was not one for housekeeping but I liked to believe my chaos was manageable.

"Sorry about the mess." She tried to explain, reaching for some papers scattered on the floor and moving them to a table. Clothes and unwashed dishes scattered over this surface and that. It looked like Enid was somehow… living here, and true there were whole stretches of days when I didn't see her, but I assumed that was just because we were both busy with our own things. I hadn't known she was voluntarily spending nights in this place.

Her face lit up a bit as I glanced around the messy living room. "I um… come here when I want to be alone. It's a really nice place."

That took me a bit off guard. The island was supposed to be my place of refuge. It was where I learned with Vanessa. I assumed she wouldn't have taken to staying in a real witch's cottage, believing it would be cursed or hold ghosts, but apparently that didn't seem to discourage Enid all too much.

Well I was here now, so order would be restored in time once more. Where her housekeeping skills left much to be desired, at least she had done well to take care of the landscape and greenhouse. I ventured into the glass building just to find the distiller scattered with several different plant specimens.

"Have you been making oils?" I asked, picking up a bottle of something fragrant.

Without expecting it, Enid took it from my hands. "I… well… it's just something to pass the time. I've gotten a bit of a knack for it."

Turning to the work table I spotted other things scattered over it. Salves and soaps and pastes in jars and bottles of every shape and size. There were notebooks as well, some that looked to be written in Enid's handwriting as well as a few I recognized as Vanessa's.

"Are you… studying her books?"

"I just wanted to know more about essential oils and soaps and maybe some remedies." Enid explained hastily. "I thought it would be nice to learn a bit about all this stuff. And if I'm going to watch this place for you I figured it was the least you owed me."

The words caught me completely off-guard.

I hadn't said a single thing about it, but she was treating me like I had just rounded on her. With those words, I instinctively wanted to snap and shout about her not belonging there in the first place. She wasn't a witch and this wasn't her island to just crash in whenever she felt like it. This was a sacred place where a powerful witch once lived, and she was treating it like some kind of Motel 6.

Yet even with that thought, I knew she had still risked her life to come here every day and take care of the land. So, as much as it galled me, I didn't have the heart to tell her just how much I disapproved of it all.

Instead, I just turned around and left to tend the garden, fuming in silent resentment.

I just hoped she would at least have the decency to tidy her crap up before we left today. I didn't have the time or the patience to pick up after another person.

The overall state of the island looked fairly decent, though I still managed to find one or two weeds growing where they shouldn't have been. They could have popped up overnight but it still annoyed me. Enid obviously seemed to have been far too busy with other things to bother keeping the place in decent order.

I tried to put it out of my mind while I fished a bit through the cellar for some bath goods to take to Holly and Cory, the couple that looked after the pigs. I knew they were also running low on things like candles, so it seemed a good idea to take them some of those as well.

My body leapt nearly off my feet when a voice cried out from behind me. "Beetle!"

Whipping around I turned to see Vanessa standing a few feet away, wearing a look of worry.

I held my frantic heart, having been scared almost to death. "Oh, Vanessa, it's just you."

She didn't share in my relief, her face still twisted in concern for some reason. "Beetle. There's been great wrong done here."

"Huh?"

"Your friend is dabbling in things she does not understand."

"W–what do you mean?"

She didn't answer, only turned to lead me to a deeper part of the cellar into a far dark corner where an altar had been set up. With horror, I glanced around to gage the kind of ritual that had been in the makings here.

A pentagram was traced around a stone block where the head of a walker lay atop it, gnashing its teeth away without any body to assist its unquenchable quest for flesh. Accompanying it, was the severed leg of a lamb and the beak of a raven on either side it. Written in blood were ancient runes all along the edges of the circle and laying open in the very center of it all was the Poetry of Death.

There was a terrifying chill that permeated the air the moment I spotted this blasphemy.

"What… the… hell!" I hissed at the sight of it all.

My first instinct was to flee from all of it, but for some reason, me feet wouldn't carry me away. My next thought, drove me forward. My foot struck out and kicked the book closed with an impossibly loud BANG, the sound of which echoed through the entire cellar! Next, my feet skidded through the circle, severing the lines and the incantation with it. After that, I took up the knife in my pocket and stabbed the gnashing head in its brains, silencing it forever.

In five seconds flat, I had reduced this evil altar to pieces. I wasn't sure who it was initially intended for but I had a bit of an idea. Even so, I didn't care. After breaking this spell to shambles I took up the evil book and turned on my heal, running up the stairs two at a time.

"ENID!" I screamed. The young adult appeared to me in seconds.

"What? What is it? Is something wrong?"

"Yes." I all but shouted at her, waving the Poetry of Death in my hand at her. "What the hell is this?"

Her face transformed in terror at the sight of it.

"Where did you find that?"

"Where do you think?" I hissed resisting the enormous desire to throw it in her face. "What the fuck do you think you were doing?"

"I was doing something!" She fired back. "Everybody seems to have forgotten what those monsters did to us and none of them want to fight for what's ours. But I am! I'm fighting back!"

"This is no way to do it!"

"Why not? Are you a witch or not, Judith Grimes? You strut around town playing the part but you haven't done shit to right the wrongs those monsters have done to us. Even when it's at your fingertips, you completely refuse to do what's necessary. Well I say if you won't, I will!"

"This is not the way!" I yelled back at her.

"What is the way, then? Kill or curse, what's the difference? The way I see it, harm is harm—what does it matter about the manner in which it is dealt?"

"It's not worth the cost of your soul!"

"Soul? Are you going to try and tell me you believe in that garbage Father Gabriel spews? You know better than anyone that's all a load of crap!"

"Maybe I don't necessarily believe in those teachings, but I know there are spirits out there who were kind and decent in life but are wandering around with darkness and wrath in them with no way out because they're holding on to the terrible crimes done to them. And this stuff," I shook the book at the older girl, demonstrating how seriously messed up this was, "is a good way to make sure you become just like them when you pass on! So you better ask yourself now; is a moment of revenge worth eternity for my soul? Is playing with the devil really worth my damnation forever? Because if so, you can take this book right now and go finish what you started, but if you do, you get off this island right now and don't you ever come back! I'm not carrying that weight for you and I won't let you drag down the people we love because you wanted to play with crap you don't know crap about!"

The air grew eerily silent after those final words and neither of us moved for a long time.

Finally, Enid turned on the spot and left through the door of the cottage, leaving me alone with the Poetry of Death still in my hand.

Later that day I locked the book in an old trunk, filled it with sand and purified crystals and buried it under the same broken altar. As a further precaution, I performed a cleansing ritual, bidding the forces in the book to rest where they were and not stir so long as it was in the chest.

I thought about burning it, or sinking it to the bottom of the river but there were several terrible fables that rang in my head about people who'd tried to rid themselves of a cursed object in similar fashions only to meet with horrible misfortune later on.

The following days after that, Enid and I barely spoke to one another and I did not find her at the island again.