By Mistress of Magic
Disclaimer: I don't own the 'His Dark Materials' trilogy by Phillip Pullman but I'm a big fan. This is my fanfic. Enjoy!!
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Part Two: The Witches' Council/ One month later, midnight, full moon
At twilight, the huge bonfire, which had been built primarily for light seemed to burn with a certain greenish-blue tinge; it made the witches feel grimmer than they had been in the month that had passed since their clan queen's nightmare. For exactly one month since that horrible night, Serafina Pekkala, who had once been Lyra Belacqua's friend and ally, had not spoken to anyone at all, not even to the witches that were closest to her. She had hardly eaten; she and her snow goose daemon Kasia only exchanged mind-thoughts to one another from time to time.
Hot tears of salt streaked down Serafina's pale cheeks as she stood alone on top of a large gray boulder that served as a dais, and prepared to speak. Tonight was the night it would all have to come out. Her time of silence was over. The witch had thought this all out, even though she had desperately wanted to erase the whole incident from her memory forever.
"Whoever has done this, Kasia," Serafina said through clenched teeth, addressing her daemon, "will die. I can and will promise them that. They cannot get away from me with the thing they have done!" the daemon's black eyes were hard.
The rest of the witches knew about their queen's dream, and shared her feelings—although most of them had not directly known the little girl their kind had called Eve for countless generations. Serafina Pekkala had been Lyra's friend, her true friend.
She would avenge her death.
And she was more ready than she had ever been in her life.
Serafina stood up as straightly as she could, so that she could be seen by all present. Her mouth was set firmly; the witch's long hair, which was noticeably fairer than Lyra's had been, lay over her shoulders, loosely tangled. Her eyes, which were usually as bright-green as cloud-pines catching the glare of the setting sun, had lost their twinkle, and were red from her angry crying. The witches were sure they had never seen their sister appearing so haggard.
The witches, young and old, grew suddenly very quiet as they waited for Serafina Pekkala to speak to them.
"Is this all true?" a witch perhaps a little younger than Serafina with a colorful sharp-beaked lyrebird daemon perched heavily on her shoulder whispered to another witch who stood very stiffly beside her. "That the all-mother Eve is really dead?"
"Shh!" the witch scolded her. "Of course it is! Now mind yourself, Tania Iemi!" in agitation—for she had been one of those who had helped save the children from the child-cutters at Bolvanger and Svalbard—and made a low, hissing sound at the base of her throat. She faced Serafina Pekkala and waited, acting as calmly as she could.
Then Queen Serafina Pekkala of Lake Enara began her speech:
"Sisters!" she cried in anguish. "Listen to me! You all know what has happened. In my dream, I was able to see Lyra…Someone—something has destroyed her! An assassin! I saw him—he was like an angel, one of the watchers, of the bene elim. in his right hand, he held a knife—Lyra Belacqua-Silvertongue, the witches' Eve, has been murdered."
For a moment, Serafina paused to stare out at the crowd, and then went on:
"My sisters," she said, "I tell you, I will avenge her death! I will find this angelic assassin and destroy him and all he worked for, even if it kills me!" and to emphasize her determination, the witch queen pulled her own one-bladed knife out of her belt, and brandished it at her entire clan, not an unthreatening act.
"The angel wanted to also destroy Lyra's daughter, possibly more than he wanted Lyra. Sisters, she was only a child. A baby. He wanted her dead, and so did someone else. I heard a voice…it may have been a human, or another of the angels, I don't know, nor do I care, as long as I in turn kill him in the end. I think the voice must have been the angel's thought-voice, as he remembered his exact orders. It said, 'Kill them both! Eve's daughter must die!'
"I want the other witch queens to know all that has happened, in case they do not. I will fly and consult Ruta Skadi, Reina Miti and Ieva Kasku about what I am about to do. Perhaps their wisdom is more qualified than my own. I am so lost…they will know where I should turn."
Serafina fell silent for a few moments again in thought. Then she turned to her daemon and said quietly, "Kasia, I place you for now in command while I am gone." And, "I fly early morning tomorrow," she said to the witches. "Sleep for now, and please, take care. Begin to follow me when you hear my call. I believe the one who killed Lyra can and will also destroy anyone who gets in his way, surely including us. Goodnight."
With that, Serafina Pekkala jumped down from the rock, and followed the gray snow goose into the darkening night.
The next morning's light was still gray and the misty fog still quite thick when Serafina mounted the branch of cloud-pine and set off into the pale, windy sky. Serafina would have a long ways to go before she reached the large, slightly warmer region the Latvian witch Ruta Skadi ruled over. But if she kept up the steady, strong, fast pace she was going at now, then she might arrive there some time within the noon of the day after.
Serafina Pekkala could not stop wondering why the angel had murdered Lyra. What could this all mean? Not every angel is on the right side, she thought. But I learned that to be true a long time ago.
She could still clearly remember the sleeping Lyra's face from her dream. The little girl she once knew had grown older over the years as all short-lifes do, but all in all had not changed so drastically as many short-lifes do in eleven years. The witch felt a cold chill at the core of her spine, but it was only the northern wind, as usual. But the witch shuddered as if a lone spirit had touched her cheek anyway; she was alone in the sky.
Her mind was in a turmoil, and Serafina barely noticed it when a strong gust of wind rushed by her, rustling the dark green needles of her cloud-pine and tossing the witch much higher up in the sky than she intended, like a light breath feather. Serafina took her cloud-pine in a tighter grip, and looked ahead of her, breathing in hard to try and clear her thoughts. She knew she would have to keep her head on her shoulders, for Lyra's daughter's sake. She quickened her speed and headed in a straight, sure direction, straining not to think about what things, no matter how terrible they were, had come to pass.
But she did not sense the hate-filled eyes upon her from the craggy, treacherous cliffs below her.
In the wide, overcast skies towards the Southern lands, the Latvian witches flew a little higher than was usual for them, sitting rigidly upon their slim branches of cloud-pine. They spoke among one another, but in hushed tones, flying towards the great North.
Leading them at the front, Queen Ruta Skadi flew along silently, her ears perked up and ready. If there was anything to hear riding on the sweet swell of the wind as light and mingling as foam riding the crest of a wave in the ocean below them, she wanted to be the first of the witches to hear it, as she had for almost four months now, for it was hear the skies were becoming thinner, at this particular height, and they would become thinner at intervals the closer to the North the witches flew.
The dampish wind without warning filled with the sounds of a thousand small, light voices that conversed in hushed, frightened voices. Their speech seemed angry, somehow, and urgent, as if what they said was a warning for none others but the witches themselves. Sentence upon sentence made it sometimes impossible to decipher what was being said; but the Latvian witches knew these voices came from another world that was joined on to their own, or any other number of universes, and it could be important. And, as clan queen, Ruta Skadi thought she needed to know what these otherworldly beings said to her or anyone else, just for peace of mind.
Why did these voices today seem so menacing? Was not today the same as any other day?
Ruta Skadi's dark eyes were wide with frightening excitement as she dipped lower in midair; she had no wish to fly where it would be hard to breathe. There was no need to worry about the other witches, even the youngest of them, because the all knew somehow intrinsically the air levels were the atmosphere became thin.
Her bluethroat daemon, Sergi, fluttered closely beside her, and whispered in his witch's ear the most recent things he had heard the voices say, which were the things spoken in the quietest and most subtle of voices, that not even the witches with their sharp hearing could hear. Bird daemons everywhere, who had previously been sent out to be the witches' ears, were now beginning to fly back to their witches from every direction, in every which way. The air was filled with the sound of many beating wings.
Sergi flew into the witch's curly black hair to get closer to share her warmth, and said, "I heard only fragments, and like everyone else… I heard something about someone dying! Was it about someone important, do you think, Ruta Skadi?" The bluethroat studied his witch's pale face when she turned to meet his eyes, but the witch said nothing to her daemon at first.
Ruta Skadi knew what the small bird, who was similar to an oriole but with brown- and black-feathered wings and a throat and breast as blue as bright larkspur blossoms, was speaking to her about. She had, of course, as many of her witches also had, heard the words "death," and "die" more than they cared to recently, but had no clues whatsoever concerning who had died, or who was dying as she and Sergi spoke. A few of the witches, their clan queen included, had even heard sounds of low, far-off weeping, the sounds of a woman weeping with enragement and deep sorrow.
"Are they speaking to us, Sergi?" Ruta Skadi asked, also taking care to acknowledge the disembodied whispers, if they would answer the main question she had been inquiring of herself during these last few months. "I want to know! There is no telling who has died, witch or human alike."
"Our sister witches want the answer as much as we do," Sergi said in reply, "but there are times when such things are beyond even our own understanding." The bluethroat daemon thought again of the relentless weeping, and the sensation of a heart torn into it always brought with it. The witch flying next to him also remembered the sound as well as her daemon. "Ohhh…" Ruta Skadi said in a soft voice, and shuddered, with the instinctive need to run away from what was possibly danger. "Something is happening, Sergi," she said. "And I think…I think someone is coming, too."
She could recall very well eleven or so years ago, when the witches of her clan and the witches of every other clan, too, had heard the same unestablished voices coming from other worlds talking about a little girl, a young short-life, who had been called Eve by witches for generations upon generations—a little girl who had been destined like so many others since before she was born, to play a part in the prophecy, that, if fulfilled properly, would bring about the end of destiny.
But, Ruta Skadi wondered, was that prophecy ever completely fulfilled? She had never decided that for herself.
…And then, the answer came to her ears from another world of worlds: It hasn't.
Together, they watched the young fair-haired witch fly on and on, it seemed, endless flying, over the high, mountainous cliffs of rocks streaked with varying shades of white, to gray, to black, which they both stood on. She had been flying at a very noticeably faster rate for a long time now. Wherever she was going, she was trying to get there faster than ever.
"Has she seen us?" he wingless one asked, clumsily scrambling up a tall boulder to get a better view, instead of staying down, like he knew he was supposed to. "She doesn't seem to be looking our way…"
The other did not answer his companion's question right away; instead he hissed, "Get down from there! She will see us if you don't!" The watcher spread a pair of large snow-white wings as if stretching them, and then closed them again.
The younger one did as his elder had commanded, but angrily said under his shaky breath, "I will kill her, that witch! She was a friend of Eve, and she'll protect the daughter, too, you just watch!" his hand was locked firmly on the plain hilt of the bronze-bladed dagger at his waist, and he watched the figure in the sky with pure contempt. "She must be destroyed!" he growled. "They killed my—"
"Hush," the winged elder said calmly, just as if the one next to him had said nothing at all. "All in due time; all in due time. Just because Eve, I remind you, Eve took your twin's life, does not mean you too should lose yours by rushing into that witch there. Nay, be quiet. The prophecy will play on if you allow it to—and dark Lilith will die, I promise you. This is all for the greater good."
"Yes. And I will avenge Aluris' death."
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Mistress: Hello. Sorry that chapter wasn't that good. Catina took me out of my straight jacket just now so I could type out the comments, after my rest. I'm sitting here with a nice shotglass full of rootbeer (which Catina checked for anything besides rootbeer I may have *accidentally* put in) so I can take my riddilin so I won't be hyper active, and so I can concentrate on my fanfic a little better.
Catina: I had to get rid of all that vodka she bought.
Mistress: You WHAT?! I'LL KILL YOU!! CATINA no BAKA!
Catina: *sweatdrops* Ohhh, I'm in for it now. Yambe-Akka! Come to me!
Mistress: Just so you'll remember, Yambe-Akka is the witches' goddess that brings death. Her visits are gifts of joy. Right now, you see, our dear Catina wishes Yambe-Akka would come for her life before I take it myself to add to my beautiful Collection.
Catina: COLLECTION?!
Mistress: Yeah. Collection. *Unsheathes knife and smiles* I think our dear Catina needs some joy in her life.
Catina: O_o Um…bye!! *runs away*