Chapter Four - In a Quiet Cottage

Candles glowed brightly throughout the comfortable sitting room where a lovely young lady sat stirring a medium-sized cauldron over a tripod and flame. Well, at least she seemed like a lovely young lady, at least until you got a look at her eyes. Her deep gray eyes gave some reflection of her true age. Both her true age, and her true nature.

The gray eyes of Moira Culhane looked dead. They looked both dead, and dangerous. Like the eyes of a cadaver who has refused to release from life entirely. A description, in fact, not too far from the truth.

She sat, gently humming tunelessly, as she waved her wand above her cauldron in a stirring motion and watched as bubbles began to generate a gentle mist from the liquid surface. Carefully, she removed the stopper from a small crystal vial and suspended it, inverted, over the cauldron. Her wand motions began to usher the fumes into the vial, and she continued patiently to herd the tenuous wisps upwards into their glittering enclosure until the cauldron hissed empty over the flame. She blew out the lamp beneath the cauldron as she continued to hold the vial inverted in her left hand.

Then she put down her wand and gently grasped the blade of a silver knife that sat, seemingly awaiting her attentions. Standing the knife up by its handle, caressing its blade and hilt, she drew her middle finger across its point, drawing blood. A small gasp of pain escaped her lips, almost amazed that she could still feel pain, and she gently lowered the knife back to the table.

Delicately, she reached towards the crystal stopper for the vial, and deposited the drop of blood from her finger onto the surface that would enter the enclosure, being careful not to stain any of the exterior surface. When she was certain that the blood droplet stood perfectly on the inside of the stopper, she used her clean right thumb and index finger to pick the stopper up, and raise it to the inverted vial opening.

"Let this give you life," she whispered, as the stopper sealed the vial, and the mist contained within took on a brilliant ruby hue. It was as though the blood drop somehow fed the fumes, and they swirled through the container as though animate.

Barely audible incantations sealed the vial, as she arose to place it in a cabinet along the wall, in company with several other such vials. After closing the cupboard, she went to the sink to wash her injured finger and put a piece of plaster on it. She was drained and exhausted. Too tired even to use the small magic it would have taken to heal the petty injury. Besides, a wound made with that knife was not so simple an injury, and would have required more concentration than she had available.

She sat down at a rocking chair she kept near the fireplace and relaxed. Waving her wand gently, she materialized a cup of tea on the small table alongside her. Her head leaned back on her long slender neck as she closed her eyes and let the fire's warmth fill her. She always seemed cold. Even in the heat of summer, her house and her body seemed chill.

Slowly she opened her eyes and allowed them to wander about the room. Her belongings seemed framed by the antique furniture they rested on. The room was not cluttered, but not sparse either. It seemed balanced and tastefully laid out. Books in cabinets lined two walls. Her sitting area formed a small cluster about the large stone hearth and fire that dominated the central wall in front of her. The doorway to her left led to the dining room and kitchen, and from there on around to the bedrooms. The fireplace and chimney formed the center of the structure, and the chimney was shared by all the central rooms, including her bedroom.

On the two walls not occupied by bookshelves, paintings of her progenitors hung in quiet dignity. Her eyes came to rest on her mother's kindly face. Maude, she was named. The last of the fools in her line.

Maude it was who believed it was their duty as witches to care for the muggles who shared the world. Maude, the wise woman and healer of the woods. She was a great witch, or could have been anyway, if she'd not wasted so much of her time worrying about muggles and their petty ailments. Such command she had, of herbs, incantations, and the making of potions and talismans.

Maude had passed most of her skill on to her daughter Moira. Her skill, she succeeded in transferring, but not her heart. Moira had never completely accepted the noblesse oblige of her gifts. She did not understand why Maude was satisfied to live in a comfortable but small cottage in the beautiful green woods outside their little Irish village. The villagers and surrounding farmers were shallow and brutish in her, Moira's, view. The few times Moira went shopping with her mother to the village, even as a little girl she noticed that the people would step aside or look away as they passed.

The village children had never played with her, nor even spoken to her when their parents could prevent it. But so many times, in the dark of night, a cart had driven up to their cottage, always with little gifts of eggs, or pork, or a chicken or two, and some pathetic villager would stand there crushing his hat in his hands, asking Maude's help with a sick child, a fevered woman, or a difficult childbirth.

Her mother would always pack her basket with the right herbs and medicines, grab her shawl, and go off in the cart. When Moira came into her teens, Maude would take her along. While Moira was supposed to be learning more of muggles and their lives, their ailments and needs, and how she could be of service to them, she learned only contempt for them.

Moira's was a dark beauty, dark of hair and eye, though pale and clear of skin like moonlight. The older she became, the more beautiful she grew. He found muggles to be weak, and thought them stupid. She grew to hate their men, as she went along to tend a sick child and would see a black-eyed wife turn away from her piercing gaze hurriedly. She had a talent for using the crystal ball her mother kept, and she often observed village life through it. Her mother encouraged this, thinking it would aid her learning. It did indeed, but not as her mother had hoped.

As now she sat, recovering in her chair with her tea, she considered whether to gaze in the crystal for a time. It relaxed her, it excited her. In the late hours of the night she could find anything from passion, to terror, to violence in the atmosphere surrounding the village, and home in on its source to satisfy her emotional hunger. Tonight, while the thought of it made her smile wanly, she decided simply to retire for the night and recover her strength.

The village was spared their nightmares for another night...