beneath the moon - part III.

Title: Beneath the Moon - part III.

Genre: Fantasy, witchy-bitchy, kinda angst, kinda smut, maybe hurt/comfort, again I think?

What to know: I watched the Chilling Adventures of Sabrina series, okay, I binged it, and I just wanted to write a story of... being witchy-bitchy. Since I was inspired by the Sabrina series, it influenced me, but I also mixed all sorts of witch-interpretations from current pop culture, but if you want to, you can see it as a story from the expended universe of Sabrina. No characters from the show are present though. The story summary is available on the contents page. The previous parts are available on the blog.

Warning: swearing, I guess that's all

Category: T (teen&up)
Length: 3240 words

BENEATH THE MOON - PART III.

Darius left her sleeping on the couch, covering her up. He then went up to their own room and exhaled an agitated sigh as he dropped down to the bed. Blanche was already tucked in, reading a book on herbs and potions, underlining some lines she thought she would need later.

‘She’s still asleep?’

‘I hope she gets up in the morning,’ he answered, indirectly answering the question itself.

‘I think she’s alright,’ Blanche smiled, not really paying attention to him. Her hands unconsciously moved to his shoulder to ease his anxiety. ‘She’s just weak and exhausted, she’ll come around.’

‘I hope you’re right. You showered yet?’

Blanche nodded and turned back to her book where the next chapter told her all the secrets of potions for the mind and memory.

‘What are you reading?’

‘We prepared a bottle of vigor for her to drink when she wakes, and Leda knew the entire recipe by heart, so, I decided, again, to emerge myself in potions again.’ She had always been interested in herbs, just like Gen, Darius thought, but she had never been the one for potions, but from time to time she came up with the idea that she’ll be educating herself and she’ll become an expert.

Darius with the shake of a head went to take a shower. He was worried about Gen and the council, the vote, even Blanche. What they did was the indirect cause, not to mention that they invaded the late Duke’s office for a spell they did not know what would do.

Not long after six in the morning, Gen on the couch with a painfully empty stomach, a sore-throat, and a terribly aching head. She felt miserable in every way she could, barely felt her limbs, and really didn’t feel like getting up. At all. But the sun was already lurking over the horizon, not letting her go back to sleep so she decided to stretch her legs until the others would wake.

The house was nice and tidy, not so big but homey and cosy, filled with lots of pictures and paintings on the wall, books on the shelves, patterned blankets and rugs. It was the kind of place she would have loved to live at. With the small little staircase leading upstairs, a corridor leading to the back of the house, with white doors lined up each side, divided by family pictures of Blanche and another woman, Blanche and people who seemed like her parents, Blanche, the woman and Darius together.

‘Oh, so you’re up already!’ the woman from the picture stepped out of a room at the back of the house. Her short, black hair was wavy and messy, she was putting on a flower printed robe. ‘How are you feeling, are you okay?’

‘Uhm…’ she cleared her throat, scratching the back of her head. ‘I guess I am sort of alright, thank you.’ As the woman stepped closer, she seemed more and more familiar to Gen, but she couldn’t actually put her finger on it. ‘You are…?’

‘Oh, uhm, I’m Leda. I’m Blanche’s aunt, we actually met a couple of times, cursorily, back before you went MIA.’

‘MIA?’ she frowned all confused.

‘Missing in action, sorry. I guess we have to catch you up real bad,’ she cajoled, passing by Gen, making her way to the kitchen. She drew the shutters up by a snap of her fingers, letting all the sunshine in, turning the whole house into some really magical place. ‘Yesterday, while you were knocked out, we made you this,’ she told Gen, taking a bottle of shiny blue potion out of the refrigerator. Gen remembered when they were becoming a common thing in households, but she never really had the time to get one or understand them. ‘It’s vigor, with a little menta favouring.’ She poured some into a glass and handed it to Gen. ‘It’s going to help you, but I’ll make you some breakfast as well, until the lovebirds wake.’

‘I’m sorry I didn’t recognise you earlier –‘ she tried to apologise, her voice still rather husky.

‘It was decades ago, don’t worry about it,’ she dabbed, cracking some eggs into a bowl. ‘I’ll make some fried eggs for you. Or a lot. You eat as much as you want.’

Gen was disturbed, still very weak, but the vigor she started sipping felt like it went straight to her blood. She even felt like as if it instantly turned into strength, stopping the shaking, even relieving her pains of all sorts. She sat down to the table and watched Leda make some breakfast, moving around the kitchen like some sort of fairy; airy steps, light moves, doing everything out of routine. Lovely smells started to fill the house.

‘Blanche told me all about what happened yesterday,’ Leda started, putting a plate in front of Gen, then started cutting some vegetables and bread.

‘It wasn’t my proudest hour, really,’ Gen coughed, sipping some more potion. ‘I just needed to get my vengeance.’

‘I can imagine that.’ She continued chopping, while behind her back the coffee put on itself. ‘And I need you to know, that we support you. But it’s not going to be an easy road.’

‘I never thought it would be.’

They then went on small talking about their lives – or about Leda’s life, really. She told Gen that she’d been raising Blanche since she was two years old because her parents went off to discover India and never returned, probably still researching something over there, or maybe even dead by now. But they never did return, leaving Blanche to the care of her father’s sister. She also told Gen that she had a winter garden at the back of the house, with both flowers and herbs that she uses for potions and charms, she let Gen use them whenever she needed them. Leda babbled about Darius as well; how he courted Blanche until she felt ready to get into a new relationship, and how he had been part of their family from then on, not only protecting them both, but also taking care of house chores and buying them food when they had rough times, and they had become friends over time.

Their little cottage, that the three of them shared reflected each of them, and they were ready to take Gen in if she wanted to stay at their house. They had a separated guestroom with its own bathroom that Leda had already prepared.

Her hospitality and the fact she had already thought about everything by the time she came around astonished Gen, it was not what she was expecting. She had thought about getting out of that cell, killing the Duke, getting her revenge. She thought that she would have to face the charges that she left hanging when she disappeared, and even the charges of murder, but she never thought how she would continue her life. Whether she would move out of the city, maybe out of the country, or she would stay and continue her life as if nothing ever happened. Where she would live, what she would do to support herself. She never got that far in her imagination, so Leda taking care of that for her.

‘I laid out some bedding for you, and some clothes of my own. It’s a separate building, but the door is at the end of the corridor, to the left. Last door. It doesn’t have a kitchen, or anything, just a room and a bathroom, but it’ll do.’

‘You’re too kind,’ Gen responded, fighting back some tears. She looked at Leda as if she was some kind of angel – which was rather ironic, considering that she was a witch.

‘You’re not a bad person, Guine –‘ she started, but Gen intermitted;

‘Just call me Gen.’

‘You’re not a bad person, Gen. A lot of bad things have happened to you, but that doesn’t make you bad. And I don’t stand for injustice.’ Gen looked up at Leda, saw her eyes shining with all kinds of motherly feelings, empathy and power radiating off her face, and Gen just wanted to hug her, sob into her chest, and hide from everything. But she had buried those kinds of feelings when her family died.

A couple of hours later, Darius and Blanche went down for breakfast. Darius hugged Gen again, she thanked Blanche again and again for rescuing her from that underground prison. They talked about the herbs in the winter garden, the guest room and that they needed to summon the council in a couple of hours to avoid scandal or further problems with the rest of the coven. Darius, as a deputy, was put in an impossible situation, but Gen had no hard feelings. She just needed a long shower, some fresh clothes, and more eggs to shovel down her throat.

‘You’re gonna be okay,’ Darius promised, patting Gen’s shoulder in a supporting manner. ‘We’re gonna be okay.’

Gen ate some more eggs, drank another glass of the potion to make herself a bit stronger, then went to the guestroom Leda mentioned to her. It was just like the rest of the house; filled with books, some plants in the corners, paintings on the wall. A wardrobe, a king bed in the middle of the room with flower-patterned cover and cushions. A desk by the window, some papers stacked in the corner. Books on the shelves, another door that led to the bathroom where she could take a shower and sit on the loo, crying out all the stress she held in for what seemed like an eternity. She did find some clothes in the wardrobe; a bra she would have never bought back in her time, and strangely tight pair of jeans with a looser T-shirt. She never really cared about how she dressed, but it was all new to her. It was very tight, very different, very modern. She did need to catch up with the world.

As Darius, Blanche, and even Leda were making their ways to school with her, Darius and Gen lagged behind to talk for a couple of minutes more.

‘I don’t know how this is going to go down, but we’ll come up with something, no matter what, alright?’

‘It’s okay, Darius, really,’ she promised. ‘I’ve had my time in the cell, whatever they decide now, won’t really matter. I mean it.’

‘You can’t really mean it, Gen,’ he fussed. ‘You didn’t come this far for this. I’m not taking this bullshit.’

‘Can’t we talk about something else?’ she implored him.

‘Like what?’

‘Like you? You are deputy Duke, about to become the Duke, living together with a girl that is basically way to good to be part of this excuse of a coven –‘

‘She is, isn’t she?’ he chuckled, his eyes wandering off to the distance. Gen noticed the traits of his Scottish accent and his love. ‘I don’t even know how it happened.’

‘I do. Leda told me all about how you wooed her and everything,’ she smiled, crossing her arms on her chest.

‘Just so you know: nobody uses the word “woo” anymore.’

‘Yes, I guess I’m kind of lagging behind on everything. Words, clothes… this isn’t my world anymore.’

‘We’ll guide you through it,’ he promised, embracing her with one arm. She still recognised his scent, and he recognised hers; it meant family. The only family they had left.

‘So, what will happen now?’

‘I guess we’ll summon the council. We’ll tell them all that’s happened, and they most probably will start a trial.’

‘Leave Blanche and Danny out of the story. Tell them I got out myself.’

‘How would have you gotten out of a cell that never allowed you to use magic?’

‘They still don’t fully understand my powers, I assume, let’s –‘

‘We can’t mislead them, they would know right away. I don’t want to admit that my girlfriend and one of my students stole a spell from the late Duke, but I don’t really see any other options,’ Darius argued. He seemed frustrated.

‘Then just tell them that they have set me free on their own,’ she demanded. ‘They don’t have to know all the details.’ With that said, they set foot in the school. It was grand, mostly decorated with black and golden colours, with a huge Satan statue in the middle of the hall that she had missed the previous day as she was on her way to murder someone she was taught to defend at all costs. Leda and Blanche sent them worried glances and let Darius lead Gen and them to the office of the all-time Duke.

She still felt strangely uncomfortable in her clothes. Strangely, because at the same time, she felt comfortable at the same time.

Members of the coven were already there, including the widow of the Duke. She was tall, in some way resembled a greyhound with her long, bony legs, and oblong, sunken face. ‘I thought you’d never come,’ she boasted, with an obnoxious smile on her face. Flashes of lightning flashed from her eyes. ‘I thought you’d run again, as you did back then.’

‘I ran because your husband didn’t leave me any other choice,’ Gen spat through her teeth.

‘Because what you’ve done,’ she started, pausing between parts of the sentence, ‘what you’ve become is an abomination. You shouldn’t even be alive,’ she argued, her voice deepening. There was something threatening about her tranquillity. Danny arrived at just that moment, silently closing the doors behind his back. The tension was just as high in the office as it had been the day before, with members of the coven, even young ones, including students, were standing at the two opposing sides of the office. The corpse of the Duke was laid behind and covered with a black silk behind the desk, Darius, Leda, Guinevere, and Blanche were standing in the middle, facing the evillest looking woman he had ever seen; she was the one to speak up the day before. He didn’t know her name but knew that she was the widow of the Duke.

Danny felt people looking at him, but he was focused on the people in the middle, he didn’t even see his sister standing at the back of the crowd on his left.

‘What am I, Lady Mallory?’ Gen asked. She decided not to back down, the widow’s hostility made her confident, ready to fight. ‘Tell me. What am I?’

Darius, fearing any confrontation would lead to more trouble, stepped in, holding Gen back by grabbing both her shoulders. ‘I think we should leave the existential philosophy for another time and summon the council.’

The general murmuring stopped at that moment as he started the incantation. After the first sentence, Lady Mallory joined in as if she thought it wouldn’t work if only Darius summoned the council. The High Council consisted of the eldest High Priests there were to find; three out of four was born back in the tenth century and were mostly rigid, but the fourth one was selected as a member in the twentieth century, and he was born in the eighteenth. Darius knew him from before he was a member of the council, so he decided he would appeal to his emotions.

When Darius and Lady Mallory stopped, a warm breeze swept through the room, and with a bright flash, the council appeared in front of the desk. They all wore old, black robes, and didn’t seem very happy about the situation.

‘For your own sake, Darius, I hope you have a good reason to summon us,’ the youngest one commented, already bored.

‘I’m afraid I do, my friend,’ he sighed worriedly. ‘We have found ourselves in the need of…’

‘Guinevere Hepburn has been found, and moments later she killed my husband,’ Lady Mallory interrupted, unapologetically stepping forward.

‘Yes, that is true,’ Darius snapped, ‘but before we could move on with that, we need a Duke for the trial, Lady Mallory.’

Gen bypassed Darius and stood right in front of the council. Head held high, firm stance, arms crossed, but as she opened her mouth to speak, Lady Mallory interrupted her as well, arguing that her existence is a threat to all living creatures, mortals and witches alike, and she was never sentenced as she should have been. Gen was responding with passive-aggressive comments, raising her voice to outvoice Mallory. Darius was gasping for air and turning to each of them minute by minute as if he had forgotten the presence of the council.

‘Stop it already!’ one alderman shouted, frustrated with the situation altogether. ‘How dare you waste our time with this nonsense circus?’ Darius shared a quick glance with his former friend, who then spoke up. He was firm, but not loud.

‘Lady Mallory, I have to ask you to step back, as I don’t see your role in this conversation.’ She was offended, inhaled sharply, she couldn’t believe how the alderman treated her, but she couldn’t bring herself to oppose a member of the High Council. ‘It is clear that the first problem that needs solving is the lack of a reigning Duke.’

‘I agree with Brother Willoughby,’ another member joined with shaky, airy voice. ‘Without a Duke, we cannot proceed with a trial, no matter what charges we start.’

‘Is there any nomination for this position?’

After a minute of silence, Leda stepped forward, shyly clearing her throat before she spoke up: ‘I nominate Darius Homewood.’

Lady Mallory’s head almost exploded, and without thinking, she shouted: ‘I nominate myself!’

The right side of the room started whispering and murmuring restlessly, while the other was outraged. By that time for years, it was obvious that if Mallory would die, Darius would take his place, and the widow’s proposition conflicted that. Danny was afraid of the reactions.

The council shared some meaningful glances before the oldest spoke up. His face was wrinkly, his eye was fading light blue, all his limbs were shaking by each movement. ‘The vote and inauguration will take place in a month, on the night of the next full moon. You can gather your supporters until then, but all kinds of intriguing will be seriously retaliated.’

‘We will decide about the fate of Guinevere Hepburn after your coven has a Duke.’

‘And she’ll just go freely for a month?’ Lady Mallory was disgusted by the mere thought. ‘After all, she’s done?’

‘I had been locked up in a cell for more than seventy years by your husband. I deserve a month to go as I wish,’ she claimed, staring at Mallory with a look that could kill.

‘And what would guarantee that you wouldn’t run and hide as you’ve done before?’ Lady Mallory’s face was twitching with hatred.

‘I guess you would never trust me on my word,’ Gen smirked, satisfied by the fact that her mere existence aggravated Lady Mallory.

‘I know better than to trust a freak.’

‘Enough is enough, witches!’ the council shouted in unison, then the youngest man continued: ‘Brother Homewood, as the deputy for the late Duke, you shall bind Sister Hepburn to the town until there’s a sentence in her case. Anyone unbinding her shall be thrown into the pit. Sister Hepburn, you should look for someone who would represent your cause in the trial.’

‘If that is all, the council will recede.’