A Rumor
There was a body in the shed.
Ishara knew there was a body in the shed because she’d dragged it in there herself the evening just before. Ishara massaged sore back muscles. Manipulating and moving the dead weight of a body could be quite a task. Bodies are damn heavy.
Ishara had always known limp bodies were unwieldy. She wasn’t unfamiliar with rolling bodies over, lifting up or pinning down arms and legs, or supporting the trunk, for example. Such things were a matter of usual course when she went about her duties working as a healer. In more recent years, she worked for the military her husband served in. She was thus used to lifting, rolling, and prodding at (mostly) well muscled, stocky soldiers with shockingly little tolerance for discomfort and who actively resisted her efforts.
The stashing bodies in sheds outside of the house where her children slept was quite out of character for the healer.
It was also quite out of character for the woman to have used a spell normally for paralyzing and anesthetizing patients as a weapon. But she’d done that to the body in the shed, as well.
Have I lost my mind?
She wondered about her own sanity even as she made preparations for the body in the shed. Rummaging through an old chest she found a grimoire she’s started an abandoned many years ago. A grimoire that had gotten her into a lot of trouble. Ostracized her from others in her discipline. Even caused familial strife after a certain trip to New Orleans once upon a time.
Things are different now. She reassured herself. And shit. I have to do something with that body.
Ishara brushed the dust off the cover and flipped through until she found the page in question. She had everything she needed in her shop and around the house. The last piece of the puzzle would arrive shortly.
_________
While balancing an engraved wooden trinket box on her hip, Ishara shoved open the door to the shed with her shoulder. She turned on the the battery powered lantern and set on the workshop bench. The room flooded with a warm glow and the body stirred.
“Good, you’re awake.” Ishara greeted as she placed the wooden box with her supplies on the floor at the feet of the prostrate body.
The other woman wriggled to roll over onto her back, struggling against bound hands and feet, all the while trying to mumble over a rag shoved into her mouth. With brusque motions Ishara pulled the woman to a seated position and pushed her back against the far wall to balance her.
“I’ll take this out, but if you so as even utter a funny word that sounds like magic it’s going right back in.” Ishara warned finger wagging in the other woman’s face. The woman nodded her understanding.
The rag was removed and the woman was left spitting fabric fibers from her mouth. “What are you going to do to me? Kill me?” She asked hoarsely with some apprehension, craning to see the items Ishara was pulling out of the box.
“No dear. I don’t kill people. I help them.”
The captive laughed bitterly, “This is your idea of helping me? Holding me against my will?”
Ishara rounded on the woman, straddled her bound legs, and slapped her violently across the face. “Are you fucking kidding me? You bring up kidnapping to me? How do you think my daughter felt! Being snatched up. Kidnapped while playing in the woods. She won’t ever be able to play out there again. She won’t ever trust a stranger again.” Ishara knew she sounded a bit dramatic, but she was a distraught mother left to explain to her recently traumatized daughter why evil existed in the world.
The other woman spat blood. “Your dark side is so disappointing Ishara.”
“You won’t think so when I’m done with you.” Ishara said almost meekly as she pushed herself back up to return to her previous task.
The captive woman continued, “Your daughter would have made a wonderful apprentice. It’s a shame all that innate talent of the Hart line will be wasted on the healing arts.” She feigned a sigh.
Ishara ignored the commentary. She took a seat on the workshop bench and read through her notes. Her finger dragged along the page line by line as her eyes scanned the instructions.
“So how will you be helping -?”
The captive’s question was interrupted by a knocking at the shed door. Ishara popped up from her seat and hurried to open it. A man tall enough to be forced to duck through the entrace bowed inside carrying a kennel that bore a mewling panther cub.
“Do you know what I went through to get this?” The man asked as he pushed his way into the shed. He would have missed the woman bound up on the floor if she hadn’t cried out.
“Please, sir. Please, help me. This witch has captured me!” She begged in feigned hysterics.
Ishara uttered a spell under her breath and flicked her wrist at the other woman who was silenced. Mouth open and moving with no sounds coming out. “Quiet.”
The man was similarly gaping. “Uhm- Ishara?” He turned suddenly, unconsciously swinging the kennel as he did so and throwing the crying cub against the crate’s wall. “What’s all this! What’s going on here?”
Ishara shushed him. “Keep your voice down, Darcy, or I’ll do it for you. I’m with a patient.” She lied. “And be careful with the poor thing. You’re terrifying it.” She crowded around her longtime friend and pulled the kennel from his hands.
Darcy complied with her instructions but turned back to the woman he’d known as his best friend’s wife for near two decades. “Since when did you start treating patients -bound up, at night- in the shed? Does Renly know about this? Where is he?”
Ishara planted her hands on her hips, holding her ground against the questioning she really deserved. The man was nearly a foot taller than her but one wouldn’t tell the way she faced him down.
“I don’t need permission from my husband to treat my patients when I see fit, where I see fit, and how I see fit. He will know all about this just as soon as he comes back from assignment. And he will also know you enabled me, sneaking around, stealing panther cubs, and bringing them to me in the middle of the night. That is if that’s how this story will be told to him.”
Darcy frowned and didn’t press the husband matter further. He knew he wouldn’t win with Ishara on that front. He couldn’t help but ask, “So who is this woman?”
Ishara pointed to the door. “You’re excused, Darcy. Thank you for your help, darling.” Ishara cooed as she ushered the man shuffling man out of the shed, patting him on the behind as she did so. He twisted around and batted at her wandering hands as she escorted him out of the squat building
“Come for dinner sometime. The children miss seeing you. I miss you too. Renly is beside himself with that damned home distillery project, he needs your help setting it up. It’s a mess.” Ishara’s pleasentries were grossly out of place in a dimly lit shed containing a clearly kidnaped woman, a panther cub, and the potential for some dark magic.
When Darcy was outside, Ishara placed her hands on his chest and rose on her toes to press a kiss on his cheek. “Thank you for your help.” She chimed and tapped his nose with her index. “You’re such a sweetie. Now off you go before the neighbors see you so close to Renly’s wife at this late hour.”
Darcy batted her hand away, “You’re nothing but trouble.” He muttered and Ishara beamed as if he’d complimented her. “Just don’t do anything crazy, Ishara.”
The shed door was closed on the world and Ishara returned to her task. The other woman continued to try to produce any vocal sounds to no avail.
“No no. You’ll be quiet from now on. Well actually -” She turned to the crate on the floor to unlatch the door. The panther cub cowered in the corner refused to be comforted by the healer’s outstretched hand. “You’ll have a voice. But the speech apparatus will be different for you.”
Ishara pulled the kitten from the crate, it meowed pathetically in her arms.
“Isn’t it precious?” She asked holding the cat up. The woman stared dumbfounded.
“I think it’ll make a wonderful pet for my daughter, Victoria. Don’t you? It’ll grow big and strong and always protect her.” Ishara made a show of splaying the kitten’s foot out forcing the claws to display.
“She has been begging father for a cat, but he’s never allowed it.”
With a free hand, Ishara opened the box she had brought with her and pulled out a small piece of raw meat. She tossed it to the floor where she’d drawn some runes with black chalk and set the hungry cat down. The cat pawing and chewing on the meat while Ishara turned to fetch the book.
“I thought since you liked Victoria so much that you kidnapped her that you might be amenable to being her lifelong companion. Plus you need a little time out to work out your behavioral issues. ” She explained in her best ‘mommy’ voice. “So I’m going to put your essence - your soul - into this kitten here.”
The woman gaped in horror and tried to protest struggling against her bonds.
“I know what you’re thinking. Once you’re free to control the cat you’ll just attack us. Well, here’s the thing, I also know some great little curses to keep you on your best behavior. As a little incentive I’ll even preserved your body for you. I’ll leave it in the ground somewhere for you. So maybe someday Victoria - your new handler - will release you, or your obligation will be fulfilled, and you can return to your body. That is, if, you can find it. Now, let’s get started.”
Ishara turned out the lantern. If she were going to do dark magic, she’d do it in the dark.
_________
Even if introducing Victoria to her new pet went well and even if Renly didn’t have a fit about a wild cat as the new family pet, there was still the matter of disposing of the preserved human body emptied of it’s soul. This was Ishara’s task the next morning. Her head was swimming and she felt unsteady on her feet from the effort of the prior evening. The procedure had been successful but left her crawling back to the house and collapsing into bed. If her fatigue wasn’t bad enough she had a tyrant of a child old to deal with while she disposed of the body. The other children had been sent off to school.
“Mama, I’m bored. Why can’t we go?” Owen was whining and squirming around on the ground of the cemetery in one of his usual fits.
“Get up from there.” Ishara snapped, holding her hand out for her youngest to take. Just barely 4 years old he wasn’t yet in school and had to be brought on her last errand. Burying the body at St. Demetrious Cemetery.
The staff at the facility were familiar with Ishara who often turned over bodies of deceased patients. Bringing the body herself was new. With a pounding heart, Ishara told a convincing story about the Jane Doe who sought her services in her last hour. No family, no friends, no money. Ishara was unable to save the poor woman, but would put her to a proper rest.
Owen grudgingly obeyed his mother’s command to stand sensing that she was on her last nerve but he refused to take her hand. He crossed his arms over his chest and turned away. “I want - I want my dad to come home.” Owen huffed, off topic.
“Hush, Owen. Be quiet please.” She demanded politely, her hand still outstretched for the child. The body was being lowered into the ground.
“No.” He stomped his foot. “You.” He faltered with the new vein of his tantrum and then recommitted. “You are being mean. And I want to go back home and see dad.”
“No, you are being mean.” Ishara sighed. She knew better than to engage with him when he behaved this way, but the child had learned well how to push all of her buttons. “Your father isn’t at home. And you will be punished if you keep this up.”
“No, I won’t!” Owen was yelling now. “I am being good!” He took a few stomping steps towards his mother and snatched her hand as proof of good behavior.
Ishara signaled her apologies to the cemetery worker for her son’s behavior. He’d been a nightmare the entire day. She knelt down next to her child as the simple coffin met earth. She hugged Owen, squeezing him into her side. “I know you are.” She brushed at his hair, rearranging the messy golden locks. “We’ll get something to eat on the way home, yes? Before your piano lesson?” He nodded without letting the frown leave his face. “And then you are having a nap.”
Owen pouted at the mention of the nap. He looked away from his mother to stare at the gravestone. “What does it say?” He asked.
“Jane Doe.”
“Dad kills people sometimes.” He said seemingly out of nowhere. A suggestion from a precocious child that his father was responsible for the burial of Jane Doe.
“I don’t want to hear you talking that way.” Ishara didn’t know what else to say. Owen wasn’t far from the mark. It had been his mother, not his father, who was the responsible party in Jane Doe’s premature burial.
“Who is the lady?”
“Nobody. She’s nothing but a rumor now.”
Ishara stood then bringing Owen with her. She turned her back on the grave and left carrying the grumpy child in her arms. He stared over his mother’s shoulder at the grave as it receded from his eye sight until finally it disappeared when they turned a corner.
Bitch, I'm limited edition.
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