The Lastsister and the Bête Noire

EVERYTHING: a scene from Enchanted Earth

Readers,

Last week was weirdly disturbing. I had a rough plan of what to write next for my fictional worldbuilding but then I found a dead cat in a plastic bag in the parking lot of my apartment complex. The next day Sinéad O'Connor was found dead. Then I had a strange dream about her. I’ve always liked her music but haven’t listened to her music beyond her early hits. I’ve never followed her or been a “fan.” Generally, I think the phenomena of celebrity is super creepy and messed up for everyone involved. I ended up writing about all that. I’m not sure what to make of it. I might work on it more and share.

In the tweentime, I’m sharing something I wrote in the beginnings of this creative project/journey, back in July, 2020.

My fictional writing comes to me in scenes. You could say “visions,” but I don’t want to get too woo about it. Because of this, I envisioned it as a television series or a graphic novel. (And maybe it will be eventually.) I see an event, then I try to divine everything from that. Kinda like watching random scenes of movies with the sound muted, which is weird. Are they part of the same story or different? Who are the characters? Why are they doing what they are doing? Where’s it all going?

I’ve revised much of what you about to read. I had to walk away from it because I keep making tweeks. But the core is the same as it was first written.

I hope you like it. Please, please share if you do. It’s the only way my art will find new readers and open up opportunities for me as a writer. No one is an island. People need people to make things happen.

Until next time,

—C

The great cypress groans and the earth hums beneath Evelyn’s feet.

She wonders. Why have you awakened now, Mother?

The vibrations move through the air and stone of the vast cavern chamber and then up, lost to a ceiling so high and wide as to be mistaken for the night sky. Hope and fear battle in her throat, stealing her breath. Mother Sempervirens has not stirred since Evelyn’s birth and the tree’s 2000 years of silence has seen all the hearts and lands of Gaea inexorably fill with avarice, discord, and despair.

This is not right, she worries. It is the summer solstice, not winter. What should I do? It’s been so long…our lives nearly lost to myth. All I have are stories. I have no counsel.

Outside, the last of the sun falls below the horizon and the light stealing through the entrance to The Womb of the World retreats.

My scattered Sisters, did you hear my call?

Evelyn sets her torch and kneels. Her eyes follow the massive tree’s limbs rising high into the darkness. Another groan and the Sister struggles for balance as the reverberations move through her flesh. Tiny points of light begin to emerge from the sky of stone lost in the dark far above until a starry night arches over the Sister’s field of view. The great cypress is dwarfed, she is a mote. Tears run down her cheeks.

Evelyn raises her hands above her head in praise and some of the starlight begins to fall—floating, meandering, down towards the cavern floor. Their paths slowly become more directed the closer they come to the upper reaches of the great cypress, moving towards it. A faint buzzing sound creeps into her ears. One by one, the points of light find a place in the tree’s boughs and the buzzing gives way to whisper-clicks and chirps.

She lowers her hands and bows her head. “Beloved Mother Sempervirens. I, Evelyn Lastsister, leader of your children, am here to receive your will.”

The great cyprus groans once more and the resonance is so deep Evelyn’s vision dims and her bones threaten to break. The cavern shudders. Her head raises to see a vertical crease forming in the base of the tree. Its bark crackles, splits. Blood oozes from the bottom of the crack. She moves closer and lays a hand on the ancient trunk, feels the timeless wisdom in its bulging bark. The crack widens into a hollow, the edges soften to flesh. A muffled wail calls out from within.

Evelyn pulls back the arms of her robe and reaches into the hollow. Her hands deliver Mother Sempervirens’ next Sister into the world. But her joy is cut short. Her mind flails.

A MALE?!

She centers herself and looks deep into the newborn’s eyes, probing for deception. He stares back, transfixed. Time passes.

“Much has been cast into doubt in these diminishing times. Thankfully your heart is true, little brother. Surprises within surprises, this day has brought. Did Mother send you with more?”

Evelyn nestles the baby in a soft patch of moss between some gnarled roots and weaves strands of her long black hair together, waiting for the afterbirth. She draws a knife and tests the keenness of the blade as the placenta slips out of the hollow and onto the cavern floor. Plucking the woven hair from her head, Evelyn ties it tight around the umbilical cord and cuts the placenta free.

She coos at the baby. “Let’s meet your familiar.”

The knife slices open the placenta with ease. Evelyn’s hands probe inside.

She gasps. “It seems Mother saw it fit to send you with two gifts.”

She removes her bloodied hands. One holds a hen’s egg, the other a pine cone of roughly the same shape and size. The cone unsettles her but she keeps her attention on the egg, which is hatching. She brings the egg close to her lips and whispers. The hatchling peeps back through the cracking shell.

In a blur, the egg and cone disappear into the folds of Evelyn’s robe as a chill passes through her. The hairs of the nape of her neck stand. Her ears prick. Someone is here.

Underground? Clever witches, the Emperor’s Reaper thinks.

How many forests were felled searching for the fabled mothertree? How many armies have scoured the land? For how many generations? He looks down at the artifact in his grasp—a mummified left forearm, its hand with fingers curled into a claw.

None of them had this, he muses proudly.

The assassin slips from shadow to shadow, angling for a clearer, closer view of the Sister. A thunderous groan splits the air and he grips the artifact tightly. The ground trembles. The enchanted forearm lead him to the hidden location of the Womb of the World and past the witch’s deadly familiar undetected, but he worries…is the tree immune to its power?

The shadows soften their edges and spread. Day is ending outside. As the Sister kneels at the base of the massive cypress, he moves closer. The tree groans again and the vibrations leave him lightheaded. His sight swims. A sliver of fear works its way into his thoughts.

Sheer will has placed me here at this moment. I will fulfill my oath, my destiny.

The ceiling of the cavern twinkles to life. The assassin pauses, wrestles between urgency and awe as bright prismatic embers float down and land in the mothertree. He shakes off the wonder and begins to undress. The tree groans again with a fathomless resonance that makes reality shimmer. He falls to his knees in pain, holding his hands to his head. The artifact slips in his grip, almost drops. He can feel blood leaking from his ears.

He steadies as the reverberations subside and with his free hand he retrieves a dark, slender object from his pile of clothes—an obsidian dagger radiating a dark, otherworldly aura that dances like flame and smoke. He stands, and a sigil tattoo is revealed covering his chest and belly—a single interlaced line that forms a unicursal hexagram. He places the point of the crystalline blade where the line intersects at the center of the sigil…and hesitates. The assassin watches the Sister reach inside a hollow of the mothertree…and sees her body stiffen as she retrieves…a newborn.

Ah! The legends are true! But what is wrong? He wonders.

The details are mostly blocked by the Sister’s body. The assassin tries to divine her actions, but he dares not to move closer. He hears her voice but it’s unintelligible. Then she moves a little to the side and he sees the newborn lying in the roots of the great cyprus.

A male born into the Sistercoven! Stunned, the artifact slips from his blood-slicked grip.

The Sister stands and spins to face him, growling. He snatches up the artifact.

“HOLD, WITCH,” the assassin commands, pointing the artifact at her, its middle and index fingers animate, straighten together at the Sister. She goes rigid, eyes wide.

“I wield the severed arm of your god, Hectate! Kneel!”

The lights covering the mothertree and cavern ceiling wink out, darkness collapsing onto the single torch. The Sister falls to her knees. Tears stream from her terror-filled eyes.

He strides forward to the edge of the torchlight. “I, Holy Reaper of the Order of the Gates, am here to fulfill my oath and end your kind. I have sent word of this secret place. Armies are coming. Perhaps this remarkable newborn will be spared, if proved moldable.”

“I now give my life to summon your annihilation!”

The assassin places the dagger’s tip back to the center of the sigil and sinks it into his skin. Slowly he begins to trace the hexagram, leaving his gaze unbroken with the Sister.

“I AM THE GATE. I AM THE KEEPER. I OPEN AND BECKON THE MOST INFERNAL OF YOU. STRIKE THE SISTERCOVEN AS I STRIKE MYSELF, AND STRIKE THEM MORE, FOR YOU ARE FAR GREATER AND STRONGER.”

With every change of direction of the dagger’s travel through his flesh, the assassin can feel a hungry pressure build from within. Blood pours down his torso. He struggles to keep the artifact raised at the Sister as the pain from within consumes his will. The dagger switches direction a final time and he screams, eyes bulging.

The cut completes.

They can sense the thinning between worlds and swarm. The call of a gate this powerful beckons legions.

Amidst the sea of dark shapes a great shadow looms in, sending lesser forms fleeing. Its lithe bipedal contour blurs and warps—a distorting humanoid silhouette, featureless except for the blank stare of a pair of milk-white eyes.

The form stops and cocks its head at empty air. Its arms raise, hands searching, fingers prying for the unseen. Then its fingers catch and it pauses, waits. The roiling mass of shades around its towering presence turns stormy with desire but keeps its distance. Then the giant pounces, prying and tearing open the fabric between its realm and the next.

The arm of blessed Hectate?!

Evelyn fights panic. Her stare is locked with the intruder, knees compelled to dig into stone. She understands the doom the Order of the Gates presents. She can only watch and wait for him to waver, for what comes after will not hesitate.

The assassin gloats but the Lastsister doesn’t heed. She plans her movements.

The dagger drags through the the Reaper’s flesh and she feels his command begin to weaken, sees the mummified arm tremble in his grip. The assassin screams, his torso bulges out then spilts open as his cut completes—through the tear shadowy fingers pierce and quickly rip the assassin in two, parting him as a curtain. The tear continues past the assassin’s corporeal form, distorting the fabric between realms. The powerful Bête Noire shoves an arm through.

Evelyn snaps back, snatching the infant into her arms and as she spins to face the shadow again, she sees that it is already completely through, rising to full height. In a flash of motion the shadow raises a hand over its head, materializing a huge smoldering spear of its own essence in its grip. Evelyn dodges, feels the spear rip through the air and lodge deep into the heartwood of Mother Sempervirens…