Chapter 32

2055 Words
The path she had taken through the meadow was as visible as any trail in a fresh snowfall. The tall grasses, inflexible in their dryness were flattened from the far hedgerow to the canopy of woodland leaves where she now stood drinking in the shade. She marvelled at her path, so ragged and bent, not at all the straight line she had imagined herself walking. The wild flowers were a cacophony of colour on the fading green; purple thistles, blue cornflowers, red poppies and tall asters with their yellow centres. There was no coordination like the displays in town, just a free-for-all choreographed by the wind. The meadow was a glorious expanse of grass and meadow flowers, grass rustling gently in the breeze. There was a narrow brook flowing through it choked with weeds. Tall water-mint with pale lilac flowers, like dozens of tiny bells were growing at the edge of the brook. There was a shallow ditch at edge of the meadow. The grass was thick and lush grass, growing in dense tussocks. The oak tree provided sun-flecked shade, a cool and refreshing respite from the mid-summer sun. The white umbrellas of cow parsley were becoming brown. The rutted track, once boggy was mud hardened and cracked. The meadow lay peaceful in the thickening light of late afternoon. This was the place where the bodies of her sister had been buried in unmarked graves. Nature had been pleasant and good-natured with its bounty while taking the strength and magic from the bones of her sisters. She knew that it was not going to be easy at all finding out their bodies and then bringing them back to life but now that she had access to the magic off life she knew that it was just a matter of time before her Dark Sisters would rise again and they would all find their way back to the feet of their Dark Lord. Many said that when you die, you will meet a robed skeleton holding a scythe. Some said you go to Heaven or Hell. Some say that you are reincarnated. Some say you turn into a ghost, while some say you sleep for eternity. Maybe one of those will happen to you. Not for me, though. I never met the Grim Reaper's scythe that would take my soul. I never met the pearly white gates to Heaven, and I never went down the stairs to Hell to face my punishment, and hear the screams of the dead. I never was reborn into the world. I was never trapped on Earth as a ghost, and I never slept for eternity. Instead, as cold tendrils embraced me like a lover, my vision fading and a final breath left my bloodied lips, I felt nothing. There was no emotion, no heavy weight upon my shoulders; just the feeling of floating, of being part of the world... Of being part of the stars. I felt whole, as if I had found a piece of the puzzle I hadn't realised I needed. I was everything, and nothing could ever be better than this. Why are we taught to fear it, she asked herself. Why? Whether deaths is an eternal abyss of darkness, a fiery pit, of a clouded castle, we fear it. Whether it comes as a relief or a surprise, we fear it. Leah Masterson, the mother of the Alpha of the Blood Moon pack, the only living descendant of the Dark Sisters stood in the middle of the meadow, bathed in the afternoon light and found that she had been living a life as she had wanted and it had done nothing more than fulfill her. It had taken away her hunger for power and for youth, it had taken away her need to hear the screams of the children whom they were supposed to sacrifice in the cauldron of boiling blood. It had made her more and again it had reduced her to nothing. She had lost all her identity except for being the mother of someone and wife of a man who had loved her like no one else. The thought of her husband, the wolf who had revived her from dead and then given her a life of happiness brought tears to her eyes. I broke down and dropped to my knees, The last breath had been pulled from my lungs. Father, he reached for the cheeks and spoke, “Find your faith, speak with no man’s tongues.” Black traces of sin began to pour from my mouth, And the devil stood to applaud. Father stepped back in fear, “Look within yourself to find God.” But there is no God here, Only a lost, broken soul. A place where demons raise their young, A place where shatters of glass are added to the coal. But yet you tell me to look deep down here, The place that harbors the secrets that never left my lips, The place where my greatest of judgement trips. The place that provides the solution my mind sips. Don’t tell me to find my faith within, Because the hell inside doesn’t allow a god. What good is it to listen to myself, When all the voices inside are leading me to the spinning rod. So Father, forgive me when I say, That you have done no good. I think when I told you I was dying, You simply misunderstood. There is no light hiding in the darkness of these shadows, The pieces inside don’t all fit. You can’t just raise your hands and say a prayer, Because upon entering the Holy Spirit got the faith scared out of it. I called to you in need of a miracle, And you looked at me with pity. You turned from my cry, As if I hadn’t tried everything already. Father, look with your eyes at the worst of failures, See what happens when you let the suppressed come out to play. Do you not understand what happens when you’re four months overdue, And the devil tells you it’s time to pay. But look no more, You have absolutely no reason to cry. Father, I have only one request; When the next scream calls your name, Promise to at least try.   Leah did not bother to look up at the figure standing in front of her. For she knew that he had come like she always knew he would. It was the poem that she had penned down the night she had lost all hope to get any help from the light. It was the night that she had sold her soul in a piece of contract to the one they called the Master of Lies and Master of Disguise. “You have done well Leah, I am pleased with the way that you have been able to commit that atrocious crime and alienate your family from yourself. It seems that you still are not pleased with the decision that you had made, isn’t it? You have not been able to accept it as the thing you were always supposed to do?? Family life has not made you blunt has it now? After all, you were always my handmaiden of death,” said the Dark Lord as Leah could do nothing else but sob. The sobs of pain and guilt racked her body as she saw all the crimes and murders she had committed in all these years in her mind’s eye. She had never thought about the justification of what she had been doing, it was a means to an end and she had not found it necessary to think any further about them but now when everything came back to her in waves she looked up at the Dark Lord with tear stained face. “Master…Dark Lord….help me find my way out of these filthy and sick emotions of the human world that I have been facing since the last two decades…I am sick and tired  of feeling guilty of the crimes which  I took pleasure in committing. I am in need of the guidance of your hand, Dark Master…” cried out Leah. She knew that if she would tolerate the pain that was racking her insides a little longer then she would lose herself to insanity. He now understood that it was the ploy of the Dark Lord to make her experience the greatest pain in life and then he was going to make her beg him to allow her to return to his fold. She now knew that he was not the salvation and he was definitely not the ultimate truth as he had claimed to be when she had slit the throats of her sisters in order to create two new lives. Two new sisters, from the womb of darkness.. “Ahhh, my sweet darling daughter…you finally do realize that you are destined to come back home some time or the other. You, my child just need to touch the folds of my robe and all your pain and suffering is going to go away in no time. After all, I am never going to be able to see my own daughter suffering like this,” said the dark Lord as he came forward towards the sitting and sobbing Leah. She knew that she had to take it and corrupt her soul again because if she did not then his eyes would fall on that of her two sweet children who were even more powerful than her and she could not let that happen under any circumstances. Leah smiled at him, grateful that he had believed her superb lies and acting and then touched the fold of his robe. And just in that instant all the light that she had been able to save in her soul after the two new lights of her life had come to her lap a few years ago, went out in that instant. “I see that there was a lot of pain and suffering which had been bothering you for quite long. You know, sweet child, I would have come for you that night if you had called upon me once but instead you chose to be saved by that filthy animal who took you home and gave you nothing except servitude and even more lies of the life which you were never destined for. You are my Dark daughter and you will raise my dark daughters to life again, like you had done the last time,” said the Dark Lord with a smile as Leah looked up to him in gratitude. “Whom do I have to kill, Master?” asked Leah, with a sinister smile adorning her face. “It is not who, darkling, it is far more greater this time and tougher as well. You have to fight the Earth and take claim of the bones and the insides of yours sisters of which she has robbed all the magic as you can see around. I think it will be fun…” said the Dark Lord as he pointed his finger at the father and daughter who were walking towards them but then they stopped somewhere. Only the crown of the skull was poking above the soil. It wasn't there the day before, but heavy rains had revealed it. In a week the leaves of fall would have covered it again and the secrets of seven years ago would have remained in their grave. But today a small child was collecting stones with her father and she had a thing for white. Each night she laid these stones on the shelf by her bed for the fairies and went to sleep smiling at her latest offering. When she spied the shiny dome she squealed. It was so smooth and perfect, yet quite unlike her usual quartz. She begged her daddy to dig it up and watched enraptured while he tried. His fingernails couldn't prise it free so he took a stick and started to remove the earth from round it. Then spying the tell tale jagged lines of two fused plates he froze.      
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