The Magician's Witch

Aftershock

Eilis felt the brush of fur against her face—a tail. Then a small set of paws stepped on her arm, sniffing the air around her nose and mouth. Eilis opened one eye and peered up at the brown, wide-eyed face of a Siamese cat. She opened both eyes and looked directly at the tiny animal in confusion. Was this some kind of dream brought on by the opium she had ingested? She half expected it to start grinning at her.

The cat, startled by her sudden movement, dug its claws into her arm in response.

"Ow!" Definitely not a dream.

The cat shot away with a screech, diving under the furniture.

Eilis put a hand to her throat. It was on fire, her vocal cords swollen, her voice coming out raw and raspy as though she had been screaming at a rock concert. And she felt—absolutely wretched. Everything hurt from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. Even her eyelashes hurt. Eilis' low tolerance for foreign substances reared its ugly head as she regained consciousness. Dying would have been less painful. Having a potent drug like opium festering in her veins made her system revolt—violently.

She could tell that she was lying on the floor, on a pallet of some sort, a blanket covering her and a single pillow behind her head. Why she was on the floor, she'd figure out later when her head wasn't splitting itself in half and her throat didn't feel as though it had been rubbed raw by sandpaper. Speaking of which—

Eilis rolled over as her stomach indicated its desire to expel its contents. Looking around in desperation, she found a porcelain bowl by her head. It was empty. Eilis grabbed it in the nick of time as the nausea overwhelmed her. Bile rose through her tortured throat, but not much else—she hadn't eaten anything since—she had no idea how many days it had been. Stomach acid tore at her inflamed esophagus.

She continued to dry heave for a minute, and then her stomach relaxed. She coughed, then winced, the pain in her throat screaming in agony.

Eilis noticed a glass of water next to the ceramic basin. She sat up gingerly, wincing as she placed pressure on her injured wrists and her head swam from being upright and reached for the glass. She lifted it to her lips with a shaking hand—her strength felt completely tapped. She took a small swig, swished it around her mouth, then spat it out into the bowl, dispensing some of the vomit lingering in her mouth. She took tiny sips of the cool water. The first few felt like knives being shoved down her throat. As she continued to drink, the inflammation subsided.

She looked around at the room she happened to be in. She recognized it from her visions. This must be his room, she concluded, remembering the masked man. The room was just as opulent as she recalled.

The decadent furnishings were unlike any she had ever seen. Everything was embellished and sumptuous; the materials--the furniture, the wall hangings, the stone itself were of the highest quality--extravagant in cost as well as in design.

Eilis looked down at the floor; she had never seen a real Persian rug before, but as she sat in a dazed stupor upon one, she acquiesced that now she knew why the real ones cost so much! She could see every detail, how it would have taken painstaking care and time to weave a pattern this complex by hand!

She looked around, careful not to crook her neck too much. The cat wasn't the only animal in the apartment; there was a small menagerie against the far wall. Eilis observed a turtle with a broken shell sitting motionless in his tiny habitat; there was some kind of clay bridging the gap of the injury. A bird with a broken wing blinked at her from its perch. A scorpion that seemed to have no visible injury sat fixed in its glass container, its long stinging tail curled upward, its claws open and waiting.

She turned to investigate the area around the bed. The same chemistry set she had seen in her dreams sat on the desk; nothing bubbled in it now. She saw the bunsen burner, some test tubes and beakers, some empty, some filled with liquids of various hues and viscosities. Was the man some kind of chemist? Eilis had hypothesized that he may be an alchemist. She noticed an inkwell and a pen. A solitary journal sat closed next to the ink well.