SHATTERED FATE: A Gothic Tale

PART TWO

Clouds of sulfur, the odious smell of rotting eggs, woke her. Her eyes pricked open and stared at a cracked ceiling, like she was trapped inside a shell.

Frances was in a house that was not her own. As her vision came into focus, her head exploded in pain. The rim of the room was lit by grimy oil lamps and peeling wallpaper. Her back was stiff against a lumpy couch, her hands trembled as she grasped for the edge of the cushion. Threadbare velvet slipped under her fingers as she scrambled into a sitting position.

Dizziness overcame her, and she had to squeeze her eyes shut against the sensation, but also the mounting fear which followed. The place was silent except for the distant tick of dead branches on the window.

Where was she? She had not remembered anything past her fall in the forest.

The room was cloaked in dust and yellow sheets, the furniture arranged beneath like ghosts on a night watch. A fire crackled dimly in a fireplace, above hung a mantelpiece, which bore strange and curious objects. Dead animals watched from every corner of the room.

Specimens glared out at her from beneath bell jars. The matted fur of a mummified rat. Twisted antlers of a deer. The plump stuffed body of an owl. Giant moths asphyxiated beneath glass. Pungent dried weeds hanging from the ceiling.

Bringing herself to stand on shaky legs, Frances peered out the tattered lace curtains and found rain puddles in the yard. It was near twilight. The house was situated down a long lane, its path now overgrown and sunken in by two muddy ruts.

She recognized the ruts. They led to the witch's house on the other side of the forest.

Frances and her friends had only peered at the house from afar, creeping between the hedges to spy. But no one had ever been inside.

Until now.

Heart tapping against her sore and aching ribs, her notebook long lost, Frances rushed to a large wooden door, but her footsteps betrayed her. The floorboards moaned and eked out a message.

She was not alone.

Just as she was about to leave the mournful room, the door swung open.

Frances screamed and shrank away.

A woman with one eye stared at her. Her wiry colorless hair was tied beneath a scarf, her skin smooth but her hands as contorted as an old crone's. One gray eye was alert it looked right into Frances' soul. The other was made of mossy green glass, a shiny marble-like orb, and it sat unflinching in the socket.

"Where do you think you're going?" The voice that came out was raspy, like ripped paper.

Frances clenched her hands into her skirt. "Please. I would like to leave."

"I don't keep prisoners." The woman lurked in the doorway.

Frances' heart did not slow. Her vision sharpened to the darkness and she was able to take in the scene around her.

She had not found the door to the outside. The door led her into another room, where a large table was laid out with herbs and dried plants, powders and potions. A fire blazed so warmly she thought it must be bewitched. A copper kettle hung over the flame, bright as the eye of a crow.

"I must be going," Frances insisted.

"You're still bleeding." The woman pointed one of her crooked fingers to the side of her head. Frances brought her hand to a lump and drew it away. Her fingers were striped with blood.

"See." The woman shuffled to the kettle where she poured a steaming brew into a chipped mug and brought it to Frances. "Drink this."

"No, thank you." Frances did not drink potions offered to her from strangers. "I don't even know your name. What is it?"

"No one has ever bothered to ask before." The old woman frowned and raised the mug to her lips instead. "I used to be called Abelina."

"What are you called now?"

"Witch."

Frances paled.

"Do you think I'm a witch?" Abelina asked. She braced her frail body on the messy wooden table, daring Frances not to lie.

"I don't know." Her throat was parched.

"I saw what you did." The old woman busied herself with a mortar and pestle, grinding a blood-red root into a paste. Its strong odor, like an onion, filled the room and made Frances' eyes water.

"I'm sorry. It truly was an accident." She flinched at being in the same room as a witch, for she didn't know what else to call the woman.

"To step on a bird's nest is a bad omen. To crack an egg, even worse." The woman scraped the bowl of crushed root onto the table and sprinkled something like salt upon it. Frances thought it looked like the innards of an animal.

"I don't believe in omens. I really must go now," Frances turned to leave the room, but before she could try to think about how to escape, the woman spoke again.

"You can leave now, or you can let me tell you the way to banish the omen." The woman chopped now, slowly with the blade of a silver-sharp knife. "Leave now, and bad luck will surely follow."

"Why should I listen to you?" Frances demanded, her anger rising like the pulse in her injured head.

"That bird belonged to me."

Frances could not deny it, for Abelina owned the property. "What must I do?"

The old woman stopped chopping with knife in hand, and glared. "You broke the egg. Put it back together."

"That's impossible." She stared at the crust on her boot. Her stomach turned at the dried mess on it.

The old woman shook her head. "Nothing's impossible unless you're too afraid."

The stiffness in her arms and legs made Frances numb. "I'm not afraid. I just want to go home. Let me go in peace."

"Mend the egg and all will be well." She pointed to a basket of eggs off to the side. "Choose one and break it. Put it back together again and bring it to me in one piece. Then the curse will be gone."

Frances' voice shook. "If I take an egg, then you will let me go?"

"Provided you promise you'll return with a whole egg in hand."

"Fine." Frances walked to the basket, her head splitting with pain. She chose the first egg she saw, a pure white oval, and put it in her pocket.

"I expect you back here first thing tomorrow." The old woman led Frances, with red-stained hands, through another hallway and out the door into the cold.

Frances ran down the muddy lane, tripping over the ruts, listening to the old woman's laughter, which mimicked the black bird in the forest.