Through Fire And Water

A Mother Always Knows

Anya and I were combining our allowances for this grocery trip, and I promised to pay her back with whatever dish she wanted. Even a three-tier cake!

Anya laughed at that because I hate baking and I'm terrible at it.

We were about to fill our third shopping cart when I felt the hair on the back of my neck raise. I became alert and swung around, scanning the area for whatever put me on edge.

"Anya, go on without me." I released the cart and closed the freezer door I was propping open with my body. "I'll meet you at the register."

Anya looked up, about to protest, but froze when she saw how I was standing. "Yeah. Okay." She tried to act like she was shrugging my behavior off, but her hands were shaking. "Stay safe, okay?"

I smiled down at her. "I will. They won't hurt me, anyways. I'll tell you all about it when we get back to the house."

She looked like she wanted to say something else, but she closed her mouth and attached two carts together with her belt. She left casually, trying to look normal. I stepped out of the isle and followed my instincts to an abandoned isle in the back corner of the store.

"I told him such foolish tricks would not work," a strange but slightly familiar voice said behind me. I turned slowly. "He was disappointed when he threw all he had at you and you still would not give in."

"I live to amuse," I said as I faced the figure.

My stomach dropped as soon as I saw her, my eyes widened and I felt bile in my throat. I did a double take and blinked rapidly to try to rid myself of the hideous being before me, but everything I did only made it worse. My lips puckered.

"What are you?" I asked it. "You look like my mom, but there's no way you are. She'd never let her nails get that dirty."

Its hair was like drenched seaweed, hanging in long clumps down to the figure's waist. Its face was white, eyes ringed black and lips an eery greenish blue. It was shivering and completely soaked from head to foot, dripping water seemingly from its own pores. It wore robes that were once white but were now black and green, rotten and torn, and its nails were long, crooked and the color of swamp mud. It was hunched forward slightly, and when it smirked I wanted to throw up. It really did look like my mom, Galadriel.

"I am. Part of her, anyways. Her other half, some would even say. I am the witch that resides within her, the darkness her soul holds incarnate." She tilted her head slightly, studying me. "Are you afraid if me?"

"No. Just completely and utterly disgusted, that's all."

She laughed, and it was so evil I shivered. "I like your spirit, little one. How much fun you would be had you chosen to come with us."

"Who controls you?" I asked, changing the subject off of me. "It definitely isn't Sauron. I highly doubt it's Vader, either. So who is it?"

"Do you believe you and your merry band of annoyances can truly defeat us? Are you as naive as Galadriel believes you are?"

"You're not the leader. You can't govern Elves, there's no way you could control two masters of darkness. Who brought you all together? Who brought you all into my world? Who brought my merry band into my world?"

She laughed again, and this time my stomach actually started to raise. I clutched my stomach, nearly going to my knees. "You are so much more naive than you think," she crowed. "You stupid little girl! My master is beyond your puny mind's capability of understanding. He is the king of all kings, the ruler of time itself! He governs the stars, the earths, the tides of every kind of world you could ever dream of. You are but a pebble beside his splendor, and you still have the audacity to think that you can even look upon him!"

She glared down at me as I went to my knees. "You are alone, Jenakin. You have no one. No one cares for you, no one loves you. Your own mother even wishes to banish your soul from your body. You are nothing. You are no one, and yet you still wish to defeat my master?" She laughed again. "What if I were to tell you that the light of your existence, the little human boy, still deeply loves your sister?"

I thought about that for a moment. I knew from what she had been saying so far that she wasn't lying about anything she had said. She truly believed every word that came out of her mouth, at the very least.

I smiled up at her, much to her surprised. "I would say that I'm happy for them."

For a moment her eyes cleared. She looked down at me as a mother would her child.

"You know," I gagged, "you know I'm not lying. A mother always knows when her child is lying to her."

The woman stared at me and I could see Galadriel, looking profoundly saddened but also proud. Then she blinked and she was a witch again, growling in anger. She kneeled into my face; her breath smelled like rotten fish.

"If it were up to me, I would kill you myself. You disgust me. Farewell, child." She straightened. "We shall meet again."

And then she was gone, and so was everything in my stomach. All over the floor. An employee came running up behind me and held my hair back for me as I puked a second and third time, then helped me stand as I told him that I was finished. He radioed in the mess and called for a clean-up before helping me to the cash registers.

The manager was red-faced when we arrived. "You couldn't at least blow it in the bathroom?" she snapped, arms crossed over her chest tightly.

"Sorry," I said in as shaky voice. "I tend to throw up when I smell gas." The woman went pale as another employee ran for the fire alarm.

Our groceries were half off. There was a gas leak. Anya drove me home laughing the entire way.