My Mother Divinity [Unedited]

Chapter Eleven

I'm coming to the end of my allocated month. More than half of that time was spent travelling, navigating the paths of the country I thought I knew - the one that I'm coming to know more each passing day. Memories are coming back; as for which ones are of the most importance remains to be seen but I swallow them all up like water I've not drank in years.

Edinburgh is like an ocean. I remember the charming gothic tones of the buildings, the rusty balconies stretching over blocks of flats that never went too high. The spires of churches and the crows that circled them. But I also remember the noise, the constant flow of pedestrians on the busier streets, buskers, painters, shoppers and entrepreneurs. A herd of students clambering their way to the back of a bus in both excitement and dread to start their school day.

The streets are now deserted. Exactly as I imagined - a few cars leftover, turned on their heads, missing parts used for scrap metal. The smoke doesn't lie low in the sky anymore and the lights of the castle are off. I wonder if homeless people take shelter there now. I think my mother took me there when I was young.

But I didn't come here to wish for better times when I was young, but rather to chase a trail. The witch may be lurking in the city and there's no telling what she wants with Sally and Isla, or if I might even stand a chance at reaching them before she does. Would she curse them, paint them with the marks of her books, damn them to suffer? What would be the point, anyway? Why go after people just to make their lives miserable? I can't help but think of the assassins who are probably still chasing me, or Amon, or both of us.

I almost want to give up on trying to conceal my identity. Surely now that I've been wandering outside of that basement for the last four weeks, word will have spread more than it already has - and I'm quite grateful at this moment for the lack of electricity. There's no way I would have survived ten minutes if there were a hundred satellites tracking my location or even just police cars with a right of passage.

Speaking of satellites: I have stumbled upon one. Scattered into pieces of debris and marked with a circle of stones, large and barely-recognisable. It looks to have fallen from space years ago but it's preserved, carefully enclosed in this box that I don't want to enter and disturb. I don't know how it didn't burn up or what the significance of this shrine could be but perhaps it's some sort of memorial; a tribute to the great things mankind was able to accomplish before they all crashed and burned from the sky. It's in the middle of Princes Street Gardens.

I'm supposed to meet Amon here today. He'll have brought Brodie. That is, if they haven't been killed - and the worst part is that if they don't show up, that's exactly what I'll have to presume. That someone cruel took that kid and made him scream and cry until he was dead. I get off the horse and don't even bother to worry about tying up my things; I just leave them abandoned on the overgrown grass, with the exception of one possession.

It's the book. The one I still haven't opened, the one I'm sure I may never open. What's going to be in there that might make me feel happy? Nothing. And why waste my time on things I would honestly rather not know? Perhaps it's a naïve, foolish idea to have, but ignorance has proven to be bliss in the past and I've learned my lessons the hard way.

I hear someone shouting in the distance. At first I think it might be one of the men lurking around the trees whittling down their weapons they might use to poach the deer and rabbits who wander too close to the urban areas. I pay them no mind until I hear it again: "CALI!"

There's a hooded figure sprinting towards me and he's carrying a child on his shoulders. Human contact. I can't wait to see my friends. My feet take me forward and a smile, a genuine smile, breaks across my lips though you wouldn't be able to see such a thing under my attire.