My Mother Divinity [Unedited]

Chapter Twenty

She was not always sadistic - or perhaps that pain lied dormant in her like a hot coil, ready to spring when something came up to anger her. There wasn't much that disturbed her specifically, and keeping grips on her powers was so all-consuming that she found it difficult to focus on any one emotion. If sadism is emotion, it has grown into second nature. Maybe she can pinpoint that exact moment it blossomed to fruition, well past seven years ago now.

In the home with the trees and the rolling hills and meadows, there is a small family clinging to survival like a leech to a wound. They suck out the life source of the land, waiting to get stomped on by something bigger than themselves. The baby is newborn, wailing. They don't live far from where she grew up herself but the cottage - down to the windowpanes, the ivy on the sandstone - is eerily familiar. It's like a carbon copy of the life she's imagined in her head - a normal life with a partner, a child, as much as its screams pierce her eardrums.

What drew her here is her own name: Calista. She isn't the only one with such an identity in these parts, which is surprising. There are hundreds of thousands of children born everyday and they come from all kinds of backgrounds and cultures, called names from every language, but this is the first time she's wandered and heard her own name being whispered and discussed on the streets. This new 'Calista' must get some unwanted attention, just because of the witch she shares a first name with.

Her last name is Boswell, and she lives with the small family. Her brother is called Amon, which she thinks is an equally unusual name for the region - mostly recognised as the ancient Egyptian God of the sun and air. To think there are other mortals breathing the same air as her and calling themselves Gods brings a sour taste to her mouth. They - Amon - won't know anything about divinity, about the stories their mothers and fathers have told them and lied about.

Amon's partner - girlfriend, wife? - has perhaps the most dull name on the planet, ironically. Plain Jane. She is rather plain, with that mousy hair and knobbly knees and narrow hips; it's a wonder she managed to carry a kid looking so young and frail. However, the Goddess can only blame herself for the food shortages that would make any normal person's shoulder-blades jut out the way Jane's do. Amon is lean and healthy on the other hand, but maybe she's deceived by his height more than anything else.

The kid is called Brodie. Finally, somebody in the household with a name that neither excites nor disgusts her. He's just Brodie, just a shrieking newborn with red cheeks even as the temperature rises into Spring, even as his mother rocks him on her tiny hips as she walks up the hills in their garden. She's trying to take the washing down with one free hand, struggling to dump it into the wicker basket on the grass. Brodie is sobbing and hiccuping and even from a distance, the witch can see the bags under Jane's eyes. The mother won't have returned to work just yet, she reckons, but soon she'll have to contribute to the bills and those bags will only get worse.

Maybe before all of this, Jane got to drive around the countryside with her head stuck out the window like a filthy dog, and she would crank up The Lumineers like she was in some hippie movie, and laugh at the sun. She'd laugh at the big ball of fire that was supposed to be ruled over by some fake deity sharing her partner's name. Calista doesn't like shared names, and she doesn't like Jane and her family, and she decides from her hiding spot that something must be done about this.

*

A room of ornaments, framed and sentimental but nothing recent - never recent again. A broken salt lamp, heavy on a bedside table that is used for little more than reading glasses and candles; so many candles. Candles on crotchet mats, burning thyme and cedar, and the older imported ones shea butter and bergamot, their wicks a little too long and always trying to flicker out, the breeze from open windows tickling their flames. The wax hasn't totally liquified yet and that means there's someone - someone(s) - home.