NaNoWriMo Detour # 2: A Liliana Fic, Because Why Not?
“So it has been some time, then, since you last saw your aunt?” the head nurse said, sounding a bit confused.
“My great aunt, and yes,” Liliana said, smiling as she lied. “It has been some time. I’ve been away for many years, you see, and I only just heard of her decline.” Liliana’s smile broadened. “Naturally, when I did, I came straight away.”
“Ah, I see, I see,” the nurse said, sounding somewhat mollified. “You will have to forgive my surprise, my dear. It’s just that we were unaware that the revered mother had any family left.”
“She does not,” Liliana said, “save for me.”
A white-robed orderly was pushing a cart laden with strong-smelling medicaments down the hallway, so the head nurse and Liliana stepped to one side to make way.
“My ties to the revered mother may be distant,” Liliana said, “but they remain very important to me.”
“It gladdens me to hear that,” the head nurse said.
They paused then beside a heavy curtain, drawn across an open doorway, and the nurse held up a hand in warning.
“Before you enter,” she said, “I wish to steel you for what you may find. If it has been many years since you last saw your aunt—”
“—Great aunt,” Liliana said.
“Great aunt, yes,” the nurse said, before bowing in apology. “But, as I was saying, if it has been many years since you last saw your great aunt, then you may be in for a bit of a shock.” The head nurse paused, and appeared to choose her next words carefully. “Her mind is still clear, and her tongue remains sharp – or at least it does when she’s able to speak. But her health is in rapid decline. This latest stroke, in particular, has frozen much of her body.” The nurse shook her head, and sighed. “She tires easily, I fear, and she has little time left.”
“That being the case, I will keep my remembrances brief,” Liliana said.
“It would be for the best,” the nurse said, and nodded. “Still, I am sure it will do her a power of good to see you.”
“Yes,” Liliana said, “I am sure that it will.”
“Just ring the bell when you are done,” the nurse said, “and I will come and collect you.” Then she drew the curtain aside, and bid Liliana to enter.
The room behind the curtain was small, and sparse. There was a window facing the courtyard, with the shutters drawn wide, to admit the fresh air from outside. There was a long, wooden chest – for bedlinens, most likely – and a half-moon table, fixed with screws to the wall. The on top of the table lay a pair of glass vases, filled with stems of red roses – one bunch a bit wilted, the other still fresh – which gave the room a splash of color and fragrance. The only other furniture was a three-legged stool, and the low, wooden bed.
With her foot, Liliana drew the stool up next to the bed, but she did not sit. Instead, she stood, staring down at withered, wretched form of the revered mother, who lay helpless before her. The woman’s once-powerful face – which Liliana still saw in her dreams – had been split down the middle, so that, while the left side retained some ghost of its former authority, the right side lay sunken, and drooped, with a thin trail of spittle dangling from the corner of its downturned lip. The woman’s hair – which had once been black as nightshade – was wispy, and more yellow than white, like the color of old parchment, where it curls up at the edges.
Liliana could sense the old woman staring up at her, from behind cloudy-white cataracts, and the revered mother tried to raise her head to get a better look at her visitor, but could not summon the strength.
“You’ve aged terribly,” Liliana said, taking little pain to hide her delight.
For a while, then, she fell silent, as she waited for the revered mother to speak. But the woman said nothing, and Liliana frowned.
“You don’t recognize me, do you?” the planeswalker said, feeling a bit put out, before shaking her head. “But then, of course, you wouldn’t, would you? Not when you’re lying there like that, all shriveled up like a prune, and here I am, standing before you, as fresh as the day we met.” She again shook her head. “No, I suppose you wouldn’t.”
Liliana walked over to the half-moon table, where she drew one of the fresh cut roses from its vase.
“Maybe this will refresh your memory,” she said, and, with a sharp flick of her wrist, she lashed long, woody stem across her open palm, so that it cracked like a whip. “Recant, young Vess,” she said, in a parody of the revered mother’s once-fearsome voice. “Recant!” And she lashed herself again.
From somewhere behind the old woman’s cataracts, a glint of recognition flickered, where Liliana saw it, and smiled.
“Ah,” the planeswalker said, “and now you remember.” She paused to suck at the sting on her palm, where a thorn from the rose had drawn blood. Then she slid the dying bloom back into the vase, where it stood out from the rest of the flowers – a patch of black among red.
The revered mother opened her mouth to speak, but Liliana silenced her forever with a spell, and all that came out from her mouth was a low, lopsided rattle.
“You had your chance to speak, long ago,” Liliana said. “Now it’s my turn.” And she sat down on the stool, leaning in close, so that the old woman had no choice but to look at her.
Liliana’s palm was still bleeding, and she glanced down at the wound with a laugh.
“Here I am, after all these years,” she said. “Sister Liliana, the little heretic – only not so little anymore.” She sucked at the cut, and smiled. “If heresy could be beaten out of a girl with stern words and a salted lash, then, my dearest mother, you would have done it. But I think we both know it’s not quite so simple as that, now don’t we?”
Another unintelligible rattle came from the withered woman’s mouth, and Liliana patted the woman’s patchy hair in a facsimile of care.
“You know what I remember,” she said, “when I think back to those days? I remember how terrified you were, by the darkness you saw inside me. And I remember how excited I was, about what I knew I could become, if only I could escape your strictures.” Liliana’s smile widened. “Well, it turns out we were both of us right. And there’s something poetical about that, I think.”
Liliana sensed movement out of the corner of her eye, and she glanced down to see the revered mother’s functioning arm scrabbling for the bell pull. But Liliana brushed the old woman’s arm aside, and, gathering the bell rope in her own hand, she tucked it safely out of reach.
“If only you knew the number of times I’ve thought about coming back to this world, just to kill you,” Liliana said, her tone of voice still friendly – for the sake of anyone who might be passing outside – even as her words grew cold, and sharp, like a razor glinting through silk. “You ought to be flattered, really, by the amount of thought I’ve given you in my dreams.”
Liliana leaned in close, so that she whispered in the old woman’s ear.
“But then I thought to myself: ‘No, Liliana, that would be to quick, and too easy. She doesn’t deserve as much kindness as that. How much better to let old age take her, instead? To let her wither away, to see her dignities stripped from her, one-by-one, until her last days are passed in pain and decrepitude, so that she will know the same terror and helplessness that you once felt?’” Then Liliana drew back, so that she faced the old woman, and smiled. “And, you know something, revered mother? I was right. This is so much better.”
Liliana stood from the stool, and she smoothed-out her dress.
“I’ll leave you to reflect upon that, revered mother,” she said. “And you will have rather a long time to reflect. I shall have a word with the nurse, on my way out, and I have several potions which I shall prescribe, with which she may keep you alive for some time.”
Then Liliana shrugged, and pursed her lips in faux concern.
“Of course, you can’t live forever,” she said. “That privilege, revered mother, is reserved for we few, and you are not among our number. But do not think that you will be free of me, when your time inevitably comes. For, you see, as the last of your living kin, I have made arrangements with the head nurse to collect your body from these halls, after you pass.” Liliana smiled. “And death, my dear revered mother, is only the beginning of your repayment to me.”
Then she knelt down one more time, to whisper once more into the withered woman’s ear.
“Which of us is God now, dear mother?” she said. “And which of us the heretic?”
Then Liliana kissed the old woman’s forehead, and pulled the bell to call the nurse.
“Think upon that,” she said, “as you dream.”
