part 6 of the seven…part… story challenge, a few months late but. Better late than never, eh, @straycatreadsthat?
“All right,” says Ena. She says it slowly, thoughtfully, and then quirks a smile at Alina.
Surprise and disbelief arch Alina’s brows, and then they narrow in silent question.
“I’ve been observing you for enough time,” Ena explains. She speaks carefully. She watches Alina closely. And she tries not to think at all. “And I read as much as I could, with the resources I have access to, and now… Now I’m ready to join you.”
Alina schools her face back into that distant, superior cast. “Yes, well, since you left Fariah, you probably couldn’t do any really effective research.” Her voice is cool and dismissive, but Ena thinks she sees—no, Ena knows she feels Alina’s excitement, a hot undercurrent that belies her attempt at cold reserve. “You might not have taken so long to see the light.”
Ena doesn’t grit her teeth. She makes a rueful noise, and then she smiles and puts her whole face into it, eyes and all. Alina takes her hand and pats the back of it, and then tucks Ena’s arm into hers and says, “Now, let’s talk about your initiation night.”
Desiree doesn’t look at Ena when she joins them at their next meeting, barefoot and dressed in the white of an initiate as Alina had told her to be. While picking out the dress—a simple shift, easy to move in, with none of the fancy waistlines or tight goth bodices of the other women—Ena had tried not to think disparagingly of all the witch cult movies Alina’s probably watched in the past three years since cobbling together her own cult. In the now, approaching the circle of torches dressed in pure, virginal white and feeling the grass and the cool earth and the occasional pebble or stick beneath her bare feet, Ena thinks of nothing again.
It’s not easy for her to do, not always, but she breathes in a slow, deliberate pattern and routine does the rest for her, sweeping her up into a count of breaths that drives everything else away. Breathe in one, out two, in three, out four, in five, out six, in seven, out eight, in nine, out ten, in one…
“A new sister joins us today,” says Alina, though Ena isn’t really new. About half the women turn their heads to her anyway; Desiree isn’t one of them. Desiree and a handful of the others look resolutely towards the imagined center of the circle. If Ena were thinking, if Ena were doing anything but breathing out six, in seven, out eight—Ena would probably recognize the glazed, unfocused looks in their eyes.
Desiree isn’t the only one of the sisters trapped with the daylight of bad dreams, Ena might have thought. She might have asked herself, how many of them has Alina lost over the years? How many more could Alina kill before she realized it was her fault?
“I am Ena, and once I was of Fariah, and I come now to your circle and beg the love of your sisterhood,” Ena says, without thinking, because these are Alina’s words, and all Ena needs do is speak them.
“Come, Ena, and we will love you as a sister,” says the circle, as one; a medley of voices high and low and eager and intrigued, and under them all the foundation of Desiree’s and the others’ monotonous voices, perfectly in sync, their eyes still focused on the center.
Ena steps forward, into the circle, and takes up the empty space between Desiree and another of the blank staring ones. She stands across the circle from Alina.
“This is the end that justifies the means,” Alina says.
The unlit torch in front of Ena bursts into flame. Ena flinches from the sudden flare of light, but doesn’t move. “This is the end that justifies the means,” she replies.
As she had the first night, and every night Ena has seen them since, Alina raises her hands up to the sky, up to the sliver of the moon there, to the bright nail clawing at the sky. “This is the end that justifies the means!” she calls, and the black smoke curls from her fingertips, rises to choke out the fires of each torch. One by one by one by one. Out four, in five, out six, in seven.
Ena’s torch goes out, and she’s not thinking still, but suddenly she’s not counting either.
The light of each torch as it goes out does not disappear completely. It hovers, so well dispersed it could be gone, it could be a flash of moonlight, but when the halfway point in the torches is reached and Ena’s torch, directly across from Alina’s, goes out, the light leaps back into place as a thin line connecting the two. Running from Alina to Ena.
Then again—the second torch, throwing out its connection to the one across from it in a thin, fiery light. And again, and again, until air above them is crossed with fine, burning lines of light and at the center, transfixed into place a few feet off the ground by the dozen-odd lines—
Naked, eyes closed, head lolling forward so her thick, wiry black curls cover her face, but it’s Fish.
“This is the end that justifies the means,” the women chant, and Ena’s voice is among them, maybe, but all Ena sees is Alina’s triumphant smile.
“This is the end that justifies the means,” Alina says, with awful gleeful knowing.
In nine. Out ten. In eleve–shit.
