Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Part Seventy Eight
Another day was spent on chores and reading through the tome to really gather its knowledge and take notice of some of the subtleties that Jacqueline had mentioned before. The writer was clearly a woman, something Felecia had ignored before by not reading so many of the non-essential sentences until the end. There was the mention of her arrival to the English colonies and her likening of how the natives planted some crops to how her people on the islands did so as well.
Everything Jacqueline mentioned about the author of the book came to pass as Felecia took her time to really read the work between fetching well water and feeding and watering the mushrooms and worms. Jacqueline left without a word that afternoon only to come back with a length of ebony colored wood along with a handful of quills and straw. Felecia continued reading as Jacqueline whittled a rough mask out of the wood and proceeded to give it a comb of hair made from tied straw and a mustache and beard of tiny daggers using the quills.
The third morning of cave living had Felecia waking and walking out into the sun light only to see Jacqueline packing up a collection of water skins and the same long, flat pan from before.
“You can ask your questions, the real ones now, on the way. Day light is fading and we got a stop to make between here and there. Those are for you, and you’re carrying half the water. No complaining.” Jacqueline pointed to the crude mask she had been making from the day before and an equally crude poncho coated in urine and mud.
Felecia didn’t really consider the reasons or the implications of wearing the odd little mask, the poncho however. “I’ll stick to extra clothes if it’s all the same, and I’ll go get my bow.”
Jacqueline spoke with a sudden and strange authority. Her voice was already so much like Nana’s just without such clear diction. Felecia found herself falling in line before she had the time to counter. “No, you won’t. Extra clothes means extra slow. We have ground to cover and you need to be free of the biters. Wear the damn muddy sheet. No weapons either, not around me, not ever.”
Felecia was already grabbing at the mask and forgetting about her precious bow until she looked down at the wet, muddy poncho. “I’ll keep up.”
Jacqueline, boney and full of sinew as she was, reached down and pulled at one of her feet until the ankle and knee attached cracked and popped. “Take it with you anyway, let your pride get the better of you, so be it.”
There was none of the slow plodding that Felecia had become accustomed to when she followed Jacqueline home the first time. The old woman with her dry, caked muddy armor and her ridiculous mask built up a head of steam early on and kept at it going farther to the north than before. They reached and passed the gnarled old oak tree while the sun was high and reached a desolate beach under the punishing heat of a summers day.
Jacqueline was quick to search the desert beach for anything that might do. A handful of shellfish and the partially decomposed remains of a fish of significant size were the offerings made at the time and Jacqueline made her offerings without word or ceremony before ducking back into the woods and walking back toward the high, dry meadow.
Felecia though to ask her questions a few times over before the heat and the work of walking caught up and then thought to plead for the two to stop while she adjusted herself or worked at her already raw flesh to keep the relentless mosquitoes at bay,
Hadn’t the witch’s worth been born true already? What vital bits needed to suffer now only to make the old woman right once again?