Sun Kissed Innsmouth
Party Eighty Three
The dream…
The nightmare, something she could never seem to fully wake from. One moment she was still so young and naïve, still trying to figure out how to survive her time in Josephine’s cave. One moment she was still shrugging and smiling shyly at how crazy everything in the old witch’s empire seemed, and the next she was alone again in her tiny cabin, gasping and gulping like a fish pulled out of water.
Felecia was at the work station, practicing her candle making and perfecting her version of the first recipe Josephine was willing to teach her. A powder for curing headaches and minor ills. She was waiting for a sheet of beeswax to cool and found herself staring at a small bit of polished mirror.
She was still thirteen but not for much longer, months had been spent in the cave, the first winter there. They had made dozens of trips to the meadow and Felecia had begun to settle into being a retainer in yet another, all be it, much smaller household. It had been so long since she saw her own reflection that she barely recognized the soot faced girl in the mirror.
The old injury brought it all back. Felecia dared to reach up and trace along her lower lip, finding the ridge of scar that ran down the middle of it, the right side of that lower lip, drooping ever so slightly. She pushed the bit of mirror away and turned from the work station, forgetting that she wasn’t, and couldn’t, be alone.
“Something vexing you?”
I don’t want to talk about it. Felecia had tried that one before. Josephine was always guarded, always careful, always busy keeping Felecia at arm’s length and away from learning or knowing too much of the old woman’s craft or their family history. Yet the old woman refused to allow Felecia that kind of freedom. There would be questions, awful, telling questions. The old witch had already pried the story of that night in the village from Felecia as well as most of her memorable moments during her time spent with Phillip.
Josephine refused to refer to Phillip by name, only ever calling him Yacob’s get, to her he seemed a perpetually fish faced youth, an impossible time locked adolescent that followed around in the shadow of his massive, intimidating, mountain of a father. Phillip never mentioned his father, not during Felecia’s initial stay with him and his boy, and never since. All Felecia knew of the terror that was Yacob came from Josephine in snippets here and there. Mostly whenever their conversation turned to Felecia’s time with Phillip and his boy.
“All this time without a mirror, I forget how ugly I am.”
Best to be honest with the old witch, Felecia had already learned that lesson in spades during that first winter. Honesty kept the nonsense chatter to a minimum. Belligerent honesty kept the crazy rambling and the pseudo-religious fervor at the periphery of their shared encounters in the tiny two room cave.
“No question you’re my sister’s blood, but I wouldn’t call you ugly, not until you start acting like her at least.”
Felecia waved at her mouth and groaned in disgust. “I’m hideous, Phillip sewed my wounds with a fish hook and line while I screamed through clenched teeth hoping he would sew straight at least. So much for hope.”
Josephine, old and ill-kempt stopped stooping over the cook stove and groaned as she stretched her elderly joints. “Hideous?”
The old woman shouted the question at Felecia and gave the stew another stir before she stomped over to the work station. Josephine had always been quite liberal with her interpretation of what counted as clothing, or personal space. She ignored both as she suddenly turned away from Felecia while standing before her. The old woman pulled her simple shift up over her hips and then her shoulders. The old woman’s pale, pimple coated hips and back came into view before the shattered line of long-ago broken silver scales came into view.
Josephine’s entire back from the bottom of her thin ribcage up to her shoulders was an endless zig zag, road map of scared lines and broken and interrupted scales half grown or left wanting for the mooring they once belonged to.
“That’s hideous, that’s ugly! All you are, girl, is vain about the outline of your damn mouth. What you need is perspective, and some work to keep ya busy.”
Josephine was already lowering and smoothing out her shift and turning before she bothered to look up and see Felecia aghast and so affected by what she had suddenly been shown.
“I told ya before, they beat me. Yacob and his men. My sister told them to do it and they did. Once when they found out about me and my Abe and then again after we moved out here and they killed him. I wasn’t kidding, girl. No fun to be made here. They whipped the life out of me, twice, for her sake and at her command. What you got was an accident, a harsh one, but an accident all the same. What you didn’t get was a sentence. Perspective!”