Reading time: 6 min

chapter five The first draft

Three Sisters three, each beholden to their fate.
Each Sister’s blessing cradles each Sister’s curse,
nursing it to life, and to death.

Three Sisters three, gripping the tiller in the darkness.
Mortals, immortals, the future as past is seen,
past but a forgotten memory.

Three Sisters three, each walking the path between light and dark.
Each clearly sees the darkness that waits before them,
how all the stories will end.

One walks away to set the wheels in motion.
One walks away to kill gods not yet born.
One walks away to tame demons old.
Each leaves no waypoint or direction, so none may follow their steps.

Three Sisters three, each beholden to their fate.
Each Sister’s blessing cradles each Sister’s curse,
nursing it to life, and to death.

Three Sisters three, gripping the tiller in the darkness.
Mortals, immortals, the future as past is seen,
past but a forgotten memory.

Three Sisters three, each walking the path between light and dark.
Cursed in the knowing of dances that each can lead
but none may either call nor alter.

They dance with a thing forgotten.
They dance with a thing created.
They dance with a thing poured forth from too many pots.
As things moved apart flow back together and muddy each path.

Three Sisters three, each beholden to their fate.
Each Sister’s blessing cradles each Sister’s curse,
nursing it to life, and to death.

Three Sisters three, gripping the tiller in the darkness.
Mortals, immortals, the future as past is seen,
past but a forgotten memory.

Three Sisters three, each walking the path between light and dark.
Each carries within them a motive,
to end, to begin, to cease, to dance anew.

The old horrors will awaken.
The world will be joined and shattered.
The world will be born again, vulnerable to threats long past.
Only those who have chose blindness will see the path.

Two Sisters two, each beholden to their fate.
Each Sister’s blessing cradles each Sister’s curse,
nursing it to life and to death.

Two Sisters two, gripping the tiller in the darkness.
Mortals, immortals, the future as past is seen,
past but a forgotten memory.

Two Sisters two, each walking the path between light and dark.
Each clearly sees the darkness that waits before them,
how all the stories will end.

Walking shadow where old eyes see not,
To prepare a hiding place from the old eyes of heaven.
What was once lost, in places long forgotten,
can no longer find its prey.

Two Sisters two, each beholden to their fate.
Each Sister’s blessing cradles each Sister’s curse,
nursing it to life, and to death.

Two Sisters two, gripping the tiller in the darkness.
Mortals, immortals, the future as past is seen,
past but a forgotten memory.

Two Sisters two, each walking the path between light and dark.
Each carries within them a motive,
to end, to cease, to never need dance anew.

The circle complete, to earth will the heavens descend.
What was once lost finds its source
and consumes it with a long forgotten greed.
All is undone undone.
Only whispers remain.

One sister one, not beholden to her fate.
Blind, she cannot see the steps of her dance.
Deaf, he knows not of stories, old or new.
Mute, she cannot explain, only scream.

One sister one, not beholden to her fate.
For a crime she cannot see,
for trangressions not her own,
her world perishes in flames.

Madame Flattery cringed with a grandiloquent show of personal agony as she read the meticulous handwriting on the ancient pieces of parchment she had found tucked away in an equally ancient book in the library. One thing the Sisters of Kril were charged with was preserving all the old documents they could find, both in hard copy and transcribed onto shards. Their library was an impressive place, and one which each of them would defend with their life.

“I simply refuse to believe than anyone would have bothered to write this thing down, let alone save a copy. The new one really is much nicer,” she huffed with hurt pride, holding the pages close so that none might identify her hand. But only December and Tishian were there. Neither needed to see the paper to identify the penmanship.

With a great show of grim determination, Madame Flattery rose from her seat at the table in the great hall and ceremoniously fed the sheets one by one into the fire in the fireplace.

The illusion of a roaring fire entirely failed to consume it, though the brittle document lost a few pieces around the edges at it struck the floor beneath. She made a good show of watching it burn to ashes anyway. Eventually satisfied that in a real fire it would be nothing but ash and embers wafting up the chimney by now, she returned elegantly to her seat.

She sat down as demurely as one could in the middle of a long bench that needed stepping over to get one’s legs on the proper side.

Both Tishian and December knew the pages would be safely retrieved and tucked away into the same book as before by Madame Flattery’s own hand when no one was looking.

After bringing the pirate Shadow to the island for a less than pleasant visit, December had settled in to waiting, along with Madame Flattery, for something. At least, Tishian had never seen her leave—she really wasn’t sure how many places December could be at once. She had no idea of what they were waiting for, and neither seemed inclined to answer and questions on the topic. So Tishian did the only thing she could do, she waited with them.

She also got a fair amount of reading done. History was not all her mother had led her to believe.

All three sat around the table in a calm silence, watching the paper fail to burn, until a dark expression rolled across Madame Flattery’s face, followed by a palpable anger flowing out of her. Then, as suddenly as it had come, it faded into a discomforting simmer.

Tishian looked at her with concern. “Mother?”

Madame Flattery turned her head slowly to look at her, as if not entirely present. A dark anger danced behind her eyes. “I must say, I had quite forgotten what that felt like, and was more than happy to have forgotten. It is not something I wanted to be reminded of.”

“Felt what?”

“The death of my children—their screams, the crush of water, the eyes of their killer.” Madame Flattery’s body shuddered, while her head sat perfectly still.

Tishian knew of her mother’s connection, but had never seen the effect of it before. Madame Flattery used to call it her warning bell. Anyone coming for her usually had to get through her children first, and when they tried, she would know it. She had forgotten how closely linked her mother was to her children, at least to some of them. Before now, at least so long as Tishian had been alive, none of Madame Flattery’s children had ever died.

Tishian realized she could feel it too, a subtle tug at her mind that, if she paid attention to it, was saying something had gone missing in a painful way. It was not the overpowering sweep of emotion she had seen cross her mother’s face, perhaps because they were only her siblings, not her children. With it came an odd buzz, like little pieces of her, once lost, now returned were slipping in to place. It left her feeling… different.

“Mother, what happened”?

“Belle just destroyed one of our patrols. Those wonderful children crushed by the sea in mere moments.” Madame Flattery’s head snapped back to stare forward blankly. “I— It— I’m sorry child, some of the poor dears are still busy drowning. I can only close their eyes so quickly. Too much of what they had become is lost to me forever.“

She gathered herself for a long time before she spoke again.

“They failed to obey a direct order from her, or maybe failed to obeyed it fast enough, or maybe they reacted first then realized who she was afterward, it is so hard to tell in all the confusion. I suppose it is, after all, her right, being who she is and all. If only she weren’t such a bitch about it.” She fumed quietly for a while. “Sorry child, I’ve just forgotten what leading them home is like.”

Madame Flattery put on her best diplomatic face, but the anger in her eyes only burned darker. It was a look that made Tishian uncomfortable, a welling darkness that felt like it could reach across the table and rip out her soul if it felt so moved. The question of what Madame Flattery meant by “leading them home” was drowned out by a chorus of anger in her head that forced her to look away.

To escape her mother’s eyes, Tishian turned to December, but she was no longer there. Tishian wasn’t sure she ever had been.

Madame Flattery abruptly got up to leave. “Page seven,” was all she said before striding out of the room.

That night, Tishian’s sleep was filled with confused dreams that were not her own.