Our Dark Prince (The Scottish Play)

IX. The Foul Place

2
Robin
Vinci, Louisiana
October 31st, 2014
Time: 5:00 AM
_____________________________

    "When shall we meet again? In thunder, lightning, or in rain?"

    Fear chilled the bones in her body; glossing over it like the ripples of the wind. As Robin stood in the cold, she heard words more primal and guttural than a tribeʼs drum. The rain struck at her as she stood in the Mist, swirling around the mountainous terrain of Catahoula Countyʼ Sisily Island. She couldn't see the women chatting, couldnʼt see them speaking, but she watched the silhouette of them tracing the tendrils of their skins with Slavic words, Scottish words, ancient words of dead tongues and languages. They carved inverted crosses into their skin, scarified faces decorated in heretical marks, primitive bones as charms in their hands.

    "When the hurlyburlyʼs done; when the battleʼs lost and won."

    The violence of the storm lacerated Robinʼs hands with new scars; lashing at her, sinking deep like claws and fangs. With this brutality of the storm, crevices of Hevene – the Bath of Purity – bled passed the sl*ts of the sky; large flakes descending down through cracks of sunlight that blanketed the furious, ferocious forest. Kneeling on the floor, the rocks sliced through the skin of her dress – snowy-white in its lace. Tears stabbed Robinʼs face, little icy pellets, and blood seeped through the pores of her knees, staining the rich ivory in an endless bay of rubicund red. Gasping, Robin clasped her hands together in prayer – rocking motionlessly. Dizzy, so dizzy.

    "Where the place?"

    One of the witches spoke carefully, slowly, in a Cuban accent that was so...familiar to Robin. Electric. Even with the nights she spent lurking in shadows of the night, and the colors of her skin blocking out the light, Robin still recognized her. Shrewd and small eyes, hair a: long, matted, scraggly tangle of gray curls, her lips – a thin platitude of pink – were tight as they tried to suppressed her irritation.

    Annora; her grandmotherʼs twin.

    "Upon the battlefield, there to meet with Macbeth and his kin."

    As a howl ripped through the air, Robin felt the sting of her frosty tears bite into her skin. Grabbing her dress by its skirts, she watched the night burn through her; newly christened moonlight painting the forest red as she whirred passed the familiar stretch of farmland, jet-lining against the ground. Blood ran freely, trees branding welts on her flesh like the marks of a heretic. Robin ran on the naked ground with little effort. Through the slews of rocks, the teeth of the forest dug into her forearms until they were a fresh shower of blood and flesh coating the snow white.

    She had to get out; she had to get out of this dream.

    "Fair is foul and foul is fair," they chanted in unison. 

    When a second howl sounded, Robin howled back as well; barking like a bloodhound, flesh calling upon flesh in haunting, bone-chilling chorus, the Wolf coming alive. As the angry rivers of the Bath of Purity pounded into the bone of the bay, Robin listened to the gulls caw ominously, calling to her, calling her name. Eyelids fluttering shut, the wind howled against her ears – vibrating, biting into her skin, listening to her cries and soothing her with the heat of a father. The woeful torment, this insanity, was a horde of spiders – crawling up her spine, feeding on her, suffocating her, clothing the monster within.

    Jump, Robin.

    And so she did.

    Jumping over the edge, her gown fluttering in the breeze beside her – a doveʼs wings greeting the sky, Robin fell into the arms of the ocean and broke the waves; the waves folding over her delicately – sending blow-after-blow to her face in little kitten licks. As her lungs burned, her limbs croaked in protest, and slowly, but surely, the waves blanketed her with its frosty arms and echoed her one last, desperate cry.

    "Hover through the fog and filthy air."