The Witch Woman's Prophecy

34 | The Pipe |

Soni found me dozing in the garden late the next morning. She was panting so hard she had to pause before she had enough breath to speak. This was so at odds with her normal steady way of moving that I was snapped awake.

Her eyes were shining and I could tell that she was grinning even though I couldn't see the smile. 'We forced the dome open – the dome on the metal building – you'll want to see what's inside.' She was babbling as she had done when the skin had been discovered. 'It may give us answers, but I don't know what.'

She ran off to tell the others and I was left trailing behind her.

There was a lot of excitement when I caught up with her. Instead of her usual quiet manner and refusal to draw attention to herself when she was with her family, Soni was enraptured as she talked of the building beneath the sand and how important it was to the ustel. She broke off from describing how the dome had been lifted up by three of the guards and turned to point at me.

'We've been walking over it for so many summers, and we would never even have known it was there if it had not been for Thamet!' She gave me a hand over heart bow.

The rest of the family were eating, but they stopped to nod and smile at me. Although my face burned from the attention, I felt more included than I had since I had arrived. I was pleased to see that Soni's family were interested in what she had to say. Sometimes they seem to ignore her.

'How does it feel when you are near to a relic?' Jalada asked me.

For a breath I thought of telling her that I felt a sense of holiness or smelled an exotic perfume, but Soni would have put her straight, so I told her the truth. 'I get a terrible headache. Sometimes it's so strong I can't see straight and I feel faint.'

I expected her to laugh at me, but instead she patted my hand softly and smiled at me. Perhaps she liked me after all, I decided.

'While you eat I will arrange for guards so that you can see what you helped to find,' Naamiya said.

I sat down and was offered food from all of the dishes on the table, but I was too excited to eat and my stomach was already tightening up in anticipation of the pain to come. Once the noonday heat had died down, I ate three of the pellets. I was desperate to see what had been discovered in the square and did not want a repeat of the day before when I had felt so ill when I got close to the relic. I did not think to check with Soni what was likely to happen if I took too many of them at once.

As we walked to the square, I experienced a sensation of unreality, a disconnection, as though I were slightly taller than I actually was. It was almost as though I was floating rather than walking. I followed Soni, watching the way the fabric of her robe seemed to ripple like water as she strode ahead of me. The sensation amused me and I found every speck of dirt and flaw in the fabric fascinating.

She pointed down into the pit and said something to me. Her lips were moving, but I could not make sense of what she was saying. She pointed to the metal building in the pit, where more of it had been uncovered. Timbers had been added since the day before to brace the sides to stop them from sliding back over the building. Two guards were still down there, looking at the base of the building, pointing out some feature of it.

It is hard to explain what happened next. Some madness seemed to possess me. Without stopping to think, I jumped down into the hole before Soni or the guards could stop me and hauled myself in through the open dome. Startled words from above washed over me, but I couldn't understand them and I didn't care.

It was dark inside the building and I wished there was more light as I groped around. Cold bare walls met my fingers and I squinted in the gloom, trying to make out details. The walls were bare except for something that glinted on a wall. A cylindrical object rolled under my foot. I bent down to pick it up, ran my fingers over it and felt dimples along one side. I held it up closer to my eyes so as make any details in the near darkness inside the building. It was a pipe with positions to place the fingers.

My vision blurred and I seemed to see my own hand doubled. A ghostly version of my finger reached out to touch the top dimple and twisted within it. My own finger followed a heartbeat behind and performed the same action. The ghostly finger moved to the second dimple and made the same motion. I could not stop my finger from doing the same.

A bolt of lightning shot from the pipe in my hand and knocked me down to the floor with a terrible thundering sound. The metal ceiling above me disappeared and light filtered in through a cloud of dust and smoke. Everything went black and I let out a silent moan as I fainted.

***

Basata was in my dream again. She stood before me, her face stiff with horror. She held out her hands to me and shook her head. Tears leaked from her eyes and slid slowly down her cheeks. She lowered her head and wiped them away.

'I am sorry, it was not the time for you to learn the secrets of the pipe. You must go to the mountains. Find the gift. It is the only thing that can save us all,' she told me, lifting her head to look me straight in the eye.

I woke up in my bed with tears running down my own face. Soni stood over me and I knew she was angry with me; her movements were jerky and she kept shaking a finger as though she were shouting at me. I could not hear what she was saying and I put up a hand to quieten her so that I could apologise and found it was bandaged up. Blood seeped through the bandages, although I felt no pain in it.

My other hand was also bandaged. What had I done to myself?

I lost the world then, for I don't recall anything else of that day.

***

What has he done? There are bound to be repercussions!

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Anni X