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atmo-graphia · 8 years ago

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Definitely forgot to post @morgan-le-cray‘s witchy fanfic. Still kind of eh about it, but here it is at any rate, complete with bonnet snatching action.

All the way from London, it seemed rain had been following him. The miserable, soul-slicking kind. Not quite dangerous or terrifying but endless and hopeless. Across land, across water, the night he’d spent in Dublin. The next morning was sunny with only a few clouds. He’d smiled when he’d climbed into the carriage.

They’d been travelling for only an hour when one of the horse threw a shoe and tore its hoof in the process. His coachman had shaken his head and asked if they intended to press on.

“Well, I don’t want to lame it,” he answered.

The look on his coachman’s face was dark when he peered into the east, back towards Dublin. “It looks as though there’s a bad storm coming.”

“No, a storm?” He bit his lip. The sky was as bright and sunny as could be. If only he could have one day on wretched trip without a drop of rain.

“Most certainly.”

When he looked the sad creature in the eye, though, and looked down on its shredded foot, he told the coachman to ride back for a fresh horse. He’d stay with the carriage to ensure its (and his luggage’s) safety.

An hour passed, then another. Sitting on the carriage’s bench, he felt the temperature dwindling colder and colder. Grumbling, he crawled inside and attempted to puff out his coat the way a bird might. No one had ridden by. No one had walked by. All around the horizon, the world had been abandoned, left to the odd crow and the green hills.

He’d never been to Ireland before, but the reports he’d received on his holding had always implied that at least some people lived there. He was never coming back. There was plenty of rain in England.

He closed his eyes.

A sharp scream woke him. Banging his ear against the casement woke him further. Feeling his heart in his ears and his throat, he leaned out of the carriage.

It was just thunder. It was still echoing over the green hills. Not so green, he thought—they were blue and grey below the churning clouds. He watched as another tendril of lightning curled through the air. The following cry was only a moment behind. The wind was growing quite vicious now.

With a shiver, he started to lean back into the carriage. He’d barely twitched when something came into view down the road in the east. It looked like a person.

“Finally,” he muttered.

He pinched his cheeks, rubbed his eyes and straightened his coat. The wind swallowed him when he stepped out of the carriage. He tugged the edges of his sleeves over his fingertips and drew his chin lower in his collar.

The figure moved slowly.

He’d asked them if they’d passed his coachman.

It grew wider.

He’d complain to them.

When the figure was nearly close enough to make out, he started started down the road toward it.

It was a young woman, maybe twenty years old. She was dressed in a green redingote and a bonnet with a black ribbon. There was massive, shaggy grey dog at her side. Her comportment conveyed nobility, and her dress was far too fine for a country girl. As she walked, she looked straight ahead. The fierce winds at her back didn’t so much as tousle the black hair pinned on her head.

He was so enchanted by her appearance that he didn’t say a word as she passed him by. With a start, he took a few steps after her. “Hello, um, miss!”

The woman stopped, turned slowly. The dog circled around her, leering, tail low. Her eyes were dark green. He felt the current in the wind and the fire of the storm.

“Miss?”

Chin raised, she said something he didn’t understand. The wind gusted feverishly.

He laughed, wincing. “Don’t tell me you don’t speak English...”

(under his breath – “This ridiculous country.”)

The woman’s hard face cracked in a menacing smile. “Of course I do, sir,” she answered in a thick, rolling accent.

“Ah—oh.” The man glanced away. His cheeks were a little red. “Well, that’s good. But, miss, why on earth are you out here all alone? There’s a storm coming—”

“Oh?” she said, peering over his shoulder dramatically.

Deep in his chest, he felt the longing to ask her, ‘Please, did you see a short man in a red coat ride by?’ but instead he more or less mumbled, “If you’d like, you might join me in my carriage. We’ll weather it out.” His face grew warm again when he remembered that (aside from the dog), he was totally alone with this woman and several leagues of apparently uninhabited countryside.

With the same unkind smile, she said, “That’s so kind of you, sir.”

“Not at all, miss.” He glanced at her dog. He’d never seen such a sinister beast. It was so still and haunting, like the impression of a specter burned against the darkening hills. “Hey, doggie-doggie,” he clucked, holding out a hand for it to sniff.

The dog’s sides heaved with breath, but it stared unblinking.

“You’ve a... fine animal there.”

“Thank you, sir, I do.” She gave the beast a firm pat, and still it stood unmoving.

“Hmm.” He considered repeating his offer. He considered silently dropping all decorum and scrambling back into the carriage on his own.

Before he could weigh his options, the sky pounded with light and heat. His own voice roared out of his mouth as he covered his ears. The rain fell. In huge, weighty drops. Blinking through the water, he saw that the woman and her pet were unperturbed.

“Miss!” he cried, pulling his coat up, hobbling toward the carriage. Blinking even more, he saw that woman didn’t even look wet. He fumbled with the handle as he gestured to her, but she was looking west. Dazed, hand still ready to open the door, he turned, too.

A white figure was standing there. White and bleeding white against the darkness of the storm, with streamers of light (no, clothes?) reeling. He tried to brush the rain from his eyes. It was another woman.

He said, “Oh my...”

And the second woman approached.

He found his hand had slipped off the handle. His back was pressed against the carriage door.

This woman was dressed strangely, like some cheap actress in some cheap Shakespearean staging. She had wild blonde hair which seemed to glow in the stormy shadows.

The woman in green waited as the white newcomer approached her. The latter was totally drenched, but still she kept her brow lowered and her hands on her hips.

In the middle of the road and rain and screaming thunder, the two women stared at each other.

The woman in white spoke first, “Le Fey.”

“Ryan.”

The dog growled deeply and pawed at the muddying ground.

“Cúchulainn,” the woman in white said.

The dog yipped in response but didn’t relent its teeth baring or lower its hackles.

In the following pause, the hungry sky growled with another stroke of lightning. Then, the white woman said, “You slaternly little wagon!” With one clawing hand, she snatched the green woman’s bonnet right off her head and cast it into the mud.

Gasping, the green woman shoved the other backwards. She was saying something in that language, again, and it was something very angry.

In response, the white woman trod directly on the crinkled bonnet.

It was hell after that. The woman in green’s very body sparked with lightning, the white one’s hand’s flashed brightly. In the blinding, strange fury of these apparently wrathful and uncanny young ladies, he shuddered and curled closer the carriage. His eyes closed against the light. The air roared with their screamed chanting and the hound’s gurgled baying.

And, though he felt compelled to intervene, he couldn’t move. His heartbeat was a nail through his chest into the carriage wall.

The ground shook, the carriage trembled. The wind grew freezing then hot, and his eyes were still quite closed.

(“This ridiculous country. This ridiculous country.”)

“You, sir, what’s your name?”

Suddenly, he realized that the crackling of the storm had ceased, the rain was just a patter. He blinked. Both women were eyeing him. The dog, too. There was no weird shining, but the world glistened in a slash of sunlight that had cut through a layer of clouds.

It was the woman in green. She said now, “Where are you from?”

Name? Where? “L-London,” he managed. “Please, go about your business, ladies, I’ll just—” His hand scratched at the door.

“London! I told you.”

“Sasanach!” the woman in white muttered. He was relatively certain he knew that one...

A glimpse of brilliance shone in his mind. “Ladies, there’s no need to fight. Whatever your differences are—”

“Sister, mine,” the white one said. “Even he agrees.”

The dog swerved around the green one. When he looked at it now, its gruesome sneer looked almost like a grin.

“There’s no need to fight,” the white one said, “amongst ourselves.”

His face felt hot, even in the chill wind that still scrambled down the road. Well, if nothing else, he could broker at least a sliver of peace in this miserable place. That’s dog’s face, though.

He shivered.

The one in white went on, “We should celebrate our shared heritage by slaughtering our homeland’s enemies.”

He felt his voice in his throat, “S... slaughtering...?”

From one horizon to the other, the green grass and the black sky roiled. The two witches (and one dog) stalked up to the carriage.

#short story #fanfic #fantasy #historical #blaahhh

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