40°58’57.7”N 47°29’11.3”E
Kərimli, Azerbaijan
20.05.2024 – 16.00 UTC +04.00
“Hey, lunch is ready!” Ramin shouted from the other room.
Not much was said while we sat around the dinner table. The hot soup made my throat feel better, so I could chat, but neither of us initiated any important topics. I spent most of the time observing him and trying to get to know him. I learned that he was also Cursed, a satellite of Starling’s coven, maintaining a safe place if anyone needed it. I did not pry for more information.
Ramin placed a radio, almost from a different decade, onto the table, by the window. He stretched the antenna and searched for an interesting station. Between the cracking static and the voices, a melody reached through. A song that sounded familiar.
“Leave that on,” I asked, and he smiled.
Was this from my days in the Caspian Sea? I could not tell.
...və onların
tapşırığı yalnız
işığı tapmaq idi...
I looked at Ramin and wondered what his Curse was. The moment the thought jumped into my head, I pushed it away. It was beyond rude to ask someone that, and improper of me to even be curious about it. My head hurt a bit.
“Sister, are you alright? Do you need some more soup?”
“No… no, I am fine, really,” I said, but I was not. This headache had been torturing me all day, showing up and then retreating. It was not normal. It was a similar feeling to when I would receive a whisper, but instead more esoteric. My subconscious, perhaps? “I could do with a bath if that is alright.”
“I see,” he said, “Of course, the bathroom is in that corner. There are clean towels already there for you, and they are already warmed up. I can stay and clean up a bit here.”
“Sağ olun. Thank you.”
I stood up, the song on the radio shaking me more than anything. Its words, their meaning was lost to me, even though I knew it was important somehow. Unstable, I reached the bathroom, I closed and locked the door behind me, making sure Ramin wouldn’t interrupt me. It felt important to do so. I was in danger.
I paused.
In danger? What was I thinking? Why the sudden paranoia? Everything was fine. This was a Safehouse.
I turned on the faucet to draw a warm bath. I focused on the sound of the running hot water. Yes, everything was fine. But maybe I had to try to tune in to my coven. Maybe they were trying to whisper to me, and I had been distracted. I tried to deprive myself of senses: no sight, no smell, no hearing except for the running of hot water. I needed all my senses muted, leaving only my whispering to pick up anything from the rest of the coven.
I almost tried to whisper, but something held me back. My tongue, my lungs, and my vocal cords all threatened me if I tried to do so. It was fine, maybe I was exhausted. Maybe I was not ready to whisper. Still, I was hoping there would be someone reaching out to me, sending whispers seeking me. Where was Zephyr? Did he bring me here?
The water running into the bathtub filled the silence in the bathroom. There was no whisper coming to find me. Nothing.
The water shifted and turned surrounding me. As I breathed in, I rose above the water, feeling water dripping across my chest. As I exhaled, I sank deeper into the water, its warm touch numbing me.
I tried to go back into that night, closing my eyes to focus. I remembered… locking myself in a cabin, spreading sand around it to create a powerful ward.
“Purified by the sun,” I spoke words somehow familiar to that night, “Starling bless me and…” I did not complete the prayer, an instinctual fear tying my tongue.
I opened my eyes and watched the water ripple as I moved my legs. A sharp aroma infiltrated my lungs: pine infusion. It replaced the soreness with a cold sensation of numbness.
I closed my eyes again.
I remembered the cabin. I had waited long there. For what? What happened?
I raised my left hand to caress my neck. I felt its muscles tense more and more. I opened my eyes again; my memories would not serve me. I wet my head with the infused water.
It was time for another approach. I was disconnected from my coven and its whispers, but my senses were still intact. The candles around the bath were lit, casting long shadows in the otherwise dark bathroom.
“I have to see Far.”
The words were enough for my Farsight to fly in the sky, leaving my body behind. I did not have to go far. I had to reach that cabin, search through the fields, the skies, the villages nearby for that… orchard.
The cabin stood, barely. It was still there, I could see it just out of my reach. Its windows and door were open, letting the breeze shake them. I willed my vision inside the cabin, only to face the smell of burned wood. Not much was left. The television’s glass was shattered, and tobacco was hurled everywhere. And in the middle of the scene, a burned Starling robe.
That was mine. Why did it lie burnt next to… A pile of sand?
Different sand. Not the one I had used to ward.
I leaned over it to examine it. I saw my hand, dream-like and incorporeal, extending to touch it. And then I was gone, transferred violently and unwarned to a new location. Somewhere I have seen before.
All I could see was an endless desert, houses built in the sand, and no vegetation in sight. It was almost midday. My Farsight only worked in real time. No visions of the past or future. Just another location. So, if it were midday there now, this place must have been very far to the west of here. Europe had no such deserts. Africa?
I tried to walk on the sun-scorched sand of this desert. I kneeled and touched it, sifting through it, to see if it triggered anything.
“Ah!” I cried in surprise.
Something sharp had bitten or stung my index finger under the sand. I started shifting the sand around, looking for it. For the sign that caused me to bleed. A small scorpion jumped out of the sand and skittered away. Its body was dark like charcoal, but its legs were white like sand. Morocco, or Western Sahara. I just knew some-
-how.
I was back in the bath of the Safehouse, no longer in the bathtub, which was now overflowing with running water. I was standing near the west-facing wall, in front of the mirror. The sting persisted, and I looked at my right hand.
My finger was bleeding.
A small but tactical nick at the edge of my index finger. And then right in front of me, the mirror of the bathroom was smeared with blood. Not randomly, but shaping a word in Azerbaijani, in the old script.
قاچ
RUN
Was Ramin the one I had to run away from? Was that faraway desert the place I had to run to? Was I safe here?
The pine aroma had numbed my senses. I should be feeling concerned. I should be feeling concerned. I should be…
I picked up a wet towel and quickly cleaned the mirror. I could not take watching my blood taint it with a warning, a warning to…
RUN
I stopped the running water and stared at the bathtub, full to the brim and water overspilling everywhere. The intoxicating smell of pine resin emanating from the water almost blurred my vision.
Is he messing with my head somehow? Is it this aroma?
“All good, Nisy?”
“Absolutely.”
My voice cracked. I should be concerned. I should be…
“All right, let me know if you need anything,” he said, and I heard him move away.
I went back into the bathtub. As I stepped in, more water spilled, making way for me. I did not care. All that water meant more pine aroma for my sore lungs. The mirror was clean of my blood. And I did not need to run. I needed to rest.
✦ ✦ ✦
I found myself standing in the corridor next to the bathroom, humming some melody I had long forgotten. Something about finding the light. I raised my right hand to caress the tapestry as I walked to the bedroom. It was a small house overall, but each room felt huge as you stepped through its perfume.
“It is a pomegranate tree.”
I was talking to myself, as my hand traced the drawn branches of the tree in the wall tapestry. The whole corridor was an homage to a beautiful – if not impossible, biologically speaking – sprawling pomegranate tree. Its branches were painted to adorn the wall, connecting door to door with fruitless branches. It was the same drawing from the bedroom, continuing through the corridor.
Somewhere in the kitchen, Ramin was loudly preparing dinner. Ramin? I had an idea about Ramin, I just had one when I was in the bathroom.
“It is a pomegranate tree.” That was all I could say. And maybe I should be concerned, as I walked slowly from the bathroom to explore the other doors of the house.
There was my bedroom, its curtains long and waiting to obscure the sun for another restful sleep. No, I did not want to sleep, so I continued following the corridor further from the kitchen. There was another door, half-closed. I stepped into the room.
It was a windowless library. A study, but it felt like a sanctuary away from the world. Three of the walls hosted shelves from floor to ceiling, all brimming with brown and old books. All hidden behind glass cases, they felt more like a carefully curated museum of apocrypha. But my breath was not taken by the collection. It was by the door in the fourth wall, the furthest one from where I stood.
I did not dare turn the lights on. Even though it made no sense, I did not want to disturb the scene with electric light, hypnotized by the remarkable talent of whoever had painted the fourth wall, an oil mural surrounding a black wooden door.
“I think it is Orfey. Holding what is left of Evridika.”
The voice startled me. It was Ramin, who had just followed me into the room. He did not turn the lights on either.
I turned back to the mural. It was using the entire wall, from ceiling to floor, and from left to right. Except for the center, where a black wooden door broke the immersion of the scene. A man painted broken, wailing, his hands holding ashes, in the shape of a human crumbling. A woman perhaps. He was in some kind of dark desert. No, these weren’t ashes.
“These are not ashes.”
I walked closer to the wall, even though the black door of that wall screamed danger.
“This is salt. I think.”
I did not dare to walk closer, but I walked close enough to interpret the painter’s strokes.
“Did Evridika turn to ash when he looked back for her?” Ramin asked.
“I think she just vanished. This is not Orfey. He is not crying because he looked back. He is crying because she did.”
“What?”
I turned back at Ramin. “They were supposed to flee without looking back. This mural is of Lot and his wife. What’s left of her.”
I turned to look at the black wooden door. The mural was a threat: leave, don’t look back, and perish. But what was it referring to? I should have been concerned, but I was not.
This room smelled of salt and sea and was begging me to stay in this house. Forget what I was supposed to do.
“Anyway, dinner is ready.”
“Alright,” I said, and I followed Ramin to the kitchen.