H C Turk, page 63
"Mr. Denton, could you kindly explain the intents of your parents for them to seek audience with your wife?"
Convincing even to magistrates was Eric's confounded visage, his lack of speech. Naylor thus continued without Eric's reply.
"You have no knowledge of your parents' requesting of me with some firmness that they be allowed to visit your wife?"
"Utterly, absolutely I have no idea that any such request transpired."
"Might you explain, then, why the woman remains your wife? No record exists of your seeking dissolution of that marriage."
"The rearing within my home and England's great church is that marriages once made beneath God's eyes are permanent. And no need have I for shameful annulment when the marriage's continuation is impossible. Legally or not, Alba and I are not husband and wife."
"But your parents' pronouncement was precisely that the prisoner remains their son's wife. Whyfor, then, would they seek the person who in marriage you reject?"
"I conclude that their feelings stem from a comment of mine. My damage was caused by the devil in Alba, not the woman herself. The parents, however, place all responsibility on Alba as though she were evil, incarnate. Between parents and son is a stress sourced by the former's failing to accept that Satan not only can reside in average folk, but seeks their companionship."
"Mr. Denton, I interrupt for a reminding, in that you and I know equally that your wife is not average, for she is the witch."
"Before Satan's attacking me via Alba-witch or not-the woman was a peaceful, Godly sort. As for the parents, they disloved her always, even when believing her essentially a woman."
"This comment, then, that so inspired your parents to seek Alba via my office?"
"I remarked that until they understood the evil to damage me enough for them to visit my wife, the parents should not visit the son yet affected by that woman."
"Affected in what manner?"
"By her aspects evident to any man: her decisive intellect and uncommon beauty. These traits yet move me, but not so deeply that I misconstrue them as being less weighty than my scars. Therefore, Lord Magistrate, though my parents would visit Alba to reduce my oppression, I cannot imagine associating with your prisoner regardless of her beauty or wit or that recorded paper we share. That, sir, is ink," Eric added, then pointed to his crotch. "And this is blood."
Naylor was convinced of Eric's partial notion that he desired no company with the prisoner. The husband's greater idea, however, was that he would live with her forever once she became the wife again. Adequately satisfied, the magistrate departed before tea, a fluid of less concern than Eric's blood and Naylor's ink, two materials I handled profoundly.
The following morn found Eric in Penstone Place. Anxious for action, his taut emotion a type of energy itself, Eric proceeded for deeper sites, not concerned with further bouts of cutlery's display. Fortunate he considered himself to soon arrive at a voice that fit his desires.
"Eh-and if you're of prisons, enter to speak with me."
Not so foolish as to enter unaware, Eric cautiously stepped into a sagging building to find a man prepared to kill him.
Due to lus youth or the attacker's own wound, Eric avoided a thrusting knife by dropping to the floor's rubble. By then he had recognized the man as a seeker of his wife's gender, having known it from previous commerce. Poorly stabbed had he been according to his minor stiffness, his imperfect movements all anger and force. Up and around the two males proceeded, Eric intending only to run away, but the felon was between him and the door. All of this in seconds, Eric stumbling deeper into the building, his assailant following with unpleasant grunts as though a mad animal defending itself with desperation, but only sinners become desperate for vengeance, not God's natural creatures. Another exit Eric sought as he avoided the knife's loud swings, its screams through the air for his entrails. After a quick beginning, the two men danced within, never but nearly together, Eric crawling over a timber even as the felon lunged with an ugly grunt of satisfaction, a failed sound since Eric again avoided the blade.
Eventually Eric understood that the man seldom moved directly toward him, always remaining between the gent and the door, that single path of escape excluding the roof; and Eric had thoughts of flying, of clambering up fallen rafter and thatch pile to the outside world. But no opportunity had he for this attempt, the felon sliding left and right, his mass expertly balanced over his feet, amateur Eric not considering attack, only survival, not contemplating grasping that beam as a weapon nor throwing those bricks, only seeking the door, only seeing that sliding knife.
Stepping backward, Eric stumbled to his knees-and the man was on him, Eric throwing himself at the felon's shins, barely tripping him as the knife ripped near enough his head for Eric to smell metal. With each following lunge and stumble, Eric seemed slower, now attacked by that anxiety of his parents' visit wherein he had lost his legs, but this poor moving would lose his heart as slit by the criminal. And again he was in his bloody bed, part awakening to find himself part missing; and how would such damage feel to one fully aware? Each rough breath by the attacker was as frightening as a scream, Eric sensing efficiency in the felon's sliding moves, in his careful view of his victim's feet, Eric sensing disaster, a cut to come that he would feel, feel absolutely, as he ran to the man's side and leapt over a chair only to be met upon landing. And there was Eric hurling himself over that same chair backward, an unlovely move that saved his life. Eric again had avoided the one blatant mistake to be his last; and how would their audience observe his mutilation?
Came a woman so blatant as to enter through heaven, which was the door, a Jesus door to save him. This audience carefully approached the felon's back. Immediately Eric thought her
Elsie; but, no, this person he had never seen and could not study now, not with his needing to match the ldller's every lunge, needing to hear this every grunt, the soundless woman with a shadowlike appearance grasping the timber Eric had faded to gain, striking the criminal against his shoulder.
The felon gasped but retained his knife. Turning to face the woman, he made to strike her as she stepped away to swing the timber again, but these two were not alone in their lunging. Immediately upon seeing the ldller's back, Eric thrust a fist against his ear. This blow so stunned the man that he faded to elude the timber, which struck him near the neck, nearly cutting Eric's face with a protruding nad, Eric instead striking the man to the nose, a slap to splatter the felon with blood and preclude his avoiding a timber blow that felled him.
At once the man began to rise, but slowly, Eric immediately on with his exit, grasping the unknown woman's wrist and pulling her along. Not light nor agile was she, though neither was she plodding, Eric viewing the damaged felon, then glimpsing the woman, a face never seen-a creature never seen. This was Eric's startled thought as he clambered about debris toward the door, watching the felon, his spur, then the woman, his horror. A horror because when this woman looked about, she did so literally, her head swiveling past Eric but not stopping, rotating too far, too impossibly far, until her face was parallel with her back. And when looking about again, her head came comfortably to rest toward Eric at her side, her face pointing at him bizarrely, chin rubbing her neck-like an owl, not like any human. Then they were through that Jesus door and into the heaven of continued life.
Quickly they stepped from the budding, Eric certain to remain ahead so he would not see the woman look devdishly behind. He looked ahead to guide them, then briefly to her face seen as most ugly in day's light, but at least pointing toward him, not Satan.
"I have sought this man with the witch," she spoke to Eric as they slowed, her voice revealing the stress of combat and flight. "Ted me your house so there we speak again, for Alba is mine to save with you or despite you."
After a pause for slow understanding, Eric stated his grandfather's address. Then, after a glimpse behind by the woman that sickened Eric, the literal stranger concluded.
"Common sinners can't aid in your desire. We go to our own places now, but prepare for your future. If you will save the witch, prepare to lose some in exchange, for this is the way of nature." Then she ran past, turning only her head to look over her back and warn Eric finally.
"To gain your wife, expect to lose as much as me." And to her place she ran, one Eric prayed God he would never need achieve.
Forty-one
With difficulty, Master Eric explained to his only servant how to prepare herself for a future guest.
"And I'm to be upset, now, because this woman is unhandsome?" Elsie replied. "You're noticing, sir, that I'm no beauty meself, though Fm frightening no people with my appearance."
"But a beauty you are, miss, compared to this woman who in her great courage saved my person as surely as Jesus has saved my soul."
"Oh, and Master Eric, Fm worrying to near stop my heart whenever you're gone to that place, and Fm fearing you've not told me half the times you've been attacked and Fd be fearful to hear them regardless. So what's the terror in a woman coming here of no beauty? If she's aiding in our planning, then 1'm finding her handsome enough."
"In truth, Miss Elsie, this person's lack of facial beauty is not her most distressing aspect. Instead, 'tis her neck most strangely bent; and-more unfortunate for her than any observer-also . . . twisted."
"And it's twisted, you're saying, sir?"
"I do say, and say further that from kindliness you must absorb your distress upon seeing this woman to avoid a mutual embarrassment she especially does not deserve, in that I believe her likely the most important resource in our freeing Mrs. Denton."
What a life of doors had Eric for these swinging walls to present him alternately with anxiety and stressed love. Next to arrive at Grand's stoop was the macabre, for Elsie one day approached Eric to state with a whisper and pale visage that a lady had come, no name given.
Solemn Eric approached the foyer to find Lord Andrew chatting with the saving woman as though the two were friends seen each week in church. How decent was the weather, they decided, with the clouds only occasionally drizzling. What exceptional strength had Grand, determined Eric, to pleasantly converse with a woman completely repellent, from her hideous face to her soiled apparel, to her neck so canted that her head seemed about to fell. She did, however, fece Grand at an angle so that her head turned obliquely across her body seemed natural, surely a decently comfortable positioning for one whose face was usually directed to the side. Andrew then stated to Eric that this fine and friendly woman was known to him, and her purpose was business. Summoning some courtesy, Eric agreed with a smile inferior to Grand's, the latter bowing to Eric's guest, stating he would leave them and the drawing room for their discussion, exiting their presence with no hand kissing. As the two colleagues in crime began to step away, Eric was elated that the woman's first words for him had not been given Grand as well.
"I know Alba in that she and I are as family. On Man's Isle we lived, not persons of the same blood, but the same type of humans we be."
Not delicately settling as a lady, the woman placed her weight on a chair as did the wife; and were not the two of one nature? Thoughtful this woman was, Eric knew, to look over her shoulder instead of her back.
"Saying you are the same type of person as Alba is to say you are equally the witch."
"No more pride could I have than to be friend to Alba's mother," the woman replied. "And God forgive my boasting to say that I am the same person as the daughter, the same witch as she."
"To what extent are you the same as she, madam? Do you have equivalently within you a physical surge that mutilates fools?"
Though stern before, the woman achieved an unpleasant tone when next replying.
"Alba can annoy with all her words, but I will take them from a sister. No more of sinners' words will I suffer from a man. When I suffer next again, it shall be blood for blood."
The woman was becoming filled with emotions, a type of anger seen in her eyes, and in her voice perhaps some hatred-or was it
love?
"I would have no further suffering," Eric told her, "for we all have suffered beyond normal living. So tell me, friend and family of Alba, how might we release this person to a freer world without more torment befalling us?"
"Before have I told you that suffering has only begun. To free Alba, you must not only accept torment, but seek it."
"Here I travel with difficulty, since Tve less of the estimable courage that you witches so pridelessly display."
"Boast before you lie, man. Those in Penstone know your courage, thinking you foolhardy enough to live there. When that knifer succumbed, a coward would have left alone. What were you, then, to pull me along and thereby slow yourself?"
"What I was I remain, a foolhardy man who thanks you to his heart for allowing me to live via the force of your own courageous actions. If all witches be the same people as you and Alba, then praise God for witches."
"Courageous words are those in a land of sinners, but we've told of your courage. Next to be measured is your love, and with it your desperation, for not love and courage together will free the sister. Your taste of death given by Satan through Alba must come again. No weaker force will break the bonds that hold her, for they take the hateful form of society. Sinners' justice is not changed by mere permanent love."
"Emotion for Alba is no lack within me, but it has no tactile state. How, then, shall we manifest our emotion? Pure feeling is pure nothing compared to the passionless building that holds her in its heart."
"We free the witch from sinners not with their means, but those traits of their best prisoner: with that unpleasant state of magic."
"Magic is known to me only as superstition, a groundless rumor on the lips of the ignorant. Alba herself asserted to me that she knows no more of magic than I, and I believe her honest."
"Honest she is, but oft incomplete, for with her long wording, she can have one hear things not said. Enough you've heard her to know this."
"As well, madam, you might understand that my own affected
speech is due directly to Alba's lingual influence."
"I am no madam," she returned, "but named Marybelle."
"A name I have heard," Eric mused, then paused to study either that face or deeper for identity. "God of Heaven, you are the one to take her and five in the wdderness. But unless Alba is the absolute liar, you should be dead, for this was her most saddening belief."
"Sinner, I am dead," Marybede declared, her sound like a sentence of further execution. "Dead she yet believes me, but I walk because of her. Death I neared because of you, sinner, for your kind had ad the hatred to remove my head, even as we must have the love to give Alba further life."
Eric's reply was to move his head side to side as he stared at Marybede, her neck, able to say no more than, "No such thing is possible ..." in a strangely firm whisper. Firm in her living, Marybelle replied more certainly.
"The sinning men of Lucansbludge placed my head in the casket against me, but with no more care than needed for the dead, and so it grew, though decendy it functions. And ad from Alba, for though unaware of magic she remains, the force of God's greater nature came to her through a love and panic to cure me."
"Marybede, please ted me anything but that Alba via magic reattached your head," Eric returned, those last words nearly choked out.
Then the woman stood to approach Eric, turning her back toward him, but also her face.
"Sinner, I come from the grave to free my sister, and no less a passion would have brought me from that repose. For days with bloody fingers I dug through the wood and soil above to gain clean air, and only because I knew that Alba one day would need equal to what she gave me. Now, male, I come for my sister and wdl use you if only in slaughter to free one who to her shit is your better."
Sitting strictiy upright, Eric stared at that face too near, that back too improper, stared at the witch to declare:
"Marybelle, you could have no more desire than mine for Alba's release, for with the woman I lived in love, and with God's grace shall do so again."
"Boast not on your lust, sinner, for your love is mere fucking, and ye shall have no more of that. Your prick is gone to never return, but Alba is retrievable. But not forever. Too much passion has this magistrate to retain the witch long. So much he wants the sex with her that only killing Alba will end it, unless you think hell cut his own prick off. Pray your Jesus she rambles well with the writing he's having from her, for thereafter he has her burned like the animals you sinners eat, and God has given not even Satan the power to retrieve a person from ashes."
"I will have her out, I tell you," Eric croaked, wishing to shout yet wishing to retain this conversation within the room. "But you speak of impossibilities and ask me to agree when I have no ability."
"Alba knew no ability to save me, yet save me she did with a strength of spirit a sinner would die to experience. So if you aid me, male, be prepared to approach some loss that seems death."
Marybelle then stepped even nearer, her ugliness and perversely canted neck not hiding the humanity of her emotion, perfectly normal except for an intensity that seemed enough to kill.
"If you save the wife as I save the witch, prepare to lose as she did to save me. And that was no small body part taken in sleep by Satan. What she lost was the sanity and sanctity of loving her own life, for she exchanged it for a blade, exchanged it for my head, exchanged it with a sinners' knife to kill her. But, no, instead she lived for me."
Eric made to speak again, but Marybelle stopped him insanely.
"With her own hand and own volition she did cut away herself to save me, sinner, so in your love to release her life, what gift have ye for Satan?"
Eric then leapt to his feet, brushing past Marybelle as he stepped away, having to halt because of the pain that bent his body, the pain in his head that turned visual; for he saw the wife hacking her breast with a blade, Eric's greatest pain that he could not imagine mine, not with all his fine intelligence. Great was his torment because it was not his own. And so genuine was his love that Eric rejected the tears coming enough to drown him; for in surviving that wetting, he proved himself the witch, finding again the anger that drove him, drove him to me.
