Blood to blood
He’d hoped in vain.
He’d hoped, foolish he, that he’d get some sleep and rest after the eventful morrow he had had. As soon as he entered through the door of his room, his sole focus was the warm bed he had left undone in his hurry earlier that day. He lay on the comforter, not changing his clothes, and waited for sleep to come.
And come it did, but it was restless and ill-fated.
At first it was not especially worthy of note, just picking some herbs from the garden (even though, as his mind noticed through the haze, not all of them had the same flowering and harvest time). Marigold, marshmallows, mullein, feverfew, yarrow and his personal pride and joy, Indian saffron.
Then, two ravens entered the scene. They did not look relevant, did not act differently, but Baudran's consciousness concentrated on their presence, just in the mysterious fashion dreams work in. Their eyes gleamed, and he could not evade their knowing gaze.
Then, the ground beneath his feet grew sombrer and sombrer, streams of petite spiders flowing and flooding the base of his flowers. They did not all pursue the same goal nor followed the same direction, and their chaotic and hasty march suggested a panic that resonated all too well within his own body.
Then, a flash of garish light rose from the forest, the direction the spiders appeared to escape from. It chilled his bones like a winter river flowing through his veins and freezing everything on its path.
Then, then the spiders hastened their already frantic run, and behind them they left another creature surrounded by the mullein of the garden. These stood tall, impossibly tall over it, guarding it, caressing it, mourning it. Baudran got closer to the figure. Horror awaited him like it was about to greet an old friend, like it knew he was coming this time too, irredeemably, inevitably.
The plants gingerly moved, sensing his will but hesitant to show him, and left clear for his view a fairly new yet familiar face, now still as the moonless night, now cold and gray as the ashes of the wild bonfire.
The ravens produced a deep, rasping call. The spiders appeared again all over his body, reaching the flowers and plants he still had in hand, obsessively surrounding them. Some started dying and falling to the ground in a grotesque manner.
Then, another flare roared from the same place as before. There were fewer and fewer spiders left. The plants withered. The pond turned black. The sky tinted red.
Finally, when the third flash of light came upon him, he woke up with images of bloody ravens and emaciated arachnids behind his eyelids.
He loathed dreams like this. He despised them because he knew, with all of his body and soul, that they were not just dreams. The specification of the flowers he was picking? Suspicious. The dread he felt throughout the events and after waking up? Not helping. The two all-knowing ravens, not unlike Wodan's companions? A dead giveaway.
The witch slumped in his bed, scowling at the wooden planks of the floor. He refused to let it get to him, he already had had too much that morrow and he deserved some rest. With a groan he gripped tightly the covers, turned his back to the door (as if that would make his problems go away) and laid down again with a fierce determination, closing his eyes with equal force. He was going to sleep, make some tasty meal afterwards, maybe read a nice book at eve with a lavender infusion in his hand, definitely put a couple of protection spells around himself, and let the world figure things out by itself. Besides, why should he do anything? He was just a lonely nobody. It would be presumptuous of him to think that he'd be powerful enough to change anything.
Outside the cottage, a careless breeze swayed the leaves of nearby trees. The gentle weather invited the animals out of their hideouts and they trotted and frolicked. An old hen chirped lazily. Some bees floated above the garden, buzzing happily. The water rocked a small boat delicately. A raven ominously cackled. Baudran gripped the covers as if he were falling free. He was going to stay. He was…
He was taking his runes and leaving the house, galloping to the pond and feeling his heartbeat in his neck. As angry as he was at the universe for dumping this onto him (and at himself for going along with it), there was no point in staying at home if his mind would wander back to the dream on loop. He couldn't escape any way, or so it seemed. The gods would not let him.
Halfway to the pond, the witch slowly stopped his travel. His hands were quivering, his chest felt heavy and constricted, his sight unfocused. That's not why you're doing this, and you are conscious of it , he argued with himself. The Gods are not the reason why . He closed his eyes, exhaling a shaky breath. I have to calm down. There is no way on this Earth that I can save him in such a pitiful state , he thought bitterly. The raven cackled again like it was laughing at him. He glared at it, and his anger grew just a tiny, little bit. By God, I could be happily sleeping in bed, why do I have to…? He frowned once more, his eyes shut tightly once more. In his mind's eye he saw the familiar face of an old man. Ashen. Drained of all life. He inadvertently took a few steps back, holding a sob down in his chest. What have I become? Back then I had all the power I ever wanted, but now my legs tremble and I can no longer breathe as I make a step through the threshold. He acidly snickered. My old self would despise my current self. Curse it, curse it all! I will get this right, by God I will.
He resumed his path to the pond, an angry pep in his step. If the Gods' will is to help the weird young man from before (Piers? No, Pieter?), so be it, but I refuse to try to decipher some wacky dream and wander aimlessly. The earlier I get there, the earlier I get to come back home. He stopped by the shore, sat down and put his runes in a specific formation he knew like the palm of his own hand, even though it wasn't quite the orthodox methodology ( But it works for me , a part of his brain spat out with bitterness even in this circumstance). He focused on the clear waters in front of him. In just as clear a voice, he whispered " Where will I find him?", and started humming a tenuous chant, hurried and slightly panicked. Slowly, or as slow as he could muster under this pressure, he touched the surface of the pond, drawing random figures with his finger.
With the calming repetitiveness of the chanting and the relaxing and grounding feeling of the water against his hand, after a minute or so he was solely focused on what he could see on the surface. His face got closer and closer without even realising, and soon enough the vision changed and he could almost feel a familiar place surrounding him.
He finished the chant, thanked whomever it was helping him, and hurried back home to retrieve a couple of things that would come in handy in his trek (namely a mortar, a blanket, stripes of cloth, cinnamon tincture, a bottle of some spirit drink and food) and went to the garden to take some of the plants he had been recollecting in his dream.
If my witchy intuition is correct, he thought, he will be needing all of it. And I need to get it right.
Not half an hour later, he arrived at the place he had seen in his vision, a clear in the forest with a small but recognisable stream that sprung from the ground at the centre. Everything seemed quiet, but for someone like him, trained to feel something more and accustomed to the sounds of the forest, that quietness was almost deafening. Something was off. He sat down and waited for a couple of minutes. When he looked at the stream of water again, it was slightly tinted red. That was not a good sign.
It seemed his dream was correct, and as much as he hated the situation he was also glad he had this ability. Panicking a little bit, he stood up and started walking frantically to the North-East; if the stream was carrying blood, the closest water current was the Ruisseau de Pont Dom Jean. He had to be close and probably needed help, quickly.
He followed the sound of running water. When he found the Ruisseau, he took a quick glance up and down the stream, nervously looking for striking red and blue to pop out from all the green around, but he found nothing. A chill ran down his back. His heart started beating faster and faster, as if his own body were trying to be thrice as fast in order to find anything. He continued his path upstream, rationalizing that the water current couldn't have carried the blood from the other direction, focusing his sight in any small detail that could point out where the young man was.
Then, he saw him.
His heart fluttered, feeling both relieved and scared. The other young man was lying on the ground near the stream, still in that strange red and blue… skin?, but the dirt around him was also tinted crimson. Baudran's sight roamed rapidly over his figure, trying to take in all the injuries he had, but there were too many to count.
Baudran, his hands trembling, laid the blanket next to Peter, took his mask (?) off, gently tapped his face a couple of times trying to wake him up. Peter scarcely whined. The young witch took him by the armpits and managed to put him on the cloth, grabbed the top extremes and proceeded to pull towards where he'd come from.
He thanked the gods for guiding Peter there on such dire circumstances. The Fountain of Youth, which had served in his dream both as a landmark and as a symbol for healing, was only a couple of minutes away. At moments like this, promptness could be the difference between life or death. And he knew, he knew oh so well: time, the subtle thief of life, waited for no one. Every drop of blood that managed to flee the young man's body added to the metallic scent that Lady Death sniffed to hunt down her prey. Baudran tightened his grip on the blanket. He could feel it in the air, the Reaper dancing, jubilous and preparing her scythe. A lone, involuntary tear escaped and mixed with the sweat on his face. Please, not again. Not again. Not again.
The couple of minutes turned into many more, with Baudran's tender and delicate hands fighting to keep their hold on the cloth and pulling the weight. He knew they were going to hurt the following days. He knew it would hurt more if he didn't succeed.
Finally placing Peter inside the small spring, the clear waters carefully embracing his silhouette, the witch breathed deeply.
He had to take this red and blue… garment somehow, and since he didn't recognize the form nor saw any laces or fastening, he tried to rip it off with brute force - not his biggest talent, by far, but that would have to do. Except it didn't work. Whatever fabric this was made of was way more resilient than him. Alright, stay calm , he tried to rationalize. Baudran, clearly not the calmest despite his own words, went to take the dagger out of his bag.
And the dagger was not there .
His mind, body and soul froze for a second. I left it at home. I didn't take it. I left without it. I'm an absolute idiot. There's no time, there's no time, there's no time, his own mental voice provided. What could he do? He went back and forth, not even a step and a half each time before his panicked brain provided him with the idea of checking both options again and again and again. He thought of his mentor. What would he think of him, letting his fear overwhelm him? Would he sigh in that way of his, like he was pretty tired of having to take care of the young witch, managing to almost hide the tenderness and fondness in his brow, in the corner of his mouth? He definitely would. He panicked a little bit more.
Alright, he had to do something. Letting fear take control of his own mind and body was not leading him anywhere. He went back to Peter's unconscious form and commenced trying to figure how the garment worked. There had to be something. Anything. He tried at the back of the neck, but there was not any kind of fastening hid there. Oh, no . He then tried for the waist, and maybe there was a belt of sorts there that would give him a hint. Not. Shit . He took a step backwards and looked again over his entire frame, desperate to find any clue. Baudran's face contorted in a confused expression: there was a figure at the center of his chest, made of a material different from the rest. After some seconds, he came to realize the shape aimed to resemble, to an extent, a rather geometric spider. He got a flashback from his dream, of all the spiders running from the forest, leaving behind them the young man's body, crawling up his own legs and torso to reach the flowers, dying by the hundreds. He took that as a sign because, in all honesty, that was the only thing he had at that point. He was getting extremely desperate. He hastily reached for the shape and attempted to girate it, to pull it, to open it in some way. Nothing worked. Peter was going to die and the only thing he had to do to help him was ripping this damned piece of fabric off of him. He felt, in a way that he wasn't sure if it was his powers or his imagination, the inevitable march of the soul-reaping scythe getting closer and closer by the moment. He started breathing heavily, fast, manically. He tugged and switched and tried anything that came to his mind.
The garment did not budge.
And Lady Death loomed over Baudran like she did a year ago.
He let a frustrated shout leave his mouth, and in his panic his fist bumped with the spider figure. Suddenly, the fabric around it started deflating. He froze in the middle of another try, his eyes round as the moon and almost shining with confused relief. He could not understand a thing, but he was going to take it astride and not ever think about it again.
He quickly took the strange garment off, exposing all of the angry bruises and open injuries to his trained eye, letting them be washed by the gentle waters of the fountain. Several cuts -some deep and some superficial- were still leaking blood, and a vast array of dark patches covered his skin, connecting them like a malign cobweb. His forearm was bent at a suspicious angle, and Baudran suspected there were more broken bones along the beaten body.
He tried to take a deep breath. He had some work to do, and thus he prepared himself: one of his hands touching the ground, still hissing with fresh wounds; the other inside the fountain, stilling in numbness. He could hear a raven nearby. Wodan, the Wise One, Lord of the undead, God of the Witches, was watching him. He absentmindedly sensed a hot and cold feeling travelling through his veins. He gathered air in his lungs, concentrating the energy on his hands, letting it flow from the ground to the water, and with a steady voice recited:
"Like bone-sprain,
so blood-sprain,
so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone,
blood to blood,
joints to joints,
so may they be glued"
The stream started glowing slightly. Then Baudran took the yarrow, marshmallow and mullein out of his bag while Peter's worst wounds were cleansed by the brook's gentle current, the blood still pouring from his injuries.
"Like bone-sprain,
so blood-sprain,
so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone,
blood to blood,
joints to joints,
so may they be glued"
He continued his chanting as he hastily mashed the plants with a mortar and then mixed them with the sacred water and some powder. The palm of his hands stung with his own untreated wounds, and he tapped with his foot along the enchantment, a calming habit he very much needed at that moment. He inhaled deeply once again.
"Like bone-sprain,
so blood-sprain,
so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone,
blood to blood,
joints to joints,
so may they be glued"
At the third round of the incantation, the brilliance commenced to gain force. The blood transformed into almost invisible tendrils that rose up from the current, curling in the air as if they were searching for something. He could feel his face light up for a moment, a hesitant smile rising up. It is working ! He retrieved some stripes of cloth and cinnamon tincture, washed his hands and, as fast as he'd ever been, bandaged his own hands. He couldn't attend to Peter's injuries with his open; that'd be unholy and, with all honesty, he didn't want more godly interventions. He already had way too much on his plate. He furrowed his brow. He shouldn't be thinking that in such circumstances. Focus, Baudran .
"Like bone-sprain,
so blood-sprain,
so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone,
blood to blood,
joints to joints,
so may they be glued"
By the fourth round, a subtle noise could be heard in the meadow, akin to rocks grinding against each other but softer and muffled. The forearm that was twisted at the middle slowly regained its original form, and other parts of the young man's body moved almost imperceptibly. His chest rose fuller than before with the sudden breath he took, and Peter became conscious again a second after, screaming in pained agony. Baudran wanted to reach out, although he didn't know if he wanted to comfort him or just make him halt his screams; still, he couldn't break the flow of the enchantment. He'd have to be content with putting his hand on a patch of clear skin, trying to help him stay grounded.
But Peter wasn't completely there at that moment. His mind was in a really weird space, like there was only fog but also ambulance lights reflecting on the particles. Numb, but also frenzied. He could only feel pain, not even able to focus on just one of the sources. He could barely move, he could barely see. Through the haze, the only thing he heard was a faraway chant:
"Sose benreki,
sose bluotrenki,
sose lidirenki:
ben zi bena,
bluot zi bluoda,
lid zi geliden,
sose gelimida sin"
By the fifth round, the spirals of blood were gathering back around the injuries, but something seemed to be stopping them, repelling them. It was what Baudran was waiting for. He silently thanked the gods, seeing how tired he already felt and knowing he wouldn't have lasted much longer. He took the cinnamon tincture and applied it on the stripes of fabric, and then used them to clear off the wounds. He'd have to get rid of the malign forces blocking the return of blood.
Suddenly, Baudran let a pained scream leave his mouth. Peter was holding his very forearm with an iron grip, impeding his work on his injuries. Although his hand was shaking, the mysterious young man was on the precipice of breaking his bones. A shudder ran down Baudran's whole body. He was no common human, that much was clear. Could he kill me in one hit?, he grimly asked himself. Would he? What if he thinks I'm trying to harm him further?
Fighting his way through his own pain, he looked Peter in the eye, and he saw febril-filled fear. His ash-pale face contorted once again, his grip tightening just that much around Baudran's wrist, his chest trying to rise and fill its lungs with air. When he let it out, he opened his mouth and barely managed to make recognizable sounds.
"Please…"
The humming of the forest grew in its intensity. Even through the language barrier, Baudran understood. Something writhed inside the young witch's guts, a feeling of empathy and understanding that made Baudran let go of the fear and almost make an oath to protect him from any evil.
And Baudran was not someone that was used to affection. Not used to receiving it, and certainly not used to be the one giving it. It hit him hard, swiftly, cruelly.
Dumbfounded for a moment, he nodded at the implicit petition Peter had made, and as he came back to his senses he tried to assure and calm him down, and concentrated again on the task at hand. He continued dabbing softly at the angry wounds, hoping to get whatever was keeping the blood from returning out of the way. When he had taken care of all of them and saw the tendrils were moving towards the openings, he sang again.
"Like bone-sprain,
so blood-sprain,
so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone,
blood to blood,
joints to joints,
so may they be glued"
The sixth round brought back at full force the brilliance from before. The water shone, and the tendrils, now fully made of a bright crimson liquid, made contact with the open skin. Baudran took advantage of this moment, of letting the magic work by itself, to pick up the bottle of spirit drink and give it to Peter. He should take a sip. The following steps were going to be painful. Baudran couldn't talk (that would entail breaking the spell), and it wasn't like they understood each other's languages anyhow, so he tried to mimic in a fashion that the other would understand. Through the haze in his vision, Peter seemed to get the meaning and frowned.
"But… I'm not…", he struggled to say before a new wave of pain inundated the entirety of his nerve ends and rendered him incapable of speech. His chest heaved, his hands contracted gruesomely, his lungs fought to take air and let a pained growl out at the same time. Baudran planted his hand at the back of Peter's neck and reclined his head so he could drink. When the pain subsided a little bit, he eyed the bottle with an unconvinced look, not sure of what to do. Baudran insisted impatiently, his eyes starting to stay closed longer than before. Exhaustion was catching up to him. Peter, even though he wasn't at his most perceptive, noticed the problem. With a trembling "Fuck it" and a gigantic effort to nod so the other boy could understand, he finally accepted the drink, and it burned his throat but took away the edge of the pain a little bit. He more than welcomed it.
Baudran sighed with relief. He really didn't have the energy to try to convince anyone of anything even under normal circumstances, but he knew this would make things easier for everyone. Letting his shoulders drop a bit, he concentrated again on his own task. When he esteemed that the timing was right to go through the next step, he sang again:
"Like bone-sprain,
so blood-sprain,
so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone,
blood to blood,
joints to joints,
so may they be glued"
By the seventh round, Baudran could sense his energy escaping from his fingers like cascades, and he was incapable of halting it even for a fraction of a second. His arms were shaking, his vision swimming through a vague haze. He focused all of his energy on Peter's wounds and inside his blood vessels, and soon enough he could see petite drops of a viscous element fleeing from the open injuries. Baudran gasped: he surely wasn't expecting that. Had he been poisoned? How is this lad still alive? The witch unconsciously moved a little bit away from the lying boy, a confused grimace painting his face. He should be dead, but there he was, almost breaking his arm unintentionally, without even realizing he was inflicting pain on him. He watched his countenance, almost unconscious, palid, emaciated. What was he?
Shaking his head, Baudran once again watched the wounds as the droplets emanated from him with a lesser frequency. He took a deep breath, trying to redirect his attention to the matter at hand. When he calmed down, he took a ragged cloth and trapped those beads inside, soaking the fabric in poison. He left it inside a small leather pouch. He then took the poultice he had prepared at the beginning, smashed it a little bit while adding more water, and applied the herbal salve to the smaller cuts and scrapes. His arms trembled, completely overworked at that point, but his resolve didn’t quiver. He had to get this right.
His eyes widened when he saw those little wounds close and disappear almost immediately. He shivered once again, perfectly aware of the unnatural way he had healed even with the extra help of his own magic.
He saved most of the unguent for later, leaving the mortar by his side. It almost fell over from the way his hands trembled, but he managed to avoid the crisis. Inhaling again deeply, keeping the air inside his lungs, Baudran stood up and put one foot inside the water while keeping his balance on the ground. The hand closest to Peter’s still form hovered above him, and the other hand rose to the skies. This was the hardest part. He had to get it right. The leg that was standing on the ground initiated a steady rhythm. After some beats, he released the breath he was treasuring, imbuing it with most of the magic he had left in his own body. He had to get it right.
"Like bone-sprain,
so blood-sprain,
so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone,
blood to blood,
joints to joints,
so may they be glued"
By the eight round, the brilliance of the water beneath him blinded momentarily every soul in almost the entirety of the forest. The pulse that surrounded the ancient trees nearby grew heavier, reverberating inside Baudran’s chest. He could sense the life on the Earth connecting with the sacred waters through his feet, and the energy of the deities above traverse from the risen hand to the opposite one, letting it fall onto the young man below. He shivered from the sheer power. Would his mentor be proud of him? His face lit up with an assured smile. He felt like he could take on the king of England’s entire cavalrymen by himself and no one would come close to stopping him. Yet his mind was slowly swimming closer to the verge of oblivion, drunk on the supernatural force.
A loud scream and horrifying snapping noises woke him from his impending slumber. Baudran steadied himself, focusing on the rhythm his leg was still marking. Sweat rolled down his face and, after the initial numbness from the extra power had faded out, his whole body ached with a fierce, brutal force. Still, he held on. His one hand still pointed at the sky, the other one still suspended over Peter. The foot inside the stream stood firmly on the gravel below. He had to get it right.
The body beneath his standing figure was regaining a natural form, his bones and joints finally going back where they should be and as they should be. He was close, so close to finishing this whole ordeal, but he had to get it right. If he let his control slip once again, he could hurt the young man beyond any miracle healing he’d be able to ever muster. Baudran let his head hang, sighing with anxiety and a deep fatigue that had seeped into his very core. He trembled from his toes to the crown of his cranium as his own energy was being dragged out of his body along with the power he was conjuring, like a leech sucking off every drop of blood he had. He had to just hold on for a little bit longer. He clenched his jaw to the point of feeling pain. His leg maintained the beat.
After a whole eternity, Baudran could not hear any more snapping sounds, and the humming from the trees seemed to urge him to move on. Slowly lifting his head, his vision foggy and unfocused, he looked at Peter. He was still as a statue, with a vacant look in his eyes as they looked above, and hadn’t it been for the way his chest almost imperceptibly rose and fell, he would have believed he was dead. The thought constricted his lungs and clung to his neck. He had to get it right. He couldn’t let him die. He fought for some air to pierce through the worry in his trachea, and with all he had left he intoned the last cycle of the incantation:
"Like bone-sprain,
so blood-sprain,
so joint-sprain:
Bone to bone,
blood to blood,
joints to joints,
so may they be glued"
With the ninth and last round came a calming stillness.
Baudran felt no more energy coursing through him, and it left him shivering even stronger than he had before. He tried taking a small step towards Peter, but his knees collapsed and he fell to the ground, scraping the cloth around the palm of his hands. He hissed at the reborn pain, but shoved the thought aside for the moment. With a colossal effort, his whole body shivering, he approached Peter’s peaceful figure. The latter slightly moved his head, attempting to look at the young witch. He seemed to not be in as much pain as before, and his gaze was more focused. Baudran sighed, relaxing for the first time. He checked his worst wounds. The biggest one, in the abdominal area, was already closing, although barely so. The young witch could not still understand how this man had been able to survive this long, and the thought that there was something supernatural about this person came back to his mind.
Peter suddenly coughed, and it sounded jarring against the stillness of the clearing in the forest. Oh, right. He had to take him out of the water. Baudran’s mind was getting foggier and foggier, but he was a thorough witch and he would finish his task with all the attention and care needed. The mysterious, perhaps supernatural adolescent made an attempt at sitting down, and Baudran hastily stopped him. He was not going to let one obstinate, thick-skulled idiot destroy his hard work by opening the injuries he had not even healed yet from. He took his arm as gently as his humour and tiredness let him, and putting his other hand behind his back, he started pulling Peter out of the Fountain of Juvence. Even though he retrieved the blanket and tried to help him get dry, Baudran silently thanked the gods for letting this happen in (almost) summertime, and by noon to boot.
Both teenagers lied down silently for a while. Peter passed out almost immediately, finally getting some rest. The forest had resumed its peaceful humming. Baudran was used to feeling the inherent magic surrounding him, especially at certain places like the Fountain. It comforted him, and it made him reminisce about the gentler summer morrows at the pond by the cottage, his mentor singing quietly while attending the plants of their garden. It enshrouded him like a warm hug. He could almost taste the scent of freshly cut flowers - marshmallow, marigold, mullein…
He quickly shot his eyes open yet again. The tincture , he thought. I still have to apply it to his wounds . He groaned with all the tiredness in his body. Slowly, very slowly, he barely sat up and crawled to where he had left the mortar. Taking the yarrow, the saffron and the feverfew, the witch added the remaining plants to the previous poultice. He looked at Peter while he mixed them. The boy was still pale, but some colour was tinting his cheeks; his chest rose and fell regularly and his wounds seemed to be almost closed. Baudran smiled for the first time in... a while. Once all the ingredients were properly blended, he gently applied the balm on the cuts and semi-open wounds. This should help them heal properly. With a last effort he bandaged them tight enough. Then, he plopped down by the other boy’s side. He fell asleep right away with a smile on his face.
He finally got it right.
A raven warbled contentedly before it took flight.
The sacred waters of the stream murmured gently their crystalline lullaby.