Page 41 of Reflections of Silence

She seemed to like that.

Maybe I should try it.

I pushed through the undergrowth that dominated the path until I reached the jetty and placed my bundle into the small boat, and reached for the pole, wary of the bayou’s underwater occupants.

Dolion might like to wrestle with the beasts, but I had other business tonight with a swamp witch who might have the answers I needed about my wife.

I stared into the watery eyes of the wisest creature I’d ever met with the knowledge she could end me in an instant.

Not so much this particular hedge witch who moved to the bayous; rather, her wolf-man companions, loyal to a fault who might like to bathe on rare occasion. Hell, at the rate my senses were assaulted by their lack of personal hygiene, I was ready to keel and be shunted into the next available coffin before sunrise.

“Her future is not set,” the bayou witch purred, her voice rippling the waters around us where we sat on a thick buttress root, a small, hand crafted table made of the same tree between us.

A python slithered from beneath the many shawls twisted around her skeletal frame, but in my not so limited experience, the relocated witch was not as fragile as she appeared.

One of her many talents in shifting her shape, along with the wolfmen who protected her between sunrise and sunset when the other predators came out to play. Another of her serpentine friends coiled around my ankle and nested there.

I ignored it.

“And mine, with her?” I asked, terse.

“Manners, Sebastian. Or have the years eroded those as well as your sense of survival?” She stared at me through brittle silver lashes, shuffling her tarot cards.

One drifted from the middle of the deck to the jetty planks beneath my feet, face down. I reach for it. “Apparently not,” I murmured.

Her sandaled foot slapped my fingers away, and the snake nestling around my ankle collected the thing for her like a trained pup.

“Nevertouch the cards,” she hissed, her voice echoing weirdly as I withdrew my hand.

“My apologies.” I watched from my retreated place, pretending to ignore the hairy behemoth at my back and wishing I hadn’t come to this deity forsaken place.

Or maybe there were too many deities residing within these tepid waters lapping at the swamp witch’s doorstep, crowding mortals away.

My mortal.

The memory of Gisella in my arms, her pale throat exposed as she screamed for me last night, rose unbidden. My breeches tightened, and the wolfman behind me growled his disgust at my arousal for a woman who was safely miles away.

Thank a god who no longer acknowledges me.

A battle my soul, the remaining fragment I clutched to, childlike in my desperation for forgiveness of a sin that wasn’t mine to beg penance of in the first place, I continued daily with no answer.

Until Gella arrived, and my chance at a clean slate offered me a sliver of hope for the first time in half a millennium.

Until the bayou witch flipped the card over and smiled.

“The five of cups,” she whispered, drawing out the last sounds to wrap around us, weaving her magic. I flicked my chin, but her voice locked me in place as I listened beyond what she said andfelt.“Loss. Regret. So much taken from you, Sebastian. And it will flow over your cup into hers.” Her eyes snapped back to mine as she swiveled the card to face me, upside down. “But the card is reversed. Luck may be with you both. What you see as irreparable, she views as a hurdle to drag you across. Oh, it will hurt. Ache and tear. And you will forgive her everything she does. Almost everything,” she added, flicking the card on the table.

I blinked, and the card depicting the five cups disappeared beneath her shawls, along with her scaly friend.

“Fascinating,” I murmured, shaking my shoulder free of the clawed paw that gripped me, still featuring an opposable thumb.

I flicked the monster’s digit and he backed off, shaking his hand, the fur retreating into his skin.

Who harbors the devil within here?

“It’s almost daylight, nightwalker,” the swamp witch muttered. “Best be back to your cave before death takes you.”

“Thank you.” I flicked an emerald from my family’s collection onto the table as payment for her tortures. “I’ll be back.”

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