On August 21, P.T. Wyant posted at ptwyant.com a Wednesday Words prompt about a door in the hillside. This inspired a Tale of the Navel: The Shadow Forest about a young Leiwell, a very long tale. Here's the third part of that tale...
“You speak as if I held her captive.” His master spoke in a low, aggrieved tone, bowing his head. “I cannot help it if Megan is easily swayed by anyone who might satisfy her appetites.” The older man lifted his chin and meet the angry woman’s gaze. “Not even she knows what she truly hungers for.”
“What she truly hungers for?” The woman slapped a hand to her forehead. “You speak as if she were still alive and a far more complicated person than she ever was.”
“Did you ever bother to find out if she truly was complicated?” His master fixed eyes as chill and brilliant as ice upon the stranger. They reflected the redhaired woman’s flushed face back at her. “How petty and shallow you are, Magdalena. How preoccupied with only what you see on hollow surfaces.”
“I never would have spotted this Door in the hillside if I was only aware of what’s on the surface.” The stranger, Magdalena, crossed her arms and glowered at his master.
“True, but you never bother to look too deeply.” His master didn’t flinch, gazing down his nose at Magdalena with a severity Leiwell might have expected from Map when he’d misbehaved. “You’re too afraid to.”
“What’s wrong with a little caution?” Magdalena lifted her chin in defiance. “My sister died because she wasn’t frightened enough!”
“Your sister is not dead.” Words of hope lingered in the air, forming a purple haze around the woman’s head, the carved landscape of the door, bringing life and movement to its snakes and spiders. “Not if you don’t wish her to be.”
“Coward. You’re trying to hide behind giving me hope.” Magdalena took a step forward, balling callused fingers into a fist. “Do you dare to suggest that you didn’t kill her?”
The question turned the haze red, forming a halo around his master’s head, settling upon it like a wreath of flowers.
No. Leiwell couldn’t allow this to continue. He reached out, waved his hand in the direction of the writhing wreath.
It withered into nothing, dropping petals to the ground.
The woman and his master both turned to him, the same surpise parting their lips and tugging at the corners of their eyes.
“Don’t assume my master would kill anyone.” Leiwell shut his eyes, allowing his words to gain weight and substance as they only could on the threshold of a Door. He opened his palm, allowing whatever formed to fall into it.
Something cool, hard, and metallic struck his skin. He opened his eyes.
A coin lay in his palm, a coin with a woman’s head. The profile was handsome, a double chin rippling and softening what might have been arrogance, gentling her lips and nose. Her resemblance to Magdalena was striking, even as her dissimilarity was.
Leiwell held out the coin to the woman who stood before him.
Magdalena gazed at him with angry eyes, full black pupils surrounded by rings which might once have been hazel. Right now they were golden-green, luminous in their fury and hope.
Leiwell didn’t look away, he couldn’t look away. “Don’t blame anyone for your own regrets.”
Magdalena recoiled at this, gazing at that coin. “Well, well, Another acolyte steps forward, ready to whisper your words, Vampyre.”
“I’m no more a vampyre than you are, lady.” His master moved forward to lay a hand upon Leiwell’s shoulder. “This little shadow of Seraphix says nothing more than the truth as you well know.”
Magdalena glanced at Leiwell, at the smooth, checked tile under her feet, anywhere but at the coin. The floor became more real and solid the more she looked at it, as did the pillars in the background, the long cobwebs handing from the ceiling, hiding what might have once been a mural.
“Assuming what you say is true.” Magdalena spoke to those tiles, lifting her head in a slow, cautious movement. “Can you bring my sister back to me?”
“She’ll be altered, not quite what you remember, but yes. I can bring her back to you.” His master took a sharp, hissing breath, sniffing the air. “If you take the talisman my Leiwell has offered you.”
Magdalena cast a weary, reluctant gaze at the coin. She reached out for Leiwell’s hand.
He felt warm, rough fingers brush his skin, very like Map’s, hardened with a lifetime of work, withdrawing the small, metal object which had manifested.
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