Into the free...........Thursday
Thursday 16th
09:30
My alarm sounded at quarter to seven which surprised me as I didn't remember setting it, so that meant Xanthic was expecting me downstairs with some task or chore on hand. Well as I am still recovering he could wait.
I walked into the bathroom, slipped out of my long night shirt and baggy knickers, stepped into the deep shower cubical and closed the glass door behind me .
It was good to feel the hot water running down my waist length hair and I washed it with my good shampoo. I don't have many luxuries in life as Xanthic isn't the best of payers (when he remembers he does in fact employ me and doesn't keep me as a pet) but I have shampoo and good shampoo for when I want feel like a woman again. I kneaded my hair with the lather and marvelled at the aroma of woods and spices. The shower was large, twice the width and depth of my old one at home with Mum and Dad which caused me to jump when my back and made of thick glass and silvered metal and I loved to dance within it listening to music in my head - when I told this to a male friend he suggested I should install a pole and video camera and make a fortune selling the tapes saying he'll happily buy a few hours worth. A carved grey granite slab guided the water to a grill in the floor under the corner where the taps sat connected to the pipe to a over head shower head that made the water fall like soft rain through to a torrential down pour. If you need it, a sharp turn on the regulator and you'll be cleaner than you've ever been before. I ran my hand across my chest with fingers tracing the outside lines of my new tattoo. I'm still getting used to having a permanent mark upon me especially having no choice in it, but as it aided my recovery and possibly saved my life I can't get too upset; at least the redness and soreness have reduced greatly. I thought about shaving my legs but I can't keep a man waiting all day.
For someone who claims to not be of this Earth, Xanthic has pretty much every luxury within his home like deep soft towels, under floor heating, walk in wardrobe and dressing room straight off the bathroom where I kept a lot of my clothes. Yes here we have a house with rooms I never knew you could have in a home like a library stuffed with leather bound original texts on ancient lives and medicine sat next to Pratchett paperbacks and Superman comics. Dressing rooms with rocking chairs and sheepskin rugs underfoot. Walk in larders and pantries filled with foods as well as a thoroughly modern kitchen filled with gadgets and cooks aids. But we have no computer other than my old laptop and a telephone straight out of a museum, we also have a three inch long old mortise key for the front door - which is incongruous as the house has a brand new heavy oak red painted front door with an electronic lock, but it won't budge without the key being held up to it and turned.
I threw on a black tee shirt and long skirt pulled at random out of a built in real wood dresser and went down to see what Xanthic wanted and for breakfast.
There were two flights of stairs between my bedroom and the kitchen on the ground floor. The 'public' areas of the house are very clean and modern, plastered walls and paint that maintained a current visage of creams and light tones (and strangely get a hue or two darker or lighter depending on its owners mood). The private areas are ancient, dusty and filled with wondrous sights and books that I just want to run my hands over and fondle in a sensual way; the smell of the library is amazing in its own right, aged paper and leather, cloth and old scrolls, wood and coffee.
I walked into the kitchen, my laptop was open on the large real oak dinning table and sat next to it was a pile of five old books ( three I was beginning to know well with my studies) and a magnifying glass of crystal and sculpted pewter so it looked like a clawed foot of a raptor (for all I knew it could have been a clawed foot of a raptor cut off before it could close those sharp talons around an unsuspecting small furry meal).
I poured myself a coffee from the bubbling pot of fresh brewed smoky and black liquid heaven into a deep stone mug and wrapped my fingers around it feeling the heath of the coffee slowly heat the mug. Breathing in the aroma as I held the mug up to my nose I then reached to add the cream Xanthic insisted on having in place of milk.
"Why do you humans always insist on taking the best out of your food and make do with the unfavourable?" He would often say, especially when I order low fat cheese pizza or diet coke.
I always skip breakfast itself, something my Mother never let slip if she witnessed it, but luckily Xanthic took me for an adult and said nothing even though there was always plenty of food on the stove or piping hot in earthenware pots and bowls around the kitchen sides. I never saw Xanthic cook but the smells of cooking constantly wafted around the house tempting me with roast meats, bacon, melted cheese and roasting vegetables whenever I felt the slightest bit hungry.
My laptop was not in current demand so I sat in front of it and opened up my diary, nothing more interesting planned today than the usual Thursday run around the more specialist antique shops and talking to the man on the street to see if anything has come up since Wednesday - the most important and influential day of the week. A Wednesday day is as important to the 'Others' that inhabit this world as a Friday night was to me and my friends when we were teenagers, and for pretty much the same reasons. Its a time to get together and let your hair down, imbibe, indulge and absorb all there is to offer in a local public establishment; the only real difference is what liquids are actually drunk and what kinds of atmosphere the clientele generate. I am constantly surprised over the Thursday gossip of who went home with whom and what demon ended up unconscious under what bush. What they say to others when in these states fills my note books to the last page and sometimes it proves useful.
"Not today." Said Xanthic not looking up from a large thick book stuffed with numerous bookmarks, scraps of paper and pens to mark important passages and pages.
I was startled. Although I knew he was in the room and could clearly see him, his stillness had withdrawn him utterly from my mind. He was now very much back in the room.
"I'm sending you to spend a few days in the country, fresh air, space to recover, soft bed, good local beer, friendly people."
"What's the catch?" I asked, unaccustomed to acts of spontaneous kindness.
"I need you to go on a quest for me."
"A quest?" I loved the old words he used. From previous experience I was required to proceed with all haste on a fact finding mission, gather intelligence and report back...........or other words go somewhere, look through a few local papers (and a few peoples' bins) and phone Xanthic if I find anything. "Is this anything to do with your inability to visit me in hospital over the last few days?" I asked with more than a little curiosity over his absence.
"I'm afraid it might be but satisfied that it does not involve it enough that I am not worried about sending you alone." He looked up at me and gave a winning smile. He went onto explain that it had been brought to his attention a series of occurrences had happened in a couple of small English villages laying on the river Meon. "Nothing too strange but out of the ordinary enough to arouse suspicion from my kind, and I said I'll look into it for them." He finished before getting out of his worn kitchen chair and stalking towards the coffee pot with lust in his eyes. The chair was at first glance ordinary, wooden rods fitted together to form four legs, supports and a frame and a curved seat was supported in its middle; but it stood out for me because it was almost twice as wide and deep as my chair, the white paint had been worn right through to the natural wood leaving an aged and dirtied ring where wood and Xanthic did not meet. The tall back of the chair had been gently forced back so it was leaning away from straight, especially in the middle where the supporting rods curved left and right from the middle to form a large oval from seat to headrest. I was also full of carvings of skulls and bones and old runes cut in different degrees of depth onto all the parts and then painted numerous times in white gloss. How old the chair was I did not know, but I doubted you would find a brother of it in Ikea.
"I have a house in the country and I want you to go there and investigate a spate of animal mutilations. If it turns out humans or misplaced large cats from a zoo are behind it, then all the good, but if anything different presents itself then I'd like a call." Xanthic leaned on the word different so much I could hear the italic slant of the word.
A series of sensationalised news stories had been locally reported over a couple of weeks which led to a five line side bar in a national rag.
"And you're not coming?" I asked. "What will you be doing?"
A jar appeared in Xanthic's hand. He was going for impressive magic but I've seen his slight of hand before and knew he had a side shelf he screwed to the table so he could study specimens at meal times. Either way it was kinda cool how he did it.
Inside the jar and sloshing side to side by the momentum of the water three quarters full was a greying, swollen and rotten hand, roughly cut at the wrist (and pulled till it came off judging by the ragged flesh pulled into strips leading to the absent arm).
The hand came from a zombie, I was not as surprised as I thought I should have been to discover this information; but after coming face to face with demons, Fae and blood sucking fiends these things are becoming easier to accept on face value.
"Zombies need to be created, people just do not die and return to their decomposing corpses." Said Xanthic studying the hand. In the moving water it looked like the fingers were slowly crawling on the glass inside but this had to be an optical illusion. "There needs to be a reason to return or a forced prohibition from leaving to keep a soul within its mortal confines after death and then the soul still commands the will of the thing. A zombie has had that will totally removed leaving a soul desperate to understand where it is and to escape; a side effect is an insatiable appetite and willing to follow the crowd. I once new a lady in New Orleans who kept her husbands around after their time for companionship and housework but they maintained their consciousness for years after death until they succumbed to natural deterioration."
"You mean they rotted away?"
"No, The swamp woman's magic held them together, but a few days in the stomach of a crocodile caused irreversible damage even she couldn't counter."
"It must be awful being stuck inside a dead body for so long." I said gaining a new nightmare to worry about later.
"In this particular case Love was the sustaining factor and a lot of people would gladly give up freedoms to have more time with their soul-mate; they wanted to return just as much as she did.
This poor wretch on the other hand." He said this swirling the jar and hand around. "Is a different matter, he was in a demented rage and attacking himself in his mindless frustration and hunger. When I opened the cage he leapt to attack like a cornered animal. No plan, no tact, no understanding, there was no identification of pain or amputation of limb. When his arm ripped off after being caught after I wedged the cage on it he didn't notice and waved his stump around still advancing on me. A dangerous enemy indeed, and I always thought it was the intelligent ones I needed to watch out for."
Yeah, this is definitely going into the nightmare list; they must queue up in my sub conscious to get me at night.
"You do not need to worry though, you're only going to walk around a few fields and tracks and recuperate in the fresh country air. And if you see a dismembered sheep or something laying with its entrails spread through the trees then all the better."
I finished my coffee, copied down the address of where I would be staying and went to pack an over night bag. I only packed the essentials so I only had one rucksack to carry (I left Xanthic to haul my three suitcases to the garage where he had a lovely classic Jaguar parked.) I picked up a few reference and theoretical spell books to take with me for light reading, but Xanthic pointed out he had a well stocked library in the house already and I could find tombs of arcane wisdom, and the odd John Grisham when I got there.
Filled with excitement over a short holiday (with the possibility of getting my hair and nails done on company time) and the knowledge I would get to drive the Jag all the way there on my own, I walked out into the Bright morning sunshine.
09:30
My alarm sounded at quarter to seven which surprised me as I didn't remember setting it, so that meant Xanthic was expecting me downstairs with some task or chore on hand. Well as I am still recovering he could wait.
I walked into the bathroom, slipped out of my long night shirt and baggy knickers, stepped into the deep shower cubical and closed the glass door behind me .
It was good to feel the hot water running down my waist length hair and I washed it with my good shampoo. I don't have many luxuries in life as Xanthic isn't the best of payers (when he remembers he does in fact employ me and doesn't keep me as a pet) but I have shampoo and good shampoo for when I want feel like a woman again. I kneaded my hair with the lather and marvelled at the aroma of woods and spices. The shower was large, twice the width and depth of my old one at home with Mum and Dad which caused me to jump when my back and made of thick glass and silvered metal and I loved to dance within it listening to music in my head - when I told this to a male friend he suggested I should install a pole and video camera and make a fortune selling the tapes saying he'll happily buy a few hours worth. A carved grey granite slab guided the water to a grill in the floor under the corner where the taps sat connected to the pipe to a over head shower head that made the water fall like soft rain through to a torrential down pour. If you need it, a sharp turn on the regulator and you'll be cleaner than you've ever been before. I ran my hand across my chest with fingers tracing the outside lines of my new tattoo. I'm still getting used to having a permanent mark upon me especially having no choice in it, but as it aided my recovery and possibly saved my life I can't get too upset; at least the redness and soreness have reduced greatly. I thought about shaving my legs but I can't keep a man waiting all day.
For someone who claims to not be of this Earth, Xanthic has pretty much every luxury within his home like deep soft towels, under floor heating, walk in wardrobe and dressing room straight off the bathroom where I kept a lot of my clothes. Yes here we have a house with rooms I never knew you could have in a home like a library stuffed with leather bound original texts on ancient lives and medicine sat next to Pratchett paperbacks and Superman comics. Dressing rooms with rocking chairs and sheepskin rugs underfoot. Walk in larders and pantries filled with foods as well as a thoroughly modern kitchen filled with gadgets and cooks aids. But we have no computer other than my old laptop and a telephone straight out of a museum, we also have a three inch long old mortise key for the front door - which is incongruous as the house has a brand new heavy oak red painted front door with an electronic lock, but it won't budge without the key being held up to it and turned.
I threw on a black tee shirt and long skirt pulled at random out of a built in real wood dresser and went down to see what Xanthic wanted and for breakfast.
There were two flights of stairs between my bedroom and the kitchen on the ground floor. The 'public' areas of the house are very clean and modern, plastered walls and paint that maintained a current visage of creams and light tones (and strangely get a hue or two darker or lighter depending on its owners mood). The private areas are ancient, dusty and filled with wondrous sights and books that I just want to run my hands over and fondle in a sensual way; the smell of the library is amazing in its own right, aged paper and leather, cloth and old scrolls, wood and coffee.
I walked into the kitchen, my laptop was open on the large real oak dinning table and sat next to it was a pile of five old books ( three I was beginning to know well with my studies) and a magnifying glass of crystal and sculpted pewter so it looked like a clawed foot of a raptor (for all I knew it could have been a clawed foot of a raptor cut off before it could close those sharp talons around an unsuspecting small furry meal).
I poured myself a coffee from the bubbling pot of fresh brewed smoky and black liquid heaven into a deep stone mug and wrapped my fingers around it feeling the heath of the coffee slowly heat the mug. Breathing in the aroma as I held the mug up to my nose I then reached to add the cream Xanthic insisted on having in place of milk.
"Why do you humans always insist on taking the best out of your food and make do with the unfavourable?" He would often say, especially when I order low fat cheese pizza or diet coke.
I always skip breakfast itself, something my Mother never let slip if she witnessed it, but luckily Xanthic took me for an adult and said nothing even though there was always plenty of food on the stove or piping hot in earthenware pots and bowls around the kitchen sides. I never saw Xanthic cook but the smells of cooking constantly wafted around the house tempting me with roast meats, bacon, melted cheese and roasting vegetables whenever I felt the slightest bit hungry.
My laptop was not in current demand so I sat in front of it and opened up my diary, nothing more interesting planned today than the usual Thursday run around the more specialist antique shops and talking to the man on the street to see if anything has come up since Wednesday - the most important and influential day of the week. A Wednesday day is as important to the 'Others' that inhabit this world as a Friday night was to me and my friends when we were teenagers, and for pretty much the same reasons. Its a time to get together and let your hair down, imbibe, indulge and absorb all there is to offer in a local public establishment; the only real difference is what liquids are actually drunk and what kinds of atmosphere the clientele generate. I am constantly surprised over the Thursday gossip of who went home with whom and what demon ended up unconscious under what bush. What they say to others when in these states fills my note books to the last page and sometimes it proves useful.
"Not today." Said Xanthic not looking up from a large thick book stuffed with numerous bookmarks, scraps of paper and pens to mark important passages and pages.
I was startled. Although I knew he was in the room and could clearly see him, his stillness had withdrawn him utterly from my mind. He was now very much back in the room.
"I'm sending you to spend a few days in the country, fresh air, space to recover, soft bed, good local beer, friendly people."
"What's the catch?" I asked, unaccustomed to acts of spontaneous kindness.
"I need you to go on a quest for me."
"A quest?" I loved the old words he used. From previous experience I was required to proceed with all haste on a fact finding mission, gather intelligence and report back...........or other words go somewhere, look through a few local papers (and a few peoples' bins) and phone Xanthic if I find anything. "Is this anything to do with your inability to visit me in hospital over the last few days?" I asked with more than a little curiosity over his absence.
"I'm afraid it might be but satisfied that it does not involve it enough that I am not worried about sending you alone." He looked up at me and gave a winning smile. He went onto explain that it had been brought to his attention a series of occurrences had happened in a couple of small English villages laying on the river Meon. "Nothing too strange but out of the ordinary enough to arouse suspicion from my kind, and I said I'll look into it for them." He finished before getting out of his worn kitchen chair and stalking towards the coffee pot with lust in his eyes. The chair was at first glance ordinary, wooden rods fitted together to form four legs, supports and a frame and a curved seat was supported in its middle; but it stood out for me because it was almost twice as wide and deep as my chair, the white paint had been worn right through to the natural wood leaving an aged and dirtied ring where wood and Xanthic did not meet. The tall back of the chair had been gently forced back so it was leaning away from straight, especially in the middle where the supporting rods curved left and right from the middle to form a large oval from seat to headrest. I was also full of carvings of skulls and bones and old runes cut in different degrees of depth onto all the parts and then painted numerous times in white gloss. How old the chair was I did not know, but I doubted you would find a brother of it in Ikea.
"I have a house in the country and I want you to go there and investigate a spate of animal mutilations. If it turns out humans or misplaced large cats from a zoo are behind it, then all the good, but if anything different presents itself then I'd like a call." Xanthic leaned on the word different so much I could hear the italic slant of the word.
A series of sensationalised news stories had been locally reported over a couple of weeks which led to a five line side bar in a national rag.
"And you're not coming?" I asked. "What will you be doing?"
A jar appeared in Xanthic's hand. He was going for impressive magic but I've seen his slight of hand before and knew he had a side shelf he screwed to the table so he could study specimens at meal times. Either way it was kinda cool how he did it.
Inside the jar and sloshing side to side by the momentum of the water three quarters full was a greying, swollen and rotten hand, roughly cut at the wrist (and pulled till it came off judging by the ragged flesh pulled into strips leading to the absent arm).
The hand came from a zombie, I was not as surprised as I thought I should have been to discover this information; but after coming face to face with demons, Fae and blood sucking fiends these things are becoming easier to accept on face value.
"Zombies need to be created, people just do not die and return to their decomposing corpses." Said Xanthic studying the hand. In the moving water it looked like the fingers were slowly crawling on the glass inside but this had to be an optical illusion. "There needs to be a reason to return or a forced prohibition from leaving to keep a soul within its mortal confines after death and then the soul still commands the will of the thing. A zombie has had that will totally removed leaving a soul desperate to understand where it is and to escape; a side effect is an insatiable appetite and willing to follow the crowd. I once new a lady in New Orleans who kept her husbands around after their time for companionship and housework but they maintained their consciousness for years after death until they succumbed to natural deterioration."
"You mean they rotted away?"
"No, The swamp woman's magic held them together, but a few days in the stomach of a crocodile caused irreversible damage even she couldn't counter."
"It must be awful being stuck inside a dead body for so long." I said gaining a new nightmare to worry about later.
"In this particular case Love was the sustaining factor and a lot of people would gladly give up freedoms to have more time with their soul-mate; they wanted to return just as much as she did.
This poor wretch on the other hand." He said this swirling the jar and hand around. "Is a different matter, he was in a demented rage and attacking himself in his mindless frustration and hunger. When I opened the cage he leapt to attack like a cornered animal. No plan, no tact, no understanding, there was no identification of pain or amputation of limb. When his arm ripped off after being caught after I wedged the cage on it he didn't notice and waved his stump around still advancing on me. A dangerous enemy indeed, and I always thought it was the intelligent ones I needed to watch out for."
Yeah, this is definitely going into the nightmare list; they must queue up in my sub conscious to get me at night.
"You do not need to worry though, you're only going to walk around a few fields and tracks and recuperate in the fresh country air. And if you see a dismembered sheep or something laying with its entrails spread through the trees then all the better."
I finished my coffee, copied down the address of where I would be staying and went to pack an over night bag. I only packed the essentials so I only had one rucksack to carry (I left Xanthic to haul my three suitcases to the garage where he had a lovely classic Jaguar parked.) I picked up a few reference and theoretical spell books to take with me for light reading, but Xanthic pointed out he had a well stocked library in the house already and I could find tombs of arcane wisdom, and the odd John Grisham when I got there.
Filled with excitement over a short holiday (with the possibility of getting my hair and nails done on company time) and the knowledge I would get to drive the Jag all the way there on my own, I walked out into the Bright morning sunshine.
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