Sinners Will Suffer

Bile and bilge water swished in her stomach. The Trier sternly brewed her next drug while glancing anxiously at her.

Knowing how little time he had, he could not afford to make mistakes. Tomorrow was All Hallows’ Eve and the wrongdoer must pay!    

Lighting a candle, he administered her drug.

A blankness was hers; she was void of memory even of being. Her state was between this world and that. She neither recalled her own name nor her age. 

Consternation brimmed over The Trier; he must not fail! Failure was not a choice! He must bring forth stronger powers.

The stars, mists, and animal cries told him it was midnight, so he led her away. A tornado brewed. Broken branches, torn leaves and blood-thirsty brambles tore around them. Nothing harmed them; neither the maelstrom of debris nor the creatures of the night.

Further they walked. Around a broken rotted tree stump, there was a ring of anemic fungi resembling dead men’s skulls. Careful not to enter into the ring, he gently pushed her towards the stump.  

Removing his hood, staring at the Halloween moon, The Trier began an incantation under his breath. Each word became louder as the fungi skulls gradually rose. Intent on the incantation, The Trier was in a semi-conscious state with eyes and arms raised. 

Suddenly he was shoved into the vortex surrounded by skull fungi. With a wretched cry he was swallowed up by Mother Earth, who sighed knowing the sacrificer had become the sacrificed.

Confused, Seana stood outside the ring of fungi, now rotting on the ground. Her memory was hazy, her stomach slowly settling. Had she been hurled and knocked into someone or something?

Seana remembered little of her ordeal. Was she waylaid on the way back from healing her cousin? She loathed the rumours that she was only there to flirt and have intimacies – whatever that meant- with her cousin’s handsome but rakish husband. When would the superstitious realize she was no more than a gentle herbalist?