Salt and sanctuary mage creed8/8/2023 ![]() His people had been awakened by the crashing of the great front door, the babbling of the disturbed hens, and the alarmed honking of the geese. “She is out among the sheep,” they told him as he ran out into the yard, pulling on his coat. He sensed the “otherness” in Melusine and wanted to taste it, yet lacked the words to frame this desire. Something cold, hard and hungry stole’s into Thomas’ heart. Through the open window, he saw a slight black shadow rippling over his fields and knew that it was she. She was not lying awake with her wide brown stare, as he was accustomed. Winter had invaded the room with its cold breath, and frost had formed over the furniture. What could she do but run? Thomas, waking from a libidinous dream, stumbled up the stairs to his wife’s room and found the door hanging open. She would bring a blight and the wrath of the Church upon his house. It had come for her soul, which all these years had been leading a stolen life in the world of men. Now it had manifested itself before her in all its dark glory. All her life, when the episodes had overtaken her, she had sensed as far-off presence in the fields. ![]() Outside, the stars shone like unwinking eyes as God beheld their unholy transaction. ![]() She uttered little grunts of horror, her breath puffing on the cold air. Melusine scrabbled her way backward in the bed, until her body pressed against the rough headboard. All the while, silver tongues of fire fell from its lips, its hait. It hissed to her in a language she could not fathom, then raised its right hand and pointed at her heart. ![]() The angel, however, cast shadows of radiance that eclipsed everything but the immensity of itself. Behind the being, it seemed, was another world of light. Then she saw a blue glow in the corner of the room, and being stepped forth as if coming through a door. She felt afraid - and almost certain that she was not alone. Thomas could be heard snoring in his chamber below. Melusine awoke from a dream she could not recall, and her eyes searched the darkness. It manifested from the shadows in her high, narrow room in the farmhouse. This was a being of fire and storm, whose eyes were smoking flames of madness, whose voice was a howl that broke men’s hearts. This was no holy creature like the statues with sad faces and drooping wings that stood guard in the churchyard. On the night she saw the angel, four months after her marriage, she knew her strangeness had slipped over into something more terrible. She would have to sit down where she stood, afraid yet full of a strange desire. Her lungs would squeeze shut and the air would shimmer before her scalding eyes. At times, the landscape became still, almost unreal. It was as if the world was a far larger place that it seemed, and something immense and unimaginable would one day be revealed to her. Each night, she would listen for the creak of the boards that would advise her of her husband’s approach. She had her own room at the top of a narrow, twisting staircase. In private, she chattered to the animals, unaware that sometimes others heard her and puzzled about her behaviour. She tried to be personable, and murmur words appropiate for a wif. Thomas was not a cruel man, and she imagined that life withe him would be good for her. At first, as Mistress Gifford, Melusine had resigned to her fate. Poor little Melusine she was fair enough and obedient enough not to invite fiercer censure. She was not simple, but rather, a stranger among her kind. She would work from sunrise till the twilight, yet there was a strangeness about her. Se’ll make a good wife for a man.” True, Melusine was a strong girl and had a way with the beasts of the field. “Put the holy cross on her tongue and see the truth of it. “She’s no changeling,” Melusine’s mother would declare. His own mother had sometimes whispered that Melusine, with her fey, faintly inhuman beauty, might be a changeling child. She hardly ever spoke, which was one of the reasons her father had dared for her future. Red: that was the color she saw most of all in this land of green and earth. The sun had pressed itself through the high coloured windows, and the blood of Christus had flushed her skin, and her pale.linen gown. It was in the old gray church hidden by yews, that the priest had bound their union. It was a good match, and they’d feared their fey Malusine would never catch the eye of a man - she being what she was. He had wed her in the in the simmering high summer, taken her tiny, sun-gilded hand in his among the corn, where the regal poppies had shed their crimson gowns like fragile brides. Thomas Gifford was a gentleman farmer, only 10 years older than she. Prelude b y Storm Constantine As the Yuletide holly bared its bloody poppets in the lane, she had been married only a four-month. ![]()
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