She asked me what had occurred and so I started to fill her in. I told her about what had happened when I went to Venom and the way Malachi had made me feel. I informed her of everything that Jackie had done, right up to the point where Martin had tried to strangle the life out of me before Lawson revealed the inside of his throat. Along with the miraculous recovery and how I hadn’t been able to feel anything since the death of my mother.
Once I finally finished, convinced that she would be calling me a lunatic this time, she just fell to her knees before me and pulled me into her arms. I could feel her tears soaking into my blouse as her chest heaved with the sobs until she eventually pulled away and returned to her chair.
“I apologise for my behaviour, I was just struck with so much sadness when you were speaking about the horrors that you have incurred, and it should never have been like this. You were never supposed to be left in the dark dear child, but my daughter filled her children with such fear that they were consumed by it.”
I asked her to tell me her story and with a heavy heart, this is what she told me.
Z
Mihaela
“I was born in Italy into a very devout catholic family, my mother would never contemplate a different kind of religion and her word was law.
When I turned sixteen my abilities started to develop, if I was injured it would heal practically before my very eyes. Of course, it depended on the type of injury that I had incurred, but a deep cut would be gone within sixty seconds of happening. I had also started to see people that weren’t there and they kept whispering to me to not shut them out. I had no idea what was happening and so I turned to my mother. She called me deluded and said that I was bringing shame to our family so I decided to prove to her that what I was saying was the truth.
I had gone into our kitchen and retrieved a very sharp carving knife, my mother’s eyes had grown so wide, and she screamed at me when I slashed it across the palm of my hand. It was that deep that you could practically see the bone through the gash. My mother had grown hysterical but I begged her to wait and watch, we saw the moment that the skin began to knit back together until all that was left was the blood that had coated my hand.
She marched me into the kitchen and made me clean it before she turned it this way and that way, her eyes grew wider and wider with fear, as she slowly backed away from me.
She said that I was evil incarnate, that I had been possessed by the devil and called for my father to restrain me, I tried to fight him off but I was a lot weaker back then.
I can still remember my younger sister with tears streaming down her face as my mother slapped me before she called for the asylum to take me.
She told me that they were going to rid me of the evil that was coursing through my body but I knew what it really was, she was terrified of me and wanted me gone from her sights.
I was holed up in that dreadful place for two years, all the while being visited by priests who tried to exorcise the demon from me and doctors who used barbaric forms of torture. They claimed that it was in the name of healing me of my ailment, but it was never going to work.
I was a husk of the person that I had once been, my body withering away until I was nothing more than skin and bones, until the day that a woman called on me with hair as striking as my own.
I was shocked to meet someone with the same shade as me, seeing as my family had all been blessed with light brown hair.
She had pulled me to my feet and with her arm bracing my feather like weight, she pulled me from that hell.
No one tried to stop us, as the doctors and nurses looked on in a daze, she put me into a horse drawn carriage and with her palm placed on my head I suddenly drifted off into a dreamless slumber.
When I awoke, I was lying in luxury, with a mattress that sunk beneath my weight and satin lain upon my skin.
I pulled myself from the luxury of it all as I stood upon my weak and shaking legs and made my way out of the unfamiliar room until I came upon her sitting room and she indicated for me to take a seat.
She told me that her name was Alina and that she was a sister to my great grandmother and even though she looked no older than I am now, she was in fact a hundred and twenty years old.
I reacted in a similar fashion as you did, but unlike you I had nowhere to run too, so I stayed seated as anxiety clawed through me.
She told me how she too, could heal in a miraculously fast fashion. I asked her how she could even be aware of what I could do when she said quite simply that it was all in the hair.
She told me a story of love, betrayal and heart break. It was our origin story in a sense, it was what started the curse or blessing of the ebony hair.
She explained how we were descendants of the Greek god Zeus and how even though the blood line had been weakened over the many years, occasionally it would still affect a member of our family. Usually every second or third generation and how our abilities weren’t all the same.
She asked me to explain what I could do and I told her about how I could see people who weren’t really there, she seemed perplexed by this until she disappeared and returned clutching a book against her chest.
She told me to read a passage from a s
elect page and when I did, every candle that had been unlit was suddenly engulfed in a flame. I screamed when this happened and she helped to settle me down. She explained that I must have inherited my abilities from the Sorceress who had been betrayed in the very beginning and that my powers would continue to grow until I turned eighteen, where my powers would peak and my true strength would be revealed to me.
At that time, there was only two weeks until my fated birthday and my nerves were eating me alive.
I asked her how she had come to find me and she explained that when her powers had started to develop her family turned their backs on her, shunning her existence entirely. As far as they were concerned, she had never existed, she stayed close by keeping an eye out for any children that may be born with our ‘gift.’ She had almost given up hope when I was born, after that she kept an ever-watchful eye, knowing that my family would never be able to accept me, just like she wasn’t.