Badlands Witch (Cormac and Amelia 2)

He chuckled. “Thanks for the vote of confidence.”

“Call me if you need me out there. I’ll drop everything.”

A baby started crying in the background, which meant Ben was home, and Kitty and their son Jon were there, a nice domestic scene, and that was where Ben ought to be putting his attention. He shouldn’t be worrying about Cormac.

“You don’t need to do that,” Cormac said. “It’ll be fine.”

The baby cried harder. Cormac couldn’t imagine what must have been going on there. He still wasn’t used to the way babies could just wail.

“Cormac—I gotta go. Call me.” It was a command.

“Yeah.” The line clicked off.

Amelia skirted around her captor’s mind. This was not an orderly collection of thoughts. Cormac was perhaps not entirely stable, but he had structure, order. A predictable set of strategies by which he interacted with the world. He could converse.

This mind had none of that. It was all panic, all hate. But she learned what she could, watching at a distance.

This was a woman, not young but not old. Privileged, she was used to living in comfort. Used to doing what she needed to keep herself safe, usually under the protection of others. But she had nothing now. She felt herself wronged. The details of it weren’t clear. But knowing Cormac, Amelia could make a guess.

This woman, her nemesis, would destroy herself to take revenge on him.

Now, how could Amelia use that? Goad her into some kind of rash action? She almost relished the challenge. The woman kept the clay pot, Amelia’s prison, close. Her wild mind was never far away. Amelia could brush it. Breathe the equivalent of a soft sigh upon it. Her captor would feel it as a nagging instinct. That voice that tells you there’s something under the bed. Something hiding in the closet. It could just be a branch, knocking against the window. Or is it something else? Something dangerous? Her stomach would clench, her heart would race.

Amelia and Cormac had their place, their meadow, beautiful and calm, where she had first been able to speak with him. Approach him. Befriend him. This mind had no calm space, no safe refuge where Amelia might have a sensible conversation with her. How did this mind see itself? There had to be some kind of self-awareness, even if it had no visual component. Amelia needed to understand her, but however much she probed, she couldn’t find a center.

I am your friend, Amelia prompted, not hoping to be believed. She did not need to be believed. She merely needed a space where this mind might listen to her, if only for a moment.

Who are you? Show me. Take a breath. Picture yourself in the place you feel safe. What is under your feet, what is over your head? When you put out your hands, what do they touch? Build me this picture. Show me where you go when you need peace.

The reply came, There is no peace.

In spite of herself the woman showed her an image of which she was mostly unaware, rising out of her hindbrain. They were in a stone room with no adornment. A cobbled floor, narrow windows close to the ceiling, the dank smell of a cave. Amelia would have called it a dungeon, but it was a modern American’s imagined version of a dungeon, too wide and clean for its truly medieval predecessor. Amelia was not there, could not picture herself there, but she saw her captor.

She was a girl dressed in a froth of lace. Like the room, an adolescent conception of a historic romantic aesthetic. She was slim, long brown hair brushed to a soft sheen. Her hands were folded before her, and her head was bowed, contrite. She did not move, she did not speak. She might have been a statue.

“This is how you see yourself?” Amelia asked.

This is how I am for him. It was a thought, not vocalized. As if she had no voice, not even in her own mind.

“But how do you see yourself?”

I don’t.

Amelia sensed the captor had the experience and bitterness that only came with age. Something had happened to her, and her sense of self had not grown past this place, the prison. This was where the woman’s rage came from. She did not see herself without her master. She was doing what she believed her master wanted of her.

Oh Cormac, you would be able to tell me where this comes from, how it happens that someone so buries themselves within another. I do not understand. Amelia ought to try to help her. To free her. But she couldn’t afford to. She had to look after herself.

“What will you do, after you have taken your revenge.”

It doesn’t matter.

“Do you think. . .you might ever break free of this place?”

It’s too late. I killed her.

“Who—”

I have killed. I will kill again, to do what I must. The figure in the stone room never moved.