Chapter 5: Chapter Four : Voiceless Soul

“I admit, I thought at first that your choice of career to be pure folly. But I’ve seen the work you’ve done, and now I wonder if the value of Weavers has been misspent. How many fields could be expanded by their hands?

But I do worry what horrors you expose yourself to, my little fawn…”

~~~

The Great Antonian Gardens had plenty of places to steal away in silence. Multiple terraces of trees and flowers faded into dark shadows. It seemed like they weren’t the only ones who wanted to steal away, multiple couples finding not quite enough privacy to prevent Hazel from blushing at the sights. And sounds. No wonder Zinnia had gotten the wrong idea when Hazel had asked for a private moment with her boyfriend. Zinnia’s face had brightened as she asked ‘thirdsies?’ And didn’t dim in the slightest when Hazel clarified, no, please, not like that.

At last, in the furthest reaches of the eastern branch, they had found true silence. Even the orchestra’s music had been muted by the thick glass and foliage. Somewhere in the distance, Hazel could hear a fountain or waterfall. She could also hear Edelweiss prancing and rustling through the plants, hear the shrieking squawks when he distirbed one bird or another’s nest. He probably wasn’t supposed to, but given what she’d seen much larger people do among the plants, the tiny dragon was probably far less damaging. Beyond the glass walls, she could see the distant lights of the city glitter like the stars had fallen to earth.

Hazel and Aurelius walked side by side. He held his hands tightly behind his back, watching Hazel with interest. Hazel let her finger slide along a terrace wall, feeling its texture as she put her thoughts together.

“So Aurelius,” she said, “Do you know what a Weaver Witch is?”

“Hm…” he purred in his throat. “I suppose that’s something much different than a common spinster.”

“Yes…” Hazel said. “A Witch is someone who works with the Fabric. They can weave spells with tools and fabric-rich material… Well, you’ve probably seen Zinnia’s brush and paints. But a Weaver is someone who was born naturally attuned to the Fabric. I can touch the Fabric without needing a tool, and write a spell without burning a fabric-dense fuel…”

“Ooh, impressive,” Aurelius said mildly.

Hazel laughed lightly. Yeah, that's the impression she normally got from the layman. Most witches would kill for the power Hazel had. But to someone not in the know, it was just ‘and, so?’

Hazel continued, “A Weaver is also someone who can peer into Fabric, naturally as blinking. Where most people can see where the Fabric glowing where it's strongest, I can see all of it. Whenever and wherever I want.”

Aurelius cocked his head and asked, “So what’s it look like?”

Hazel blinked and looked around at the glorious glowing Fabric around her. As she walked, the stones beneath her feet felt as sturdy as rubber, sinking slightly under her steps. But her response was rote. She had talked about this so many times. She blinked it away, and the stones beneath her snapped back to full solidity.

“It’s brighter. Like the whole world’s lit up at noon with a riot of colors. Crisscrossing threads dancing around us, flowing in a tumult…” She looked to Aurelius. “It's honestly pretty disorienting. But it’s very helpful, for a number of reasons.

“See, I wanted to do something with this power of mine. Something only I can do.” She tapped her head. “I told you I’m a researcher of Psychomagical Healing. We try to understand why the mind works like it does… and I try to see if I can use my magic to help cure deeply rooted psychosis.”

“Hm…” he leaned forward, grinning. “And what do you see, when you see me?”

Hazel hesitated. “I see… that you may need my help.”

She locked eyes with him, and he kept her gaze. Aurelius’ face remained impassive, calm, his small smile not leaving his face.

“What makes you say that?” he said, voice quiet and eyes unblinking.

The power of his piercing gaze made her hesitate. ‘How much does he even realize about his condition?’ she wondered.

“When I look at most people,” Hazel said, looking away. “I see Life, primarily, with all the other Fabrics dancing among them. Air, Fire, Water, Earth, and even Death….” She winced. Wait, was that common knowledge? She had been in academia so long couldn’t remember any more. “Anyway, I can read some simple emotions from the way the Fabric flows about the mind. Air for joy or mania. Fire for passion or anger. Water for flexibility or sorrow… but for you…” She took a deep breath. “All I see is Death and Earth. While that can mean stubbornness and an open mind… in your case, it looks more like anxiety. And melancholy.” She couldn’t meet his eye. So she hesitantly touched his arm. “I can see you are suffering. Immensely.”

He said nothing. He didn’t even react to her touch. She glanced up, and saw he was still staring at her, smile drifting off his face to neutrality.

“And?” he asked. “What about it?”

It wasn’t hostile. Not by a long shot. But the coy dance had left his movements, the lilt in his voice was gone. He watched her like a hawk. Hazel couldn't remember the last time he blinked. Which was silly, of course he was blinking. But the longer she looked, the more she was convinced.

He wasn’t blinking. He wasn’t breathing.

Edelweiss suddenly burst from the bushes. Hazel yelped as his wings battered against her arms.

“Edelweiss!” she cried.

But now Aurelius was shouting. Edelweiss had dug his teeth into his hand, a long thin knife falling from his palm and clattering to the ground.

Aurelius reared his arm back and flung Edelweiss back into the foliage. There was a distant snapping sound, and Hazel desperately hoped that it was a plant.

But the thought was wiped from her mind. Hazel stared at Aurelius’ hands. Two fingers had been ripped off.

The stumps were not even bleeding, the white bone surrounded by dull gray flesh.

Aurielus spun on her. But Hazel had already blinked, reaching back for the stone wall, gripping at the bountiful Earth around her. He didn’t even manage one step before she flung the green Fabric at him.

“Stop!” she shouted.

He froze in place. Hazel cursed softly as she wrote and reinforced her impromptu spellweave across his body with careful flicks of her fingers. Of course a curse as complex as his would have urged him to end any threat to it. Stupid, Hazel! Stupid!

Edelweiss came crashing back out of the green and bit Aurelius in the ankle. Deep. But no blood seeped from that wound either.

“It’s fine, Edelweiss,” Hazel said. “I’ve stopped him.”

The dragon let go and made a retching sound. “He tastes horrible, Lady Webb! Worse than rats even!”

Hazel sighed heavily and rubbed her palms over her eyes. She clicked her tongue as her makeup rubbed off… but clearly she had bigger problems. What now? Leave him here? Report an assault? Ha, fat chance. Random newcomer girl versus one of the most powerful men in the city? She’d be eaten alive, her second shot at life ruined before it started.

She peered at that curse gripping his mind. No. She was going to do what she came here to do.

She was going to help him.

She sat down on the terrace and sighed as she sunk into the soft Earth an inch. She reached for the spell she had woven around Aurelius’ body, and gently moved him to lie beside her, his body as pliant as a rag doll’s. She settled his head in her lap. His eyes stared at her, eyes moving, but his expression unreadable.

Hazel grabbed the threads of the stopping spell and tied it to more rocks, letting it draw from more solid surfaces. The stones would eventually crumble, but this was not the fragile limestone of the cliffs. Probably some quartz or granite — but it mattered not. All that mattered was that it would last through the procedure.

She patted and flattened his Fabric of Death. His clothes were like a gauze, barely obscuring the radiant glow of his body. The Fabric of a person felt like… well, like Fabric. Death and Life both had a silken quality, smooth yet strong. She tried to part it. To find the Life beneath his shroud of Death. But it was all black and green, all across his skin. She even peered at the bones of his fingers, but the flesh there too was black and green.

She’d very rarely seen this before. The impression that she was looking at risen labor returned. She shivered, and reached for the fabric of his mind. Was this just… a very complicated, puppeted corpse? If there was no mind to fix, what then? Put it to rest?

She touched his forehead, between the fingers of the curse. While she could read emotions at a glance, reading thoughts required a touch, Life Connecting to Life – or Death, in this case? At the brushing of her fingers, she could connect her mind to another person’s – willing or not. The way she understood it, for a moment, their Fabrics were intermingling, weaving together as one whole. She always felt a strange tingling in her fingers, the Life and Heat in her fingers resonating with another’s.

She closed her eyes, and listened for his voice with her mind. Every mind was different, she found. Full of whispers, images, sensations, boiling and rolling with thoughts both conscious and unconscious. She could hear the complicated whispering in his voice, which was a good sign. She gently flattened his curls as she stroked the Fabric, reaching for his thoughts.

“I’m sorry,” she thought aloud in her head. “I’m going to try and break this curse on you. Please. Tell me if you’re in there.”

She felt his Fabric recoil in her hands, his mind seizing in response to her unexpected touch. The whispers grew louder, incoherent, before solidifying

“Please,” Aurelius begged. “Save me or kill me, I care not. Just end it. Free me from his torment.”

She squared her shoulders and nodded. Somehow, Aurelius was alive in there.

Hazel lifted her hands, breaking the connection, and took a shaking breath. Okay. This was her last chance to back off. She had the overwhelming fear that she was just making the same mistake that had ended her former life. But she assured herself, she was not going to actually alter the man’s mind. She was simply going to remove the external curse afflicting him.

She touched his head again, his whispering thoughts rising into her.

“I will save you,” she asserted. “Can you recite a favorite story from your childhood? It will help me differentiate between you and this curse.”

The mind rolled and floundered, rippling as it tried to recall something, anything. Images flickered in her mind of places and faces she didn’t recognize. Textbooks, picture books, long unfurled scrolls filled with the letters of a language she didn’t know.

“…The story of the Elements’ Wedding… I think … The King and Queen had the children … but that's another story… the siblings water and fire wished to bring earth and air together….”

Hazel nodded. It felt like he could barely remember the story, other stories tumbling over each other in a hodgepodge. But the story itself didn’t matter so much. When she touched his Fabric, she could hear the overlapping, rambling tale.

But when she touched the curse, his thoughts grew silent. An insistent whispering replaced them, in another voice, wheedling and croaking through dry lips. And, importantly, it was not part of the Fabric of his mind.

She traced her fingers on a pinky as thick as her wrist. The combination of Earth and Death felt nasty, like tree bark pulsing with fat maggots. She flattened the area where it met Aurelius’ mind. She wasn’t going to reach past his flesh and bone; it made her nervous to even brush up against them. But the curse dove deep, past those Weaves of flesh. She fretted. Would he die if she attempted to remove this curse? It pained her to admit, but psychological magic had only just begun to blossom into its own field, separate from the older and more well-established healing magic. While she did know basic healing, and she knew about more…. Normal curses…. something this invasive was beyond her.

She took a deep, shuddering breath. She couldn't just sit here and do nothing. Leave the man screaming in his own head. She was the only one who could do this.

She had to do this.

She touched two rocks to either side of her, pulling their Fabric around her hands and arms into green glowing gloves. Protection. She dragged her fingers through the air, letting strands of gold whirl about her fingers. Freedom.

Stolen story; please report.

“Edelweiss–” Hazel started.

“Yes, I know what to do,” he said, his glimmering jewel-like fabric settling beside her.

“Okay then…”

She grabbed the rotten branch jammed into Aurelius’ mind and pulled.

~~~

The roar of the sea, and creaking of a boat. The air is rank with piss and men’s sweat. Clothes soggy, skin boiling and prickling. She rests on a bed of dirty straw. Salt dries like flakes on her lips, forehead soaked from fever. An oil lantern swings overhead, the only light in a dark night.

There's a flash, a peal of thunder. Shadows loom around her. Argueing, their words grunting and barking like wild animals. They hold up fine silks, glittering trinkets, delicate scrolls full of inkwash paintings that make them hoot like apes. She grits her teeth, even while they clatter. The men’s wet and greasy fingers stain everything they touch.

Her grip tightens. Hidden in the straw beneath her, she clutches the metal handle of a knife.

~~~

There was a sharp pain in her arm. Hazel gasped, and gulped for air. Her tiredness was banished, replaced by the shivering alertness of adrenaline. The cursed finger, a fragment of Earth and Death, dissolved away, threads dispersing in the air. Edelweiss continued to bite her arm. She blinked and tapped his head and he released his grip. No blood was drawn, just indents in her skin where his teeth had sunk in.

“Fascinating…” Hazel panted, gulping. “Was that an immune response? Or a spell woven out of emotional trauma itself? What in the world…?”

“Focus, Lady Webb,” Edelweiss said. “Observe his Fabric.”

Hazel’s guts twisted instinctively. How could she have forgotten? She blinked back into the Fabric and looked down, patting the area where she had removed the finger. Flesh and bone were both still intact. But the fabric of Death was rolling and pulsing in fear and pain. She brushed the area with her gloves of Earth, asserting calm and peace.

“Aurelius,” she demanded. “What about the story?”

She felt his mind reel with indignation. “You dare demand I continue a gods damned children’s story when you’ve literally ripped out a piece of my gods damned brain?!”

Hazel momentarily balked at the surge of anger. But then she sighed in relief, “Thank goodness, you’re still in there.”

“What? What do you mean thank goodness? Did you expect otherwise?”

“Well…” she couldn't help but let a stab of her own anxiety tumble out. A glass eyed subject, drooling and slumped in the chair. Body alive. Brain dead.

Aurelius’ anxiety flinched and rolled at hers, but quickly stilled. “Kill me. If it comes to that, just kill me.”

Her muddled thoughts tumbled out, her knowledge that it wasn't really her choice, even if it would be her fault. But she asserted to Aurelius, “Okay.” She gripped the ring finger with one hand, feeling that repulsive texture. Her other hand on his forehead, she asked, “Can you tell me about yourself?”

“Now??”

She reiterated, “Subvocation helps me separate what is your fabric from this cursed fabric.”

His thoughts became tumultuous with anxiety.

Hazel raised her eyebrows. “Do you not remember?”

His thoughts tumbled. “Yes. Well. It’s complicated…”

In a moment of clarity, she asked, “Actually… is your name even Aurelius?”

“Yes,” he asserted. “Aurelius Rainbloom. Rainbloom! RAIN! BLOOM! By the bitch below, so nice to fucking say that.”

Hazel almost laughed at the crass tone he was taking. The image of the immaculate dance of the man filled with poise and dignity clashed with his angry swear-filled shouting.

His thoughts rolled, whispers overlapping, one thought clear.

“Noble affect is a means to an end.”

“Of course it is,” Hazel thought back, rolling her eyes. She couldn’t help but think, “What a rube I’ve been.”

“You and everyone else,” he thought, before yelling at himself not to tell her that.

“Well, Mister Rainbloom, let’s return to the matter at hand. What about hobbies you enjoy?”

“Painting,” was the immediate response. But that soon made his thoughts boil too, nearly incoherent for the pain and confusion.

“This poor man…” Hazel couldn't help but think.

“I don’t need your pity,” she felt him assert. “Just your…” A series of different variations as basic as ‘help’ and as humorous as ‘undying loyalty’ tumbled after.

Hazel exhaled a laugh. Which was good, because she was still shaking from the traumatic experience she had just inhabited the skin of. She took some deep breaths, and felt for the ring finger, which had dug into his eye. With one deep inhale, she wrapped her fingers in Air once more, and she plunged in.

~~~

Her body felt dead and cold. Her face was upturned, dull gray clouds overhead. Rain pattered on her face, but the sensation was dull and numb. She couldn't move. She couldn't even blink as the rainwater stung in her eyes.

A pressure on her neck that she barely still noticed was relieved. There was a low sigh beside her ear. Mist rose and spun in the air. A purr. Contentment.

A black shadow moved across her vision. Wiping the rain from her eyes. She saw a pale face enveloped by a curtain of silky black hair, wet and shining in the rain.

The face leaned in, and she felt the ghost of a kiss on her lips.

~~~

Hazel winced as Edelweiss bit her again. But at least that wasn’t as… immediately terrifying. Just… mildly disgusting, if that shadow was who she thought it was…

She turned back down to Aurelius. She stroked his fabric, as blue sorrow rippled among the black.

“I don’t want to see these things,” he thought. “I don’t want you to see these things. I know what’s coming. I don’t want to see. I don’t want you to see.”

“These branches are woven from your trauma then…?”

His thoughts grew confused, but she could clearly pick up, ‘my leash,’ ‘his leash.’

“I can stop…” Hazel thought.

His anxiety spun and boiled, and through the conflict between just dying and being free at last, he decided, “I can take it. Get this leash off me.”

Hazel nodded and reached for the middle finger, dug into the other eye. She didn’t even need to ask Aurelius to subvocate. His fear and anxiety whispered and hissed, terrified of what was coming next.

She recoated her fingers in air, gripped the middle finger, and yanked

~~~~

Her knees were sore, trousers wet from kneeling on a wet dock. A heavy weight pressed against her chest. A body, one bigger and heavier than her. Her chest was warm, wet, blood soaking her clothes.

Her one open eye could peer past her bloodied white curls. To a man, middle aged and graying, deathly pale. He could almost be considered asleep, were it not for the gaping red wound in his neck.

She heard in the faintest, creaking whisper, from the man nearly a corpse,

“You’re are… a good man, Aurelius. You are…”

Her eyes throbbed, begging to cry. But there was a heavy weight on her mind, pressing her, urging her body beyond her control. She gripped the man and slumped her bodily off the dock, the water overwhelming the warmth and smell of fresh blood.

~~~

Another bite roused her. Aurelius under her hand groaned, his thoughts racing, calling out the man’s name again and again.

“Cirrus. Cirrus. I thought I forgot your face. Cirrus…!”

Images flickered in her mind. Images of the dead man, the memory muddled and unclear, but becoming clearer and clearer the more he touched it. More emotion emerging from the bottomless black. Blue sorrow, red passion, and a flickering of joyous air.

With a tired chuckle, she sent, “Mourning a relationship lost, are we?”

“We never were. But maybe we could have… “

With some embarrassment, Aurelius’ mind rolled with passion and sorrow, as if trying to craft a memory of kissing the dead man. She lifted her hands away, and sought the next finger. She tried not to pay the image much mind. There was no need to self-censor one’s own mind – it could only be done with practice, and even then, it was finicky and prone to failure.

She wrapped freedom around her fingers, and yanked at the next branch.

~~~~

Pitch darkness. Unable to move. Unable to breathe. No sound. No light. Pressure pushing in from every direction, as if she was deep underwater.

Something tugs at her sinuses, reminding her that she is alive. Despite everything, she is alive in this darkness.

She is alive, and she is starving.

~~~~

Hazel gasped for air as Edelweiss roused her once more. Aurelius is screaming in her head.

“What more could you do to me?!” his voice screamed. “What more could I fear?! I craved death yet you found more ways to make me hate living!”

“Who did this to you, Aurelius?” Hazel asked.

“Who else? Who else but Somber Asphodel?!”

His face flashed through his mind, the face of the old man with long silky black hair. At last, the image held long enough for Hazel to take in, clear in his mind’s eye.

In his mind, this was no old man. It was a tall, slender man who moved with grace and fluidity. Skin pale and perfectly smooth, like Aurelius’. His face was long and angular, his eyes a shining ruby red, black hair long and silken. His hair flowed like a cloak, a waterfall of hair, impossibly perfect. His clothes, his expression, shifted and warped as Aurelius’ memory tumbled through memories. But the face and hair remain the same, along with a cane of black bone, shining in a thick sheath of clear lacquer.

“Your… grandfather?” Hazel guessed.

Aurelius’ mind squirmed, disgusted. “He is not! How dare you!”

“But at the party…”

Her thoughts were drowned out. His mind radiated more colors now, thoughts chaotic, a tumult of thought and emotion. Asphodel laughing, blood on his lips. The plunging of a knife, held in his pale hand. The knife turns into a paintbrush, held in delicate fingers, committing red paint to canvas. And that croaking, crooning whisper. Sometimes soft and loving, sometimes sharp and mocking.

Hazel took a deep breath and backed away from Aurelius’ thoughts. Something strange was going on with that relationship. Did Lord Asphodel force him to pretend to be a grandson?

She observed Aurelius’ fabric. Where once the fingers of the curse gripped, the fabric was reclaiming, filling in the space and flowing, well, like Life would. It was still strange to her that, among the six fabrics, Life had not yet emerged. But Aurelius was still under a curse, after all.

All that was left was the Thumb. It had wrapped around and dug into the brainstem, thicker than the rest. She checked her woven spells. Aurelius was still held in place by multiple stones, all whole. The quartz she used for her gloves had yet to crumble. And Air… well there was always more air, though the smell of ozone indicated usable Thread was depleting.

She grabbed the last finger. And she was

~~~

Buried under the weight of a thousand thousand aggressions.

~~~

It was no solid memory, no loss of self. But a thousand words, a thousand wounds, a thousand thousand days of pain and neglect and hunger. An implacable hunger, succor offered, but at too high a cost. Wasn’t she grateful, being allowed to live in the radiance of that man? Wasn’t she grateful that she was precious enough to torture for eternity?

Hazel tasted blood in her mouth, and she didn’t know if it was hers or Aurelius’ or something other. She choked, gasping for air, the world a riot of colors, the solidity of reality having escaped her. The poison words of love in her ear. The sensations of unwanted caresses across her skin. She dug her fingers into the noise, and tore them away. She tore and tore until only the scent of blood overwhelmed her, a red flood poured like a waterfall across her face, clinging to her hair, her skin, seeping into her pores.

~~~

Then Edelweiss bit her. And she fell straight out of the Fabric, reality thrown back and reeling. Her spells shattered, stone crumbling, the air so depleted it grew thin for a moment, leaving her gasping. A sickly smoke of black and green radiated around her. She swiped it away, blinking rapidly, bidding it to disperse. But like it was blown from a pipe, that black smoke lingered, hovering in the air of reality, clinging to her skin and drifting over the garden leaves.

Aurelius groaned from her lap. She scrambled to keep him still, but he tumbled down, falling to his hands and knees. The smoke billowed off his back, rolling away from him.

She reached for him, trying to steady the man, reassure him. But he lurched away, heaving up to his feet. Hazel grabbed his shirt.

“Stay still!” She cried. “The curse may be gone, but you need to rest as your Fabric repairs!”

“He still stinks,” Edelweiss hissed.

She blinked. The curse was gone from his head, yes. But his fabric was still black as Death, with the barest hint of other colors. No Fabric of Life had yet to assert itself.

Hazel blinked it away, and stared at his face. He wasn’t breathing, and stared dead ahead.

Hazel thought frantically, ‘I’ve done it again. Another failure. Another brain death. Why do I do this? How do I keep—?!’

But he took a step forward. Ran his fingers through his hair. Looked around with wide eyes.

“It’s gone,” he croaked. “He’s out of my head.”

“Aurelius?” Hazel cried, still clinging to him.

“I have to…”

He squirmed out of her grip and looked around frantically, stumbling down the path. Hazel gathered up her skirts and followed after him.

“You must sit and rest!” Hazel asserted. “Something is still wrong with your Fabric! Your affinities aren’t correcting themselves!”

He ignored her. He ran his hand over the terrace wall. Suddenly, he dug his fingers between the stones. He hefted a flat rock the size of a head between his hands.

“Aurelius?” Hazel asked, heart hammering.

He heaved the rock over his head, and with a shout, tossed it at the greenhouse wall. Hazel screamed as the glass loudly shattered.

Aurelius grinned manically, hands grabbing at his face as he held back a wild giggle.

Hazel’s heart plummeted into her stomach.

“Stop!” she shouted. She blinked and reached for the Earth again, but it was too late. When she turned back, he had charged through the broken glass and was already vanishing into the night.