The Spirits Speak

This afternoon, Arabella has finished her duties with the seamstress early. She\'s been to market, and holds her prize in hand: a bunch of the prettiest, late wildflowers someone has collected. They\'re a bit scraggly, at best, but they\'ll have to do. The girl with crow-dark hair has marched purposefully all the way up to the cemetery fence...and there she pauses. She\'s here on an errand, for here Sam\'s grandmother resides, and today was her birthday. Bella worries at her lip, clutching the flowers a bit tighter and shifting her weight from foot to foot. She\'s thinking of Muirgheal, that darned superstitious woman, who has filled this girl\'s head with one too many stories of supernatural occurences.

Having finished at the healers\' early for once, Cordelia is slowly making her way to Combe--the following day being her day off, so that she doesn\'t have to come back to Bree. Up to nearly the top of Bree hill she had climbed, and on some whim, she came into the cemetery, where she sits now among some of the tall grasses here, brown hooded cloak drawn up, her knees up, arms around them. She looks up as she sees Bells, but says nothing.

Bells starts when she sees the brown hooded figure, and she cannot take her eyes from it. Could this be one of the restless spirits that Muirgheal spoke of? The girl gives a frightened yelp as Cordelia looks up, and she throws her hands up, dropping the bright flowers, which scatter. \"Oh, please, I mean no disrespect!\" She cries, imploring. She doesn\'t yet recognize the woman.

The younger girl\'s reaction seems to surprise Cordelia, her eyes widening in confusion--and then, at Bells\'s words, a glint of something cruel comes to the Mordain woman\'s eyes. Careful to keep her head angled down so that the hood shades her face, Cordelia moves back very slowly, hiding herself deeper in the grasses and under the shade of a tree.

A low voice, eerie in its tones, comes across the graveyard in answer to Bells. \"Why do you disturb us?\"

Bella\'s knees are shaking, and tears have welled up, unshed, in her eyes, at the sound of that horrid, ethereal voice. \"Oh!\" She exclaims. \"D-d-dear spirit! I am s-so s-sorry!\" She quickly begins to pick up the flowers, her eyes never leaving the brown hooded figure. Once they\'re all in hand, she thrusts them out as though as an offering to the spirit. \"These were for g-grandmother, b-but you can have them, if it p-please you! It\'s her b-b-birthday!\" The usually confident Bells has a definite stutter in her trembling voice.

\"Put ...them...down. Over there, by those headstones...\" The voice is still low, but wavering. \"You disturb us with your presence here. You should leave.\"

Bells is sobbing now, though silently, the telltale sign being her constantly shaking body and hands as she takes the flowers to the headstones indicated. As the tears slip down her cheeks and soak her face, she\'s wishing fervently for Sam, and thinking she isn\'t so brave after all. Why didn\'t Muirgheal ever mention how to get -rid- of the spirits? The wildflowers are placed by unsteady hands. \"I-I-I\'msorry.\" Her words are slurred together. \"To d-disturb you. M-m-meant no harm.\" She throws up her now empty hands in a submissive gesture, backing slowly away from the brown figure.

\"Good...good...\" the voice comes, still low. \"If you stay there we won\'t hurt you. Why did you come here? Whom do you seek? Why do you bring this gift to the spirit world?\"

Bells slumps against the fence, still shaking in fright. She cannot remember a time when she felt this afraid. Muirgheal\'s stories are rather more terrifying here than they were in the telling, now that she knows it\'s all for real. \"I-it\'s. Sam\'s. Grandmother\'s. B-b-birthday.\" Bella chokes out. She sniffs and wipes at her eyes with the back of her hand. \"Sh-she\'s buried h-here.\" She tries to slow her shaky breaths.

Grandmother\'s birthday....for a moment Cordelia has a pang of regret, feeling sorry for the girl. \"She is not here...\" the voice comes in answer after a moment or more. \"She has moved on. Where is her grave? Point to it.\"

Bella has no way of telling what emotions this strange, brown cloaked spirit might have, if any. A trembling, calloused little hand is raised and points to two headstones side by side, Sam\'s grandfather and grandmother. The woman\'s stone is on the right, and that\'s where Bells is trying to point. \"Th-there.\" She keeps sniffing and stuttering, attempting at calm and failing each time.

\"Put the flowers down,\" the voice commands. \"I will see that she gets them.\" Cordelia is not about to let the girl come any closer, given where she is pointing. \"You are alone here?\"

Bella takes the flowers and puts them down right against the base of Sam\'s grandmother\'s headstone. \"Th-thank you.\" Is said clearly, though shakily. That next question makes Bells even more terrified, however. Will this figure in brown wish to make her one of the dead, as punishment for disturbing the peace here? She wishes fervently again for Sam or Muirgheal, and for a moment, considers lying and saying that she is not alone at all. But..can spirits detect lies? Best not to tempt fate. Bells answers quickly, \"Yes.\" She stands, trembling like a leaf, a few steps from the gravestone where she laid the flowers.

\"You have disturbed us. You have awoken the spirits. They must be appeased,\" the voice now says, anger growing in it. \"And how will you appease us? What sacrifice will you make? What gift will you leave us, other than rotting flowers, on which I can already smell the stench of death itself?\" Those words are spat out at the girl.

Arabella is crying hard again, and the sounds are quite pitiful. All she has got with her is...a tiny silver band on her finger. Her engagement ring. It is taken off and held out in her palm toward the brown spirit, though she does not step closer at all. Her hand is shaking very violently now, but she fights to keep it open so that the spirit can judge what she\'s offered. \"All I h-h-have!\" Is forced from her throat with scarce breath.

\"Put it back! Trinkets do us no good!\" the voice comands harshly. \"What good is money in the next world! We need something better...more important....\" Though the voice does not say what.

Bells eagerly puts the ring back on her finger, the only symbol she has of her true love. She\'d be so glad to see his kind eyes and smile right now. Better yet, she\'d be glad to see his father, with an axe. But what good is physical strength, here? Bella doesn\'t know. Worrying at her trembling lower lip, she shakes her head. \"I have n-nothing important! I am b-b-but a s-simple girl! Wise s-spirit, name your p-price!\"

\"You have your life!\" The spirit voices laughs suddenly, a maniacal sound. \"You have your life, and if you can think of nothing better than that as a sacrifice, then that is what we shall take from you, foolish girl. Disturb not the spirits in the graveyard, lest they claim you for your own--is this not what you were warned?!\" The voice grows louder, angry.

At the sound of the angry voice and the realization of what those words means, the scared girl gasping for air can no longer help it- she falls over in a dead faint, her head narrowly missing the corner of a headstone that would have knocked it something fierce. She lies slumped in a heap on the withered autumn grass.

The spirit hisses and spits, or so it might seem, for Cordelia curses quietly to herself in another language. \" Stupid girl. Loud mouthed busy-body gossip. Serves you right.\" And with that, the \"spirit\" slips further back into the shadow of the trees, exiting the graveyard by hopping over the fence rather than risking walking right past the girl. Cordelia slips into the woods, staying off the path as she hurries to Combe--the cloak is ditched somewhere deep within those woods, as well, in a hiding place that Cordelia has used before for other important things and that--so far at least--noone has found. It was only a spare cloak, after all--her heavier winter cloak being at home.