Bell Reliquary

Dark clouds gathered along the horizon, and the wind kicked up against Robin’s jacket. She thrust her fists into her pockets as she walked against the wind. An overgrown cornfield rustled under the wind on the left and right, framing the road as it obscured whatever might be lurking there.

Ava strode past Robin, and lifted her hand toward a house on a hill, at the edge of the road. “There, we’ll find a reliquary suitable for a night’s rest.”

Nodding, Robin quickened her pace to match Ava’s, shadowing the fluttering of Ava’s cloak and dress.

Evening redness matched the clouds and took the diminishing half of the sky as they hurried to the house on the hill. And as they drew closer, the house seemed to grow. With no trees or brush around its lawn, there had been little to reckon its size to from a distance. Only, as they stepped up onto the concrete sidewalk that led to the mansion’s front doors, did they understand its size.

Weeds choked the yard, in uneven squares and rectangles where gardens might have been. Robin examined them for awhile, trying to recognize the different plants for useful herbs.

Ava stood by the door for a moment, half cracking it to look inside. “This home can be made safe,” Ava said, waving for Robin to come closer, to slip inside. And as Robin passed into the home, Ava finished, “We’ll need something to take place for your father’s eidolon. A reliquary.”

“You don’t have one?” Robin asked.

“The nearer a reliquary is to where the memories associated with it are remembered,” Ava said, “the better a reliquary.”

“Oh,” Robin said.

Ava looked around for a second.

Decayed portraits hung on the walls, crumbled photographs on the shelves, some with broken frames. A uselessly shattered urn in front of the fireplace. Robin stopped to take a look at some of the pictures, and saw a young man and a little girl. A father and a daughter, Robin thought. At a park, holding hands. And another picture of them sitting in a booth at a restaurant, with matching ice cream cones.

“I am sure something here,” Ava gestured to the photographs, the urn, and to the furniture, “will make for decent reliquaries. But I want something that will require less of my stores. I believe I saw a cellar door as we approached. Perhaps there is something below which might be of use to us.” She gestured toward the adjacent room, a sitting room as far as Robin could immediately tell. “Can you handle the ground floor? I feel we should be together if we venture above.”

Robin nodded.

As Ava slipped back outside, Robin stopped by the window. The clouds already seemed darker, and the shadows on the ground more severe. On the opposite end of the field from the sunset, the tall shapes were rising as though from sleep.

Robin searched a study, and grabbed a remote control and a pillow before finding an ornate steak-knife and cracked wineglass in the kitchen. All over were cracks in the walls, thick cobwebs, and dust at her feet and on the counter tops. But despite this, Robin knew it was an inhabited place.

Robin walked back to the sitting room and set all her things down, slipped back into the kitchen to find a knife longer and perhaps sturdier, and then took to the thankfully not creaky staircase.

At the top of the stairs, Robin came to a hallway, in similar disrepair as the home on the first floor. Crooked pictures hung on the walls, pictures of city streets at night with bright yellow streetlamps and neon greens and blues of OPEN signs and storefront advertisements.

She checked a bedroom at the far end of the hallway, finding the tops of wardrobes clear, and the interiors empty. The bedsheets were in relatively full condition, no mothballs, and seemingly without holes or wear and tear. She wrapped a dark blue blanket over her shoulders as she wandered out into the hallway, stopping as she heard movement from the bedroom at the end of the hallway.

Maybe she should find Ava first.

Robin reached for the pocketwatch attached to the string around her neck, clutched it, feeling the familiar spirit inside. “If I’m to one day leave Ava,” Robin whispered, so quietly that it was hardly more than a breath, “I need to face these things on my own.”

She crept along the hallway, one hand around the pocket watch, the other clutching the blanket as though it were a cloak. And finally, stepped into the doorway of the bedroom at the far end of the hallway.

There was a woman sitting on the bed, in an old jean jacket and ruffly black dress. She watched Robin with tired eyes, and her mouth moved on its own, it seemed, before she finally said, “you’ve got an eidolon with you?” Her cadence was of one only waking.

Robin could see the handle of a knife tucked into the inner pocket of the woman’s jacket. And already, a fading, transient quality to the woman’s skin. “Yes,” Robin said. “Do you?”

“I have a reliquary,” the woman said, standing. “Nothing to fill it until now.” She drew the knife as Robin backpedaled.

“Ava!” Robin cried, in a desperate way, as though she were already being wounded. She took a few more steps backward and then managed to take the first few steps of the staircase backward before she turned around to run.

Ava was in the living room, with one hexed hand upraised. Reaching the bottom of the staircase, Robin threw herself flat against the ground and crawled away as the woman descended.

“Or perhaps I can make a deal with you two?” The woman asked, knife still drawn. “Together, a ward and a reliquary would better keep the shade at bay.” The ethereal shade hanging about her person seemed thicker, somehow. Smiling, she approached Robin, eyes fixed on Ava.

“You’re not even human anymore. You need about as much protection from the shades as I do,” Ava said, the hex crackling across her fingers like lightning, dissipating into the air, all diminishing inches from her fingers though they were inexorably drawn toward the dreary eyed woman.

The dreary eyed woman looked down at Robin, now standing over her, and Robin almost glared at Ava. Please just do something to help.

“It will be easier for all of us if you occupy this reliquary,” Ava said, drawing a bell from her satchel. She rang it. “So that we may request your presence to occupy your home.”

The dreary eyed woman stepped back, and then toward Ava, lifting the knife.

Ava sighed, and thrust her hexed hand forward. Robin shielded her eyes from the flash, as the hexing weaved its pattern through the air, gripping the dreary eyed woman.

“You are no ward!” The dreary eyed woman shouted. “What a mistake I have made!” She sounded almost happy, though the hex now undid her in little bright flashes, where her being grew faint and almost like nothing. “A mortal and a witch; do you do this to every—” And her words faded, and died, and it was as though Robin could not remember what the dreary eyed woman looked like.

Ava sighed, and sat on the sofa with a thump, then tinkled the bell with her hexed hand. Bright orange lines crawled from her fingertips, wrapping around the bell before seeping into it. With a deep breath, Ava rang the bell, and the house grew still. Robin had hardly noticed the gloom before. Such a thing faded into the back of her consciousness. She squeezed the pocket watch and said, “Thank you for still protecting me, though you must be so tired now.” She looked up to Ava. “And thank you… I should have waited for you.”

“Perhaps she would have been quicker to ambush me,” Ava said. She pointed toward the front door. “I need to rest a few hours. Take this reliquary,” she held up the bell, and rang it again, “and stand just outside. Ring it once every few minutes. I will come and get you, and keep watch while you sleep. And we will continue in the morning toward your father’s bridge.”

Robin took the bell, the handle normal under her touch. It was a strange way to fill a reliquary, Robin thought, nothing at all like her father’s eidolon. She walked out onto the porch and rang the bell. And there seemed nothing special about the bell, save the night encroaching on the house seemed a little less dark when the chime echoed out into the air.