Page 1 of Gothikana

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

Vad

There was nothingscarier than a blind old woman with whites for eyes suddenly gripping your arm under a full moon night.

Old Zelda had once been the caretaker of the home little Vad now lived in with other boys. But after she went blind, the admin people let her stay on, which was a mistake in Vad’s opinion. Because she knew stuff, stuff she shouldn’t know, stuff about boys she couldn’t even see. She’d known Reed would drown in the pond a week before he did. She knew about Tor and his skin burning from the inside, something he’d never told anyone. And she said his best friend would ‘eat flames’ one day, whatever that meant, and Fury was scared of fires.

Old Zelda was scary as shit. And Vad avoided her every chance he could.

So, being caught in the small garden on a boy’s birthday night in front of the others wasn’t something he ever wanted.

Her frail, wrinkled hand gripped his thin arm with surprising strength.

‘To a castle where none go,’ she said, her voice shaking, her face heavily wrinkled, the whites of her eyes staring eerily at Vad, ‘you will go, boy.’

Fury sniggered at his side. ‘Why would he go to a castle, Zelda? Where would he even find a castle?’ They were piss poor, the lot of them.

‘He will find many things,’ Old Zelda spoke over his friend. ‘Purple eyes. You will find purple eyes.’

Ajax, another boy the same age as Vad, roared a laugh. ‘Purple eyes? Nobody has purple eyes, Zelda. Or maybe a freak does.’

‘Maybe he also finds a three-legged man,’ another boy shouted with a girly giggle.

‘Or a girl with two horns,’ another said.

Vad blushed furiously, his seven-year-old self getting mad at Old Zelda for cornering him like that and saying weird stuff about him his friends made fun of.

Amidst the laughter at his expense, Zelda’s grip on his arm tightened. ‘Don’t forget, boy. It’s a matter of many deaths.’

A FEW YEARS LATER

Corvina

Black.

It was the absence of colour, the keeper of dark, the abyss of unknowns.

It was in her hair, in her mama’s clothes, in the vast sky all around them.

She loved black.

The kids in town feared it from the shadows under their beds to the endless night that blanketed them for hours. Their parents taught them to be a little afraid of it. They taught them to be afraid of her mother, too — the odd lady with odd eyes who lived at the edge of thetown near the woods. Some whispered she was a witch who practiced dark magic. Some said she was a freak.

Little Corvina had heard all the rumours, but she knew they were untrue. Her mother wasn’t a witch or a freak. Her mother was her mother. She just didn’t like people. Corvina didn’t like people either, but then most people in town weren’t very likeable.

Just the day before, she’d seen a girl her age throw pebbles at the crow that had been trying to find some twigs on the ground for its nest. Corvina knew this because she knew the crow. There weren’t many of them in the woods here, but those that stayed knew her and her mama, too. And it wasn’t because of anything witchy.

For as long as she could remember, her mother had taken her to a clearing a few minutes away from their little cottage every morning to feed the crows. Her mama told her, on one of her good days where she was speaking, that they were intelligent, loyal creatures with the spirits of their ancestors, and they watched over them from the skies during the day, just like the stars did at night.

And they needed protectors, the two of them.

Her mama didn’t talk much but she did hear voices, voices that told her things. They told her to not talk to people, to home-school Corvina after that incident at the school, to keep her away from everyone. Her mama told her she couldn’t wander or they would take her away. She couldn’t leave her side in town or they would take her away. She couldn’t talk to anyone or they would take her away.

Corvina didn’t want to go away.

She loved her mama. Her mama, who smelled of sage and fresh grass and incense. Her mama, who grew their vegetables and cooked tasty food for her. Her mama, who took Corvina into town once a month, even though she hated it, to get her any books she liked from the library. Most days, her mama didn’t talk at all unless she was teaching Corvina or whispering to the voices. Corvina didn’t talk much either. But Corvina knew she was loved. It was just the way her mama was.

As she walked beside her on her little feet under the moonlit sky to the clearing — a rare Ink Moon that happened once every five years, an Ink Moon she was born under — she smiled. Her mama was happy after a long time and that made her happy. With candles and incense sticks that her mother made, and the tarot cards her mother was teaching her to read, and the crystals they were going to recharge, ten-year-old Corvina looked around at the darkness and felt at home.

---