The Chosen: Strangetown, 1985 Part I
Strangetown, 1985
A dull ache had settled in Olive Muenda's chest. It was like someone had brutally ripped open her chest, pulled out her heart, stomped on it and then returned it without closing the wound. She was metaphorically bleeding out, and Olive just could not see the point anymore.
“Tulip,” Peponi's voice shook Olive from her misery. She looked up, her face remaining passive. Peponi smiled sadly. “Go say goodbye, Tulip.”
Olive shook her head. She didn't want to say goodbye. She just wanted to remain sitting on the plastic hospital chair, surrounded by noise and passing nurses. She didn't want to go into that room that smelled of vanilla, where she knew Willow's form would be curled over their mother's dead body. She could hear the cries already.
“Olive,” Peponi's tone changed, his face stern. “Go say goodbye, baby girl. You're not the type to not want closure.”
Olive sighed. He had a point. She never liked not being able to say goodbye. They had forbidden her as a child to see her grandmother's body, and it still bothered her today that she never got the closure she had so desperately needed.
“Okay,” she finally croaked. “Just give me a minute. Earl went to get tea.”
Peponi nodded and Olive was grateful her father didn't show any of his distaste towards her boyfriend. She didn't need that added to her plate as well. Not right now.
Earl returned a few minutes after an eerie silence had settled over Olive and her father. He glanced between them, those chocolate orbs of his hidden behind green glasses twinkling in curiosity. Olive took her tea from him, then grasped her hand in his.
“Everything all right, 'Liv?”
Olive nodded. “I'm going to say goodbye.”
“Okay. I'll wait out here.”
“No,” Olive shook her head. “Don't let me go in there alone.”
Earl seemed uncomfortable at the suggestion that he should go with her, but she gave him no other choice. With a heavy sigh and heart, she dragged him with her, Willow's sobs growing louder as they approached the room.
Vanilla. It used to be a smell that comforted Olive. Now it just made her sick. Lerato Muenda's room smelled like her, but there was also the definite stench of Death. Olive grimaced as she halted in the doorway, Earl right behind her. She could feel him tense, although she wasn't certain why he was so nervous, he wasn't the one with magic. He wasn't the witch who could see the shadow that loomed in the corner of the room.
Olive had thought that Willow would be a sobbing mess by their mother's side, but instead the red-head was on her knees before the shadow, her hands together, begging.
“Please!” she cried. “Please, take me! Let my mother go!”
“What is she doing?” Earl asked in a whisper. Olive glanced at her lover - she could see the disgust on his face. He thought Willow had lost it. Olive knew she shouldn't blame him, so many humans recoiled from that they did not understand; reacted in fear. To him, Willow was a sixteen-year-old girl talking to a wall right now. He couldn't see the other occupant in the room. He did not understand. Olive shouldn't be angered over something he could not control. But it did anyway. Because Willow was her sister. He should know better.
“Please!” Willow cried again, but her pleas fell on deaf ears. The shadow did not acknowledge her, and with a flip of his dark cloak, disappeared into thin air, taking their mother's soul with him.
-
“I'm moving out,” Olive announced a few weeks later over dinner. Peponi and Willow looked up, alarmed.
“What?” Willow shrieked. “You can't!”
“I'm nineteen, sis. I can't stay here forever.”
Willow's lip trembled, and to stop tears from streaming down her cheeks, she purposefully bit down on her bottom lip. Her eyes were glassy, and the purple bags staining her skin made it quite clear she still could not sleep properly.
“Are you sure this is a good idea at this time?” Peponi asked, pulling the attention away from Willow's obvious potential nervous breakdown.
“Yes,” Olive replied. “Earl and I have been looking at some properties.”
Peponi did not look very amused at the fact that Earl was in the equation.
“Will he be living with you?” Peponi asked.
“Yes,” Olive responded. “Is that a problem?”
“No, baby girl,” Peponi sighed. “You are an adult. I cannot tell you what to do. But that boy has issues, and I just do not wish to see you hurt.”
“Earl is good to me,” Olive reasoned. “He's been very supportive since mother's passing.”
Willow snorted, which Olive chose to ignore. Her little sister's behaviour had really soured ever since Lerato's death. Olive knew it was a phase, the girl was mourning - it would pass. She just needed time.
“I'll trust your judgement, Tulip,” Peponi said, his stern gaze focused on his youngest daughter. “If you need anything, do not hesitate to call.”
“Thanks, Papa.”
-
It was on Halloween, just a few months after her mother's death, that Olive came across an old grimoire she did not know she had in possession. She had been cleaning, rather than celebrating, due to her loss of interest in what she used to enjoy. The grimoire was written on old parchment, and was slowly falling apart. As she held the fragile thing in her hands, she was taken back to her teenage days under her mother's tutelage. Oh, she missed it. She missed the magic, the power that crackled under your skin as you manipulated it to your will. She hadn't practiced since her mother passed.
Willow had given up on magic altogether.
With a deep breath, Olive slowly flipped through the pages of the old book. She did not recognise the language, for it was not in the standard Latin. Curious, she put the book down, grabbed a cup of tea, and settled in front of the window in the desert sun. For hours she paged through the book, trying to make sense of the characters, but she was lost.
Until she came across a word written in Latin alphabet. Nekromanteia it read. Olive blinked. She may not know the language, but she could assume what the word meant based on another word she knew, one of her own language.
Olive was no stranger to necromancy. She knew what it was, and what witches and warlocks born with the gift were capable of. Her mother and sister were practicers of light magic, and both had been judgemental of those who tinkered with the dark arts, especially necromancers.
It was why she never dared reveal her own status as a necromancer. She hadn't always known she was one - as a child, she was just as much as involved in the art of light magic than her mother was. But as she grew older, she felt as if something was missing. And she found out what it was when she accidentally resurrected a baby bird that had fallen out of its nest. When life was breathed back into the tiny creature, Olive had been amazed. And the weight that had formed over her heart had seemed to vanish. This was who she was. This is what she was meant to do.
Only animals, however. Resurrecting humans was the taboo of the necromancy world. Necromancy was all about balance, about providing a fair trade. Nothing was worthy of a trade in the eyes of Death. If you wanted one of his souls, you had to be prepared to give him one in return.
Naturally curious, Olive continued researching what she found in the grimoire. She studied dictionaries and other grimoires. She spent hours locked in her room, hoping to find out more about what she was.
She also learned that the grimoire had belonged to Asteria Thebes, a renowned necromancer in the magical world. It was said she had been able to summon banshees and all kinds of other creatures to do her bidding. Her daughter had been her successor, and the grimoire had been passed down in the Thebes family until somehow, miraculously, it landed in Lerato Muenda's hands. And then it got mixed in with Olive's things when she moved out.
As she learned more, she started to realise that maybe within in this grimoire lay the answer. Maybe she could resurrect her mother? Olive knew nothing of human resurrection, but this book could be the key to being reunited with the woman she loved more than anything. And this further encouraged her to continue researching.
Willow may have been the one crying over their mother's dead body. She may have been the one begging Death on her knees. But it was Olive who was truly broken. She just didn't show it, for Willow's sake. One of them had to be strong for their father.
But soon none of that would be necessary.