Amarilly Belladonna Nicolai Diary - Harton 10th
The train trip had been uneventful except for the insipid man in the top hat and monocle that insisted that a lady should not travel alone. I insisted that I was not a lady, but he still would not go on his way and leave me to mine. So, after two days of explaining I did not want company, I had to show him. I am sure his man-parts will heal fine with the ice the steward brought him. Though it was nice to not see him emerge from his private cabin to trouble me for the rest of the trip, I do not wish him any lasting pain.
The carriage ride from the station to this quaint village was even less eventful. Bumpy, but nothing more. It is dull and steely grey outside, and a chill in the air. There is not much to see in the mountains either. Autumn is upon this region, and I hope to finish my investigation quickly; I do not want to be stranded here in this provincial town for the winter. It is not like my birth country in southwestern Teurone. I lived on the plains there, with my gypsy family. It was cold in the autumn, but the sky was often blue and the air crisp. Here it is oppressive and heavy, and I can feel the thick miasma of more than the weather hanging all around me.
I was greeted with suspicion in the village when I arrived. I expected nothing less. I am used to such reactions. When I was a gypsy no one would trust me. Not even when I was a little girl and went into town with actual coin to buy bread, instead of going with my family to stealthily rob the small towns while they went about their daily lives or slept at night. When Elizabeth’s mentor, Suykimo, found me and sent me to the fine University of Bolton with Elizabeth, the people there also viewed me with distrust. I was short and dark haired with the olive skin of the southern folk, not fair and brown haired like the people of the isles, or blonde like the northern peoples. I have trained to spot people’s reactions before they know what they themselves feel.
I have learned the way of the blade if they react badly. It is amazing, the training of my old family seemed so detailed and thorough: how to hide the knives, how to throw them, or how to slip them out and use them without someone standing next to me knowing I did anything. It is the art of misdirection. All these things are a matter of looking somewhere else and gasp at someone moving fast, and all around you follow your eyes while you cut a purse, or pierce a side. But I have learned better ways now, refined my skills with knives as I refined my words in school. Elizabeth’s friend, Zachary, taught me how to do so much more. Now I hide blades under my lace sleeves, or in the boning of my corset.
I digress, but I do miss the days when I always knew what was next. Though I must say the life I live now is much more exciting, it is also much more tiring. Today was no different. It did not take much to bring the villagers to ease, but afterwards they were full of questions and it was difficult to bring them to the topic of which I needed information without arousing suspicion. Instead of asking elders, I made friends with one of the young girls of the town. Her name is Dariya and she was eager to talk. Her betrothed was killed four years ago, just before my schoolmate Elizabeth had visited here. Dariya is a woman of seventeen now, and refuses to take a husband, instead following the teachings of the local wise woman.
She is very helpful to my investigation. I have to decipher what she means sometimes; not the words, but the actual intent behind the words. She practices ‘magic’ much like my own people: herbs, rituals, chants, candles, smoke, and spells. The rest of the village are devout worshipers of The Changing Wheel though, but they also practice rituals and use herbs, chants, candles, and smoke, but instead call their spells ‘prayer’. I do not believe in a higher power, but instead understand that the science of belief creates results. It is a matter of the electric in the human body and mind, and it influencing the world around you.
Dariya told me about what has happened over the past four years since the lord of the valley was found dead on the slopes near his castle. There had been many killings before his death, and they stopped when he died. The villagers found proof of his being a werewolf at the castle, and I believe that. Now, I may have to defend my belief in this, because of what I said about the higher powers. But I think there are many things in this world we can explain with natural scientific causes if we just look beyond superstition, including ghosts, monsters, and magic.
The people thought their troubles had ended with his death on that night of the blue moon. But they had not. Sixteen months later, in the middle of winter, the killings began again. These were even more horrific than before. Whole families were killed, leaving only one person alive. The first was a father and husband, his wife and six children all slaughtered in the middle of the night. He woke the next morning to the screaming of his wife’s mother, who had come to bring the family fresh baked bread. He was hung that day by his own parents, siblings, friends, and neighbors.
The next horror came eight months later, as spring was just beginning to bloom. This time it was a wife and her sister found in the barn in the morning covered in gore - their parents had been vivisected and nailed to the beams and rafters in a spider web of entrails. The women were buried to the neck and stoned to death.
This pattern continued, as someone was killed every couple of months, and the person responsible being found nearby and the evidence overwhelming, so they were put to death. I think the most disturbing thing Dariya she told me about in hushed whispers is when the mayor’s whole family was found stabbed and drained of all fluids, except for his five children. The missing liquids were found in a wash tub, and the children bathing in the still warm visceral juices. The children were given proper exorcisms, but when their caretaker was found dead and missing all bodily fluids also, they were burned at the stake.
Now, I am here. And I will find out what is going on. Is it a demon, a disease, or something else altogether?