Twin Moons

Prologue

A Long Anticipated Arrival

Mateci glanced out her window at the moons as she stirred the pot of stew on her stove. They hung beautiful, bright and full above the trees. They would not be full together again for centuries. It was the perfect night for something extraordinary to happen. The air was thick and busy with energy and her whole body buzzed with the feel of magic. She looked again at the three settings on the table in the middle of her tiny, one-room house and wondered when her guests would be arriving. She was sure that they would be terribly interesting. Whatever happened tonight would have to be terribly interesting, such was the nature of The Night of Twin Moons.

She suddenly felt a tug at her mind and knew her guests were on their way. She closed her eyes and concentrated. There was something very confusing about them. Something not quite right. They were trapped somehow. As she pulled them to her she dared not hope that they would-

The whole room filled with a searing white light and a pained wail. As the light faded she could see a young woman writhing on the floor and whimpering, mud from tears and dust staining her cheeks.

Mateci's mouth pulled itself into a delighted smile as she looked into the girl, her eye's piercing through the physical world into the spirit plain. She desperately tried to contain her excitement as, after carefully removing the stewpot from the heat, she hurried over to the cupboard where she kept her herbs and plucked a jar from on of the shelves within.

Mateci knelt down beside the struggling girl and pried her mouth open. The poor dears seemed not to even notice as Mateci carefully placed a dried leaf on her tongue. Mateci whispered a short verse and the girl went limp. She now appeared to be peacefully sleeping. Mateci pulled the thin body to the middle of her plank wood floor where she carefully folded its delicate silk-clad arms.

From the bookshelf that covered the largest wall of her house, Mateci pulled a small, leather bound book that had been given to her by her mother who had been given it by her mother and so on. She laid it on the table and tenderly pulled open its cover. The pages were worn and well read, the cover was slowly decaying and the fingerprints of countless witches before her covered the pages, but the spell contained within had not been performed since the time of the witchi who's handwriting covered the pages.

Mateci glanced lovingly over the pages. She had read them often enough to have the whole thing memorized, but this was the sort of thing one just couldn't get wrong. Often she had dreamed that she would be the lucky witch to sing this ritual again. So in love with the idea of it she was, that she had always kept the more exotic supplies for it ready and fresh.

She crossed the room to her bed and pulled a small trunk from under it, which she dragged over to where the unconscious figure lay. She poured the skeleton within out next to it then picked up the skull and placed it along side the head of the young woman.

Mateci flew about the room in a joyful daze, singing in some sweet, strange language as she gathered bottles and jars and began sprinkling the body and skeleton with spicy smelling oils and herbs.

Next she hurried to her sewing box and brought out a pin. She carefully cleansed it to make sure nothing on it would interfere with the spell and then gently pricked the girl's finger. She squeezed the pricked finger just above the forehead of the skull and let one drop of blood fall there, then placed the arm back across the thin torso.

This done, Mateci pulled a bit of chalk from her pocket and began drawing symbols and words of power on the floor around the skeleton and body. She fought to keep her singing slow and measured as her heart pounded with excitement.

After entirely too long for Mateci's tastes, she finished drawing the glyphs on her floor and returned the chalk to her pocket. Here her singing grew stronger and louder. She pulled another bottle from the cupboard and began to flick bitter smelling oil at the girl and the bone pile within her chalk markings.

Her song grew so that it echoed off mountains, shook the forests and valleys and made the rivers flow to its rhythm. She closed her eyes and kept singing, praying to nature to allow her to bend its laws to make what should but couldn't be be. Her skin prickled and her skirts clung, here hair rose from her head and a smell of ozone permeated the spice of her herbs. Her voice was impossibly loud and infinitely quiet. The energy around Mateci swelled stronger and stronger making her feel as though she was about to be hit by lightning. She heard the rattling, scraping sound of the bones pulling themselves into their proper shape. As she struck the last note of the song, the energy swelled itself toward the middle of the room, spiraling down like a whirlpool.

Then everything was silent and still. Mateci opened her eyes and smiled at the two figures lying on the floor, their arms crossed over their chests. She went to the closet and fetched a blanket to drape over the young man and then returned to preparing supper. Her guests would no doubt be hungry when they woke.