Witch Doctors Inc: SEASON TWO (Ongoing)

Part 1.7

I dream of Phaedra. I dream of its moons. One of them, the farthest one, calls to me with a child's voice.

'I miss my mother.'

Sadness.

Resentment.

Loneliness.

I want to go there, to that moon. I want to drift from the surface of Prometheus, the Phaedrean capital, and sink into its light. I must never leave. I must never leave, like they did.

"It's alright," I soothe the moon. "I'll always be with you."

I wake to darkness.

At the window, behind a flutter of butterfly wings, is the one moon. I'm not on Phaedra. I haven't been on Phaedra for a thousand years.

Maya's driver takes me and Ruby to Naemar in the morning. Maya and Addy have a picnic planned, and Onyx wants to stay home and splash around in the pond.

Wild poppies dance at the cart's feet as we rattle along. The sky really is a nice blue here. It's always like that away from the city and its light pollution. It's cool enough that I don't need my charm. I wouldn't call it a sea breeze, but it's just the right combination of warm and refreshing.

Ruby lazes in the seat next to me with her head out the window, lapping up the breeze. "No wonder Maya wanted a holiday," she muses. "She looks like frog poop."

"What?"

"You haven't noticed the bags under her eyes?" Ruby gives me a look worth ten eye-rolls. "She doesn't even bother with cosmetic charms anymore. That pink is her natural hair colour."

I ponder Ruby's words. Maya usually has black streaks and sparkles in her hair, as well as a glitter charm working on her eyes. Without them she has a delicate, candy-floss look about her.

So when she said we were working too hard, she really meant she was working too hard. This is why I don't like people.

"It's that movie she's shooting," I say. "Emily Rain or whatever."

"Esmeralda Rain," Ruby corrects me. She closes her eyes and drinks in wildflower-scented air. "I don't see what's so hard about that. All she has to do is walk around and say stuff. What's so tiring about that?"

I don't know why she's asking me. I'm the last person to know about the life of an actress.

Ruby goes on some more, but I relegate her to background noise.

As we near Naemar, I start to feel queasy. There's a feeling brimming in my veins, a light that wants to shine through my skin. The world around me is green water. I sink slowly, like a drowning moon.

I take a swig of water. I don't usually get cart sickness. It's heights I don't like.

Naemar is every bit as wooden and quaint as I expected. The houses and shops are huddled together into streets. Some have signs swinging from the doors: 'Marta's Bar and Tavern: The Best Wartfish Stew in Town'. 'Guillame's Apothecary - 50% off newt's eye'.

Ignatius, the great tree, lies in the centre of the village, a fallen giant made of bark and leaves. Its trunk is ten paces wide and twisted with greenery of all sorts. The head is broccoli-shaped, and there are carvings in the bark below the canopy that one could mistake for closed eyes and a downturned mouth. Thick but smaller branches stem from the main trunk to wander their own paths. They flow down the village's streets, stopping to hug houses and twist up through chimneys. Some buildings are swallowed whole.

As I marvel at Ignatius, as child says loudly, "Who are those strange people?"

When Ruby glares at him, he sticks out his tongue. Ruby sticks her own tongue out in response.