The Raven Saga Box Set

Chapter 29

The person was well hidden by an old black cape that covered them from head to toe.

Charlie spoke first. “Here she is, Master, here she is. Just as you requested. Lilly Tulugaq,” and he pushed me so hard that I fell once again to the feet of the stranger.

The fall angered me, and I yelped. It was with great difficulty that I stayed calm.

“Don't you mean Lilly Taylor?”

As she said those words, I felt as if I had been kicked in the stomach. I was winded. I closed my eyes momentarily and then looked up as she removed the cape from her face. I gasped at the sight of Vivian.

This wasn't the woman that I had lived with for thirteen years. This Vivian had thin greying hair and wrinkles. Her shoulders stooped forward, and her back curled over, like a hunchback. This Vivian had become an old hag.

“I might have known that you would be responsible for all of this,” I spat. “Where is my father?” I demanded.

“Now that's not a very nice way to greet your dear mother, is it?” she spat as she circled me, looking me up and down with a scowl.

“My mother is dead... and you killed her, along with my sister,” I shouted, as I became increasingly angry.

Charlie shoved me down to the floor again and told me to shut up.

I could feel the lion in me trying to take over, but I knew if I transformed then, not only would I lose Gabriel, but I would lose my father too.

“I raised you, and this is the thanks I get,” said Vivian.

“You haven't got a clue how to raise a child,” I spat back, adding, “why are you doing this? Where is Gabriel? And where is my father? If you've hurt either of them, I swear to god I'll...”

“You'll what, Lilly? You'll kill me with your bird's claws? I don't think so, my darling. A little raven isn't going to kill me. I'm one of the greatest witches that ever lived,” she announced.

“If you're so great, then why do you look like an old hag?” I asked.

“How dare you!” she yelled back, slapping me hard on the side of my face.

“You hit like an old hag,” I said with a glare, knowing I was hitting a nerve.

“Get her and bring her in here,” she ordered Charlie, who grabbed my arm roughly and pulled me after her. The entrance to the cave was small, but inside it proved to be a lot bigger than it first appeared.

“Throw her in there,” she said, pointing to a massive birdcage in the centre of the cavern.

As I was pushed into it, it dawned on me that Vivian had no idea about my true self. She thought I could transform myself into a raven, but she knew nothing about the mountain lion. I began to feel that I could use it to my advantage.

“What are you going to do to me?” I asked her, watching as she read from a large ornate book that looked centuries old.

“I'm going to take your blood and your hair... not that you've got very much of that these days... and use it to make me young and beautiful again.” She said it as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“Is that what you did to my father?” I asked, hoping to find out the truth.

She ignored me, instead standing up and walking over to a large shelf that had been created from an old log, similar to the ones I had seen on the beach at Powell River. On it was a number of vials filled with all kinds of creepy looking things. I recognised a few of them. They were just like the vials in the black room in London.

“Is that my father's blood?” I asked.

Again she said nothing, ignoring me as she continued to search through the little bottles. Her eyesight was clearly failing her, and she had to hold things up close to identify their contents.

“Talk to me, Vivian. Oh, I forgot. You never talked to me before did you? Years of no conversation. And you think you raised me,” I said, hoping to irritate her enough so that she'd tell me more.

“What happened to you? Why are you old and ugly, Vivian?” I continued.

“Old... of course, I'm old. I've been alive for hundreds of years, what on earth do you expect. Why do you think I became a witch in the first place? Eternal youth, of course. Don't you know anything, girl?” she shrieked like the old hag she'd become.

“I can't believe I thought you were my mother. You're nothing like my mother. She was absolutely beautiful, and so was my sister. No amount of my blood and hair will ever make you beautiful. You'll never be beautiful, Vivian. Never.”

“Damn you, Lillian!” she yelled, throwing a vial at the cage. The glass bottle smashed, and I was spattered with blood. Whose, I didn't know.

“Is this my father's blood?” I asked again.

“No, it is not your father's blood. He's all out of that,” she answered with an evil smile.

I gasped. Did that mean he was dead? I felt as if my heart had been ripped out of my chest.

“When I ran out of your father's blood, this is what became of me, if you must know,” she said as she looked at herself in a large cracked mirror that had been hung on the wall. She touched her face gently, sadly.

“He gave me beauty, and then he took it away,” she whispered.

“Is... is he dead? Vivian, please tell me what happened to him. I need to know,” I asked, hoping that she might have just a tiny amount of compassion in her, somewhere.

“Dead... dead? Does it matter whether he's dead or not? It doesn't matter any more.”

“It matters to me!” I cried, tasting a salty tear as it fell down my cheek onto my lips.

“I don't believe that Jack is dead. Not entirely anyway,” was all she would say.

Although it wasn't what I wanted to hear, it did give me a glimmer of hope. I just needed to know where he was so I could try to save him.

“Where is he? Is he here? Please, Vivian. Tell me where he is.”

She shook her head and looked at me, “I can't tell you.”

“Please, Vivian, please,” I begged as I shook the bars of the cage.

“Lillian I can't tell you because I don't know where he is,” she answered finally. “He disappeared in London. I tried to find him, but he just vanished. I don't know how he got away, but he did. The second time that has happened to me, b****y men,” she said, “they always get away in the end,” she added more to herself than to me.

So my father managed to escape from Vivian, and he didn't take me with him. My heart had indeed been wrenched from the depths of my soul. He had run away and left me with a witch. What kind of father would do that? I was at a complete and utter loss.

“I have spent months looking for him. Months and months... and nothing. So now I have to find someone else to make me beautiful again. Until I can find myself another man, a special man, you will have to do. You are his daughter. You must carry the same blood as he. You will have to do... for now anyway,” she said with a smile.

“But why my father in the first place? There are millions of men in this world, why did you have to choose my father?”

“Oh, Lillian... are you that dim? I need the blood, and sometimes the hair, of only very special people. They have special qualities in their blood. When mixed with other secret ingredients and drunk by me, it returns me to my youthful glow and extraordinarily good looks. You have your father's genes, so you must have that quality, my dear,” she said as she approached the cage with a small dagger in her hand.

“Charlie, grab her hands,” she said as she opened the door to the cage and pulled me half out. Charlie appeared behind me and managed to hold both my hands while she cut off a tiny tuft of my hair. I breathed a temporary sigh of relief as she walked away and dropped it into a small pot. But then she turned and walked back towards me and pulled my leg so that it hung out of the cage door. She grabbed my hiking shoe and sock and tugged them from my foot. Pulling up my trousers, she very gently placed the blade against my skin and then pressed hard so that blood oozed out from just above my ankle. I winced, trying hard to stay calm.

She placed a small bucket underneath my foot and waited for the blood to drip into it.

Adrenaline pumped through my veins, but I took long deep breaths to prevent myself from changing. I needed to know where Gabriel was before I could do anything.

“Vivian, what have you done with Gabriel?” I asked. “Please tell me that he's okay. Have you hurt him?”

“I have no need to harm the old man,” she said, and I was surprised. The evil things she was capable of made me think that she hurt people on purpose, whether she needed to or not. But perhaps she only did so when she needed something. That was until she continued, “The same can't be said for Charlie though,” and she laughed heartily as if she'd cracked a joke.

She released my leg, and I pulled it back quickly. Charlie slammed the door shut and locked it.

“Charlie, where is Gabriel?” I asked, hopefully.

But he just sniggered and said nothing.

“There's just one important ingredient that I'm missing. I'll be gone a while. Charlie, keep an eye on her – she might try to change into a bird, although the cage should prevent her from escaping,” said Vivian before she grabbed her cape, threw it on and exited the cavern.

“Charlie... how did you get here? I know she must've cursed you. You're an Englishman that she made into a mountain goat. Isn't there a part of you, hidden somewhere in there, that hates her? A part of you that wants some kind of revenge for what she did to you?” I asked softly.

But again, he ignored me and sat staring off into space.

“Charlie, please help me. If you can't, please just tell me where Gabriel is.”

“Shut up, Lilly. Shut up!” he yelled as he bent to pick up a small stone from the floor and then flung it against me. It pinged off the side of the cage and bounced against the wall before landing on the floor by the cave's entrance.

He wasn't going to tell me, so I sat in silence and waited for Vivian to return. My leg began to throb, a dull ache where she had sliced into it. Fortunately, the cut wasn't too deep, and the bleeding had slowed. I feared that if I didn't escape, she would bleed me to death. My father had obviously come close to that, but he had managed to get away before death had come. How I had no idea. He must have been so weak by that time and to get out of that room must have been near on impossible. I wondered if someone had helped him. But why? And how? And more importantly, who?

I would find out what had happened to him, and I would find out where he was. I would also find out why he had deserted me and left me in the hands of an evil witch.

I pulled my legs up to my chest and rested my head on my knees, and before I could stop myself, I began to cry. I cried for Gabriel, I cried for my father, and I cried for me. I knew I could escape, but I was so scared that Gabriel would end up dead if I did.

That's when I heard the sound from outside. A soft, cooing noise that reminded me of something. The owl. It was the sound of an owl hooting, the same sound I had heard the night before. I recalled how the bird had watched me but had then looked away and flown off into the distance. And then again, while Charlie had been dragging me to the cave, I had seen it, but it hadn't taken much notice of me. It was a soothing sound, but that's all it was.