Chapter 8. `Thus says the LORD GOD: `Woe to the women that…hunt souls…’ - Ezekiel 13. 18-23.
5 days after crossing the flood of the Dankole river by use of logs and some of their mountain climbing ropes, they were now close to the city of Brandon. Misevasundia was writing a letter, but it was not one of her pre-fabricated letters.
To: Her Highness, Her Majesty Queen Dr. Rabbi Brittany Cohen-Schwartz, the Beautiful, the Benevolent, the Most Merciful Queen of Avallonia, Supreme Representative on Earth of God and God's True Church, etc., etc., B.A., Ph.D., MBA etc., etc.
Greetings Your Majesty,
Hi! How's it going? Well we've had some amazing adventures out here in the wilderness. I'll try to give you a quick re-cap without taking too much of your time. The troop of us nine women and 22 children had collected the last of our mountain climbing gear in Rosen. As you know the usual approaches to Cromwell Town will be heavily guarded by enemy forces - and we will have to make our approach via the unguarded routes - over the high mountains. We have a good deal of food in reserve on the wagon, and we are finding it easy to buy more food in the villages along the route. Next week we should reach the last major city in your realm, Barerro, and then we will cross the last 200 miles of empty wasteland to the frontier, and then the re-conquest of the alpine regions of Avallonia! The wagon is piled high with woolen pants, woolen sweaters, canvas jackets - from children's sizes to clothes that would fit a huge man. We have a few big tents too. Well, to get the exciting part of my epistle, one day we were travelling down the road, proceeding through a thin forest of dwarf pines and straggling firs and the birch trees which predominate along the banks of a river called the Lambert. All the snow of early winter has melted in a brief thaw. We marched through a world of yellow grass, blue skies, gorgeous evening sunsets. One day, just before noon, the horses became skittish. They smelled or sensed danger. Soon enough the horses were panicking, with only the whites of their eyes showing and froth flying from their mouths. We had to put Plan A into effect. Plan A has us unhitching the two horses which are hitched to the wagon, and then we take the other two horses which are tethered to the back of the wagon. We got the horses to calm down a little. So we now have 4 horses which can carry 8 people. Plan A has us putting the 3 orphans, and the 4 kids aged 10 and over, and Navorrasicaa, who is the slightest of us 8 warrior women, she is the least adept among us as a warrior, the one we can most afford to lose in combat, and we put the lot of them, all 8, on the four horses, and let the horses run, and they wanted to run let me tell you, as they must have feared a pack of werewolves, or a vampire was nearby. So, Martha Manning, along with the 7 remaining warrior women, and the 15 remaining kids, will have to either elude or fight whatever it was that was putting such fear into the horses, and those horses fled with terror in their eyes downwind, carrying their equally fearful riders. Something truly foul and demonic was upwind, and it probably hadn't detected us yet, because we were downwind. So we tried to hide the wagon in what woods there were. Then we hid themselves as best we could in the thin forest of straggling trees. Seraphinaria had been harping on everyone to wash everyday with soap and water. A pack of wolves will smell the scent of human beings whether they wash every day or not, but, perhaps, witches, werewolves or vampyres don't have such a keen sense of smell. I don't know. Anyway we were a well-scrubbed and sweet-smelling company. Well, you'll never guess what happened next! In another ten minutes a very pretty young woman came strolling down the road we had been on, walking along all La-Dee-Da innocent-like. Naturally we suspected she was a witch and we were itching to make a pincushion out of her with our bows and arrows. She begged for her life and she gave us some story that it was some wolves in the woods, or a grizzly bear, not her, that had terrified the horses. Well our horses and our friends came back in a little while, and the horses weren't afraid of the woman, whose name is Vyryvyr. Navorrasicaa said a huge pack of wolves had surrounded the 4 horses and forced them to return. So, it was these wolves which must have originally caused the horses such a fright, not the woman! So, just about the time we were thinking that some stupid old superstitions about witches nearly caused us to turn an innocent, live woman into a dead pincushion, we're suddenly thinking Vyryvyr is indeed a witch, because, we can catch glimpses of a huge wolf pack through the thin forest. I estimate there were 1,000 wolves, and I'm thinking they are not attacking and killing all us - and they could have easily killed us all because they were huge and because there were at least 1,000 of them - because the beautiful young woman, Vyryvyr, is a witch, and she controls the wolves, and she doesn't want the wolves to attack and kill us, at least not just yet. You should have seen Martha Manning. She was in the most horrible transports of fear. She was going on and on about how the Bible says there is a Devil, and about how the Bible says there is demonic possession, and about how the Bible says there are witches, and she's saying that it only stands to reason that since the Bible says there is a Devil, and demonic possession, and witches, then this Vyryvyr is most likely a real live bona fide witch. Martha Manning was preparing for her imminent death: she was begging God to forgive her sins, and going on and on about what these sins were, and she was insisting to Heaven that she repented of her of her sins. I didn't hear her admit aloud that she lied on her naturalization form when she said she was 37 though! Everyone suspects she is actually 57. Hey, lady you forgot one of your sins! I shouldn't crack jokes at her expense. The poor woman was in hysterics. Anyway, even the Atheists in our company were thinking that Vyryvyr wielded supernatural malevolent powers, because they too had eyes to see those 1,000 frightful wolves escorting us to Vyryvyr's place, which is a huge black Castle. It has towering ramparts, a moat, a portcullis, liveried footmen etc. And even the Atheists are thinking that with a name like Vyryvyr how could she not be a witch? She has this huge walk-in oven with 100 iron hooks hanging from the stone roof from which you can hang 100 cattle carcasses: Vyryvyr's ancestors often needed to feed an army of 10,000 soldiers, or that
‘s what she claims. So, she gives us a tour of her place. She has a dungeon, of course. We got locked into it for about an hour, which caused us no end of terror, but Vyryvyr found a locksmith to get the lock to work again. Jazar, a giant ogre-like man, could have broken the massive door down to get us out if the locksmith couldn't do it. Vyryvyr has an immense library, with tons of books on witchcraft and satanism, on miles of shelving. I can't remember the exact titles I saw, but you know, stuff like: Satan and Sorcery. Witchcraft. Vampyres. Werewolves. Diabolism etc., etc. She had lots of portraits of her ancestors hanging on the walls of the Castle, some of them were pictures of beautiful women who, the legends say, bathed daily in the blood of slain infants, as the legends say that’s what keeps their complexions fresh and smooth and ever-youthful. Vyryvyr claims she is writing her doctoral dissertation on the Folklore of these parts of Avallonia, so all these old books help her in her research. Well, to make a long story short, Vyryvyr treated us to some very excellent meals - we stayed at her place for two nights, and then we said goodbye, and got back on the road going north. Vyryvyr is very charming and enchanting. Even Martha Manning was `bewitched' by her. There is an Exhibit B in the case saying Vyryvyr is a witch, however. Exhibit A, as you will recall is the evidence of these 1,000 huge wolves being in strict obedience to her. Exhibit B runs like this: Vyryvyr has some hot springs bubbling up out of the ground in back of her Castle. She has no end of towering pines trees there also, and, with the towering pines and the boiling spring water gushing up out of the ground, even in midwinter, the temperature behind her Castle never falls much below 70 degrees Fahrenheit, so everything is green and lush in this `Enchanted Forest.' There are lots of blooming flowers and fragrant shrubs and aromatic ferns. So, though it is winter now, the kids are having fun playing in the warm spring water - if you get away from the boiling sources and give the water a chance to cool off some, there are many places to luxuriate in pools of warm water. The nin
e of us adult women stripped down to our bras and panties. And then some young guys in livery are serving us beer and chips, and we're trying to get them to strip down as well and join us in the warm water. This one guy takes off his jacket and is preparing to strip down to his jockey shorts and join us in the water, when, all of a sudden, he is struck down with sheer panic - I mean absolute paralyzing fear and horror. Well, who do you suppose is looking down at him, through a break in the pine boughs, from a window high up in the Castle? Who do you suppose is staring daggers at him, boring holes with her big ebony eyes into this guy who tried to get into the warm water with us? He's shaking with fear as he puts his shirt and livery jacket back on, and fast. Sevaladelia jumps out of the water and she waves and smiles to Vyryvyr. But Vyryvyr isn't smiling back. She just turns away and leaves the window. You would have had to have seen how scared that guy was. I tell you, Your Majesty, he was afraid of no mortal woman: he was afraid of a witch from Hell! So that's Exhibit B in the case saying Vyryvyr is a witch. She could be extremely pleasant though. But then the spell of enchantment she had cast over us wore off when we got back on the road going north. The upshot of it all is that both the believers in our company along with the nonbelievers - even the Atheists! - even those hostile to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings - are pretty sure Vyryvyr is indeed a witch from Hell - if you saw how scared that guy was, and if you saw the way she commanded that pack of 1,000 huge, black, ferocious wolves, you would believe she is a witch too. We had agreed to disagree about some stuff, and give the religious strife a rest, but now the old factional strife has again rent the not-so-seamless robe of our heroic troop. Some of the kids and some of the women insist there are heretics in our company, and they say these damnable heretics are in cahoots with the witch, Vyryvyr. The Christians in the troop, who do not deny the existence of foul damnable satanic Heretics, insist that all of the foul damnable satanic Heretics along with all of the foul damnable satanic Atheists in our company are in cahoots with the foul damnable satanic witch Vyryvyr. It has just gotten so insane! Another suspicion is that the witch Vyryvyr wants us, for some reason, to re-conquer Cromwell Town, which of course is in the hands of the papists. That's why she let us leave her place alive. Either that or she wants us all to get slaughtered by the papists while trying to re-conquer that city. We had an uneventful week of marching north from Vyryvyr's Castle to the city of Brandon, the city where I'm posting this letter. Well, not quite uneventful. I got really sick after I had the Caesar Salad at a tavern called The Cavalier Duchess. I suspect the cheese wasn't so fresh. I was sick as dog for a day there. My stomach would not even hold down goodly food. So heads up if you ever dine at The Cavalier Duchess.
Stay Tuned Your Majesty!