BOUCONNE FRANCE, 2022
Two gaolers in red and white cowls over painted leathers of the same colours emerged from the tree line. They were broad-shouldered Attachés of the Red Lion Court, as they had not yet earned their armour.
They dragged a short and balding man. He was dressed in the fashion of an accountant or office manager. His shirt was twisted and half out of his pants.
His shoes were well-kept but not expensive. He had all the semblance of a middle-aged bachelor, the very kind who holes up in his garage painting small figurines of soldiers for mock historical battles displayed on large tables.
I could see much of myself in him. Fastidious, competent, but lonely. I wondered if his future was my own. Would I be middle-aged, alone and content with the fantasy of participating in great things? Would the most significant moment of my life be getting dragged out of mediocrity by forces beyond my comprehension?
The gaolers pulled the man before Fulvia and forced him to his knees. He was tiny and insignificant before the Amazonian Lady.
“Gentle, gentle mes cheries,” Fulvia said. She cast a chilling look at the gaolers and bent forward to feather her finger down the man’s bulbous nose. “There there, mon petit.”
“S’il vous plait Madame, aide-moi,” the man said. He had tears in his eyes. “Let me go, please; I won’t say anything.”
“Shh, shh, mon petit, sois sage.” Her caresses increased.
“I can pay, whatever you want, just please.”
She cupped his jaw in both hands like one would an adorable child who had said the most pleasing thing.
“Please, mon dieu, what do you people want from me?” He looked from Fulvia to the crowd of people. His eyes widened.
“Who are you? Please, help me, someone.” He tried to pull away towards the crowd, but the gaolers kept him back. “What do you want from me?”
Fulvia stood up, resting her hands on her knees.
“Why, to know your name, of course.”
“My — name?” He looked from her to us, then back to her.
“Bien sur mon cheri, we need your name!”
“If I tell you, will you let me go?”
Fulvia laughed. “Perhaps, if we like your name.” She turned to the crowd. “Do we all agree, if we like his name, we will let him go?”
We all joined in agreement. “Yes!”
“There, mon petit, we are agreed; tell us your name so that you can be free.”
The man slumped. “C’est Pierre, Pierre Philipe Matisse.”
“Oh, like the painter?”
The man raised his head. A look of hope in his eyes. “Yes, yes, like the famous painter. Do you like his paintings?”
Fulvia giggled. “But of course, so bold, so creative. We love them!”
“Oh, oh, merci Dieu, thank you, please, let me go.”
Fulvia leaned in and bopped the man on the nose with her forefinger.
“What we like are his paintings,” she bopped his nose again, “but he has a ridiculous name! We don’t like it at all.” Fulvia turned back to the crowd. “Do we like his name?”
“No,” we answered.
“But, you said — ” He looked from Fulvia to the crowd. We all erupted in laughter.
“Hold him” Fulvia swept her staff around and angled it at his face. “The head, hold his head.”
The gaolers struggled with Pierre. They jerked his head straight. She jabbed her staff towards his mouth.
Fulvia hummed an unearthly lullaby, sweet and simple. It echoed in the trees. The counterpoint to his grunting as she pressed the sapphire headstone of her staff to his lips. One of the gaolers grabbed his jaw and pried it open.
Fulvia towered over him. She leaned her weight on the staff, forcing it down the man’s gullet. The sounds of his throat giving way mixed with the droning melody.
She found his stomach. She churned his innards, staring down at him. The man wanted to scream but only gurgled bubbles of blood and viscera. His eyes were wide with terror. His potbelly began to suck inward.
His legs broke. They crunched and crackled as they were pulled up into his groin. The gaolers braced his arms firmly as she pulled the man inside out.
She stood up, and the bag of gore, for I can scarcely describe it otherwise, was attached to the end of her aspen staff. Fulvia examined the connection between the flesh sack and the headstone before shaking it loose like one does a bit of toilet paper stuck to their hand.
I felt disgusted by him. All the more because I could see myself in him, and I hated the idea that I could be like that. So mediocre and foolish. Lonely. I loved him, too; in that way, you love something you understand but don’t like. He felt like a possible future that I dearly wanted to sacrifice as payment for something better, something meaningful. He had violated The Law of Suspicion, the first law of magic. You can only kill someone with magic if they suspect you can.
He had been a fool. Dragged into the woods. Surrounded by hooded figures. It practically screamed demonic sacrifice. If he hadn’t agreed to play the game, and bet his life that a bunch of strangers would like his name. I shook my head. Well, maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on the poor man. I doubt many mundanes could outplay the average sorcerer, certainly not someone like Fulvia Deadlocke.
The look on her face was one of satisfaction. I assumed she had collected his essence to cast a potent spell.
She stood and her arms and staff moved in a circle, occasionally stopping with a jerk and then moving in the opposite direction. The sacrifice’s essence was streaming from the head of her staff, leaving trails that whirled like a vortex to a central vanishing point ahead of her.
The energy formed a gateway. It grew until it was large enough for no less than ten hearty men to pass through. Many of us marvelled at seeing something we had only read about in books. We applauded.
Lefevre let out a whistle. “A pretty piece that was - made a proper show of his guts.” He delivered a gentle elbow into my arm as we all formed several lines before the gateway.
I looked through the twisting surface of the portal. There was a country crossroads, and some twenty meters further in, a warm and inviting building with a thatched roof and a heraldric sign that read: Le Lion Vert.