Demon of the Black Gate
Chapter 18

For the next few weeks, Cerra kept herself occupied as best she could. She had ridden into the village just once in that time. Lindi of the carters had her baby, and Cerra did her part of the midwifery. Later in Barnam’s commons, much of the talk had been diverted from the demon. She was glad that there were no new rampages to hear of. Instead the gossip and news dealt with the effects of the shattered gate on the trade of the land. The farmers and cattlers felt little change, but the miners and the silk vendors worried mightily a bout the markets. The country, though not attacked, was still threatened and under an effective siege. She offered no opinion about the situations though she wondered about some of the herbs and notions that she traded for. She certainly dared not mention her own encounter with the demon.

Other than Henery the shepard, who left her a lamb portion on his way back from the highland fields, Cerra had no visitors. That was not unusual. She kept busy. There was a succession of herbs and tinctures to dry and turn. Some needed to be made into powder or their suitable extractions. It all had to be labeled, so she had a lot of needlepoint to do.

The weather was too nice to stay in for long. She left her labeling needlepoint unfinished, twisted her hair into a hanging loop and stuffed a knitting needle into the mass to hold it together. They were perfect though they often broke.

She carried a small lunch to the lake, the stone bench where she was accustomed to going. Kamir had made the ritual trip many times. He was as likely to be there already as he was to be waiting along the path ready to spring out at her to swat her on the leg. Although the cabin had a cistern plumbed for bathing, she preferred to bathe in the lake during the summer months. She loved to float in its waters or dive blindly into the depths. Her body would glide while the weight of her curly hair could float suspended about her head, or would stream back, pulling at her brow as she dove. She could spin in the water, and in the emptiness of her sight lose her orientation completely. Cerra would then let her senses rediscover the up and down in her watery flight and surface with dizzy delight. She understood the waters association with the womb, and decided it was right to take comfort there.

She could hear Jessann’s voice in her mind: “You are a water child.” It was true Cerra loved being near the lake, and the cleansing nature of water.

She reached the lake without an attack from Kamir. As she suspected, he was already lazing on the rock. She lay out her things and sat for awhile, puffing at her pipe with her own seven leaf blend. The heady mixture was relaxing for her, especially when the cramps came upon her. She could feel the most minor twinge that would herald the bout and knew they were upon her soon. All the more reason for a relaxing swim.

She was floating on her back, ears submerged. The sensation of both blindness and the muting waters left her mind in an intense state of awareness. Of places she didn’t know. She felt like this sometimes in her dreams, and she let her mind and body drift.

She didn’t notice the change in the air, the whirling condensation that came over the lake in eddys. When the blue shimmering first appeared in her eyes she thought at first it was a transcendence of her mood or internal visions. It was only when the thick, sinuous air collected over the lake that the wash of a platinum aura wavered and overlaid the skies of her inner vision. The demon was here.

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As his awareness grew, so too did the demon’s awareness grow of the powers that saturated its being. The airs left him thin and light, and without borders. Time felt different in the ethers and winds. First it rushed along at breakneck pace then lofted and hung in suspension to wait for the next wave.

It was difficult at first to open his awareness without the menacing anger holding him to his core. The demon felt the edges of his consciousness shredding away if he let it. The tantalizing avenues of currents became the focus when he drew himself in. He could pull fires from the frictions of his passing or absorb the dusts of rainsoaked clouds to refresh or give him form. But air is forgetful as well, and he often was sidetracked in a lull. But every moment was not lost on the demon, even the lulls. The sound of the screeching hawk carried in the alpine currents filtered through his smoke, as well as the scents of earth and pine. Air didn’t have the pulse of the earth. It could not sustain the demon forever.

It was the lack of water that finally broke the spell of discovery and cast a new reflection across his mind. The lake. The blind woman. The thirst reminded him of his intent upon leaving the cave. The one thread he had not lost was the scent carried on the wind. Of the lake. Of her.

As his recollection returned, the fog that had slowly formed over the lake settled. The grey white vapor and smoke of the demon drifted to the waters and dissipated, sinking slowly into the depths.

For Cerra the glowing of the demon grew around her like a wash. The water warmed perceptively. She surfaced her head, treading water, a blue and silver rippling extending into a wash of black. She imagined it was like swimming in a cave, the water lit from below. She laughed. She took a quick dive, keeping her eyelids open. Her world became a scene of reflection, the wavering glimmers matched the swirl of the waters about her. The bottom of the lake contained the waters in her sight, waters held in a bowl of nothing. She was exhilarated, spinning and turning, barely pausing to catch a quick breath at the surface. The thought shot through her that she was swimming in the demons embrace. She let herself turn slowly underwater, lost in the phosphorus blue. Cerra felt herself warming, her skin caressed. She lost all sense of direction, lost in sensual turns, the warm water smooth and tantalizing. It wasn’t until she was starved for breath that she broke the surface. Cerra treaded water for a moment, analyzing the edges of the blues that surrounded her, feeling her skin aglow and deliciously alive. None of it made sense. She chirped for Kamir, and heard an immediate meow from her left.

“Ah, there you are.” she managed to get out, clearing and spitting some errant water from her mouth as she spun to get her direction right, then began her swim to shore. She let herself slip smoothly through the water, head raised in an easy breast stroke. The blue surfaces set against the black horizons of her sight supplanted the usual patterns of her secret garden, the place that Jessann had told her about. The images of birds or trees prised from her days prior to blindness were the inhabitants of the garden. Some were new constructions, fertile products of her imagination. For the moment, her garden, her references for the lake had been dissolved by the presence of the demon. And she was floating naked in his embrace. The thought warmed her.

The demon felt the woman as soon as his smokes absorbed the water. The waters contained her essence, transferring her sense. There was a lightness in the transmission that confused the demon. Joy had been crushed from the demon’s soul in the void and had yet to strike a chord that he recognized. Still, the vibrations sent through the waters played further on his senses. He felt the change when she left the water, a living nature no longer in its embrace. The demon gathered himself from the edges of the water, seeking the clays and fires of earth. They had memory. They knew. Rising from the water the demon shed the excess of his nature, and felt the diminished sense of size. The form. Contained. Vulnerable.

Cerra was squeezing water in turns from her hair when she saw the surfaces of the lake coalesce and the cobalt fire emerge, pulling the blues from the lake into his body. Though she could not see, she knew the demon had regained the form she had shaped by the coolness of his visage and the lack of tremors from his movements.

She laughed merrily. “You certainly know how to show a girl a grand time.”

If Cerra could see her creation, she might have been daunted by the coals of fire that sufficed for the demons eyes. The demon had caught the sense of elation from the woman … ‘Cerra’ returned to his mind … and it cut through the numbness. Elation was a new perception, an involuntary reaction. The demon felt a rumble from the center of his being, a spasm that lurched to his throat and was expelled as chuff of air. Followed by another. The demon recounted his passage as air, the sensation of the woman in his watery embrace, the elation. The mood raising paroxysm continued as the demon discovered laughter.

The demon looked around at the world he stood in as if seeing it for the first time. No rage. No churning with the elements. A world both alien and known. He turned his blazing eyes on the woman standing naked on the rock, the low rumbling laugh diminishing. Her cat was sitting sphinx-like in the pile of her clothing, watching him intensely. The demon felt the urge to laugh again, but instead felt his face pull back, broadening.

Cerra was patting herself dry, listening to the demons low rumble. There was no mistaking it as a laugh. Though low and grating like stones rubbing together, it sounded so much better than the agonizing cry she had heard over a fortnight ago. She watched him turn as he took in the surroundings. When he turned back, the blue and silver aura of his face was smiling. She thought she had just seen the most beautiful thing in the world.

“Well, you’re feeling chipper today. Feel like moving some rocks for me? My orchard wall is a mess.”

Cerra couldn’t say why she blurted out something so bantering.

“Oh, lords, why did I say that?” she groaned to herself. Her favorite interactions with others, with her friends, were often humorous and a contest of quips. With Cerra, those conversations got lively, for her constant smile was infectious.

With the demon, her remark caught him as unprepared as the first. If confusion generates humor, then it worked twice. The demon’s amoral apathy had been cracked. The world he found himself in was now starting to permeate the cells of memory shriven by the void.

He could not help but laugh a second time, a deep huffing sound that seemed to roll into the earth. Cerra could feel its tremors inside her.

The concept of conversation still caught the demon unprepared. The thought came to him that …

“I have been a wall.” … was vocalized in the process.

“Ha, ha, ha. I bet you have.” Cerra replied immediately. His remark struck her as extremely funny. She had to sit down. Laughing, she put her arm out and sat back heavily on her clothes, sending Kamir scrambling. As any cat, he scooted clear with both a look of annoyance and one that said ‘I meant to do that anyway.’ Kamir contented himself with edging nearer to the demon.

She let her own laughter die away, dabbing at her face with the towel she pulled from the pile of her belongings.

“And water ... and the air too.” Cerra felt herself momentarily swimming again, equating the sensation to flying. “It must be so beautiful up there.”

The demon heard her words and in them a ringing began as ‘the air’ started to reverberate in his mind. He thought of the freedom, the loss of time. ‘Air … Air’ continued to resonate, pulling him into its embrace. He tried to hold the form he had learned, but the clays of the earth began shedding as the irresistible calling pulled at the demon. He felt torn, the lures of heaven and earth fighting even as the ether drew him up and his mind began embracing the essence. He felt himself reach out to the woman even as it .

Cerra saw the man dissipating in her vision, the smiles of moments ago turning to confusion as he began pulling away. The demon, dissolving like a gas, in a sudden gesture reached out an arm. Cerra felt like she had to grab him to keep him from falling, and reached out only to miss the disintegrating form. She felt the air around her pull into the forming vortex.

“Don’t go!” she cried, but it was too late. The light of the demon was coiling away from her sight. The colored sense of him spread away like a swarm of bees caught in the winds. The moment came when the land around was still, but Cerra didn’t notice. Her world was black once more. She lay back on the stone. She felt like crying.