One Hundred Word Count Story x 10—House of Ringle

 

 

 

 

Dear Readers,

The Daughter is home from Korea for a few days, hence a little something extra. I will check back in with you on Monday.

Be blessed and be the blessing!

CES

House of Ringle

The circle laughed.

“Of course we succeeded,” came the amusement of many voices. “Our daughter Gael is the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter.”

“Wh-what?” Gael stuttered. “I have sisters?” She was now more transfixed with this piece of information than she was with the dancing lights. “I have six sisters?” was breathed out in an emotional whisper.

“Yes, of course. Engl’s first husband, Cashmere, blessed her with six daughters. When he was killed during the Ancient Blood Times, she went into recluse. Content to raise her children and teach them until she had nothing left to offer them but her love. They elected to live out their lives on Earth.

Rowan found Engl living on the outskirts of the Old Ones’ village. He knew of the House of Ringle. Witches who achieved their fortunes by divining the unknown and capturing the riches of those they thought less in power. Descended from the ancients, and master of the old ones’ portals, they feasted on their bones and could do no wrong. Rowan wanted such a mate for himself.”

“My mother was not like that,” Gael stepped closer. Her eyes slits, furious that anyone should speak of her mother in such a manner!

“Of course she was not, child,” an elderly voice kindly replied. “None of us were. We all wished for nothing more than screaming orgasms, to taste love, and to achieve the Crone stage of our lives without being burned, beaten to death, or beheaded. All to often before our Crone age arrived, we were burned, beaten, and beheaded. And all of us could have used more screaming orgasms.” You could hear the shrug of the shoulders. “Oh well…

But we know the truth that there is nothing to fear. Death is just another door. We open it with welcome for when the starlight speaks to us, we wish to hear it tell us which beam of light is ours, the path that is ours alone to take home.”

A younger voice picked up the thread. “Rowan’s grandfather began the stories about us and we could not control them, so we let them float on the waves of the universe and wash to shore with what was left of our ravaged and picked over bones.

Engl was the last sacrifice needed to set the ley lines for you to walk.”

Gael was shaking her head. Concentrating. Trying to understand. “The ancient path is there for any who know how to walk it. From mountain point to mountain point. The trek of the sun. A straight line is for any who can see it. Nobles have walked these paths since time began. Their ley lines are rutted. Your enemies can certainly track you on those paths.”

“Not these lines,” came the sure voice. “The House of Ringle has laid these lines with our blood, agony, and ashes. These paths are the one place you cannot be tracked.

Snowfall is needed to activate it. A storm is on its way, courtesy of the rapist, Roland.”

“And the Old Ones want to be fed,” she heard her mother’s voice and in an act of love reached out her hand to the woman who had sacrificed herself for her. “Also courtesy of Roland.   Gael, when Aed takes Roland’s life, you may travel with our champion to watch him do this thing, but you may not, daughter, drain his life.”

A chorus of voices echoed, “You may not.”

The warmth that was in the air was gone. The light was fading. Gael searched for an echo of the smallest amount of energy from the stones. Stillness surrounded her.

“Champion?” Aed smirked out loud. “I am a renegade and take great delight in that title.

I will get you home, though,” he took Gael by the arm and walked with her out into the night. “They were right about the snow. It is beginning to fall and the wind…”

They were stuck with such force that Gael was not expecting it and rocked back on her heals. Before she could be lifted off her feet, with a sure hand Aed drew her under his cloak. Instantly the wind that howled around them became less and the warmth that surrounded her, more.   He smelled like a wood fire. There was something hot and smoky about him. That had to be the dragon’s blood that flowed though his veins. Like the licorice tea, his smell made her belly clinch. And that hallowed space between her legs was beginning to ache.

“Roland will be looking to serve you for his White Feast,” Aed was leading her past the grove, the snow covering the ground. “He will come at you, tonight. The howling wind will mask their movements and their sounds. The snow will cover their smell.

We shall have our fun. Roland is in twenty-first century Dublin where he thinks he is safe. I stand with the seventh daughter of a seventh daughter,” he brought her hand to his mouth and kissed it. “Tomorrow will be a good day. A day of victory for us.”

The current that passed through her fired all of her nerves. He had released her hand but had pulled her up under his arm. She could see out of the cloak’s opening at his neck. Shifting so she could see his eyes, within his aura, the sound of the storm abated. “They called you Champion,” she spoke the words. “Does that mean I can trust you?”

“Never,” he laughed, his green eyes sparking under his short-cropped black hair. “It is just a word and means many things beside hero. Time to go.”

It was safest to walk. It took hours and breaking trail was work.

Finally. Home was near. “We’ll sleep here. Closer is not safe.”   Aed took off his cloak and spread it on the ground. When he lay down, she slid in next to him and was enfolded in warmth, her back nestled into him.

“…screaming…creaming…orgasms…!” her mind moaned.