The White Lady - Volume 8

The White Lady : Volume 8

The shopkeepers moving through the Artisan's District on their way to open their shops and the craftsmen going to work in the morning and coming back home of an evening have learned, since the days of the Occupation, to avoid a particular well near Ridan's wagon. Even old Ridan himself stands a bit further away from its mouth to avoid catching just the right breeze. A peculiar smell wafts up from the well now, something acidic and repellent, and no one has been much bothered to explore its cause. There has just been too much that is of more importance.

If they had bothered, though, perhaps they would have seen claw marks upon the stone....

During the siege of Elysia the casualties of battle were laying thick in the streets, human, elf, fey and shaahesk alike. Among the countless numbers of injured and fallen that day was a young slashling named Thrys'sth. Thrys'sth had been a shining up and comer in her Clan and was assigned to one of the Voivoide's War Bands in recognition of her efforts. She had grappled for position in the Band in training exercises but had grown inexplicably weak at a crucial time, totally baffling her and delighting her opponents. As a result she had been reassigned to the Artisan's District for the siege. She fought zealously but another bout of inexplicable weakness grasped her and she was felled by the thrusting point of a defender's sword.

Grievously injured, somehow Thrys'sth managed to drag herself along the cobblestones and away from the heated heart of the fight. She pulled herself up into a semi-standing position by bracing herself against the well but, suddenly overcome with dizziness, she slumped over and began to fall in. Despite all her desperate attempts to scrabble at the stone with her claws for purchase the disoriented and painwracked shaahesk tumbled headfirst into the mouth of the well and blacked out.

When she came to she had no idea how long she had laid there. She was bleeding from a half dozen wounds in a half dozen places, the sword wounds compounded with those of the fall. The dying shaahesk soon sunk into a semi-comatose stupor of agony and thirst. When her guts began seizing and cramping and her body released a clutch of leathery but slightly smaller than normal eggs she could only moan weakly, barely even roused to consciousness by the additional pain the laying caused her. With sluggishly painful movements borne of pure instinct Thrys'sth managed to pull herself into a half-coiled ball around her eggs before finally breathing her last.

Weeks passed and a smell began to seep up into the Artisan District. The adults stayed clear of it, refused to drink from it, and warned their children never to go near what they began calling the "poisoned well." The children at first obeyed, avoiding the well like their parents told them to, until late one evening when a few of the children were laughing and playing a crude form of baseball with a stick bat and a stitched up ball stuffed with cornhusks. One lucky hit and a wobbly fly ball popped up into the air and dropped like a rock straight into the well.

That started it. It took a few more months for the adults working in the District to realize that their children's laughs would sometimes echo strangely and at other times would stop completely. Every once in a while a child would be spotted carrying a pail and digging in the dirt around the trees with a stick, looking for all the world like they were searching for something. It was all fun and games, the adults thought, and weren't overly concerned even when things like cabbages and carrots and other root vegetables would be missing from their stockpiles. It didn't get serious until one evening when three of the parents couldn't find their children and began a search that ultimately led them down into the sewers, through some small outlying earth-covered passages damp with condensation, and ultimately to the bottom of the stinking well.

There they found their children, dirty and disheveled from climbing out of the smallest of passages connecting the well. The passages around them were covered in drawings of puppets and alcoves were dug that were half-filled with vegetables and ragged blankets. When the adults admonished their children for messing about in the well and building a fort, the strangest thing happened. They noticed their children's faces weren't full of the guilt that would normally be all over their features when confronted with their disobedience. Instead they looked ... calm? Confident? Indeed, it appeared that each young face held a wisdom far beyond their years.

The smallest of the boys used his body to block the passage from prying eyes. The adults gathered there were surprised to hear rustling movements in the passage beyond the young man and demanded some explanation for what was going on near the dangerous well. The boy replied in a quiet tone, "The White Lady showed us how to get here and said that we had jobs to do and that we have to be mommies and daddies. She said we had to keep them warm, and feed them, and teach them hope and how to be happy, and play with them, and show them ghost puppets on the walls. The White Lady said..."

But the rest of his words were cut off by the adults lifting him aside and peering into the passage. In the gloom they could see three small forms huddled together under a blanket, eating a half head of cabbage and what looked like wriggling worms. All three heads swiveled to look at the doorway and all three hissed simultaneously, sibilantly, a barely understandable but obvious smiling "Hello".

The boy pushed toward the front of the adults as quickly as he was able. "Don't hurt them!" he said stridently. "They're our responsibility. The White Lady said that if we do good then we can show that hope isn't something that springs from nowhere, it's a well that you draw from."