Undying Witch Read online

  Contents

  Undying Witch

  Dedication

  B. Austin

  Prologue

  Part 1

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Part 2

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  An Afterword from the Author

  About the Author B. Austin

  Other Books by Belinda

  Social Media Links

  Undying Witch

  B. Austin

  Undying Witch Copyright © 2019 by Belinda A. Garcia.

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  I will live forever. If there was a way that I could make you, my daughter, live longer than a human, I would. I do not want to be alone again.

  —B. AUSTIN

  B. Austin

  Visit my website at AuthorBelinda.com

  Prologue

  FIVE-YEAR-OLD MEDEA HAD NEVER PLAYED JACKS WITH A BLUE-HAIRED, GREEN-SKINNED GIRL BEFORE. The other children who popped into her house to play were blonde, brown-haired, black-haired, or red headed. One girl even had green hair.

  “I win,” Medea yelled and threw her jacks in the air.

  “That’s because I let you win—again,” the girl growled and narrowed her eyes at Medea.

  “Again? I’ve never seen you before,” Medea insisted.

  Ah, the blue-haired girl licked her arm like a cat. Mommy was always licking herself like a cat.

  “It’s almost time for the masquerade party at the Blind Rat,” the girl said. “I need to get ready. Shall I go as my real self, Medea?”

  The little girl blinked her eyes.

  Her playmate clutched a rock and spun slowly.

  With each spin, the girl grew taller and older.

  Finally, the girl quit spinning and, in her place, stood an old lady more than a century old. Sparse white hair stuck up from her head. She had pale, wrinkly skin and missing teeth. She was a tad crooked and hunched over. She leaned on a cane and wiped the spittle from her mouth with shaky, arthritic fingers.

  “Mommy,” the little girl said.

  “I told you not to call me that, Medea,” she spit out.

  The ancient woman spun and this time with each spin she grew younger and shapely. In her place now stood a beautiful young woman with dark hair to the middle of her back. “Shall I go to the Halloween party as the woman I pretend to be?”

  Medea looked at her mother, confused. Mommy had turned into Dima, the woman everyone thought was her teenaged sister.

  Dima pointed a finger at her daughter. “If you were not such a bad little girl, the neighborhood children would invite you to a party, or ask you to go trick or treating.”

  Medea’s chin trembled. She must not cry in front of Mommy, uh, Dima, uh whoever she was at any given moment. Dima liked surprises, but not tears.

  “Well, I suppose we must be festive. It is Halloween.” Dima flashed her fingers at a dragonfly and the insect turned into a small bat.

  She whistled and a spider wound its way down from the ceiling.

  Dima set her shapeshifting stone down on the floor beside Medea. The rock was about the size of Dima’s fist and had three holes which sort of looked like two eyes and a mouth. “It’s Halloween. Give the child some holiday spirit,” she said to the rock.

  The stone turned into a smiling, large, carved pumpkin, only this pumpkin had a glowing aura about it. Lights flowed from the eyes, nose, and mouth.

  “Watch her,” Dima growled, “I’m going out.”

  Seventeen cats encircled the five-year old girl and the pumpkin. The cats hissed at Medea’s every move.

  Dima closed the door behind her.

  The mouth of the pumpkin turned down and the eyes glowed meanly.

  Medea laughed, thinking that the pumpkin was playing with her.

  The pumpkin shifted into a black cat of stone with an arched back.

  Medea touched the stone cat and screamed. The rock had burned her. Smoke hissed from the stone. The rock was, after all, volcanic.

  Medea yanked her head back from the spider’s pinchers.

  The bat circled Medea’s head and landed on her shoulder, sucking some blood from her neck. The sting hurt slightly more than a mosquito bite, yet Medea overreacted with gobs of tears. The child did not cry because a small bat bit her, or a shapeshifting stone burned her, or a couple of cats were clawing her leg.

  The little girl hiccupped some tears. She thought, other kids won’t play with me because Mommy is a witch, and they fear Dima.

  The child was wrong. In truth, the sight of Medea scared the other children. The girl had different colored eyes, a sign that she, too, was a witch.

  Part 1

  Six Years Earlier

  Chapter 1

  THE GYPSY DIMA STAGGERED UNDER THE WEIGHT OF FOUR MEDIEVAL BOOKS OF MAGIC PRESSED AGAINST HER SAGGING BOSOM. The book on top had a swirling, white, glowing amulet on the cover. The monks labeled this book Conjuring Magic. The gypsies who raised her swore that in the Starostavne Books of Magical Spells and Enchantments was the secret to immortality on earth. At every village and town their nomadic life led them, her gypsy family questioned everyone about the Starostavne Magic Books. Now, at the age of 97, Dima had found the books hidden at the Nevsky Monastery.

  A monk recognized the ancient, peasant woman hobbling in the cemetery. Dima had the gift of hydromancy and told fortunes by reading bodily fluids. She earlier predicted his death when he urinated on her shoes. “The witch has stolen the books of magic!” he yelled at his brother monks.

  Dima snarled at the monks, “The magic is mine now. My inheritance. Mine.”

  “Get the hag!”

  The monks ran towards her picking up whatever weapon they could find, mostly rocks.

  Dima never thought that she would be grateful to see the Cheka, the Bolshevik security force. Ever since Lenin and his red army won the Russian Revolution, the Cheka had been pillaging monasteries. The monks were now too busy fighting for their own lives to worry about the Starostavne Books of Magic.

  Dima was not in the line of fire of the secret police but still her heart raced as she dodged the sound of bullets. I should have been Tsar instead of that stupid idiot the Bolsheviks toppled from the throne. She was a Romanov, daughter of a bastard daughter of Catherine the Great, once Empress of all the Russias until her death 121 years ago. The safest place for any Romanov right now was any place but Russia. The boat on the Neva Riva at this time of day must be fate.

  She dragged a trunk from behind the bushes and swatted two cats
from the top. She opened the lid and dropped the books into the trunk.

  The books floated to the bottom of the trunk with a book labeled Natural Magic on top. This book had a talisman on the cover in the shape of a chemist flask. A tree with gold leaves grew from inside the flask. Fog rising from the flask obscured the miniature tree.

  She slammed the lid shut and locked the trunk.

  Lights glowed from the keyhole of the trunk and tiny circles of fog rose through the keyhole, appearing as if a tiny creature was smoking in the trunk.

  The two cats that had been playing on her trunk followed Dima, rubbing their faces against her legs.

  As she dragged the trunk towards the Neva River, Dima’s gift of touching objects came into play or perhaps the ghost dragging a phantom trunk beside her was from the book of conjuring magic in the trunk. Oh, Dima had seen this woman in her nightmares. She was the midwife who had delivered Dima. The muffled sound of a crying infant came from inside the ghostly trunk.

  Dima’s heart rose to her throat as she struggled to breathe, feeling once again as if she was a tiny baby trapped inside the trunk, the lid slammed by the midwife at the order of Dima’s father.

  The midwife muttered, “It’s not my fault that the child is born damaged. Her parents should still pay me for delivering the brat. Lord knows, they are rich enough.”

  The midwife stopped at the banks of the Neva River. She threw open the lid of the trunk.

  The baby wiggled its head out of the amniotic sac. Earlier at birth, the infant appeared monstrous with dark hair plastered to the head by bloody liquid and the face smashed up against the wall of the clear amniotic sac, which had failed to break at birth. Now, the newborn appeared like an angry butterfly emerging from a cocoon.

  “I will pretend that you are not an ill-tempered thing. It is the sunlight that hurts your eyes,” the midwife snarled at the infant. “Do not bother to look around. You are not for this world, child. No one wants a baby born en-caul, a child who will grow up to be a witch. You resemble a caterpillar in a cocoon of amniotic fluid. You may look a bit human now, but your parents told me to drown you.”

  The midwife picked up the baby and threw the infant Dima into the Neva River.

  There was a big splash and the phantom trunk and midwife vanished.

  The old Dima now felt herself sinking to the bottom of the river.

  Each cat clawed at a leg, bringing Dima out of her gift, which was sometimes a curse, of seeing the past simply by touching an object. She coughed as if she was spitting up water from her lungs.

  A ship bobbed on the river. A sailor was closing the ramp to board the ship.

  “Wait for us!” she yelled in a hoarse voice.

  The attendant waved the back of his hand at her, shooing her away. “We are full,” he hollered. “Make a reservation.”

  “Let me see the manifest. Perhaps you misspelled my name.”

  He lowered the ramp back down and walked to where Dima stood.

  She pulled a flashlight from her purse and aimed it at the ship’s manifest. He did not notice that the light was green instead of the usual white. “Look for the name of Dima Romanov,” she ordered.

  “Oh, I see you do have a large cabin reserved in your name,” he said. He eyed her shoes full of holes. “You are a Romanov?”

  “We can’t help our relations.” She pointed to a silver-red emblem of Catherine the Great that decorated her trunk.

  Well, the fortunes of the Romanovs had tumbled from royalty to imprisonment since the Bolsheviks took control of Russia. Dima’s appearance was anything but royal. She looked like the witch she was fated to be at birth because she was born en-caul, which meant that the birth sac did not break when she was born. The locks of her white tresses were thin, dry, and brittle.

  “My dressing like a beggarly crone is a disguise,” she said. “My distant cousin, Tsar Nicholas, has been imprisoned.”

  He grabbed the handle and dragged the trunk onto the ship.

  The cats followed.

  “You’ll have to buy a third-class ticket for each of your cats,” he said.

  “I have a pearl to pay,” she said.

  “You cats will travel first class then in your cabin. You must buy two more first-class tickets, one for each cat.”

  “Agreed,” she said, but Dima seethed inside at the exorbitant price of passage for two cats. Being a Romanov had always been a curse for her.

  She grabbed a pearl from her pocket and handed it to the attendant.

  The man examined the pearl carefully. “This pearl is of extraordinary quality,” he said.

  “The pearl is oriental and only the best for my grandmother, once Empress of all the Russians.” She sighed deeply. “We are all the same now in Russia. There is no more royalty.” She smacked her lips with satisfaction. Deep down, Dima was glad that the mighty Romanovs, who rejected her, had fallen. “Where exactly is the ship headed?”

  “This vessel is leaving Russia. The Neva River opens up to the Baltic sea and the Gulf of Finland.”

  “Even better,” she said.

  “Gdańsk, Poland is as far as we dare go. The war is still going on in Germany.”

  Dragging her trunk, he led her to the first-class cabins. “Your trunk is light,” he noted.

  “I am but a poor gypsy now,” she added, in case he thought she had more pearls.

  He unlocked a door to a stateroom and surprised the occupant. The attendant grabbed the man by the ear and pushed him out into the hallway. “Stow away!” the attendant hollered.

  While Dima threw the man’s things from his cabin, now her cabin, the passenger protested that he had paid first-class passage. He gave the attendant his name. The attendant scanned the manifest, but his name was missing as a paid passenger.

  “This man snuck onto the ship,” the attendant told another employee. Throw him and his things off the ship so we can get underway.”

  The legitimate passenger was still protesting when Dima gently closed the door to the cabin that was now hers.

  Dima clicked open the clasp of an amulet that hung from around her neck. She peeked inside the golden dragon. If the captain of this ship knew what she had stored inside this talisman, he would return her pearl and let her sail on the ship for free. The dried birth sac of an infant born en-caul protected a ship from sinking. Being born en-caul in the amniotic sac, also, meant that the baby was fated to be a witch.

  Dima snapped the golden dragon closed. The contents of her birth sac should have made her feel safe on the river, but the rolling of the boat on the water made her heart ache. Her parents had her thrown into the Neva River to drown. It seemed as if every wave that sloshed against the ship sang out, “Unwanted.”

  Both cats jumped on Dima’s lap. One cat patted her right cheek with its paw. The other cat patted her left cheek.

  A tear rolled down her withered cheek.

  Dima wiped the tear with a gnarled hand.

  Chapter 2

  DIMA LAY ON THE CABIN BED WITH A CAT SLUNG UNDER EACH ARM AND FLIPPED OPEN A BOOK WHICH HAD AN ORNAMENT ON THE COVER OF A GLOWING KEY. She studied the Key of Solomon, one of the Starostavne Books. This book of spells was one of many Medieval books of magic attributed to King Solomon of the Old Testament of the Bible. This was not the original book of magic written in Hebrew but a book some ancient Russian monks copied. The word, Starostavne, meant written a long time ago. The Starostavne Books were all written on Medieval paper called parchment made from animal skins. Gold-leaf letters and silver paint illuminated the book. The text and pictures glowed with gold and silver colors.

  After about 20 minutes, Dima staggered to her feet. Bah! The Key of Solomon consisted of two books and the Starostavne Books of Magic had but one of the books of Solomon. The book in Dima’s possession had many powerful spells, such as how to become invisible. However, there was no spell in the book that would keep a person from ever dying.

  Finally, the ship docked at Gdańsk, Poland. Dima dragged the trunk behi
nd her, the cats riding on top like princes. She was glad the cats were boys. Given that she was once a semi-famous woman-for hire, Dima never did like female competition.

  She used another Catherine-the-Great pearl to purchase a train ticket to Prague of the newly formed Czechoslovak Republic. A pearl for a train ticket seemed extravagant but the ticket included a private car for her journey to Warsaw, called a roomette, and the trip included all her meals.

  By the time she wobbled off the train in Warsaw and boarded a train to Prague, the magic books had revealed to Dima her destination. On her journey, she did not discover the secret to immortality in the Starostavne Books of Magic. However, Dima believed she found a loophole in the volume that had a picture of the Russian Tree of Life on it.

  In the first-class dining room, appalled eyes stared as Dima sloppily ate. Apparently, few of the snobs had witnessed a nervous old lady gumming her foo. Dima moaned to herself, “What if I should die before I get there? My stomach hurts. My head aches. My legs are giving out. My heart beats too fast. My brain overfills with dreams of being young.”

  When the train pulled into the Prague station the next morning, Dima felt better after she wolfed down a large breakfast.

  With hands shaking with old age, Dima purchased a train ticket to Florence, Italy which cost her the grand sum of 2 pearls, because she was traveling through 3 countries, Poland, Austria, and then into Italy

  I am not sure how much longer I can hold on, Dima thought. She grimaced at the cats, wishing that she had nine lives like Vodka and Gypsy.