Undying Witch Read online

  Well, the three Italian cities of Florence, Rome and Naples were all medieval and Dima felt that she was on the right track to living forever, if she survived the journey.

  Chapter 3

  SURELY, DIMA HAD COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE IN HER SEARCH FOR IMMORTALITY—POMPEII, A PLACE WHERE THE DEAD DID NOT DECAY BUT WHERE VOLCANIC ASH AND PUMICE PRESERVED THE CORPSES FOR ETERNITY. She walked with rasping breath to a Circumvesuviana train that would take her to the ruins of Pompeii, a city destroyed in 79 A.D. when Mount Vesuvius erupted, burying everyone in its path with volcanic ash 20-feet high. Volcanoes also meant life—Volcanoes gave birth to islands and mountains.

  “Iceland was created by a volcanic eruption,” Dima mumbled. “I am going to the right place.” She was at the end of her journey. “Beginning,” she muttered, “My life is beginning.”

  The sea had been rough and the trains bumpy, and Dima aging with each wave, and jolt, yet she managed to read the books in which she studied magical spells, astrology, magical rituals, divination rituals, and odd prayers.

  Dima must act in secret. Her main obstacle was finding privacy because Pompeii was quite an attraction and brimming with tourists anxious to explore an excavated, ancient city preserved by volcanic ash.

  Dima hired a tour guide named Fabio to pull her trunk from the train station to the ruins of Pompeii. The man pulled the trunk with Dima on it. She hugged the trunk while he dragged her and it towards the ruins.

  They entered Pompeii through an arched tunnel which led to a cobblestoned, narrow street.

  Gypsy and Vodka led the way, meowing loudly.

  It appeared as if time froze Pompeii. The eruption left the victims preserved in the exact shape of their final moments before the volcano smothered them. Dima vowed to conquer death or die here among the dug-up ruins.

  Three stray cats ran out from the ruins of the Temple of Venus.

  At each tourist site, three cats ran out and marched alongside Vodka and Gypsy, who it seemed were summoning other cats with their meows.

  Dima knew the significance of three cats running out of each ancient ruin as they passed. Three was the most magical number in Numerology.

  Dima and her retinue were a site to behold. She was an old Russian lady hugging a trunk. A young, handsome Italian man dragged the trunk. Seventeen cats of various breeds and colors walked in front with their heads held high and their tails wagging.

  The cats stopped at the ruins of The House of the Tragic Poet.

  Dima eyed the cats going into the house. The cats had not entered any of the other sites. “Before you leave me here, what do those words mean?” She pointed to a white mosaic on the floor of a black, growling dog near the right narrow entrance. The only color on the mosaic was a red dog collar. The words cave canem were black letter tiles in the mosaic.

  He laughed. “Beware of the dog. The mosaic animal does look fierce with its teeth bared.” The black and white mosaic was part of the flooring of a long narrow entry hall, with the dog decorating the beginning of the walk way.

  Dima wrinkled her nose at a dog in the corner preserved in calcified ash. The legs were up and the body twisted. Odd, but the dog expressed the horror of the erupting volcano more than any of the preserved humans she had seen.

  Dima searched her skirt pocket for a few rubles and dropped them into the guide’s hand as a tip.

  He turned his back on her and walked briskly away from the House of the Tragic Poet.

  “Well, what sort of tip did he expect? Italian lira?”

  The cats blinked their eyes back at Dima who sat on the trunk with her legs crossed.

  “Well, get to work and clear out the tragic house,” she ordered.

  The 17 cats meowed in unison. The cats split into two groups. The group led by Vodka took the right entrance and the other group, led by Gypsy, took the wider and shorter left entrance into the House of the Tragic Poet. The cats went from room to room biting and scratching at tourists and chasing them from the house. There were 16 rooms in all so it took a while to clear everyone out.

  Chapter 4

  DIMA BELIEVED THAT SHE WOULD HAVE LUCK IN CONCOCTING A MAGICAL SPELL OF ETERNAL LIFE IF SHE STOOD BENEATH THE IMAGE OF SLEEP. On the south wall of the atrium was a fresco depicting the wedding of two Roman gods, Hera, and Zeus. Dima was interested in the third god in the panel, Hypnos, who was Sleep, brother of Thanatos, also known as Death.

  She opened the Tree of Life Magic and Time Spells book to a page that had a fir-tree leaf as a marker. She cut the leaf from a tree at the Rome train station. To Russians, the fir tree represented eternity of life and connected the living with the dead.

  She muttered a magical spell from the book.

  She felt nothing.

  She recited other spells and incantations.

  She flipped through the pages of the book, trying different spells.

  Dima grabbed at the pages with rage, wrinkling the parchment.

  She screamed with pain from her aching hands. Her bones were stuck in a twisted fashion.

  Her legs grew numb.

  Dima staggered and fell.

  She sat on her bony butt, thinking she might have broken her ass. She sobbed softly, tears drowning her chest and choking her.

  She hugged the magic book to her chest, dreaming of living forever.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, and willed herself to be young again.

  Her heartbeat was slowing down, echoing from the walls, taking her outside of her body.

  She grasped at the floor with twisted, arthritic hands.

  She clung to life, swallowing her last breaths.

  The effort to breathe was exhausting. She could not move and lay like a Bavarian pretzel. She must have broken her brittle bones when she fell.

  Her end had come. She must be dying.

  The gypsies instilled in me a lust for eternal life. For decades we searched for the key to immortality on earth. Look at me now, dying on a broken floor that is thousands of years old. Volcanic dust is seeping into my cracked skin. There is not even ash here to preserve me and I will soon turn to dust.

  Even so, Dima had no regrets for traveling to Pompeii. She would die surrounded by frescoes on the walls depicting mythological gods. What better company for a granddaughter of Catherine the Great?

  Across the way was a fresco of Achilles, a man with a weakness in his heel. Dima had her own Achilles heel, but her weakness was of the heart. She had a soft spot for beautiful men, which was a fatal disease for a poor, old woman. What Dima regretted most about her wasted life was that she had never found a man to truly love.

  Her heart was slowing.

  She should have had the foresight to pay for a decent burial in Naples. Her pearls would have paid for a magnificent tomb.

  As befitting a Romanov, she would place on her head a tiara for dying.

  Dima wobbled on her feet and reached down into her trunk, pulling out a rusted tiara with little sparkle. One of the times she had broken into the Winter Palace to claim her inheritance, the guards had crowned her with this fake-diamond tiara. They had carried her on their shoulders, declaring her royal. Then they had thrown her from the palace grounds where she landed outside the gates in disgrace. She had even broken her elbow. By then she was 60-years-old, nearly half a century ago.

  Her breath was now so shallow that her lungs caved in and barely moved. Dima was about to expire and her light extinguished forever. Indeed, the room was darkening.

  The Tree of Life book slammed shut.

  It must be the wind. The chill of death is in the air, she thought.

  The book had a circular silver talisman with a tree in the center. From the roots of the tree grew the heads of a Russian woman and a helmeted, bearded man. The Russian faces on the cover now glowed.

  It is simply the sun ricocheting off the wall, she thought.

  There was a whistling sound coming from the House of the Tragic Poet.

  “Leave me in peace, wind. Let me die. I have failed,” sh
e mumbled.

  The whistling changed to a song, the tune to Dance of the Russian Sailors, Dima’s favorite.

  She rose to her knees and very carefully, hanging onto a wall, stood to her shaky feet.

  She stepped carefully on cracked mosaic, cursing because she had left her cane behind.

  Hanging onto the wall for balance, Dima left the atrium, trying to pinpoint exactly where the whistling was coming from.

  There was the noise again, a whistling, followed by a cough.

  The sounds were coming from the entrance.

  Dima walked across the long narrow entrance, hanging onto the walls.

  There was a raspy breathing racket coming from the mosaic dog, which was particularly odd since the dog was a part of the floor and thus, flat.

  She dropped to her knees and brought her ear closer to the tiles.

  She jerked her head back. The dog was growling!

  She gasped. The dog had snapped at her!

  She narrowed her eyes at the dog. The teeth had not moved.

  Dima may have been old and dying, but she still had sharp eyes. The dog’s head was trembling.

  She pushed her face closer to the mosaic dog’s face.

  There was a coughing sound and the black eye of the dog shook.

  The hair rose on her back because the eye of the mosaic dog was watching her.

  Once more, there was a coughing sound and this time a bit of smoke rose from the eye.

  “Come out of hiding. I won’t hurt you,” she said. Dima assumed she was talking to a volcanic rock that appeared to be flat and pretending to be the mosaic-dog’s eye, which seemed crazy. However, the idea of an entire Roman city preserved by a volcano eruption in 79 A.D. seemed like a nutty idea.

  “I heard you cough,” she added.

  The rock poked out of the mosaic-dog’s eye, stretching in all directions until it was about the size of her fist. The rock looked as if someone had punched eyes into it, and then formed the bridge of a nose with pug-dog nostrils. The rock was an ugly thing resembling a pile of feces. It had a tiny circle for a mouth. She supposed the hole was where the whistling had come from. The wind perhaps?

  But how did the rock grow just now?

  The rock glowed slightly pink and pursed its lips, uh, its hole, and made the whistling sound again.

  She approached the rock, holding her hand out as if to a dog that might bite her.

  The rock glowed a fiery red in color.

  Dima could feel the heat coming from the rock.

  She gasped. The rock was pulling her ring towards it. She yanked back her hand and said, “My, but aren’t you a pretty thing, and with such a magnetic personality. I have always admired the beauty in volcanoes.”

  The rock was molten and so fluid in nature. The rock slowly winked at her with its melting face.

  Suddenly, Vodka ran into the room, hissing.

  Astonishingly, the rock transformed into a stone black cat.

  “Leave. Get out,” she yelled at Vodka.

  Her cat ran from the entry hall with its tail between its legs

  She sighed down at the stone cat. “You can quit hiding now. The real cat is gone. No one will hurt you so long as I am here,” she said with a hoarse voice. As long as I am here? How much longer do I have? A day? An Hour?

  The stone cat melted back into rock form. Its expression was now friendly. In fact, the rock appeared to be smiling at her.

  Slowly, Dima reached for the rock. “I’m old,” she said, “If you wish to burn me, so be it.”

  Quick, she snatched the rock in triumph.

  The rock purred beneath her hand.

  Well, she would not die alone after all. Dima had a pet rock to keep her company.

  Dima clutched the rock, spinning like a young woman. She would die remembering herself dancing in St. Petersburg Square.

  She closed her eyes, clenching the volcanic rock, feeling the stone shudder beneath her touch.

  She saw herself once more, with lush hair brushing her ankles. On a warm day, she would dance naked in the allies, her hair covering her breasts like Lady Godiva. She would twirl, slapping the men’s faces with her golden locks and driving them wild. “Those were the good days.”

  Dima would die singing. She sang out loud the song Those Were the Days composed by Boris Fomin. The song was about remembered youth and romantic ideals.

  She was getting dizzy and feared falling. She did not want to die in pain with broken bones.

  Dima stopped spinning. What the…? How could this…be?

  Are these my hands, smooth and young with no wrinkles?

  Her legs were smooth, shapely, and tall.

  Her back was straight and her breasts…ooh-la-la, could she attract the men with these twin firm beauties!

  There was no sagging under her arms.

  She shoved her hands under her buttocks and squeezed. Her Butt was hard as a rock.

  She patted a hand under her chin which was no longer almost touching her chest but was firm.

  Dima ran out of the House of the Tragic Poet with the volcanic rock, no make that shape-shifting rock, clutched in her hand. The ruins were especially eerie because the site closed at five o-clock. All the tourists were gone.

  Old Pompeii was a tourist attraction and so there were hotels, restaurants, and shops close by in new Pompeii. What they said about Italian men was true. As Dima walked, shaking her hips, the men whistled, some even following behind her. Dima smirked. She could hardly wait to get to a mirror.

  She walked briskly into a hotel, ran to the bathroom, and yelled with joy.

  Looking back at her from the mirror was the face of Dima, the young woman, about 18 years old. Her hair was golden and luscious, her lips full and kissable, her skin smooth and moist.

  She raised her hands and yelled with joy. Dima, kissed the rock and whispered, “I shall name you Pompeii for you have the gift of freezing me in time.”

  She shoved Pompeii in her pocket, stuffing the rock in snotty tissue. Well, the rock did have an arrogant look to it. The conceited stone seemed to believe that it was a rather dashing rock.

  She scurried back to the House of The Tragic Poet, relieved that the Starostavne Books of Magic were still there. The books were in a room beneath a fresco depicting the four seasons as young women. Well, Dima was no longer winter; she was summer. Thanks to the shapeshifting volcanic rock, she now had the heart, liver, and other organs of a teenager. Dima could now live forever. She had plenty of time to study the magic books.

  Dima rubbed her hands across the books which sizzled beneath her touch. With the magic in these books and the shapeshifting stone, she could crawl from the sewer of mediocre fortune telling and become genuine.

  Chapter 5

  AWAITER OFFERED DIMA A LIQUEUR KNOWN AS THE WITCH, NAMED STREGA. Stregheria was an old Italian word for witchcraft. Dima was eating supper at the best restaurant in the new city of Pompeii.

  She eavesdropped on a conversation at the next table. The couple were talking about a coven of witches in Benevento.

  “They are called the Walnut Witches,” the man said.

  The woman gasped. “They are the ones with the famous walnut tree of Benevento.”

  “They say the tree appears only on the nights when the magic folk have their sabbaths and that witches and wizards from all over the world gather there.”

  Dima called the waiter over and asked for the check.

  When he handed the check to her, she sneezed violently and turned into her 97-year-old self.

  The waiter dropped the check in her left-over soup. His face was white.

  She patted her balding head and smiled with the few teeth she now had in her mouth. “What?! You’ve never seen allergies before?”

  Dima finished her dinner in the first-class dining room, glaring at all the snobs who turned up their noses at her ragged clothing. On purpose, she ate with her fingers, chewing noisily with her gums.

  She grabbed the half-empty bottle of Strega.
/>
  The waiter had fainted and Dima stepped over him.

  She hobbled towards the restaurant exit.

  She could feel eyes drilling into her back.

  Dima walked through the exit, spun, and raised her middle finger in the air, flipping off the diners and restaurant staff.

  Dima took the bottle of Strega back to her room.

  “Sonofabitch,” she snarled at Pompeii and slammed the bottle on the end table. “I sneeze and shift back into myself. Is this a joke?”

  The volcanic rock hissed at her, smoke rising from the holes.

  The liqueur had a sweet taste and she poured glass after glass, attempting to drown her sorrows of premature shifting.

  Earlier in the day, Dima had crawled into bed with a couple of young Italian men, not both at the same time, and for free. She had her pearls and Dima vowed with this second chance that she would not return to her previous, younger life. Dima was older and wiser now. Besides, the fun went out of paid whoring when Russia made prostitution legal, thereby flooding the market with about 30,000 prostitutes just in Moscow.

  Dima had her pride. As a Romanov of royal blood, she needed to find a classier line of employment. She did not know yet what that career was. True, she had books of magic, but she preferred to do that type of work under the cover of darkness. Witches really were the inventors of moonlighting.

  “Ignore the cats,” she had said to the third young man she picked up on the street. This one was a Greek tourist.

  The 17 cats sat on the floor watching Dima wrestle on the bed with the man. They were both ripping the clothes from each other. This man was rather pretty, which excited Dima. The other two were an act of desperation on her part but Dima thought she might keep this one around for a while, especially since he had so much stamina. This was their second time in an hour.

  They were both scratching and biting playfully.

  Mm, she might lick this one to death. Thank goodness the shapeshifting stone had given her a young heart.

  Dima slid under the man and he thrust into her.

  She lay on the bed with firm legs spread wide, the headboard banging against the wall and her just about to orgasm.