Magda the Mad, Chapter Two, Magda

Here is the first POV chapter I've written for the novel, Magda the Mad, a companion piece to the Books of Belshalara.  This tells the tale of Madgalline, a young noble girl who is plagued with seizures and terrifying visions.  Her parents and doctors decide to have her committed to the new asylum that is being built in the Artisian Quarter.  In order to escape her fate, she makes a deal with a devil.  

Magda

Magdaline drowned in the Gray River. The brackish, cold water filled her nose and mouth. Then her lungs, but it didn't hurt. The river bore her body, free from the bond of flesh, to the distant shore between breath and the infinite mystery of the beyond. Magda tumbled and fell because it wasn't really water. And she wasn't really dead.

It was a familiar place the river brought her to. She could feel the satin brush of raven's wings on her face as she woke in a room with ceilings so high they were swallowed in darkness. It was here and here only that her visions were born. In a world choked by gray, they played out in lurid, brilliant colors. She walked the halls of death and wore mortality as her mourning veil.

Death was another room. A gray place with endless stairs that never lead anywhere. Death was a nothing place. It was here, that angels and demons passed through the thin membrane that separated the dead and the living to whisper lies into the ears of mortals. It was here that things took the shapes of men though they had never been men before. Hungry things made of shadow that fed on fear while all around her crashed the sound of water.

Here, time was fluid and pooled together. Everything that would be and had been bled into one, dizzying blur. Death was the place of the old gods. The strange spirits that could not be appeased with sacrifice or worship. Animal totems. Goddesses of hearth and harvest. Forgotten, ancient things that no longer touched the world with their gifts.

In the great gray forever, luminous eyes watched her. Like the cold unblinking stars, or the circular patterns on moth wings. She wondered what would happen if they looked away. If something else caught their gaze. She was certain all that was would never be again. They could turn their all seeing eyes and everything would be nothing as it been before.

Magda never learned why she was brought here. She was shown things, both beautiful and terrible by gods and monsters and mortal spirits alike. Things that had been and things that were to be. She would wake and rant and weep, but it only alarmed her parents and eventually she kept her feverish visions to herself.

She stood on an empty shore where the wind whistled and moaned. Colorless water lapped at the pale gray sand and the tide rose and fell so quickly that she couldn't look at it without feeling dizzy and ill. Magdaline turned away from the water and before her stood a small man.

Or rather, a thing shaped like a man. It was a creature so black that it absorbed the light around it. It had no eyes or mouth, yet it whispered to her.

“Magdaline. Magda the Mad,” he said in a sing-song voice. “Do you know who we are?”

She shook her head. It was strange. Every movement felt as though she were moving underwater, every limb and muscle weighted down by a force unseen. “I don't know you, spirit,” she said.

“No? Oh, we suppose we're early then. Or too late.”

She turned to look back to the water. Often spirits spoke in nonsense or riddles. She'd learned long ago not to pay them much mind. When Magda turned towards the wildly churning and endless sea, the shadowy man was before her again as though she'd never turned at all.

The thing lunged at her, sinking ethereal fingers into her flesh. His touch was so cold it burned and she tried to scream. Salt water filled her mouth and nose and stung her eyes. The current was so strong. She couldn't fight it. The undertow tore her away from the shadowy spirit and drew her down into a primordial darkness that cradled her. Magda did not drown. She was an infant again, swimming safe inside her mother. The water was thick, viscous and so very warm. The waves rocked her to sleep and when the light broke through the cracks of her eyelids, she was born again.

When Magda woke, a wooden depressor was between her clenched teeth. She'd cracked it, nearly biting through it. She could taste the copper tang of blood as life tingled back into her limbs and skin. It hurt.

Groaning, she tried to spit the splintered wood from her mouth, but she couldn't. A man in silver wire framed spectacles pressed it ever harder between her lips. His face had skin as thin as crepe paper with bulging blue veins at the temples where his cottony white hair thinned. Her doctor. It took her several moments to recognize him. Doctor Tobias Copperworth. A grim little man, she'd never liked him much, but then, Magda never liked her doctors at all.

Her arms curled to her chest and her legs splayed, wildly akimbo. Something hot and wet leaked out of her and she could smell it, the acrid scent of her urine. Finally, her muscles went lax and she was able to breath again. Swallow. Think. The fit had passed.

Magda's sparse body was soaked with sweat and piss. Vomit stained her lovely, mint green frock. A new dress from her mother. It was fuzzy and hard to remember what had happened right before her fit and the frightening, wheeling gray visions. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn't recall.

She made sure to lay still, trying to keep her panicked breathing steady. She met the doctor's gaze and unclenched her teeth. Finally, after a few more moments where he bruised her face from the force of him pressing the wooden rod between her teeth, he relented. Magda choked for breath and spat blood and splinters from her mouth. Her teeth hurt.

Her mother stood over her on the other side of the bed, her angular face pinched with disappointment. She pressed a cool dry hand to Magda's forehead. “Seems the fit has passed, Doctor Copperworth. It's the third one this month.”

The doctor hmm'd and pressed his spectacles up his hooked nose. “My recommendation remains the same, Lady Summerdale.”

Magda looked between her mother and the doctor. She didn't know what his recommendation was, but it was likely unpleasant. The treatments for her fits were always painful and frightening. She 

could feel her pulse start to race. Her mother nodded at the doctor, her brow pinched.

“Of course,” she said. “When do we begin the treatment?”

The doctor smiled. Magda thought it was the same kind of smile a wolf had right before it devoured the sheep. “You'll be pleased to know our new facility opens in two months. Yes, I realize that's quite some time to wait, but I'll be leaving you with a tincture and we can begin some of the treatments in my office in the Artisan Quarter.”

Facility? Magda shook her head and opened her mouth to protest, but one withering look from her mother silenced her. She snapped her mouth shut with a clack of her teeth. The doctor looked down at her like she was an insect trapped in a jar. He took the depressor and tapped on her chin. 

Dutifully, Magda opened her mouth.

He took a brown glass bottle from the breast pocket on his heavily starched, stiff white coat and uncorked it. With a dropper, he drew some of the tincture and placed it on her tongue. The medicine tasted very bitter and made her tongue go numb. She was used to taking unpleasant tasting things and of all the treatments they gave her, medicine was usually the most mild and least painful.

“That's fine,” Lady Summerdale said, moving away from the bed, her posture rigid. “I do hate to have her committed. It's such an embarrassment. And a disappointment. We'll owe the Rosewoods more than an apology, I'll wager.” Her mother's tone dripped with venom and spite.

The Rosewoods. Magda frowned, swallowing down the bitter medicine. Her tongue felt dry and shriveled. She wanted a glass of water, but decided against asking. Wilford Rosewood was the son of Marquis Rosewood of the Merchant Quarter. Her betrothed.

Doctor Copperworth nodded and hmm'd. “Indeed. But such afflictions are not uncommon among nobility.”

“It's going to be a scandal. I'm sure the Bugle will run their typical garbage. They were not kind in the marriage announcement. If you recall,” her mother snapped.

Copperworth didn't say anything, but she could feel the burn of his gaze as he appraised her. Magda closed her eyes. She didn't want to look at either of their faces. Part of her was strangely relieved and overjoyed. She wouldn't have to marry Wilford. He was three years younger than her, only fourteen, 

not even a man. He was a pudgy boy with splotchy red cheeks and thin, watery looking brown hair. 

He was also a dullard and a bore. Tea with him that afternoon...oh no. Tea. She'd had the fit during their tea.

Sudden embarrassment heated her cheeks and her pulse went back to fluttering wildly. Memory flooded back in a wave of humiliation.

“What are you babbling about, Magdalline?”

That's what he'd asked her. She could remember bits and pieces. She told him about the One with Many Voices. It was a demon from Venorith's infernal realm. She told Wilford because she saw him, standing right behind her tubby intended, licking his thin lips, drool sliding off sharp teeth that were as clear and shining as a pane of glass. His skin was black and his eyes were red, and he faded in and out of existence like smoke. Sometimes he looked beautiful, like a painting splashed with water, all running colors. His features were sharp and elvish. But other times, she could see through this glamour. When the illusion flickered, she saw the beast underneath.

“Tell the piglet we're right behind him!” the spirit tittered. “Oh yes, tell him! We do so love to see him squirm and squeal!”

Magda had let her fork drop from her tingling fingers. Her ears began to ring so loudly she couldn't hear what Wilford was saying. Her vision tunneled and sparked. She knew it was coming. She could always feel the fits right before they happened. She might have said something else, but her voice was drowned by the whining drone, the boom of thunder as the seizures stole her away.

She didn't want to remember. Magda saw things before she slipped away. More than that, she felt afraid. Like something chased and hunted her and that she should run. But there wasn't anywhere to hide from spirits, she knew that.

“She terrorized poor Wilford Rosewood. He never wants to see her again. Not that I blame him,” Lady Summerdale said.

Magda flinched, squeezing her eyes shut. She wished they would leave so she could bathe and change her bedding. She wanted to take off her curled, white powdered wig, it was hot and itchy. She wanted out of her dress and corset. Most of all, she wanted to sleep for a hundred years. After her fits she was always so tired, every muscle in her body sore. She'd hurt herself this time too. Her tongue, sore and swollen, kept filling her mouth with blood. I must have bitten it, Magda thought, just letting it pass between her lips to stain her pillow. Drool and blood slicked her cheek, but she didn't care. If she had to swallow anymore blood, she feared she would vomit again.

Her mother made a 'tch' noise and she could hear her pointed shoes click out of the room. The doctor didn't speak to her, he merely fussed with his bag. His papery, dry fingers were at her throat again, feeling for her pulse. It took every ounce of her willpower not to turn her head and bite his finger off. Instead, she sagged into her bed and felt it rock under her while her heart stuttered along. 

She always felt so strange after her fits. This had been a bad one, she could tell. One of her back molars was loose.

Magda was only seventeen, but many of her teeth were chipped or missing. Her mother and father told her that she couldn't have false ones until she learned to control herself. No amount of begging and pleading convinced them that she couldn't help or prevent these fits. They were wholly beyond her control.

A sharp sting at her arm jolted her into opening her eyes. The doctor was injecting her with something. It was thick, like oil and burned in her veins. It hurt, but she didn't dare even whimper. No matter what she did, everyone assumed it was because she was having a fit.

The end of her huge, four poster bed creaked as though weight were settling on it. Magda raised up off the pillow a little to look over the pile of brocade blankets that covered her. There, sitting on the elaborately carved, gilded foot board was Many Voices. He sat on his haunches, boney knees drawn up to his chin. His thin, spindly arms wound around his legs. He smiled at her.

Magda shrank back and squeezed her eyes shut again. She took deep, steady breaths. Easy, she told herself. Relax. Sometimes, if she watched her breathing and rested, she could fend off an attack.

She didn't feel dizzy and her head wasn't swimming. She merely felt sore and tired from the previous episode. The doctor didn't see Many Voices, she was certain of that. He snapped his leather bag shut and left her alone without even a parting word.

The medicine made her feel as though she were floating. She could feel its effects crawling over her skin. It itched, whatever he gave her. Her arms felt as though tiny insects were tickling her with their legs. It wasn't pleasant.

“You don't look so well, Mags,” Many Voices chimed, laughter behind his musical voice.

Slowly, she sat up, propped by her pillows. Magda opened her eyes and there, sitting cross-legged in front of her was Many Voices. He didn't look quite so beastly or terrifying now. His skin was a dusky gray and his eyes were the color of a smoldering furnace. He had sharp features and a broad smile. His teeth were blunt and very white. His hair was undulating smoke and vapor.

“I don't feel so well,” she said, her voice soft and far away sounding. Magda didn't think it was a good idea to talk to the demon, but ignoring him hadn't made him go away. Her eyes cut to the door of her room. He followed her gaze.

“Do you want to know what they're talking about? Your sly and wicked parents?” He cocked a brow at her, his grin ever present.

She shook her head.

“We'll tell you anyway! We can hear them. Making plans. Plotting.”

Magda frowned. “Plotting?”

“Your servitude. Your ruin! We don't think that's very nice, Maggy.” His burning eyes narrowed and his smile was all ill intent and hunger, desire so dark and naked that it turned her stomach.

Swallowing convulsively as her mouth sweat, Magda closed her eyes again. “Go away,” she whispered. “They already think I'm crazy.”

But no matter how many times she told herself he wasn't real or that wishing would make him go away, Many Voices prattled on. “Let them think what they'll think. We're here to help you, Maggy.”

She could feel him drawing closer. She tugged the blankets to her chin and wanted very much to pull them over her head like a child having a night terror. He sat on her chest. Many Voices didn't weight much, she barely felt the pressure of him. But the air was charged, snapping and crackling.

Magda opened her eyes and found his face very close as he leaned over her. “Such sinister plans your nasty parents have.”

“Go. Away,” she insisted more firmly.

He rolled his burning eyes. “Fine, fine! But don't say we didn't warn you, Maggy!”

With a rush of hot wind and a popping sound, he was gone.

Magda sat very still trying to keep her breathing even. Every muscle hurt and she couldn't close her jaw all the way. Sliding out of bed she tried not to think about anything at all. The medicine the doctor had given her helped. She stripped out of her soiled dress and then tugged at her underthings and corset. It was hard to change without someone there to loosen the strings. She could have called on her maid, but she wanted to be left alone. Even the maids treated her as though she were about to fly into wild hysterics at any moment. They regarded her with open, naked suspicion. They wouldn't meet her eye or talk to her. The ache and stab of loneliness was enough to drive her mad if she wasn't already there.

She washed up in the basin. The water was tepid and cold, but it felt good on her sore skin and tensed muscles. Thinking about the demon, she wondered if it were real. She realized she'd never had a vision separate from a fit before. The visions and hallucinations were usually in the throes of the fit itself. Sometimes, she heard a strange ringing in her ears, the sound of distant war horns. A rumbling. Sometimes there were angel's halos around the lights and searing pain in her head, but she'd never seen anything without a fit.

Magda tugged on a thin night gown and tied up her dark curls in a ribbon and then stripped the soiled sheets from her bed. She sat on her bare mattress and chewed on her bottom lip. So, if she hadn't had a fit, did that mean Many Voices was real? She'd seen the demon many times in her visions. She had seen his face floating in the Gray River. She'd heard his maddening whispers and felt the icy touch of his thin fingers.

Her gaze cut to the closed door of her bedroom. It was likely locked. Her mother wore the key on a silver chain around her slender neck. If she wanted to see if Many Voices was real or not, she would have to go eavesdrop on her parents.

Sliding off the bed on trembling legs, Magda went to her vanity. She rummaged through the cosmetics and blew off the thin veneer of white powder that coated the top. She pushed aside rouge and kohl and loose ribbons. Finally, she found the little porcelain bowl that had hair pins for her wigs. She plucked a long one with a pearl end and crept to the door.

She'd done this before, when she'd been younger. At seven, she'd first begun to have her fits. Terrifying and violent, her seizures frightened her parents. They'd stripped her room bare of her furniture and padded the walls and floors. They slid plates of food under the door. Doctors came to see her, often twice a day bringing tinctures of morphine and laudanum and other elixers that made her vomit and caused her head to feel wobbly.

Late at night after the manor went dark and quiet, she would pick the lock. It had taken many tries, but finally she'd figured it out.

Squinting one eye, Magda knelt in front of the door, her tongue poking out the corner of her lips. She slid the needle into the lock and wiggled it until it caught on the lock's teeth mechanism. Once it was good and stuck, she attempted to turn it. It whined in protest, but after a few more tries and a few more jiggles, she heard the mechanism turn over with a satisfying series of clicks.

Putting the hair pin in her hair, she carefully opened the door. It needed grease on the hinges badly and screetched and the floorboards under her feet groaned. She was certain she'd be heard, but no, no one came to usher her back into her little, gilded cage.

On bare feet, she padded down the darkened hallways, silent on the plush carpets. She avoided looking at the rugs. They were imported from Pith and in elaborate, lattice work patterns. Sometimes patterns made her dizzy, which brought on fits. Holding her breath, she crept down the spiral staircase and only stopped near the first floor when she heard her mother's voice coming from the drawing room.

“We have to think of something. They already see us as...freaks. Monsters.” Her mother sounded so disgusted, her voice full of tears and sniffling. Magda scowled.

“I say we take her physician's advise. Once the facility is up and running, commit her.”

Magda's heart lurched in her chest. Her mouth went dry. She couldn't even summon tears. She wasn't sad. Cold, stark terror made her tremble. She curled her small, delicate hands around the banister and continued to listen.

“Come now, Arthur,” her mother scolded her father. “That should be the absolute last resort. Word will get out, you know. That our daughter is mad and in an institution.”

She could hear the deep rumble of her father's voice as he hmm'd in agreement. “Perhaps. We could merely say that she passed on.”

Magda drew her knees to her chest. Maybe it would lessen the deep ache in her chest. How could they? She loved them, didn't they know that? Didn't they know she was sorry she caused so much trouble? Pressing her forehead to her knees, she just let their words wash over her.

Many Voices perched on the banister. He hadn't been there a moment before. Magda startled, scuttling backwards. She knew she couldn't hide from him. Spirits didn't see with eyes. They saw with some other sense.

He gestured a stick-thin arm towards the place her parents had occupied. He clucked his tongue. His movements seemed oddly jerky, as though he constantly blinked in and out of existence. A laugh left him, though his lips didn't move. It wasn't a nice laugh and it crawled over her skin and sunk icy teeth into her stomach.

“Didn't we tell you? Stubborn girl,” he hissed.

Magda wished she could sink into the floor. She just shook her head, unable to speak.

“We can help you. We've said so before. We've said so in your dreams, while you were sleeping. We slipped in your bed and whispered in your ear.” The demon tittered. She couldn't tell if it was a laugh or a high-pitched growl. His voice sounded different from before. More childlike.

She turned back to eavesdropping, blinking at the mist of tears that obscured her vision.

Her mother's voice chirped, cool and clipped. “If we marry her...”

“Wilford Rosewood is out. Anyone her age really. Unless you plan to court a commoner. Perhaps a banker?” Her father snorted. “I'd rather tell the world she's dead.”

Many Voices dripped off the banister like he was made of thick liquid. Oil. He settled beside her and now the only thing other wordly about him was the smoldering fire of his gaze. He had a messy shock of black hair and a boyish face. He looked young and oddly similar to Magda. He could have been her twin brother. His eyes were the same flat gray as hers. His skin pale.

“We don't like the way your father laughs. We don't like the things he says.” His voice pitched wildly between low growls and light chitters, the trill a cat made when hunting birds.

“I know, darling. There was a man who showed interest in Magdalline last year. Remember? The older fellow. He's from a minor noble house. The Shadowglades.”

She remembered Dolph Shadowglade. He was old enough to be her grandfather. Magda squeezed her eyes shut. It was a terrible sentence either way. She would spend the rest of her life in an asylum or married to an old, lecherous man.

“Adolphus Shadowglade? Truly, Jules? He's so old and everyone knows he's in debt.” Her father didn't sound as though he were protesting all that much. His tone was light.

“Think of it, darling. It can be a mutual act of charity.”

He tutted. “I shall have to go speak to him then. I suppose you're right. It's far preferable than the papers getting wind of Magdalline being in an asylum.”

Her mother mmhm'd. “After today, there will be a big enough black mark on our house. We shouldn't exacerbate it further.”

Numb, Magda's hands slipped off the banister as tears scalded her cheeks. It was done. Decided, her fate sealed.

A cool, slender arm circled her shoulders. “Come now...we can fix this for you, Magda. We can. We'll guide you. Give you advice!” Many Voices whispered in her ear. She could feel his breath. He smelled like ozone.

Shuddering she shrugged violently out of the demon's hold. “Go. Away,” she gritted. Silently, she called upon the goddess Herith for protection. Nothing happened.

Many Voices wearing his new face which was so similar to hers scowled. “Oh yes, just roll over for the old man. He'll fuck you, you know,” he said, crass.

She reached up to plug her ears, but the demon snagged her by the wrists so she would have to listen. He was air and darkness, but deceptively so. His grip on her was cold iron. No amount of thrashing freed her.

Finally, she sagged, giving up, her shoulders hunched. She looked at the demon even though she knew she shouldn't. “What...do I do?”

Many Voices grinned broadly. “Kill them.”

She blanched and fought all over again. She writhed. A fuzzy feeling clouded her head and pain lanced through her skull. She was going to have an episode. She could feel it coming on like drowning very slowly on dry land.

“No?” the demon asked casually. “Too much?” He laughed and let her go so that she tumbled backwards from the force of her struggling.

“Fine, fine,” he conceded. “Something a little more gentle. We know just the thing. You must fetch a book, Maggy. We'll tell you where it is.”

Panting, trying to get ahold of herself, she rasped, “A book?”

“Yes. A book. That's what we said. An unholy tome written on the tanned hide of a human. Bound in blood and darkness. In it is written an oath.” He was very matter of fact, very dry. The laughter was gone, replaced by a strange, hollow reverence.

She swallowed dryly, her throat clacking. “An oath...to who?” she asked, but she already knew.

Many Voices bowed his head, clasping his thin hands together. “To Venorith. Our creator. Only he will take pity on you now. He has heard your cries. Seen your plight. He has been moved by it, Magda.”

She felt as though she stood on a very high place, her feet hanging off the edge as she teetered. Below her was the world, so far away. Unreal. It didn't look like it would hurt if she fell. She stood on the precipice of change. All she had to do was jump.

“Where is it? Where's the book?” The words felt thick. Hard to say. She could see her father coming up the stairs, his gaze fixed on her. He looked so angry. So disgusted by the mere sight of her sitting on the floor.

Many Voices only smiled and held a finger to his lips. He faded, he sunk into the floor and his absence was like taking a breath after suffocating. As her father rounded on her, the clock on the wall, beautiful and gilded with filigree and cherubs, suddenly stopped. The pendulum ceased to swing and she could hear the clockworks click-clack to a halt.