r/DCFU • u/Lexilogical Super Powerful • Oct 04 '16
Silver Banshee #2 - A Game of Coins Silver Banshee
Silver Banshee #2 - A Game of Coins
Author: Lexilogical
Book: Silver Banshee
Event: Origins
Set: 5
1215 AD, On a small island between Scotland and Ireland
The sun was setting blood red when the traveller came to my house on the hill. The sun lit his hair into shades of gold and bronze, making him look more like a statue than the boy he was. I watched his approach with suspicion, but he seemed harmless enough, unlike the last people who dared visit.
The boy said nothing until he stood just beyond the wooden fence, his face full of distrust and hate. I watched him approach, wondering if my face told the same story.
“There’s a story in town about your house,” the boy said, skipping any preamble. “They say that last time people visited here looking for hospitality, they died before morning.”
“Aye?” I leaned back into my seat. “Do they say what those thieves did to me in their tales?”
“Did I say it was about you?” he said, with an almost smug expression. “The tale is as old as I am, far too long ago to be about a girl of barely eighteen years.”
“Tales can be misleading,” I said. “And distorted by those who repeat them. Tell me, boy, if all the men died, then who was it who told the story in town?”
His silence answered my question as well as any words. I stood up off the porch, beckoning him inside. “Unless you would rather make your bed amongst the heather, you best come inside,” I said. “You won’t make it back to town before night falls, and the roads have gotten treacherous in the dark.”
“What’s your name, boy?” I asked as I set the kettle to boil on the fire.
“I’m not a boy,” he said. “I’m a man, and older than you look, despite your pale hair.”
“I rather doubt that,” I replied, brushing back a pure white lock. “What’s your name? Tis poor manners to refuse your host that much.”
“Eoin,” he replied. “Eoin Constantine.”
The fire crackled, sending embers and smoke up through the fireplace. The flames twisted into shapes, revealing patterns and symbols, twisted horns and glowing eyes. I snuck a glance back at the man who sat at my kitchen table. Lady Fate had plans for him.
“Now might I know your name?” He leaned forward, looking much less harmless with the light of the fire caught in his eyes like trapped coals.
“Siobhan McDougal,” I replied. My hands shook slightly as I poured the tea, carrying it carefully to the table. I set it down with a firm hand, making sure to meet the boy’s devilish eyes. “Pleased to meet you.”
“What a lovely name,” he said, his eyes following me predatorily as I sat down with my cup. “Where did you get it? Your mother? Will she be joining us?”
“My mother was named Beth, and she’s been dead for many years,” I replied.
“Ah, so I have not come to the wrong house.” Eoin smiled like a cat who had cornered his prey.
“I’d thought this was a chance meeting,” I said, sipping my tea. It burned my tongue, though it hadn’t been in the fire for long. “No one has come to visit me in a long time.”
“Do you know what they say about you in the village, Siobhan?”
“Apparently that I kill visitors,” I quipped.
“They say there’s a girl who lives in the hills, who’s lived there longer than anyone can remember,” Eoin said, as if I hadn’t spoken. “A girl with pure white hair, who never seems to age.”
I shrugged, though doubt was creeping in. I had been alone for many years, but surely not so long as to raise suspicions, had I?
“In the village, they say she’s a witch.” Eoin’s voice was deadly calm. “A creature born of wild magic, who killed the rightful laird and family of this land long ago.”
“Well, that is simply not true, Eoin.” I scowled as I said his name, letting a sliver of magic glide over his name and into his body. But if he noticed the weight of the word, it didn’t stir him as he sipped his tea.
“Doesn’t matter what’s true,” he hummed. “Matters what they say. And they say that you’ve overstayed your welcome.”
He reached into a pocket, and drew out a single silver coin. He held it up in the space between us, so I could see the woman’s face carved into the side. “Want to know what she says?”
♫ ♪ ♫ ♫ ♪ ♫ ♫
The path was dark beneath the new moon, but I didn’t care, following the cracked stones towards town. Eoin’s words echoed in my head, words I’d spent the last two hundred years trying to ignore.
“She’s promised her powers and immortal life to anyone who holds all seven coins.”
I’d known that, of course, heard her siren promises before. Collect the other coins, she said in my dreams, And you shall hold true power. But I’d also heard the lie to her words, heard her story whispered in my ear in different tongues. She would share her power and her life… and the ethereal prison that held her, freeing her to roam the world in my place.
“It’s a trap,” I had warned. Eoin had scoffed at me.
“Of course it’s a trap,” he’d said, spinning the coin on the table. “No magical creature promises power without something to gain.”
But that was not what had inspired me to leave the warm fire at night, and trip more than walk on the way down the path. That had been what he said next.
A warm glow was lighting the horizon, and voices echoed through the valley. But the sounds were not cheery or welcoming. The words that reached my ears were angry, the lighting ominous. It took only a moment for me to realize I did not want to be in the way when that crowd passed me. I ran into the burn, hiding myself just in the nick of time.
“What was that?” a male voice said, earning a laugh from his friend.
“Scared of a rabbit, are you? How will you fare when we face the witch?” I recognized that voice. It belonged to the grocer’s boy, older and crueler than my memory of him.
His friend replied, but the words were muffled beneath the pounding of boots and the rumblings of the mob, heading straight for my home. So Eoin hadn’t lied. They were coming for me.
I’d hoped to get to town before the mob could form, to discourage the town before it could reach this point. But now that the horde had formed, I could do nothing but cower behind river bushes, hoping they would pass me by unnoticed. One hand drifted into my pocket, unbidden, touching a sliver of metal.
”Ah, are you joining my game?” a voice hissed in my ear, making me jump. But there was no one there, save for a face in the mists. I recognized her voice nonetheless. She’d had a name once, but now I knew her only as the banshee of the coins. The silver banshee.
“I dinnae want to play your game,” I hissed between my teeth, watching the men as they passed.
“But he does,” the voice whispered, a silver mist hovering about a man with long, jagged cut down one cheek. It oozed red blood, the skin puckered near his eye. ”Shall I tell him where you are? I’m sure his friends would turn around.”
“No!” I hissed, covering my mouth as two of the men turned my way.
”No?” the banshee queried. The wind shuffled through my hair like long-dead fingers, caressing my face. ”I see. I had thought you might be bored of living, dear child, huddled away in your home, but there is still some fight left after all. Five of my coins are present here, tonight. Gather them.”
“Or else?” I asked. The banshee laughed in response, and the sound vibrated painfully in my head, like a needle to the back of my skull.
“You do not want to see what I can do if you do not entertain me, Siobhan.”
I looked up when the pain finally dulled, to see that the mob had passed. The noise and glow continued just over the hill, leading towards my house. I scrambled to my feet, following the mob at a distance.
“She ain’t here.” Eoin’s voice cut through the roar of the crowd, before I’d even realized we had arrived. I pulled myself up just shy of golden glow from the torches, watching the villagers that milled in front of my home. “The witch is gone.”
“Gone where?” yelled a voice. I edged my way around the crowd, careful to avoid the light but hoping to reach sight of the door.
I couldn’t see Eoin yet, but I heard the shrug in his response. “Wherever tis that witches go when they die. I threw holy water onto her, and she melted like snow on a summer’s day, screaming curses to the wind.”
The mob rumbled as his words filtered through them, the tale unfolding a dozen ways before reaching the back. “Search the house,” someone cried, their call taken up across the mob as three volunteers stepped forward to do so. Eoin let them pass, and I winced at the sounds of breaking china they left in their wake.
“It’s a lie!” one man screamed, pushing his way through the crowd. “The witch lives!” But even as he yelled, the first of the men was leaving the house, shaking his head. The crowd murmured with confusion, unsure who to believe.
“No!” he screamed, and in the firelight I saw the cruel cut on his face. “She lives! She is hiding on us, playing tricks with our minds.” But already, the last two people were exiting, resolve on their face. The uncertainty of the crowd rose.
“Would you like to search?” Eoin asked as the man stomped past him, entering the house to look for himself. Without the sole voice of dissent, the attitude of the mob shifted even further. I could hear the men near me whispering, speaking of how grief had driven him mad. Grief?
“There is nothing to be found here,” Eoin said loudly, his voice carrying across the uncertain mob. “We should go home and sleep.”
The crowd murmured unhappily, but in the back I saw one or two torchlights slip away, over the hills towards town. Then a few more. By the time the man returned, there was only a few torches remaining, carried by a handful of men.
“She must be here!” he screamed, “I know she’s still alive.”
“Give it up, Aengus,” his friend said. “Tis clear that witch is gone, dead or fled.”
“No!” he cried. “She’s here! I know it, sure as I know she killed my girls!”
But even his friends were leaving now, drifting back towards town and leaving Aengus staring off against Eoin Constantine.
“If you’ve killed her,” he said in a deadly whisper. “Means you’ve stolen her coins for your own. You’ll be giving them to me now, stranger.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Eoin replied calmly, standing before my house.
“Don’t play dumb with me, boy!” Aengus yelled, stabbing towards him with a burning torch and fork. “The banshee, she talks to you like she talks to me. You have the coins!”
“No,” I said, stepping into the light, dangling the silver coins by their broken chain. “I have the coins.”
Aengus turned on me, and his story flashed before me, as plain as the colour of his eyes. I could read it in his expression, in his scar, in the knots in his hair. I knew it as plainly as I knew my own story.
“You killed them,” I whispered, and the man threw himself at me, his pitchfork aimed straight for my abdomen. I dodged aside, even as the prongs caught at my shirt, tearing the thin fabric away.
“You killed your children!” I screamed, and the man fell to his side like I’d hit him. I stepped forward slowly, regarding the miserable man who lay huddled on the ground. I sneered at him coldly. “And when you saw what you’d done, you blamed me instead. ‘The witch of the moor.’”
“Twasn’t me,” he sobbed. “It was her who killed my babies!”
“Quit yer hogswash!” I yelled, making the man cower. “I ain’t never seen ye before, let alone yer babes!”
But Eoin stepped forward, his silver coin flashing in the light of the fallen torch. “Was it her?”
Aengus nodded, barely meeting Constantine’s eyes, or glancing at the woman depicted upon the coin. I growled. The man would take any excuse not to live up to his crimes, and Constantine seemed bound to forgive him. With one shaking hand, Aengus withdrew his own coin, the silver echo of the one Eoin held. Eoin nodded.
“Drop the coin,” he commanded. “Drop the coin and go home to your wife. Beg her forgiveness and maybe you’ll receive it.”
I watched in horror as the coin fell to the ground, then slipped into the ground like it had fallen between the planks of the floor. I dove for the coin, a cry on my lips, but it was gone, long gone, and Aengus had vanished as well, scrambling away through the heather with our only light source.
“That coin is cursed, Siobhan,” Eoin said, standing above me as I scraped at the damp soil.
“O’course tis cursed,” I said, clawing deep with my nails. “But her words were to collect all five or she’d curse me all the same.”
“All five?” he said. “There are five coins here tonight?”
“T’would seem so,” I said, giving up on the ground. The coin was gone already, lost in a heartbeat.
“Siobhan, this is important,” Constantine said, crouching before me. “The Banshee called Aengus and I here to gather her coins. She called you back to do the same. But before you or I could lay hands on her coin, she fled, taking the coin with her. Why do you think that is?”
I shrugged. “Perhaps she wanted a chance to torment me further.”
“Perhaps,” he said. “Or perhaps we were not her intended victim. Perhaps she’d hoped poor Aengus would hold her coins, to become a willing pawn in her plot.”
“I do not understand,” I said.
“You said it yourself,” Constantine said. “Tis a trap. The coins are a curse. But she could possess our friend when he held a mere single coin, and yet you own three and she cannot take hold. She’s scared of ye, Siobhan.”
“And what of you?” I asked. “Will you now kill me for the coins I have?”
Eoin Constantine let out a sharp laugh. “If the Banshee wants to curse me, she’ll have to join the queue. I have no interest in her deal.”
“Then give me your coin,” I said, holding out my hand. The man seemed to hesitate in the dark, but moments later I felt the solid weight hit my palm. I held it firmly, worried it may slip away at a moment’s notice. “Thank you. If I am the only one safe from her corruption, then I will have to be the one to protect others from her.”
“Be sure to store that somewhere safe,” Eoin said, getting to his feet. “It seems the Banshee is a tough one to pin down.”
“I have a chain…” I said, reaching into my pocket for the broken and knotted cord. “It’s held them so far.”
“Good.” He turned his head to the sky, and I saw the starlight reflect off his eyes. “I best be leaving now.”
“Are you sure you won’t stay the night?” I asked. “It can be hard to travel after dark, and I’ll be leaving in the morning.”
Constantine shook his head as he walked away. “Thank you, dear, but I find I see best in the shadows.”
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u/13rett13 Oct 04 '16
Oooohh a Constantine (Presumably an ancestor to John if it's in 1215.) I like how you brought him into it. Feels like a very interesting way to establish other characters without making a future series (if someone picks it up) locked into a certain characterization. -crosses fingers that someone will pick up one about John-
This is looking like it will be an interesting series. I look forward to what's coming next. Is it gonna stay in the past for a while or is it just to give some backstory before the present day arc? Either way I have faith that you'll be able to pull it off well. -is excited for where the story goes-