9th century BT, 3 cities aligned on the same axis on Mediteranean Sea; Eryhtrai, Kreta, and Derne. 3 sorceresses, sharing the same destiny of being a born in seer, inevitably.
They dwelled on the lighthouse balconies on the high hills of their sea port cities, where they would share their spells, self invented scary bed time strories of their own lands, as well as the myths prized by their people, communicating all these by the secret “light” alphabet through exposing and hiding the shines of their hand mirrors among those 3 different cities’ lighthouse balconies, like signaled by smoke from one hill to the other in chain in ancient times, in order to alarm the enemy troops marching closer, but by that “mirror shine syllabary” instead of smoulder, among those three , those 3 sorcerresses, sometimes confide also their very intimate secrets, with the pseudo-assurence of self denial that the counter part perhaps wouldn’t receive or understand it anyways.
With those enchanting hand mirrors that they keep turning and moving in each other’s direction, from the lighthouse balconies of those three sea shore spots, aligned in one axis on the mediteranean map, with the same skilfullness as they shake and spin the auger bracelets in their wrists with joyous show-off towards their sisters-in law during the wedding of their brothers, pampering the sun by making him blink through their hand mirrors, having them once sucked light, once winked shadow through the invisible hazy horizons of the recepient lamia on the lighthouse balcony across the sea, in their native, but long forgotten languages, by times flared up and times glared away mirror twinkles, confiding all the secrets of their true nature and the craving of their very own people to each other between 3 god envying high hills of their seashore towns , they give away their inherited spells to each other, just as they reveal their invented bed time stories among themselves, right after crying out hymnes to their forbidden gods, who disappeared centuries ago in oblivion.
Innula, from Erythrai, in the millenniums ,where the cypresses, which never incline their leaves towards the earthly offerings around,but riffling them in closed cone form right towards the sky without any compromise, were racing insensibly with oleaster and olive trees, for who would invade the sands of the beaches more, if ever left unoccupied by oleander bushes so far.
Innula, husband dead, two sons and one daughter, all married away, once heard that she had two grand sons , never seen them though. Ever since her aloness took over her existence, which she almost whorships, she always remembers herself in that devoted cycle of shuttling between her house and the wuthering fields, where the grassess draw patterns by continuously being pressed and lifted obekly by the shuffling wind, the patterns that she learned from her mother how to read, in order to pick up the right healing herbs and plants, which her patients and clients desparately need. She is tall, but slightly hunched by carrying the wild plants, precious resins and odorous tree branches , and healing stones in her backsack, her curly grey hair, whose initial colour, including her, no one truely recalls, swings continuously in a loose bun as she climbs to the hills for picking up mushrooms enabling her to travel between different lives, ages and worlds during her shamanic rituals.
Innula folds human figures from the dried and sticky trunk branches of “false yellow heads”, relentless and unrepentant stam puppets , which otherwise could have been meant for a woodoo session, however Innula lets them sway above the heads of her pertitioners, whise resins melting under the pitiless August sun of Erythrai, pinned by a silk yarn to a pemu siam branch, under the siege of blind blinkings of those back and forth swinging dry stalks of human shaped forms, she reads the secrets on the mimics of the warped bay leaves that she spread over the veils she had put on the heads of their pleaders upfront, those laminas are being pulled inwards or blown outwards by the powers of the marionettes undulating above the heads, and she is deciphering their messages from the wrinkles of those whipped off bracts, the secrets oozing from the events which not happened yet, by exposing those happenings which didn’t dare to occure so far, but at the same time, Inula was involuntarily picking up , just like a disease, also her own fortune from the capillaries of those grieving leaflets, as well as from the crusted eye burrs of those blind puppets,who always keep staring right into her eyes, no matter what direction they might be turning to.
Halida from Candia on the island Crete, renowned by the pink sands of Ellafonisi beach, in the years where no one dared to step on those rosa sand chrystals at full moon.
Halida, with half gray , long castanian coloured, mane straight hair, dropping like two briskly unfolded dead arms on her saggy breasts, dilatated unhumanly until her belly after having to burry the 6 deceased children of hers , out of 12 that she had given birth to.
Halide would braid a tiara of anqelique roots and leaves to put them on the hair of her petitioners, covering their eyes with her wrinkled hand to calm their anxiety down, she would crumble and rub the dry arcangeliqua fronds clinged on their hair, then making their pleaders open up their hands in the air first, she perudes the eyelashes of theirs, meticulously studies the fallen dry artemisia cotyledons from their hair, the ones that drop off on their hands, and the ones that slip from their hands and land onto their knees, scruting all those foliole patterns carefully, reading their futures by that stencil, can’t help twisting her aged purple lips to a grimace by slipping out a snort of grumble, but only for those who drowned to tears from their squeezed out eyes, Hallida with her bitterly torn gesture by the corner of her lips, before she starts to speak their fate into words, without any reservation, nevertheless with a faint weariness wringing on her face, which attempts to tense the worn out dimple of her cheek, pierced through by all those wrinkles since decades.
Madjeali from Derne, where the leaves of the palm trees dry before its season under the harsh Lebanese sun, while the bunch of palm fruits could spare the last strength for hanging barely to their stalks, scorching into the dried awns of unriped dead-sour grapes, like the shrinked corps of hung people drying out while wavering like a pendulum on gallows ,whose souls rushing back on earth, wandering unconsciously through the desert nights, sleepwalking against the sand ghosts upheaved by frosty midnight wind ,where their bodies still measuring the time passing by , while dangling back and forth on gibbets, in those ages, as their swaying carcasses were insatiably demonstrated to the people for an engraving life lesson.
Madjeali, whose piercing green eyes , with hazel speckles inside, sparkling even more on her walnut colored skin, her beauty could have been a war reason in her youth, half a century ago, now entoured by the thorn balls of her eye wrinkles, her thight curly long hair once, with hazy black velvet shine, turned to ash gray clouds now, whose length catching barely her ears, like a risen up crowd of gun powder colored lichen, combating obstinately the gravity, as if a magical force insurging them constantly, Madjeali has given up paying any interest to her hair decades ago, as if she and her hair have made a pact of living separate lives before ages, just like she and her husband did, as he left with their only son for the grand battle almost 20 years heretofore , both never appeared eversince. Her daughter though, married to the hammersmith of neighbour town before the war, soon after moved across the sea, that she had a grand daughter heard Madjeali, the little offspring said to have inherited the same poignant emerald eyes, with glittering honey shade mottles inside.
For those who came to her to get their futures spoken, Madjeali would melt the myrhh resin and pour it onto the desert sand being scorched by the midday sun, in order to read their fortune. The dead skin of her stone cracked under-finger wrinkles split even more by the henna she used constantly for decades , lending her the numbness shr needed against the scald wrath of the elegiac desert sands.
Madjeali would read the future of their pertitioners from the shapes of those sand rolled lumpy molted resin lava that she spread on desert sands, which attempt to take the liberty to cool down without her consent, on the incadescent slica particles glowing off only ashamedly, while she was passing her faith sore hands above the piercing hot grains of desert, convoluting the thickening myrhh into regretful rolls and involute droplets narcing out unheard secrets, wrought by Madjeali as easily as if kneading the flour with water, on the magma rained voracious sand partcicles under the ravenous northern Bekaa sun.
With breath forbidden appetite and with an alienated fear for forgiving herself due to what she reads in peoples’ destinies , while cleansing herself to surrender to the holy sea ritual at dawn, in front of the lieless mirror of bitter truth, she could only confess to herself the insights of her late discoveries, now in her aforethought discrete silence to everyone else but to her pleaders whilst her fortune telling.
The next day, when the sun is back at the highest point in the sky, drying out zealously the balconies of wave-washed lighthouses of those three cities, the three sorcerers speak, from each other’s mouths with each other’s voices, all synchron, saying: “I am not the words that can be spoken, I am the guide of the spirit continents that ain’t touched by words” All of a sudden, their breath is choked out, obviously a ban from above settled in, instead of words, a vague wheeze could barely slip off their lips, infertile to turn into their own breath, they barely spare themselves a solice to speak again: “their tales awaiting here ready, but the children did not come though” waving in vain, waving to the horizon towards their late mothers.
3 sorceresses, 3 continents, 3 languages, 3 different cities gathered on the same line , with aligned balconies of 3 lighthouses on the hills of their seaport cities, they send each other the recipees of their lost arcanums in overflowing agony, in the common alphabet they bead letter by letter over years by once reflecting, once kidnapping the borrowed sun light on their hand mirrors, while spinning and turning their wrists as if crocheting a tale which is trying to smell a poem like pattern, oozed out from their native, but long forgotten myths , they contrive a potion together, an “elixir per fume” aiming to turn their unfaithful men to enemies against each other, but to true admirers of themselves