The Witch: Book Two of The Sorceress Saga Taliesin Govannon (best free ereader .txt) 📖

preferred having an impartial observer keeping an eye on things. It kept my doubting side from assuming that I was guiding the outcome, rather than observing.

                I walked down the familiar route, feeling completely at ease. It was night, but the forest seemed to glow with its own radiance.  I chose a dull brass gate on my left and broke the seal on it.

                I emerged into a basement-like room.  It was crowded, with my parents, my grandfather, and my three younger siblings all sleeping in a room that would have comfortably slept half that.

                I was small… even though I had passed my nineteenth birthday, I was barely five feet tall.  While I wasn't skinny, I was petite… which gave me the overall appearance of a fourteen-year-old.

                But she knows me I thought.  She knows the real me, the eternal me. The ageless me who has known and loved her before.

                When she first came to me, I thought that we were dead. Her fine, angular features looked Aryan to me, and we had only recently taken refuge in Meyer Lupowski’s old root cellar to avoid being taken to the camps. Jews didn’t last long at the camps, we heard.

                And a Jewish girl who liked girls? Dead meat.

                I had never liked boys.  Many were brutish, and the kind ones never excited me either. But girls?

                Ester Cohen showed me that yes, I like girls a LOT!

                I hadn’t seen Ester in a while.  I hoped that she was all right.

                But her… I thought, When I’m with her, I don’t think of Ester. I don’t think of the guards, the patrols that rumbled by at odd hours. I don’t have to.  She’s with me.

                Then I thought that she was Lilith or some other Jewish demon from my Grandfather's superstitions. I could see that her eyes burned with desire for me… was she a harpie, sent to destroy my mind and drive me insane?

                And was it terrible that I burned with just as much desire for her, and that my sanity seemed a small price to pay for the sublime experience of her beauty?

                And then she took me out of here. We walked right by the soldiers on the streets, and they looked away, as if by design, as we walked by.

                “Do not worry about the Nazis.” she had said to me, her voice echoing in my head.  “They will not remember seeing either of us three seconds after we walk by.”

                And so, while my family slept, my dark angel and I would walk freely on the city streets, breathing in the night air like it was ‘the old days’, as my parents would say. There was no war, no camps, no pogroms, and all was right with the world.

                And there is love, and passion, and my body coming alive in ways I never dreamed possible.

                “Rivka.”

                I turned, and she was there! She wore the same dress every time… black, velvety, and skin tight.  While it matched her jet-black hair, it was the polar opposite of her pale, alabaster skin.

                “Angelique.” I whispered back.

                “Come.” she said. “We have much to speak of before the sun rises.”

                I felt her hands on my waist, and soon I was being carried at dizzying speeds out of the basement, along the streets, and up the side of a building.

                When everything stopped moving, I was sitting in an easy chair by a roaring fire.  Nearby, a bed sat with covers turned down, waiting for our entry.

                We’ve never made love in such a fine place! I thought. “Where are we?” I asked aloud.

                “We are in the mayor’s house.” She said, looking through a stack of papers.

                “What?!?” I said, panicked. “We’ll get caught! We have… “

                Angelique was at my side in an instant, her cool hands calming the adrenaline rush of my fear. “Fear not, my beautiful one.” she said, cupping my cheek.  “The mayor owes me his life. We will not be bothered here tonight.”

                “Okay.” I smiled.  “I love you.”

                “And I love you.” she smiled in return. “But before we surrender to our passions, we have to go over some plans.”

                “Plans?” I asked, puzzled.

                Angelique sat on a footstool directly in front of me. "Rivka," she began, taking my hand, "it is no longer going to be safe here very, very soon. The other side of the war is going to start bombing Germany, and your shelter is too close to the munitions factory. We have to evacuate you and your family."

                “How do you know this?” My mind was having a hard time wrapping itself around what I was hearing.

                “It doesn’t matter, it is coming.” Angelique turned around and retrieved her papers. “These are all of the travel documents you’ll need to travel all of the way into Switzerland, where you’ll find one of my homes there. I’ve included a map… once you’re established there, my allies will give you all new identities and citizenship papers, as well as the deed to the house and a nice nest-egg in a Swiss bank account.”

                “But how… “ Words failed me.

                “We will return at first light with a transport big enough for everyone.” she continued, assuming that I was talking logistics. “As far as your family is concerned, I’m a German heiress who despises Hitler but uses my Father’s connections to smuggle Jews out of the country. I’ll see you to the German border, but will have to wait until after the war’s over to return to you again.”

                I took the papers and carefully set them aside. Without saying another thing, I kissed her and finally felt her melt into my embrace.

                Our hands roamed over each other’s bodies, shedding clothes as we explored.  When we were finally naked, I looked her in the eyes.

                “Why do you do all of this for me?” I asked.

                “Because I have loved you from the dawn of