//------------------------------// // Chapter 5 - Secret // Story: The Addams Family Sirens // by Universal Librarian //------------------------------// Somehow, the only thing Adagio found more creepy than the mansion itself was the girl walking along beside her. Wednesday was utterly silent, with skin that was disturbingly pale. Corpses tended to quickly turn grey, green, or blue, at least in Adagio's experience, but the girl's pallor suggested something a little less… human. "You used to kill people," Wednesday said. It was a statement, not a question, and delivered in such a casual deadpan that the girl may as well have been telling Adagio what the weather was like. "I did," Adagio replied in the same deadpan tone, not giving anything away. Wednesday simply nodded once, as if she had neither expected an answer nor cared what it was.  The two continued on in dead silence. Adagio glanced sidelong at the girl. Wednesday was wearing a plain black dress with matching stockings and shoes, and her expression, just like last night, was utterly devoid of any emotion. "How old are you?" Adagio asked. "Old enough to know what I want to do with my life, but not old enough to actually do it," Wednesday replied. "What do you want to do?" Adagio pressed. Wednesday glanced at her. "Currently? Learn." Another deflective answer. Adagio would have approved if it wasn't so annoying. "Learn what?" Wednesday looked around, almost furtively, then said in an undertone, "We'll discuss it after Mother has spoken with you." "Oh?" Something about the girl's subtly shifty manner intrigued Adagio. She had thought that the Addams were incredibly, disgustingly, tightly knit, but apparently there were things they kept even from each other. Perhaps there were still skeletons in the closet, even with this family. Literally and metaphorically. Adagio's inbuilt gossip radar was pinging like crazy, but she kept her expression carefully neutral. Everything would be exposed in time. The two slowly made their way out of the house and into the gardens. In Adagio's opinion, the garden was even less inviting than the house, with grave markers and macabre tombstones scattered around without rhyme or reason, at least not to a sane mind. Aria was going to love it. "This way." Wednesday led Adagio on a winding path through the grave-garden, towards a huge stately greenhouse. "Mother is inside." Adagio grimaced. From the outside, it looked as if the greenhouse contained very little that was actually green. Tangled messes of dark plants pressed up against the glass and climbed upwards, towering over her head. Circling around to the entrance, Adagio spotted Morticia slowly moving around inside with a pair of clippers, trimming and pruning the plants with the precision and delicacy of a born gardener. It would have looked almost quaint if the plants weren't a mix of brambles, stinging nettles, and a whole host of dark-leaved flora that were most likely poisonous. "You wanted to see me?" Adagio called out. "I did," Morticia replied, not looking away from her charges. "Thank you, Wednesday. May we have some privacy, please?" Wednesday nodded and left, closing the greenhouse door behind her. A faint feeling of fear trickled up Adagio’s spine at being trapped in a room with a lunatic armed with any sort of blade. Only the fact that the Addams' practically hero-worshipped the Sirens kept her from belting out of the greenhouse entirely. Still, Adagio was careful to stay close to the door. After a quick glance to make sure that Wednesday was gone, Morticia turned to Adagio and offered her a hauntingly beautiful smile. “I apologise for pulling you away from breakfast, but there are some things I wished to discuss with you.” “It’s fine,” Adagio replied, waving the apology away with an air of indifference that was completely at odds with her wavering nerve. “What do you want to talk about?” Morticia put her clippers down before answering, to Adagio's great relief, “I understand that you were the one who helped smuggle our Matriarch through the Umbra Gate?”  "All three of us helped," Adagio told her simply. "Of course, but it was you that our Matriarch approached for help, and you alone who she confided in," Morticia added smoothly.  "To an extent," Adagio admitted begrudgingly. She had already figured where this conversation was going, but she had no intentions of helping things along. Morticia gave her a coy smile, as if she saw right through Adagio's façade. "Our Matriarch passed her deepest secrets down to her eldest daughter, and her to hers, and so on through the generations, through family born and found, through every eldest daughter in body or spirit until, finally, those secrets came to me. Wednesday will learn too, in time, but for now I am one of very few living people who know the full truth of that night." "Then you don't need me to fill you in on anything," Adagio said flatly. "Perhaps, but there is something that I absolutely must do." Adagio tensed as Morticia suddenly swept towards her with inhuman speed and elegance. Before she could react, Morticia stopped just as abruptly and sank into a flawless curtsey worthy of a royal court. "Without your help, our Matriarch would never have come to this world, and we outcasts would still be lost, alone and unloved. Thank you, Trierarch Dazzle." Hearing her old title again set a wave of conflicting emotions rampaging through Adagio's heart. Normally, having someone genuflect towards her like this would be expected and enjoyed, but now she just felt hollow and uncomfortable. Unwilling to face the ghosts of the past, she bobbed her head and said quietly, "You're welcome." The weak timbre of her own voice was the last straw for Adagio. She cleared her throat before adding loudly, "I think I'm going to take a walk through the gardens. Let me know if the others start causing problems." "Of course," Morticia said as she straightened up. Adagio turned to the door, but just as she gripped the handle Morticia called out, "One last thing. Does the Lady Dusk know?" "No," Adagio replied instantly. "Neither does Aria." Morticia arched an eyebrow and smiled. "You kept your promise, even after everything." "I don't make promises often, but when I do, I keep them no matter what," Adagio told her firmly. She didn't dare looking back as she opened the door and left, trying to shove down the feeling that she was running away from something. Ω Morticia watched calmly as Adagio practically fled from her.  It was understandable, of course. The secret the Siren bore was one that would have rocked Seaquestria to its very core. Even now, it had the potential to cause havoc among certain groups.  Thinking about it brought a faint smile to Morticia's face. Closing her eyes, Morticia focused on the tiny fragment of Abyssal magic that resided in her soul. Grandmama was far more experienced at manipulating it than Morticia was, but she had enough skill for the task at hand. She teased out the magic, pointed at a dark space under the nearest table, and drew a circle in the air with her finger. The magic felt deliciously like barbed wire grating under her skin as it slowly woke. Morticia took a deep breath to brace herself for the coming experience, then snapped her fingers. The greenhouse shook as a tear opened up in the shadows beneath the table. Exquisite agony blasted through every nerve in Morticia's body, the Abyssal magic feeling like it was flaying her from the inside out while the gash in existence bombarded her with ethereal winds that froze and burned all at once. Through the tear, Morticia caught a split-second glimpse of a reality beyond the reach of space and time before something blocked it out, but even that brief look pushed her limited sanity to the absolute brink. "Te…ke…lili…" A deep voice burbled through the air as a thick black pseudopod reached through the tear. Morticia struggled to gather herself together enough to speak. "I… have… a m-message for… our Matriarch. Tell… tell Cantata, the others… are here." The messenger burbled once more and retracted its tentacle. All at once the spell was broken and the tear in reality disappeared as if it had never existed. Morticia slumped to her knees and sagged against the table. It took her several seconds to realize that the coppery taste in her mouth was her own blood, and several more before she could raise a hand to try and staunch the heavy nosebleed. Her entire body throbbed, a welcome side-effect of the magic, and Morticia allowed herself a wild grin as she slipped into unconsciousness.