The Water Bearer

Camilla felt her bones melting but she was powerless to stop it. Here on the cold stone floor of her husband’s family catacombs, she lay helpless yet quiet as the puce like yellow mold devoured her body an inch at a time. Strange how she was still conscious, she thought of her husband Furio, and their last words to each other…

“Are you certain my love that this is permitted?” she said holding the torch, while he fiddled with iron keys clanging through the dusty passage ways.

“Heavens no! If my brothers found out that I had our father’s map, there would be blood all over it. Bring the light closer…” Camilla moved forward, and a wind of calm flowed over her. In the glow of the torch Furio seemed so innocent, so sweetly preoccupied to her. It reminded her of her good fortune. She “was” the envy of their village, to have been picked by him out of so many eligible girls. She had prayed for marriage so desperately now in her seventeenth year, and Furio had been her answer, finally.

No matter of her mother’s disapproval, strangers as beautiful as Furio came once in twenty harvests, it would have been foolish of her to turn him down, despite the quickness of their courtship, and his urgings that they elope. Those thoughts were futile details not worth her distraction which disappeared whenever he held her hand.

For now, the top of her cowl would on occasion catch some sharp piece of the briar patch growing wild along the low ceilings. It was almost as if the roots were falling into the halls, but that could not be avoided. Neither else could the scorpions, centipedes, nor beetles that formed tiles of clicking mounds. Her foot would step on the head of one, and the others would devour it instantly knowing it was soon for death.

And this is the feeling Camilla ignored as Furio brought them deeper into the tombs, always with the insistence that they were closer to the secret family vault. He could not be blamed; they had been poor from the beginning of their marriage. And Furio had long been cast out from his family for having already married once. He never spoke of her, his Rebecca, but the marriage had been short, Rebecca had left him for another man it was rumored, an aging nearby Count whose fortune would buy her the lifestyle Furio could not provide.

“Ah here it is, past this last turn and we will be twelve paces from the tomb of my great uncle, Aquarius! At last we’ll be rich my sweet, come let’s not hesitate anymore. I want you to be the first to look upon the grave…”

Camilla felt her feet rising on air, she ran so quickly the torch nearly blew out, and despite Furio standing his ground after they both turned the corner, she went the final stretch of floor, stopping right before the great statue of the Water Bearer.

This was Aquarius, both the constellation made into giant stone, and Furio’s great uncle, whose fortune lay hidden inside the enormous jar the girth of a horse. From it’s uplifted facing, Camilla could not see the necklaces, rings nor jewels said to be within, and it almost swept her mind, when the golem animated, it’s eyes lighting a bright chartreuse.

At once it turned to face her, it’s arms rising up to empty the great urn on it’s new victim.
An overwhelming putrid smell enveloped Camilla as gelatinous liquid poured itself past her feet like a tide of slow burning acid. It cemented her to the spot in excruciating pain, then as a thing alive, like a vulture’s wings spreading out to seal her fate, it enveloped her body pushing her down to the floor.

Suddenly the Water Bearer spoke,

“Furio, my favorite grand nephew… I see you come to me again with another offering.”
“Yes uncle, another bride’s bones to mix into your pot.”
“She will do, she will do.”
“May I have more of my inheritance?”
“What will it be this time? A ruby necklace, a set of pearl earrings?”
“No I think not, Camilla was a jewel among jewels, I desire a diamond ring!”
“Very well, reach into the now empty vessel, and take your prize…”

The ring fit him perfectly, it clasped on to his left hand, third finger, as the sign of a married man.

“Don’t forget to remove it.” The Golem replied and then was once again unmoving.
“Of course… of course, after all I am single once again.