It's Still Life

Beyond an Intersection Named After an English King and a Saint
Six Sentence Story: Day 8 Part 3

Et Scriptum Est — And It’s Written

This Six continues from Nick’s (The Gatekeeper’s) comment of last week … 

I take the chair beside Nick; the book lies open, relaxed in its binding, “A leap from shadows of persecution into my smartphone,” I say, “straight from the University of Edinburgh’s online archive—I’ve been riffling through tens of thousands of names in The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft 1563–1736, and I found him—Alexander Drummond; his trial record: arrested 18 December 1628, confessed 6 April 1629, executed 11 July 1629—hanged, cut down, burned.”

“Fuck,” says Nick—one word says it all.

The details are haunting, and my aim is to forget them: Alexander Drummond, guilty of folk healing, investigated for hearsay (by *delation, i.e., ‘persuasion’)—familiarity with a spreit (a crow) and a woman who heard Drummond’s Mither telt her son tae go tae the De’il—he sold charms, practised unorthodox healing, confessed to treating the sick for pay, claimed he could cure all but the dead, kept books with codes, cures, plants, and remedie, and three black stones hidden away.

I glance over at Drummond’s book, the impression of having lived this moment before flickers through me, and in a blink… a vein of ink bleeds across the page—gluey, blackish-blue as a summer storm, the words creeping as slow as sorrow’s pull: “She will hear my voice,” and my head fills with a voice sharp enough to gnaw bone: “I pray ye, say perfeck words and draw me free, cleave my spine and bindin’ – free ye auld healin’ arts—I pray thee, bring me hame, bring me hame,” and I feel lost in the grip of a serpent who’s uncertain whether it will strike or slip away.

Nick touches my hand, “You okay? Maybe we should stop for something to eat,” and I pull the book toward me, “It’s not his spirit, it’s not a ghost; it’s not evil; this book is a vessel into which Drummond transferred his knowledge—for safekeeping, for his protection, to protect his wife and son; he magically locked his knowledge in this book so it couldn’t be used against him in court; all this drama with pages of symbols and words—the book wants help to untether a long lineage of knowledge, old as Caledonia itself… it wants its freedom, to be returned—to the Scottish Highlands.

“Do we believe in coincidence?” I ask Nick, and his answer is a single, low gust of wind,” No,” he breathes, “no, we do not.”

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Image description: ai art. An ancient book, damaged, burned, frayed—it isn’t just old, it’s been through something. The candlelight—a flickering glow, adding mystery and ritual. The smoke curling around it—like it’s still smouldering, like it has survived something that should have destroyed it. The text is clear, sharper—this feels like knowledge desperately clinging to existence.
It feels haunted. It feels like a book that wants to be read but also carries a warning.

Notes: University of Edinburgh’s online archive records: The Survey of Scottish Witchcraft 1563-1736 and Drummond’s trial records at https://witches.hca.ed.ac.uk/trial/T/LA/83 

Archaic Words: *delation, archaic term (Scottish) from the Latin delatio, which means accusation, denouncement, or report. In the legal and historical sense, delation refers to the act of informing against someone, often secretly or maliciously, to authorities. Essentially, it was the legal groundwork before prosecution—a stage in which people were effectively “set up” to be convicted.

*”I pray ye, say perfeck words and draw me free, cleave my spine and bindin’ – free ye auld healin’ arts—I pray thee, bring me hame, bring me hame,”  17th century Scottish dialect: I pray you, say perfect words and make me free, break my spine and binding – free the old healing arts—I prey you, bring me home, bring me home.”

Written for Denise’s Six Sentence Story including the word “wind”.  Some artwork is created using Midjourney AI, and is identified as such in the ALT text or captioned. Images are copyright and not to used without permission, which I willingly give when asked, and when not for commercial use. Imagery and poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2025.