When he awoke fully it was with a creeping certainty that there was somebody else in the room. The wizard slept on undisturbed before him. Lifting his head he saw a bent old hag standing stock-still three paces in from the doorway and looking down at him from a hideous countenance. She was hunched over a twisted walking stick fashioned from a branch. A tremendous age had nurtured her features into grotesque proportions, her face made all the more startling by the large, black irises of her eyes which, alarmingly, seemed closer to the boy than the rest of her, yet were somehow caught in the process of sliding from her face. She was clad in black tatters and did not belong here, not in this room, not in this house, not in the waking awareness of his mind.
On
seeing he had awoken, her eyes trembled in their sockets, seeming to take in a
thousand details from about his body, and the tip of her tongue felt along the
puckered surface of her upper lip. The
glossy black irises grew larger, inviting him to fall into their depths, making
him shudder, repulsed at their intimacy.
He
looked at the old wizard, lying defenceless at his side and when he turned back
to the crone she was already sitting on the floor beside him, her gruesome face
pushed forward towards his. Too afraid
to cry out, but equally too afraid not to whimper, he jerked away but was held
and pulled back by a bony grip on his arm.
“Look
at the state of you,” she said, in a voice surprisingly soft and sensual. “It’s no use struggling, you can’t get
away.”
Then
she released his arm and he remained where he was, unable to tell whether she
had trapped him under a spell or he was simply too frightened to contradict
her.
“You
boys have been in the wars. Look
at you.” And she ran her withered fingers
over his ruin of a face. “Oh, you’re a
pretty one, aren’t you? Such a tender
little morsel, I could gobble you up in one go. Would you like that?”
The
boy shook his head fervently and she coughed, delighted. “Maybe not yet, then.” She cupped his face in both hands and moved
her eyes even closer to his until her irises threatened to merge into one
shimmering black hole. “Let’s take a
look at your little friend then, shall we?”
Following
her lead he turned to look at the wizard and gave a little jump of surprise
when he saw that the old man was naked now, his lean body pale and young
looking, dissected by tattooed glyphs and schematics.
“Look. See,” she said, tracing the tattoos with a
cracked, yellow nail. “These are
protections. This hide of his could be
put to potent uses if only I could get it off his back. But look here.”
Around
his neck was a cord on which was strung a small, unpolished grey stone with a
natural hole through it. She lifted it
in her fingers and turned it in the light.
“I gave this to him. It protects
against witches.” She cackled, suddenly
and explosively. “Ah, me,” she said. Then a gleam caught her eye. “What do we have here?” Reaching out she picked up the fallen portal
ring that lay on the floorboards still.
The boy gave a little gasp and then stiffened. She spared him a slow, sly glance and treated herself to a slow,
sly smile. “One good turn deserves another.” Holding the ring up to one of her frightful
eyes she spied the boy through it.
“Ooh, it’s pretty, pretty.” From
out of nowhere she produced a leather thong, which she threaded through the
ring and then tied around her neck, where it joined a miscellany of amulets,
beads, bones, feathers and stones.
