Hello, once again, I failed at hitting the submission guidelines spot on. So, while it’s far from “modern,” I’ll still submit it… just if anyone can suggest a different market, I’m up for that, too. I also need to cut out at least a 1000 words and make sure the voice is the same top to bottom.
The title started out as “Man Of The House” but that was too obvious and cliched. Then it was the “Curse of Immurment.” Finally, dog-tired, I typed the words “Tortured Chambers” and realize that was a better title… but then, I was very, very tired.
Thanks in advance for any suggestions you can provide.
TORTURED CHAMBERS
by
Bill Kieffer
The Witch of the Wood straddled the old oak chair beneath various hanging bundles, bouquets, and bunches of dried and drying herbs as she waved a smudge stick in the air in slow artistic sweeps. The fire for her fireplace did not light the room, so much as the shadows and darkness hung back from her allowing all the scraps of lights in a dark and stormy night such as this seek shelter beneath her roof.
The smoke of her smudge stick clung to the damp air in bits and pieces, forming first glyphs and then words and then a truth. The Will of the Wood were plainly revealed. In this, as with no other, the Witch of the Wood was wise and literate, and quick to find her own pragmatic interests and a possible gain.
There was a knock on her door, angry and wet. It was not unexpected. The Humans of the Wood, the Mere Men, resented being called to pay. She understood that it was their nature and bore them no ill well.
Well, no lasting ill will, at the least.
It was her duty to maintain the balance and the humors of The Wood. Some chores were harder than others and the Human at the door had played an unfortunate part in the days fiasco. She steeled herself and crossed to the door, brushing the smoke glyphs away into the corner. The shadows ate the words hungrily.
The door opened to a downpour. On her stoop stood a tall, young man with red rimmed eyes and the angry scowl of a man who still did not understand his place in the Wood.
“I can not compel you to enter,” she said to his smoldering glare. She rubbed the lit bundle of sage into her palm, until the embers were extinguished and smoke surrounded them both. “Enter freely and of your own will.”
Luchester Hawke, Sheriff of the Wood, twisted in place as much as he could and still leave his dignity intact. Finally, he growled in a voice that would have impressed any of the Wolf Folk, “And, if I do not, what then, Fortunatia?”
Fortunatia stepped back into shadow. “Then you’ll be carried across the threshold by Monstresser.”
The sound of rainfall about the young man changed in a subtle way, becoming almost distant. The rain directly over Luchester stopped instantly as the stars and moon above were blotted out by a massive wall of armored, Stygian flesh. The young sheriff looked up and saw the Witch’s massive familiar use his wings to keep the rain off the human. The blood and fleece from its recent slaughter still clung to his snout and the burning eyes an arm’s length behind its dagger like teeth gave the impression of a not so fully sated appetite.
“It is, afterall, supposed to be your honeymoon night…” The Witch let the implications hang there.
Luchester leapt across the threshold as if his life and his sanity depended on it.
Ώ
The Wood was a magical land. Most humans avoided the Wood. It was easy enough, one could travel a half circle around the Wood in a day horseback. Three days afoot, if one avoided the temptation of entering the Wood. It wasn’t just that there were will-o-wisps by day and it wasn’t just the falling stars by night. Nymphs and fauns danced in the shadows of twilight sunset out in the open within sight of the corners’ of one’s eyes. Flowers bloomed in the false sunrise, releasing the scents of baked bread and honeyed tea.
All the shadows of the Wood promised things and the temptation was in knowing that not all of its promises were false. The Wood touched every Kingdom in the World of Man. Even those Kingdoms on isolated desert islands had a path into the Wood.
All but the Kingdom of Twilight Ruins. For all that it shared the same sun of the World of Man, it was not of The World of Man. Snow, ice, and shadow ruled here and they ruled as cruelly as they did completely. The hands that shaped all matter of fates, destinies, and curses was its only industry, its only export.
What coin Twilight Ruins collected, only the witches knew and the witches would not speak of such things.
The Wood were not cut up into tiny parcels scattered about the World of Man as the maps showed. Maps only showed the path heads. The Wood did not believe in Maps. The Wood believed in Journeys, in Quests, and in Getting Lost to Find Yourself. Never mind, that a human ahorse could circumnavigate what they might think of the local Wood in a day, it never took less than a week to fly a dragon across the whole of the Wood.
The Wood was, quite simply, bigger than the world that contained it.
The Wood was quite pleased with itself, The Old Gods had come to visit; now they might come to stay. Gods were fickle, but the Wood knew peace. Had known Peace for quite a bit of time and it was more than happy to share this with the Gods.
Of course, leave it to a Human to break that peace.
Ώ
Godey Woodsman growled, feeling himself surrounded and betrayed in the main room of his cottage. His own family! His fur stood on end all over his body, even beneath his trousers. His black lips pulled so tightly that his snout was nothing but jagged white teeth. His fists clenched, open and closed, several times as he gathered his will power against his rage. He could not talk like this! His own furry family would understand him, but it was the lone Human in the room that he needed to be clear to.
As a Creature of The Wood, communication had been so easy for over a decade. It was hard to lie with a tail, ears, and a scent that knew your own mind better than you did. Tails, ears, and scent said more than words ever could.
But Humans were blind to these things and assumed that the Creatures of the Wood lied unless otherwise convinced. To be absolutely clear and unmistakeable, Godey had to push his rage aside. It was an easy thing for a wolf to do, even one who walked on two legs. It was not good for the wolf skin he wore that protected his Once Human soul. It was not a good thing to reach back into his accursed human years, but he must protect his family even at the risk of unleashing the demon within. Even at the cost of his daughter’s happiness.
The Wolf in his soul and the Wolfskin would accept no less.
“No,” Godey wanted to howl, but he restrained himself. Human ears would only hear a wail of despair. “She is promised to another.”
Honey, the Wolfmaid who was his wife and mate, partner and salvation, clutched at the silver medallion on her gray and white furry bosom with both hands. It frightened her to see Godey stand up to the Human Sheriff. Her first husband had been killed by a human mob with blazing torches and wooden pitchforks for horrors that he had not committed.
Crimes against the villager that a cursed Godey had committed.
Godey wore that innocent’s skin now. A gift of the Witch of the Wood, sentence and salvation, Godey had become a Wolfman, picking up the woodsman’s axe as if he’d been born to it.
“You sold her,” the Human accused, confident the wolf-bane charm he wore would protect him from attack. “Combe is not property for you to sell to the highest bidder. It was against the Rule of Man.”
“She trained to be familiar.” The Wolfman growled, “Not sold! Combe to be Apprentice! Apprentice like in the Lands of Man. Just so! Family get money! Just like in the Land of Man. Help the Other Children. Help Family. Just like… in the Land of Maaaannn!!!”
Luchester who’d been with the Creatures of the Wood long enough to understand all this growling and sputtering was taken aback. He shouted back to cover his surprise. “What do you know of the Land of Man? You who never stepped outside of the Wood in all you life? What do you think you know?”
Godey howled now in frustration and tried to pace off his fury. What did he know of the Land of Man? Everything! What could he say? Nothing! This was the shape of his curse now. He beat and pawed at the wall. He spun back to this Human, who flinched back his slavering jaws, and screamed in rage “I know! I know these things! This is her duty, Sheriff, by all the Laws of Man; for she agreed!”
Combe clutched at the cape of her beloved Human and found the strength to stand up the old wolf-man. “I was ten,” she shouted back, parroting the words her beloved had repeated to her often enough. “I was ten and I was hungry!”
“She was but a child,” Luchester said as rationally as he could. Given his future father-in-law had just gouged several foot-long, raking claws makes into the split wood that made up the interior walls of the cottage, his voice stay heroically firm. “Surely, no court in the land would enforce the agreement of a mere babe.”
Godey raised his arms in frustration and then spun away, showing the human his tail. The claws came down on the wall again, striking them repeatedly, trying to control his temper.
“Why are you acting like this?” His three younger daughters all screamed at him, so obviously, so romantically on Combe’s side. He had no answer for them. Certainly, nothing he articulate at the moment. They did not know that a human soul and Curse from the Twilight Ruins had combined to resurrect their father who had died unjustly. The Witch of the Wood had arranged it all and Godey, once he got used to the fur, had very little to complain about. His conscious had been clear.
The Wolfish Father he’d become could not handle the thought of his child being deflowered by a Man. The Human who loved his own Wolfmaid, objected to the choice. His daughter could not marry this man… the son of the man who had allowed Godey to die the first time. Neither half could accept the situation with good grace… and the shadow of a forgotten third thrived on the conflict.
He struggled to get the words of his own very human father out. “I Am The Man Of The House.” He growled, spittle and foam bouncing out of his jaws. “You Will Do What I Say!!!” The Wolfmaids had never heard this nonsense before. They had no idea what to make of it.
Luchester had had a human father, too. And a human grandfather that had stood in stead when his father had vanished a decade ago. He was still young enough that the phrase still chafed, no matter who’s mouth it came out of. His youth felt less an asset than it truly was. The sheriff became indignant. He would not allow himself to be mocked. How dare this miserable curr treat him like this without cause! Indignation spurred his mouth beyond commonsense, but then, he’d never seen Lunacy working its way out of a creature before. “You Are Nothing!” The young noble shouted back.
Combe fled to her mother’s side, knowing a fight would decide her fate. But as a Wolfmaid, born to Wood Ways, this came as no surprise. She was only puzzled by the screaming and yelling. Her mother was wise in Human Ways, but Combe could not get her attention to ask. Honey merely kept praying to the Goddess Po, protector of women. Her three sisters then huddled around them and Combe, turning her attention back to the heated exchange, decided that he would ask her intended spouse what all that meant. Later, if he lived.
Godey repeated his words, over and over again, but their meaning was lost to him now. He tore more chunks of wood out the wall, all almost with out the concept of wall or even wood. He felt trapped in his own den. He spun with a roar, burning off the last of his humanity. His claws attacked himself in a desperate attempt to hold onto to his sanity… but the moon was out and its light fell on the Twilight Ruin as well as Godey’s thatched roof.
And the thing buried in Godey’s mind, strummed the strings that stretched between the Wolfman and the Witch as if it were a Cittern. Pluck, pluck, trying to snap the strings in its rage.
Godey leapt and Luchester raised his wolfbane ward. It glowed a golden ray of sunshine and the large wolfman was deflected to the straw covered floor.
He leapt again and the burst of harmless light threw Godey again across the floor.
The Wolfman climbed instantly back to his feet and his golden brown eyes glowed with moonshine. There was no mercy, no humanity in these eyes. It howled and its children carried its chorus unwillingly. It threw back its mighty, triangular head and Luchester watched the monster’s body grow in bone cracking fits. Its trousers tore as the ears suddenly brushed up the low rafters.
Its eyes burned red and they fixed on the sheriff. Drool fell freely from its mouth as it exalted a moment at being unchained for the first time in a decade.
Luchester faced a monster from his childhood. He was one of the last of his village to see the beast, and survive. The Witch had sworn the monster had been taken care of a decade ago… and now, Luchester saw how she had dealt with the most murderous monster…
The Witch had made some sort of Deal!
The Werewolf leapt again. The wolfbane charm flashed brighter still and deflected the ever-changing, darkening beast into the female wolfmaids. The incensed monster grappled with Honey. She fought back instantly, prayers forgotten. Part of the monster’s malice was that Godey had felt betrayed by his mate’s inaction, by her neutrality in this. Most of Godey, however, was gone now and the monster only cared that she was suddenly there. Teeth and claw flashed scarlet across the two as they rolled about. The children screamed, not knowing what to do.
Luchester himself was surprised and sickened by this turn of events. Surprised, of course, that the quiet and unusually polite Godey could also be a monster. But he was also surprised to see the wolfbane charm react so strongly to the monster. Magic in The Wood was usually more subtle.
The young sheriff was sickened to see both of Combe’s parents attack each other. It made him question his future with the wolfmaid and all his assumptions about the two of them. But the human was also sickened by his relief. The two wolves fighting gave Luchester a moment to gather his wits.
Fighting defensively was not getting Luchester anywhere. He needed to go on the offensive; bring the battle to the monster. He was not seriously trained in any of the magical arts and now he felt the fool. His talents were supposedly very strong, but he’d refused the Wizard training. It would have caused a huge rift between himself and his mother. At the time, that had seemed important. With taking Combe as a bride, Luchester knew he’d be creating a rift as great, if not more so.
But, first, they both had to survive this night.
The monster broke the silver chain of the PO medallion and tossed Godey’s wife aside. The holy object sparked and hissed in its claws as the Werewolf bent the disc in his bloody paws. The blood of a good woman was potent magic in the Wood. The wail and despair of his children were also potent magic in the Wood.
It was no longer a simple Wolfman. The pain drove him deeper into its Lunacy, which was a potent magic anywhere in the world. It wrapped all of this into its own tooth and claws. The creature broke his mystic leash and leapt with howl of insane rage.
Luchester felt the darkness wrapping about the vile demon-wolf, just before it leapt. He tapped his fear, his rage, his insult, and his need to protect Combe and her family. He cast his first destructive spell, even as the Woodbane Charm exploded and disintegrated in his naked human hand.
Two creatures screamed up at the harvest moon until it blushed orange and then ran red.
Ώ
Skyclad and airborne, Fortunatia flew above the Wood with her dragon. Together, they drank in the cool moonlight of a crisp autumn eve. It revitalized them both. She levitated easily whilst her familiar circled about her in a mile wide spiral, enjoying feel of the thermals shifting under his wings in the cool night. His joy radiated across the gap, marred only by the trace of hunger. Monstresser was always hungry. His master encouraged restraint. One sheep a day and a cow on Sundays was barely enough but it kept the peace Fortunatia insisted on. She fed him moonlight and manna as treats, and that eased his the hunger still more. It also strengthened their bonds.
Despite the fact the fact that Fortunatia fed on moonlight, she was Human.
In appearance and in heritage, no different from any of the Nobles or Peasants that surrounded the Wood. Yet, she was no longer simply human; no longer simply mortal. She was the Witch of the Wood. She’d fought and struggled for a level of respect within and without her little world. She had power. She was, perhaps more importantly, content.
A portent of foreboding struck her.
The dragon felt it, too, and he cut his circle short, making a bee-line for her as she began to slip from the air.
She felt the Wood move and flinch about her. She reached out to steady it, but already terror struck directly at her heart. Pain seared her and caused her to falter. The dragon caught her in his slate grey forelimbs, as she began to plunge back to Earth. She patted his watermelon sized digits gratefully as he brought them both down slowly. She turned her inner eye to her inner power-lines. She found the troubled heartstrings. The shared connection with Godey the Wolfman. She could feel his heart beating quickly. Anger. Betrayal. She could soothe none of it. Outrage overturned her best efforts… and then there was an explosion of pain…
The dragon stumbled as he reached the ground, with a suddenly orange moon above them. Monstresser concentrated on his landing even as his Mistress struggled to leap from his protective grasp. He let her go as the moon turned red and the moonbeams they’d consumed turned sour in their stomachs.
“Goddess,” Fortunatia announced and cursed, all in the same breath. She sunk her fingers in the loam of the Wood and steadied the land as best she could. The whimsies of Gods and Goddesses were powerful in the enchanted land. Fortunatia doubted they understood how destructive they could be here. She doubted they’d care if they did; except perhaps for the more destructive Entities.
Once the Wood steadied and the Moon glowed its special shade of white again, the Witch pulled energy softly but greedily from the Wood. This would protect it from harming itself and allow the Witch the power to protect it from other threats. Autumn leaves stirred and rode unseen winds, and twisted about her for a moment. Britches, a blouse, and a cloak of browns, yellows, and reds, clung to her as a token of office and not a gesture to modesty.
A Witch of the Wood knows no modesty.
Monstresser became invisible and smaller, following in her wake as Fortunatia made a direct path to Godey’s cottage. He watched her back. He was a good familiar; despite his hunger. His restraint helped to keep the peace within and without the Wood. His Mistress was effectively immortal and he would be too, unless she chose otherwise. Staying lean was but a small price to pay.
In a very short time, Fortunatia strode out of the copse of trees and stood before Godey’s cottage. In the light of the harvest moon, the witch made out two sets of people on the yard garden. The sheriff and a young Wolfmaid that he comforted as she cried stood off to her left. To her right, stood or squatted the youngest of Godey’s offspring, centered around their injured mother. Fortunatia ignored protocol and strode directly to Honey’s side. The sheriff could wait.
The young girls parted and Fortunatia was heart sick to see the damage inflicted on her. The Werewolf had returned, beating back all of her wards and cantrips. As long as the Wolf and the Man had been content, this should never have happened. Godey knew better than to let himself be riled during a full moon. Something must have cornered him and pushed him beyond his endurance.
The Witch looked back at the sheriff in the pale light of the moon. Something, she thought. Or some ass.
She turned back to the mature and dying Wolfmaid. She should, by the lights of the Wolfmen, let Honey die. But she could not. Not only did the Witch owe Honey for a decade of standing watch against the Werewolf. But she would need the Wolfmaid to get the genie back into the bottle. Love was one of the few things that could stand up against the curses of Twilight Ruin. The power of the Wood flowed into the broken creature at the witch’s urging.
Honey gasped and whimpered, and when her skin and bones were melted back together, she fell back and slept. Her long pink tongue fell gently into the vines of the squash and pumpkins so recently picked. Her daughters sighed happily, seeing the change. They fell upon the Witch with little yelps of joy and washed her hands with their tongues gratefully.
Fortunatia bent to the oldest of the three. She did not know if she’d seen her father transform and she would not ask the child. Still, she had to ask, “Did you see what way the Monster went?”
All three of the little furry children pointed to the dark and quiet cabin.
Fortunatia looked at the cabin. If the Werewolf were inside, the cottage would not be quiet. Every stick of furniture that could be broken, would be. And still the creature would find things to break. It would bite at shadows and chew the walls away. It would howl down the moon and twist the Wood into Hell if given enough time. But it would rather murder, it would rather generate chaos and then feed upon the fear.
Quietude was not in the Monster’s skill set.
“Are you sure?” The Witch asked, very much aware that she was perhaps no longer the most powerful thing in the wood.
Three little wolfheads nodded. Fortunatia was about to ask them another question when suddenly each of the little pups peed themselves right in a row. The smell of their fear hit the Witch’s nose just as a painful, crushing jolt squeezed her own heart. Monstresser knocked a section of fencing over as his wings covered him in his panic. She calmed the dragon with her mind and augmented her shields with his massive power reserves as a nearly human roar of pain and outrage rolled from the house.
“We’re sure,” they whimpered. “He is, he is, he is!” They hid and protected their sleeping mother.
Fortunatia wiped her tears from her eyes and stood straight and tall. She had forgotten the feeling of shock long ago. She doubted that she’d ever forget it again. Her own legs were wet with the smell of her own fear. The idea of modesty and humility returned to her, too, but these things were useless to her.
“I believe…,” she said, forcing bravado into her voice uselessly. No doubt the young things could smell the fear on her, too. “I believe you,” she said once more, finishing her sentence. She’d meant to sould droll and wise. She failed. She walked to the door of the cottage.
A human hand grabbed her from behind as she was about to enter, and it was only due to the recent moment of weakness that she allowed herself to be spun around. Her storage of mystic might might be limited more sharply than she would have liked. The price of nigh-immortality had seemed cheap. Now it endangered her as nothing else could have. This drain was advantage over her that the Werewolf hadn’t had over her when they fought the previous time.
Fortunatia found herself facing the human, Luchester Hawke, Sheriff of The Woods. He was frightened and hiding behind bravado. “You mustn’t go in there alone,” he snapped at her in what he was sure a gallant tone of voice.
Instantly, the Witch realized her oversight. Never-mind that the sheriff had a great deal of untapped magical talents and was untrained to handle it, but Fortunatia should have banned him from the Wood the moment she had realized who his father had been. What his father was, as well. “This is YOUR fault,” she hissed in his face with a severity that caused him to back away from the pointing woman. “Your fault!” She poked into his chest with such anger that she was afraid she’d poke his heart out.
She hated that she knew it was herself that she was angry at. “Stay here whilst I figure out how to clean out your mess.”
Then she locked his boots to the ground where he stood.
Just in case she needed to run out of the Godey home in a hurry. He’d at least stay out of her way.
It was, of course, dark in the cottage. Straining her ears, she heard some shallow breathing. Fortunatia held her breath, just to be certain that it wasn’t her own. It wasn’'t.
The hearth in the main room was no longer lit, but a cooling, pleasant heat still roiled from it. It chased her own chill away, but her goose bumps persisted. She’d forgotten the sensation of one’s hair seeming to stand on its end. She knew all the colors and scents of fear; but she hadn’t had reason to recall its touch. She had not missed it at all, not in all the decade since she thought that she had kissed it farewell.
She gestured and fairy light filled the room, only to wonder why not a smidgen of moonlight had gotten past the thatched roof. Then she stepped deeper in the the house, to the room where Godey and Honey had shared a bed.
Fortunatia gasped and stepped back. She’d found all the moonbeams and a sickening sight that seemed to hold their attention.
Godey had been thrown into the wall with obviously magical might. He was embedded a half cubit off the rush covered floor. The wooden logs were splinted at the edges of his distorted, spread eagle body. His fur was matted with blood and many lacerations. Only, his muzzle, a few toes, and his right fist stuck out from the wall. His eyes were closed and his body was a good foot too wide in most places. She’d have thought he was dead and the Werewolf curse had passed to another, except she knew that she would have felt that.
Such a thing would at least cripple her, easily.
Then she heard bones grinding with a disgusting liquid echo and she almost vomited. A force was crushing Godey, still.
Don’t react, Fortunatia chided herself. Act! Act like your life and all the Wood depended on your actions.
She reached out and touched his crushed furry chest, gently. She ran her fingers against the ripped skin and the clotted four. His clothing had burned away in the first moments of the Werewolf stepping forth. Ash sprinkled out as her fingers brushed the brown fur. The room smelled of sulfur briefly. She could not fell an external force pressing him into the wall.
She shoved her fingers into a long deep across his chest and his right shoulder. The poor thing gasped as she poked about and found something hard. Something wide and thick. She spread her fingers and pulled the skin apart until she saw that it was a wet red log within Godey.
She yanked her fingers out and stared in horror at the closing wound over the transfigured log within the victim. She staggered back and stepped into the girls room that shared the wall their father had been mounted on. The fairy light followed her sluggishly but when they slid into the room, they showed a wall covering behind the girls croft of rushes and blankets that passed as a bed they shared.
The Witch touched the wall hanging, not wanting to believe it for what it was.
Godey’s tail. But just the fur of it. The fur growing out of the wood in a long lustrous spread several times longer than it nature had intended. The wood beneath it was warm.
Fortunatia yanked her hand away, startled to discover that she had touched the shank of wolf hair. It was clear now that no force was pressing down on the Wolfman.
Godey was, instead, being sucked into the wall.
She bit her lip until she tasted blood and used those drops to ward the room. To cast out evil. To invite mercy, Then she moved back into Godey’s bedchambers and performed these rites twice. It was old hedge magic and she wasn’t expecting much of it, but it kept her busy while she thought.
The lingering moonlight worried her the most. It wasn’t a skill Godey in either of his lifes should have been able to manifest. The Werewolf was at the mercy of moonlight; such a summoning was elementally impossible for him. No, there was a third player her… possibly a fourth…
She went to the Wolfman’s furry tri-coloured fist. The fist was badly damaged but remained unflattened. Rivelets of melted silver left burned etchings into the fur between his fingers and down his wrist. It looked painful and did not seem to be healing (if that was the right word) as the rest of Godey’s body was.
She reached out to the furry fist and tried to gently pry it open. Ridiculously, she felt suddenly felt as if she was attempting to rob the dead. Not that Godey was far from death, as far as she could tell. If she wanted to stop this she had to know what was happening. Bemused, she glanced at the poor wolfman and felt a sickening sympathy for him. His bones were still cracking and his body still seemed to be pulled flatter and wider.
Suddenly, there was a spike in her own heart and she had to grab power from Monstresser to stay conscious. She gasped and staggered as the fairy lights flickered and then faded away. Her dragon roared with the sharp pain of giving up so much power without warning or skill.
“Go feed!” She directed, picturing her yard full of sheep and cows. The dragon sprung up into the air, needing no more encouragement. He was frightened badly by the sudden pull the curse strings had demanded. Fortunatia pretended that all the fear she felt was from her familiar and that none of it was from herself. She was the Witch of the Wood, afterall.
She brought the fairy light back to life and found a golden-yellow set of eyes staring down at her from the wall. Godey’s head had been stretched so now the ear tips were touching the ceiling while his black nose reached down to Fortunatia’s forehead. His upper eyes lids were pulled up into tear drop shapes and the inner pink flesh of his distorted eye sockets glistened like raw wounds. The Witch could not have been more unnerved if a corpse had set up in its crypt.
“Am I…?” The wolfman was obviously having trouble taking a full breath. He paused and gathered himself. “Am I… going to die?” He whispered.
“Oh,” Fortunatia spoke softly but firmly. “Oh, I certainly hope so!”
Godey’s ears tried to fold back, but they were flush against the wall. He snorted and sniffled. Tears welled up in his eyes and began to spill down his muzzle.
Then, suddenly, human eyes, pink with pain and madness looked out from behind the stretched out wolf mask.
“If I die,” the words were spit out hatefully from the shortened muzzle. “You die.” The human soul hidden inside the naturally innocent wolfman hurled invective after invective at her. “If I DIE, YOU DIE,” he screamed as if she hadn’t gotten the point.
Her heart raced and she couldn’t form enough spit to express her disdain for his cowardice. She grabbed his fist and made no pretense of being gentle now. She took out her knife and pried at his furry claws. With a sucking sound straight from the swamps, she was able to pull his fist out from the wall another two inches. Behind the hand, Fortunatia saw a blood puddle in the wall in an impossible vertical pool with little ripples sliding across the surface. She almost dropped the hand upon seeing evidence of the dark magic eating at Godey.
Finally, the fingers parted and Fortunatia pulled the ruined amulet from his grasp. The pads and fingers of his paw like hand had been cooked by holy fire, she saw. She read what was left of the silver disc as the eyes of the beast turned a fiery red. The edges of its body darkened into blackness, melting away from the fairy light.
The Witch dropped the ruined hand as if she realized it was a deadly viper. It turned black and splashed into wall as the monster howled in outrage. The monster’s paw flattened and spread across the wall as if spilled there, stopping once it covered several square feet. The monster’s raw scream was inhumanly powerful, but it vanished slowly as the room filled with moonbeams again.
She tasted the moonbeams and weighed them against the lump of silver in her hand. They tasted of the Goddess Po. Protector of Women. Guardian of Families. She was gentle and ultimately forgiving, but her wrath, once invoked, produced immediate and terrific punishments. Still, there was a conflict here and the Goddess seemed to be of two minds of what to do with the Cursed Wolfen Trinity at the center of it all.
She reached out and pushed her will against the Goddess’ whim. It bent but twisted gently in her grasp. The Witch pulled the magicks and found the spells entangled with something. Godey whimpered in three voices and twisted against the mystic tugging.
Luchester Hawke.
Fortunatia had been right and that gave her a degree of satisfaction; but it did not tell her how to stop an unstoppable monster twisted into something no one had ever seen before.
The taste of sheep’s blood suddenly came to her and then another fresh hot spurt as Monstresser swallowed another little beast almost whole. She considered making him stop at two, but the meal had only made her more aware of how weak she and her dragon had become. She could buy more stock later. She felt the barest hesitation from Monstresser, almost an embarrassment, really.
“Eat your fill,” she told him across the miles. “We are going to need your strength.” He fell to slaughtering almost gleefully.
The wolf was stretched and flattened painfully across the wall. Its fuzzy verge was barely a lump between the flattened legs and waist. The toes reached the floor now but only the nail claws protruded from the wall. The claws were each separated about two or three inches apart the feet having been stretch to a foot wide, easily. Everything to the left of Godey was only big flat and twisted ruined paw with unhealed lacerations that oozed blood and a clear fluid down his black pads that now made up the wall.
Human eyes glared at her from behind a muzzles that had flattened and spread wide to a black button nose the size of her palm and stretched into two rows of insanely dangerous looking teeth, nearly a yard wide. The black lips that framed the teeth twitched with a silent growl. Breathe whistled slowly and painfully from the nostrils and the teeth. How his lungs managed to still work, Furtunatia did not know.
The sockets for the eyes were now each as wide as a horse shoe but the orbs themselves had stayed normal sized. The lids could not close completely, leaving the eyes to simply glare accusingly at her from his ruined body.
Eyes that, but a moment later, popped out from his skull as his muzzle become quite nearly flat and flush with the wall. Except for the black spots and the brown, white, and blonde fur that grew from the entire wall, the eyes were the only things remaining of Godey that seemed to express the impossible pain the wolfman was experiencing.
Then, two minutes later perhaps, there were twin popping noises and the eyes were gone.
Fortunatia rediscovered that she could run, at that moment.
Ώ
The Witch awoke weak and confused. In the light of the dawn a hook-nosed human with blonde hair stared down at her. She knew the boy, but when she’d last seen him, he’d been at least ten years younger and it was she who’d look down on him. Seems like only a few weeks. Maybe months? Since she’d told him that his father still lived, that his father had helped saved the kingdom from the Werewolf that had devastated the fields of Man. His father had sacrificed all but his life; he could never return.
That was as close to the truth as her compact allowed her to approach.
The boy was saying her name now but she ignored him. He’d never been an eloquent speaker and it suddenly seemed very important to recall what had happened to Master Hawke. It was hard to recall beyond the villagers attacking Godey. The gutting and the maiming and the awful attempt to burn him at the stake atop a pile of rushes and wolfbane. They’d reduced the wolfman to agonized tears before Fortunatia had rescued him. She knew she’d gone to Luchester’s father for a reckoning, but she couldn’t remember the deductions that led her to realize he was the werewolf. She couldn’t have known all along. Or she would have stopped him, before the human masses blamed the Wood and its citizens.
Godey died and the Witch spun his body into a magic hide and made a suit of him. She pulled and poured the mana of the Wood into it for three days. Godey returned to a semblance of life, drawn by the love of his mate. Still, he was empty and hollow. Master Hawke willingly climbed into the skin of the innocent creature. Godey had died for his sins after all. The Witch had promised not only an end to the madness and murder, but that his son Luke would never experience the Twilight Ruin.
(Fortunatia!)
Master Hawk wore Godey like a suit and the innocent wolf was no more than a whisper in the human’s head. He looked and smelled like Godey, but he was not. The human was pleased, but this was not enough to cage the monster. Fortunatia sewed him into the suit with the last of her special magic thread. When the last stitch was knotted, it was Master Hawke who was no more than a whisper and Godey Wolfman the Woodsman was in charge of himself once more.
For the next year, the Witch would return at each and every full moon. For three nights a month, the Witch worked to chain the Lunacy. The Twilight Ruin curse was powerful and complex, but she learned to isolate parts of it, to redirect it. No wizard or cleric could have done better.
(Fortunatia!)
When the beast was at last conquered, she found a way to share in its power. For the greater good, of course.
(Fortunatia!!)
So, she’d tied herself to a Twilight Ruin monstrosity and effectively gained near-immortality and nigh-invulnerability.
(Fortunatia! Wake up!)
Nothing could hurt her now…
…so why was she in so much pain?
Ώ
The witch jerked upright, aware of every twisting vine poking in her back. She felt a thousand years old and when she reached for the manna in the ground, it was bleached and empty of any life. Even the thick ropey vines turn to dust as she moved. She had drained it all to survive the night, and there was no telling how many miles she’d have to walk just to feel the Wood alive about her. She hoped it wouldn’t scar.
The sheriff steadied her with a hand and she expended energy she did not have and reached out for her dragon. At first, she could not find him. She would have panicked, but she didn’t have the strength. Then she found a small gray thing at the end of his tether. “I ate the horses,” it whimpered guiltily to her. She patted it with an imaginary hand.
“You probably saved our lives,” she whispered aloud, too weak to merely send it as a silent thought. “Good lad,” she said, “Good lad.”
The little gray thing perked up and she could feel its weakness and hunger. But she also felt Luchester react to the words meant for the dragon. She was annoyed but pragmatic. She would use that. She looked to Godey’s cottage a dozen or so feet away. It’s walls were covered in fur and the thatched roof was a tousled head of hair. Broken and stretched out, Godey’s suffering was palpable to the Witch. The Werewolf was quiescent in the light of day, but there would be another night of the full moon tonight. That would surely kill her. And the monster would escape.
She had to use Luchester, there was simply nothing else to use. For his sake and the sake of the world; she grasped his hand and pulled.
The boy… the man, really… was full of power. She wanted to gulp him down, and he would heal her whole. The Sorcerers had let him go untrained, she marveled at this anew. It was a wonder something like this hadn’t happened sooner. She forced herself to take but a sip, to strengthen herself enough to stand. A sip to help Monstresser feed himself.
He jerked back instinctively and she used this to “allow” him to help her stand once again. The leaves which had covered her earlier as britches, a blouse, and a cloak all fell away from her now as little more than dust and mulch. He’d given her his cloak as she lay unconscious on the ground until dawn. She handed it back to him. As a Witch of the Wood, she knew no modesty, but at the moment she knew no pride, either. She folded her arms across her chest and forced their eyes to meet.
“You probably saved our lives, Good Sheriff,” she said in a voice with just enough energy to seem firm. “But this is your fault and your work here is not done…”
“I don’t understand,” the young man sputtered. “I did nothing.”
“Aye, and that alone would be damning enough.” she chided, trying to be angry. “Do you not know who your father–” But suddenly she could say more. Her compact kept her from speaking the truth as it had kept Godey from from explaining that Combe was his half-sister by way of a magic curse. Luckily, she was more nimble with lies and half-truths than the wolfman could ever have hopes to be. She made as if to calm her emotions.
“Do you not know who your father was to this monster?”
“I don’t think he even knew Godey,” Luchester said, going to the meat of the matter.
“Look at this cottage,” the witch said with sudden inspiration. “Have you not ever recognized it as your family’s hunting lodge? From childhood? Godey isn’t the monster. Your father arranged for Godey to become the Werewolf’s prison.” She added at the sheriff’s confused look. “With my magical help.”
This was as close to the truth as she could speak it. “The Monster knows who you are. It played on Godey’s quite reasonable objections to her daughter marrying a sodomite. It made him angry and it made Godey sloppy. If you’d just withdrawn and come back another day when there wasn’t a full moon in the sky, none of this would have happened. None.”
Luchester Hawke staggered under the absurdity of her accusations. Yet, he knew that magic had its own logic. “I only defended my self! And the wolfmaids!”
She sighed, looking around for any of the wolfmaids. They were not about.
“Did you not decide to defend yourself offensively? And before that, did you not throw the monster into Honey so he might shed the blood of an innocent woman?”
“I hadn’t intended that,” Luchester growled at her.
“Unintended Consequences is merely the second oldest sin in human history.” The witch poked him in the chest. “Hadn’t it ever occurred to you why you are attracted to Combe?”
He looked guiltily about. “I’ve resisted and I’ve searched my soul… but there’s no answer for it other than I love her.”
“You can love her because you carry with you the mark of the beast.”
“No!” Luchester felt the accusation as if it were a pot of boiling water poured on him. “I’m a good man!”
Fortunatia found she still had laughter left in her. “No, not That Beast. The monster your father battled. You were destined to carry the monster next.”
Luchester shook his head no and staggered away. She suspected it didn’t ring true to him because there was so much that she couldn’t tell him. “That makes no sense.”
“You were attacked, as a child.” She lied, because what was one more lie to a pragmatic woman like her? “It let you survive, so that it might escape final death into a new human host.” Luchester shook his away from this nonsense so she pressed onward. “Think about it, your father would never have sacrificed himself for any number of peasants, but for you, just you… he would have.”
“Yes, that part makes sense but I don’t understand why that would make me love Combe?”
Fortunatia sighed sincerely now, because imparting self-knowledge to men, especially, human men, was always so incredibly difficult. “Because there will always be a part of you that desires that chaos, that monster, and that murderous might.”
She choked on the sentence, ‘it’s your birthright.’ Too much truth in that. She used the hesitation to good effect and gathered herself with solemness. When his eyes met hers again, she pronounced, “You are marked.”
“But I love her.” Luchester looked away and stared at the horrible cottage.
“That’s good,” Fortunatia gently moved his head so their eyes met again. “Because Love is the only thing that can defeat the Werewolf, now. If the Po medallion still remained whole, if your wolfbane ward hadn’t burned away, then maybe I wouldn’t need you to do what I’m going to ask of you… but I need you to obey me because tonight, when that harvest moon rises again, the monster will either escape the house… or he will be a creature the size of the cottage.”
Luchester nodded as the witch tasked him in with all he needed to do in the next few hours. He only asked one question, “Why the wall? Why did he get stretched all over the house like that?”
“Po chose a form of Immurement because he had said…that he was the man of the house.” The beast simply twisted it, she thought but did not add. Luchester blanched at the stupidity of it all, but he refrained from questioning the will of the goddess. He simply shook his head and muttered, “Man of the house.”
Then just before she sent the sheriff on his way, Monstresser reported how little manna he was able to pull from the ground. And he was, still, so terribly hungry.
“I’m also going to need five head of cattle,” she said, a bit more demanded than she’d intended.
“For your dragon? Not a problem.” Luchester said, with a faint smile. “Let’s not exchange one slaughtering monster for another.”
Fortunatia found herself liking this man, this boy.
It was a shame she was going to have to betray him to set things right.
Ώ
After Monstresser had eaten three of the cattle from the Hawke lands, Fortunatia inspected the interior of the frightful college.
She’d already inspected the exterior and that hadn’t been easy. Godey’s head was now on the outside with his nose stretched into a vaguely gravestone shape. His teeth framed the doorway and, impossibly, a flat tongue was flattened into the walkway. It had had the texture and feel of mud. She poked her fingers into it experimentally and Godey’s giant, blind face flinched from the pain of it. The windows were still in place, and the shutters were the only thing not made from the wolfman’s flesh.
The rear of the house was just fur, in Godey’s tricolor markings. The fur wasn’t rope thick, but as thin as the hairs had been before the transformation. There were about three or four inches longer than they had been, she supposed. The exterior walls were warm, warmer that the mere sun could account for.
The garden was frightening. These gourds had yet to be picked and they might never be harvested now. The tail had grown into the garden the same way the tongue had merged with the path to the front door. The soil grew fur as well as vines. Those thick vines were pinkish pinto skinned things with bulbous fruit. These seemed vaguely natural, with two gourds in bound together in a loose suede hide. When touched, the sack seemed to tighten and pull away, startled.
Fortunatia thought they’d been as warm or warmer than the walls, but she decided that a fleeting touch had told her all that she’d needed to know.
The curse was not limiting itself to the house. Another night, she was sure the Werewolf would swallow the whole yard if he didn’t slip the leash outright. Po would not send moonbeams to help keep the monster trapped tonight. The goddess simply didn’t turn her attention to anyone but once. Fortunatia and Luchester were on their own come moonrise.
The Witch entered the house thru the front door, stepping gingerly were the Godey’s tongue twitched muddily beneath her bare feet. She brought forth her own fairly lights and examined the main room. The wolfman’s chest seemed to make up the floor and his backside covered the ceiling. The walls were the stretched out arms and paw pads. It was a twisted madness of impossible flesh.
She knock hard on the wall and it felt like hitting firm flexed muscles. A whine came from the doorway and Fortunatia found herself leaning in to inspect the frame. It disturbed her to see the macabre construction for the outer frame of the “door” had his upper teeth and canines while the inner frame was all gums and his lower teeth on the sides, Between the frames his jaws actually his breath squeezed out and in with a shallow, painful whisper every few moments.
Seeing this, Fortunatia could not but look into Godey’s mind and body in much the same way she might look into her dragon familiar’s. It was almost automatic.
The Witch refused to vomit by pure force of will.
She tripped over the furry floor and sat there until the nausea passed. Then Monstresser slaughter another bull and the taste of hot blood was in her mouth. Weakness was a novelty that she could do without. Still, once she swallowed back the bile, she felt stronger. The fresh kill converted to magic and energy almost instantly.
She climb to her feet near to where the hearth should have been. Something of polished stone seemed to have grown in its place. Heat seemed to pulsate from it in gentle waves. It was either the monster’s invulnerable heart or something else. Either was an obscenity, so she turned away.
Neither the furnishings nor the items in the house seemed to have been adsorbed and converted as the plants in the garden had. She grabbed an old robe from Honey’s chest so as not to shock the Man’s Priest when he arrived. It was important that someone represent Luchester’s world in this.
To that effect, she found an old broom and some dried spices so that Combe’s world world also be represented.
She stepped gingerly out of the house and tasted her feet in the back of her mouth as the cottage flinched behind her. She piled up the articles and then reluctantly reentered Godey’s tortured chambers to grab a chair. Godey struggled more but to know avail. His muscles and organs made up the walls and the floor now and it was not designed to move. As macabre as Godey’s twisted body was, it was effectively paralyzed.
The werewolf might change that tonight.
There was once a Witch that gave her house the legs and feet of a chicken. Such a spell was considered evil and no one lifted a finger to save that Witch when the house ate her like the worm she was. Another reason to end this as quickly as possible.
On the other hand, she did get at least a century of unquestioned rule in her little corner of the Wood, so there was that.
She shook her head clear of distractions. And put the chair to the left of the door, clear of the pink, moist path. Sage leaves puffed smoke from her hands as she painted a glyph in the air over the destroyed eyes. She moved the chair to the right and performed the same ritual. Small hedge magic was all she dared do, but Godey needed to see the ritual for it to work.
The red, irritated hollows faded to a healthier pink. The black nose of an entablature flexed, drawing in the smoky glyphs. Instanly, the wounds closed only to blink open a moment later. Golden eyes the size of a fist stared out in agonized pain. Fortunatia could feel the cottage trying to scream and she laid a hand on its furry walls, attempting to calm it.
Godey did not understand what was happening to him. “Why must my deaths always be so hard?” he tried to scream. If he made a sound, either he was deaf or his voice did not reach his ears.
Suddenly, he felt the Witch’s calming thoughts. The promise that she’d rescue him again. That she rescued all of them, the wolf, the man, and thing between the worlds. He did not want rescue. He wanted release. He wanted death.
“You promised her shelter,” the Witch whispered in his mind. “You promised to provide for her. You promised to protect her. You promised to keep the werewolf in check.” Then she showed Godey Honey terrified and broken on the grass. He felt ashamed, knowing his blame.
Deeper still, the Witch whispered to the human soul hidden within the Wolfman. “You promised her shelter. You promised to provide for her. You promised to protect her. You promised to keep the werewolf in check.” And to this she showed Combe, whom he loved as his own, even if she wasn’t human. Who was Human anymore, these days? He wasn’t just gaining a son, he was getting his son back.
To the sleeping darkness at the center of it all, “I’ve promised you an eternal prison of torment exposed to genuine true love.” The darkness was unmoved and caring. Words were meaningless; except he smelled the blood of cattle upon it.
“And this,” Fortunatia told all of them, “This is how we keep our promises.”
Ώ
The priest proved not at all troublesome. The Werewolf had killed several nuns in his “youth” and he was very much inclined to give his blessings to whomever the Witch ask him to. But that did not mean he wasn’t quite put off by the living house he was supposed to perform the sacred rites in front of.
Godey had taken to moaning as madness nibbled at the edges of his mind and it took some persuading that they didn’t want the priest to exorcise the house.
Eventually, he consented to perform the wedding ceremony with his back to the monstrosity. Godey’s body shook with rage and frustration as he understood what was happening. Fortunatia threw salt down on to the surrounding ground and they each landed in the shapes of glyphs they priest would not have liked if he saw them.
Godey screamed when the priest asked if anyone had an objection to the union, but salt glyphs were a fence of silence. The priest did not hear and would have rightly ignored the works of the devil if he had.
With bride kissed and groom licked nervously, Fortunatia moved them Luchester’s world to Combe’s. Fortunatia made sage scented blessings that popped happily over their head as the leapt over the broom that had swept their future home.
The deed was now doubly done, but Godey was still fused with the house.
The sheriff turned to the Witch and glared at her. “What now?” He asked thru a forced smile.
“Carry her over the threshold.” She hissed back.
Both bride and groom stare at her as if she was crazy. The door way was the thing’s mouth.
“He’s still your father, he won’t hurt you.” Instantly, the Witch realized what she’d been able to say. She took it as a sign that they were on the right path.
“And if that doesn’t work?” The heir to the Werewolf curse whispered back, loud enough for all the guests to hear.
She felt confident enough to regain her usual aloofness. “Then you’ll consummate your marriage, under his roof, and you’ll become the new ‘Man of the House.’”
Combe began to cry, as many new brides had for hundreds of years. Her reasons, of course, were rather unique.
Her family cried with her, including Godey who was forced to watch horrified as Combe was carried into his mouth.
Fortunatia crossed her fingers and poured her magic into Luchester so that his every gesture would express the love in his heart. The cradling of his love and his carrying her broke the knot that held together Po’s curse. Each step forward unwound the cursed wolfman from walls. The trapped manna flew away from Godey to the Witch to the land. So much gone and wasted, but she was able to salvage some of it. The Wood would heal.
“Now, quickly, Monstresser… Now! Do not let them see the body.” She whispered to the dragon now invisible and small.
With a cheer, Luchester leapt from the door and answered the house clear.
Fortunatia kissed Honey, stopping the wolfmaid as she searched frantically for her mate. “Po still seeks satisfaction, Honey. Godey will return one day, changed, but one day you will see him again. Have faith.”
Honey nodded, for she had trusted the Witch and Po since Godey’s first death and rebirth. Her faith would keep her through the second.
Everything the Witch said was true. Truer, sometimes, than even the Witch knew.
Ώ
Dripping wet, Luchester could only stare at the pile of wolf skins in the center of the room in bafflement. Then realization caused his face to be pierced by a thousand pin pricks and his ears roared with a protest that the world was unbalanced. “Is that…”
“Godey, yes.” The witch said pulling a spinning wheel out from a dark corner. “Poor ruined Godey. Every bone in his body broken. Every bone even the little bones in his ear that make sound work. He’d heal eventually, especially if I let the moonlight in here to awaken the Werewolf.”
“Kill it,” Luchester cried, clutching at the Witches sleeves. “Please end its suffering and just let it die!”
“So say you, knowing you’d be cursed with the murderous beast. Knowing that for three nights every full moon you’d kill and kill again.”
“No! You can stop it.”
Fortunatia shook her head now. “I made a mistake. I bound myself to the monster when I trapped him. I will die if Godey dies. There would be no one to protect the Wood or The Kingdoms of Man from you. And your untrained magic behind the jaws of that Twilight Ruin creature?” The witch took his hands from her arm and pulled him to the spinning wheel.
"You must reforge the curse. Godey must become something useful and then you will be free to leave and join your wife.
Luchester did not know how a spinning wheel worked, but his foot began to push at the pedal of its own accord. He looked pleadingly up at the witch. “I am merely restoring the Wood to its correct balance and humors.” She pricked her her fingers on the spindles and then touched her fingers to the center of Luchester’s forehead, to his eyes, and then to his neck. “This will transfer all the strings to the Werewolf from me to you.”
“Now, spin,” she commanded and handed a long stringy piece of furry meat to Luchester. Without knowing what he was doing, the living wolf skin was pulled into the spinning wheel. Yard by yard vanished into the contraption. For every yard, only a few inches of magic thread collected on the spindle. Soon the eyes of Godey were uncovered from the pile. They looked at him helplessly. Once noticed, the sheriff could not look away from them. Some times, golden wolf eyes, sometimes black eyes, and more than once he saw his father’s very human eyes, pained and confused. Helpless.
Wolf fur grew beneath the Sheriff’s wet clothes and still the spinning wheel spun
When the living wolfskin was gone, it was nearly dawn. Luchester collasped to the floor. He was having a waking nightmare with all the new voices in his head. His muzzle felt wrong and his palms itched and turned a puffy pink as he watched. His ears twitched as he heard the Witch step to the spinning wheel and pull off the magic thread.
She straddled him with her bald pink body and he was repulsed. There was a silver needle and a small silver shear. “An innocent man, hiding a murdered innocent creature, hiding a repentant coward, full of burning darkness.” The witch tapped his nose and he inhaled and held his breath against his will.
“There we go. Now, look at me, all of you.” The voices spiraled dizzily and the witch seemed to pull them all into his left eyes. He hear them echoing in his own, She closed his right eyes and threaded the needle with the magic thread. The voice all screamed in agony and the Sheriff bucked beneath the Witch as his his own body had been severed in half. Then with his left eyes forced open, so much light, so many ways to see things, only some of the eyes staring out knew the splinter coming towards them was wolfsbane.
He screamed as the splinter pierced everyone, every voice, like a fly in amber. Every voice in his head, including his own, was paralyzed. Then the witch gently closed the eyes with his left lid and sewed it shut with the magic thread. He whimpered at each and every tug. When she was done, there was no sign that he’d even had had a left eye.
Ώ
When Luke opened his right eye, the pain was simply gone.
The Witch helped him up. The pads of his feet hurt a little. He vaguely recalled putting on human boots last night. Well, that would teach him. No more boots! Then he remembered the Witch and he hung his head low, ears back. “Thank you,” Luke Wolfman said. “What do I owe you?”
She smiled and slipped the spool of magic thread into her cleavage. “Have lots and lots of babies, Luke. That’s all I ask.”
His ears burned red but his tail wagged furiously behind him. Last night had been his wedding night. “Yes! My wife! I must get back to Honey!”
“Combe,” the witch correctly gently.
The wolfman laughed, “Of course, Combe. That could have gone terribly wrong.” The new Sheriff stopped at her door and saw her small, sad smile. Human faces were hard to read. “Are you sure I owe you nothing, Fortunatia?”
The witch sighed, “For now.” Then she got up and grabbed his arm. “Come? Have you ever ridden a dragon?”
“No,” Luke said as he ran with her towards the sleeping dragon.
No… but there was a part of him… a very small part behind his wounded eye… that said yes, yes he had.
-End