For three days he had scoured the forest, seeking the cottage. He had been told that’s where she resided and his need of her satisfied once he found her. Directions had been both vague and specific and the scrap of paper with the scribbled map which at first had seemed so straightforward a way was now crumpled and wearing thin and read more akin to a map drawn by a madman than the woman he had paid to sketch it out for him.
He had met that woman in a darkened corner of a pub in a nearby village, a place he had never frequented before and couldn’t find again when he tried to return to ask more questions. His palm still itched where she had fished the silver out of it. His first sight of her had his pulse racing, comely and he had thoughts of seduction. But she paid him no mind in matters of lust and when she excused herself and never returned, she had appeared quite ugly to him.
All of this had taken place over the past nine days, starting the night of the moon high in the night sky and waxing gibbous. Soon the moon would hang low and full as though it could be plucked out of its heavens like an unearthly fruit.
His grudge was a piece of fruit grown mealy, kept too long.
The grudge he’d kept with him for over half a year, through the winter, spring and summer. He had harvested it the autumn before when she’d married another.
He loathed both of them, but it was for her he most especially wished injury.
And he would have it done, not by his hand because he couldn’t risk harm to his reputation and during his more honest moments he could admit that he was frightened of her husband.
He last saw her on market day the month before and she was gone heavy with child. And that decided it for him. He would do her harm.
It was no easy task to find the witch. The search occupied his every waking hour and most of those asleep, dark dreams filled with blood and the sound of breaking bones. He could feel something turning inside of him, bowing his shoulders and creaking his spine and yet he pressed on. In corners of foul-smelling public houses, in alleys so narrow one had to enter sideways, behind trees ancient and hollowed and scratched with symbols that made his eyes narrow. But he would have what he would have and gathering information led him to the woman who drew the map.
Finally, he stumbled upon the place. Down twisted pathways, over a poisoned creek, beneath a split hanging tree, past the shadows of night animals stilled by his passing by, he smelled the woodsmoke and spied the candle guttering on the sill. He knocked and the door swung open. A hunched figure in a chair rocking beside a massive hearth with soup cauldron bubbling.
Come closer, the ragged voice instructed him, and he drew closer. Leaving the door open to the sounds of creatures hunting and the hunted crying out.
Terrible things took place. She pricked him and he bled. She bid him drink and he vomited. His head swam but his heart stayed the course, and he made his case as though she were the magistrate.
When they were done, it’s done, she told him. In the corner, rose a shadow, up and out of the dirt floor, curling out of a pile of fetid matter, spine straightening, shoulders settling, head rising. A thing that seemed to shudder and tremble but not from fear but because it was fear.
What’s that, he asked, his voice a strangled whisper.
That’s your desire.
Not my desire!
No? she asked him, cocking her head the way a bird of prey will do.
I have no desire that is embodied so. This horrid creature. He was flailing. You’ve called it forth.
Payment of your own blood and bile would suggest otherwise, my boy. You asked of me to spell a weapon, to cast it out into the world, its target a girl, we let it loose together. You and me. She lowered herself into the rocking chair pulling a briar wood pipe out of the pocket of her skirt, leaning forward to light it with a punk from the fire. She blew out two streams of gray smoke from her nostrils and looked up at him. Your desire manifested, became corporeal.
No! He said putting both hands out in front of him. Why does it approach me? The timber of his voice rising, shrill.
It’s ready to accompany you, my son.
I’m not your son, you wicked hag.
You weren’t born of my body, but you are now my child, child. Go from here and never return, ungrateful man. She bent her body away from him, toward the flickering light of the fire and in that illumination she looked different.
He blanched. Then turned and made quickly for the door, slamming it closed behind him, panting on the stone stoop. Above him, the moon was rising full. He began to run down the cobbled path, through the opened gate, into the menacing woods, behind him he could hear the beating of leathered wings.
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