Chapter 10
1742 Words
10
We traipsed through the woods for what felt like an eternity. By the time the way opened a faint glow had appeared over the eastern horizon. That is, I supposed that was east. Maybe the directions were different in a different world.
I stepped out of the brush and into a small meadow. A small garden stood before us, and beyond that there loomed a hovel of a house. The walls looked like they’d been salvaged from half a dozen different buildings, none of which had been in great shape when their walls had been stolen to make the shack. The windows, too, were a hodgepodge mix of square and round shapes, and even a triangle glass stuck on the narrow door.
A thump and a tug on my hand made me turn around. Shade was sprawled on the ground.
“Shade!” I shouted as I rushed to his side. I turned him onto his back and his pale face stood out in the growing light. “Shade!” I shook him, but he didn’t respond.
My frantic mind turned to one place: the shack. I scrambled to my feet and dashed over to the door. “Hello!” I yelled as I pounded my fist on the door. “Please! We need help!”
“Not so loud,” a voice snapped.
The sound came from behind me, so I spun around. A figure was hunched over Shade. They wore a tight hood that hugged their head, but stopped short of hiding their face. The rest of their thin frame was covered with a patchwork of worn, dirty rags. The clothes even extended over his feet, though the toes stuck out the end of the colorful scraps. Long, discolored toenails clutched the ground beside Shade as the figure poked Shade.
The mans’ face was etched with so many lines that he looked like a scribble picture made my an exuberant five year old. His nose was long and crooked at two points so that he looked like a vulture that had smashed its nose once too often into the road carrion.
“Not the best shape, are ya?” the ancient man mused as he gave Shade another prodding.
I approached the man like someone approaches a bear: unsure whether which one of us will run first, or whether that thin frame would consider me a meal, especially with how he was poking Shade. “Who are you?”
The man stood and gave me a look-over with his pale gray eyes. “I could be asking ya the same thing, but I’m thinking yer wanting to have this heap-” He gave Shade a light kick. “-taken care of first. That’s why you was banging on my door, wasn’t it?”
My eyebrows shot up and I pointed a finger at him. “You’re door? You’re the wizard?”
He sniffed the air with his crooked nose. “Sorcerer, if you would, and if you would also drag this sorry sack into the shack I can see what can be done with him.”
I hurried to obey, but the task was easier ordered than done. Shade was heavier than he looked, and as I hooked my arms under his a grunt slipped out of my clenched teeth. Most of his body dragged the ground as I walked backwards to the shack. The one step up into the home was overcome and I found myself in a single large, dirty room that looked born from a Dickens novel, if Dickens had been inspired by wickens.
Herbs hung from the open ceiling rafters and tickled my face as I dragged Shade over to a large, ragged rug set before the thick-set stone chimney. Smatterings of furniture decorated the room as though they were half-forgotten by their owner, which may not have been far from the truth as the chairs and a table were covered in thick layers of stratified dust. A bed stood in the corner to the right of the door between the chimney and the entrance, and the piles of cloth atop the wood frame were either his blankets or an extra set of clothes.
“Stop gawking and get him over here,” the man snapped as he picked up a ladle and stirred the soupy mixture that boiled in a cauldron over the fire.
I set Shade down on the floor and stepped back. The old man filled the ladle and stepped backward so he loomed over Shade. The firelight caught his features, menacing and gleeful, before he threw the whole contents into Shade’s face.
Shade’s eyes flew open and a yelp escaped his throat. He rolled over and choked out a mouthful of water. “What’s. . .what’s going on?”
“Just me saving your skin,” the sorcerer retorted as he turned back to the fire.
“You already had medicine for him?” I asked the old man as I knelt down beside Shade.
The sorcerer scoffed as he hung the ladle back on its hook attached to the chimney. “‘Course not. All the fool needed was a good splash of hot water.”
Shade sat up, but leaned his back against a dusty chair that stood nearby. “It’s not like you to help me, Elymas.”
Elymas scoffed. “It ain’t you I’m helping, it’s this lass here-” He nodded at me and his eyes gave off a little twinkle. “She looked like she’d be a little lost without ya, and I don’t have the time to take her to your master.”
“How long will it take to fix me?” Shade questioned him.
Elymas wrinkled his crooked nose. “How the hell should I know? I haven’t got a look at it yet. Now get out of that getup of yours so I can take that look and toss ya out.”
Shade shrugged out of his coat and shirt, and I couldn’t help but gasp. The dark discoloring I had seen on his coat hadn’t been blood, but infection. The hideous yellow disease oozed out of the bandages. Shade gingerly removed those and revealed a circle of corruption that festered inside his wound.
Elymas sat down in the chair and inspected the wound for a moment before he frowned. “I haven’t seen this magic in a while. Who shot you?”
“Pawn.”
Elymas wrinkled his nose. “A new one, eh?”
“Does it matter?” Shade countered.
“Nope,” Elymas replied as he eased himself onto his feet. He yanked down a few herbs that hung near the chimney and tossed them into the water. “This’ll take a while, but I’ll get ya patched up.”
Shade shifted and winced. “I hope not too long.”
“I’ve got something for that,” Elymas offered as he grabbed the ladle.
“Then give it to me,” Shade demanded.
That familiar wicked glint slipped into Elymas’s eyes as he turned to Shade. “Gladly.” He smacked the back of Shade’s head so hard I heard a ring from the metal ladle. Shade slumped onto the floor. Elymas sported a wide grin as he hung his weapon back up. “Ya never learn.”
“You can really help him, can’t you?” I asked the psychotic old man.
Elymas turned back to the fire and tossed in a few more handfuls of herbs. “‘Course I can. Isn’t that what I said?”
I looked down at the unconscious Shade who now sported a goose egg on the back of his head. “Yeah, but-”
“Save yer buts for someone who wants to answer ‘em,” he scolded me as he resumed his seat in the chair. He leaned down close to me and those wizened old eyes studied my face. “What’s yer story now? Ya don’t got the look of someone who’s been around here before, or for very long.”
“I-um-” My eyes darted down to my unconscious guide. Just when I needed him to tell me whether this man could be trusted.
“I can,” Elymas told me.
I whipped my head up and stared at him with wide eyes. “Can you. . .did you read my mind?”
The old man chuckled. “Don’t need to with a face like yers. Just need to read what’s there to know what yer thinking.”
I winced and turned my face away from him. “I. . .I’m not really from around here.”
“And yer something special, or Pawn wouldn’t be having an interest in ya,” Elymas mused.
My eyes flickered down to Shade. “Can you. . .do you know much about Shade?”
“That’s a mighty fine idea to be gallivanting about with a man you don’t know,” the old man scolded me.
I snorted. “Like I had a choice. . .”
Elymas opened his mouth, but paused and leaned closer to me. His sharp eyes narrowed as he stared hard at a corner of my lips. “What’s that ya got there?”
I reached up my hand and touched the spot. “Where?”
He smacked my hand away. “Don’t touch it!” He stood and shuffled over to the neglected table. A pile of beakers lay beside some roots and books. He snatched one of the empty ones along with a cork and returned to me. “Now stay calm or something might happen.”
His words made my pulse quicken and I felt something shift inside me. A sensation of goo slipped out of my mouth and slid across my cheek. Elymas leapt at me with the beaker and an involuntary scream erupted from my mouth.
The goo dropped off my face and I now saw it was a blood-colored worm about two inches long. The creature slithered along the floor toward the door.
“Catch it!” Elymas shouted at me as he scrambled for the creature.
I scurried after him and we came neck-and-neck to the finish line that was the oozy worm. Elymas lunged for the beast and wrapped his hand around its squishy body, but the thing merely slipped through his fingers and leapt toward the crack at the bottom of the door. I flung myself forward across the floor and dropped onto my stomach as I clapped both hands around the thing. Its horrible viscous body made a disgusting squelching noise, but it didn’t escape.
“In here!” Elymas hissed as he thrust the vial in my face.
I sat up and pushed the bottom of my clasped hands against the top of the glass, and slowly opened them. The creature slithered out and dropped with a soft plop into the bottom. Elymas corked the vial and held it up to his face. “A pretty little thing, isn’t it?”
I pointed a shaking finger at the wriggling thing. “Was that in me?”
“You should know, it came out of your mouth,” he revealed.
I wrinkled my nose. “I didn’t feel it.”
He arched one of his ruffled eyebrows. “Not a touch of it?” I shook my head. He turned his face away. “Interesting. . .”
I plopped back onto my rear and sighed. “Well, at least it’s out.”
“Not likely.”
- Writer
