Hex Life

by Rachel Deering

  Same old, same old.

  In spite of their steadfast denials, people were seldom original.

  After a lifetime of predicting brutal tragedies that ended with such karmic deaths any perpetrator with half a brain should have guessed would happen, the witches had grown so very bored with it all. How many ways could they say the same thing?

  Don’t be an idiot. Nay, really, stop being stupid. Don’t… you will hurt yourself.

  Still, they persisted. It was as if humanity wanted to bleed.

  Worse, they wanted to whine.

  Case in point. Such a simple prophecy. One that could be easily avoided by giving the child a loving home. If only the father would do so. But as with Oedipus, he wouldn’t listen to their wisdom.

  How many times would they waste their collective breaths? Why did he even bother to come here when he had no intention of hearing them?

  “Double, double. Toil and trouble.

  “Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.

  “Humans come and humans die.

  “‘Me life’s unfair,’ they always cry.”

  The sisters took a moment to discuss what they would tell this wretched king.

  “No need to speak the truth,” Enyo whispered.

  “Shall we make a bet?”

  Dieno liked where Persis went. “Aye!” She cracked a rare smile as they began to think in verse.

  The rules of their species forbade them from ever giving their sight outright.

  Clearing her throat, Dieno lifted the eye so that she stared out at the arrogant king in all his finery. “Here your future for to see,

  “Clad in darkness, he brings misery.

  “A hundred swords light a hundred fires deep,

  “And at the knees of each soldier doth a maiden weep.

  “Over and over, a kingdom is lost.

  “Such a horrid, dreadful cost.

  “For in the end, the answer’s clear…

  “Be careful of the evil you hold so dear.”

  The king scowled at their prophecy as if he were baffled by it.

  Dieno stifled her smile. She could tell he was frightened by his bleak future. And well he should be. Even so, he mustered a polite bow and thanked them for their time, then paid them well.

  “Good riddance.” Enyo lowered the hood from her cloak and extinguished the fire. They were done for the night.

  “Was it right? What you did?”

  They paused at the sound of their apprentice. Eeri was a little snipe of a thing who constantly stuck her nose where it didn’t belong. She pretended to have the good of others in her heart, but even blind, Dieno could see through the little blond’s treachery.

  “Clean out the cauldron.”

  Eeri watched as the three witches hobbled off to sleep and glared at their departing backs. How she loathed them. They were the worst.

  She should know. Her own parents had sold her off to them for nothing more than a bag of grain when she’d been a child. And she’d hated them every moment since. Imagine, being worth nothing more than a sack of seed.

  “Bitches’ brew,” she snarled at their fetid concoction before she spat into it. The bubbling liquid hissed, then a green cloud shot up toward the sky.

  Her eyes widened in terror as she feared they might see what she’d done and harm her for it. They could be incredibly cruel over such things. Best not to try her luck with them!

  Swallowing hard, she quickly set about cleaning up. After all, she had a big day ahead of her tomorrow. The last thing she wanted was to be sleepy or tired.

  * * *

  The next morning, Eeri made her monthly trek to town to purchase supplies for her witch mistresses. These were the days she loved best of all, as they gave her a break from the three Stygian bitches and their sing-songy lies. She didn’t believe in anything they said. How could she? It was always vague nonsense that could apply to anyone.

  Screwing her face up, she mocked their prophecy from the night before. “Here your future for to see,

  “Clad in darkness, he brings misery.

  “A hundred swords light a hundred fires deep,

  “And at the knees of each soldier doth a maiden weep.

  “Over and over, a kingdom is lost.

  “Such a horrid, dreadful cost.

  “For in the end, the answer’s clear…

  “Be careful of the evil you hold so dear.” She scoffed, then snorted. “Utter rubbish, I say. Me farts hold more prophecy than that… smell better too than that shite them witches brew.”

  Letting out a tired breath, she stared up at the bright blue sky. “I’d give aught to be done with the lot of them!”

  All she’d ever wanted was to belong to someone. Belong to something like this quaint little village, celebrating the vernal equinox—a time for new beginnings. How she wished she could be one of them. Cheery and friendly, and free of the Stygian three.

  Depressed, she walked past bright colors that shot out from open doorways while the townspeople excitedly drank and danced in their revelry. All around, laughter came at her, yet she felt none of it.

  Not that it mattered. This was a good atmosphere for fortune-telling. Just as she’d known it’d be. Those around her would make good prey… er, practice for her future trade.

  Her spirits perking up at the thought, Eeri pulled out the small crystal ball she’d packed and looked about for a place to set up a makeshift stand. Not too dark or drab. Inviting and promising.

  Unlike the bitches in the woods.

  They were pathetic and old. And since the day she’d been bought, it’d been her dream that someday, with enough money, she could purchase her freedom from those old heifers. That was all she wanted. A life apart from creatures like them.

  Sadly, she had to deal with them. So she made sure to gather their ingredients first, lest she become part of their apothecary. Then, she found a nice corner in the marketplace to set up a makeshift table for her ball.

  Within minutes a couple came by and sat across from her.

  Finally!

  “Tell me about my future.” The man smiled and handed off a dirty coin.

  Eeri could smell the alcohol on him, but he seemed pleasant enough.

  The girl at his side gave her a sheepish grin. “I know he doesn’t look his best right now, but it’s a festival, you know? Anyway, are we meant to be?”

  Eeri suppressed a shiver. God save her from that fate. Yet who was she to cast dispersions on the woman’s ambitions?

  One woman’s rose, another’s asshole.

  With a deep breath, Eeri moved her hands around the ball, calling on the powers of beings from beyond to show her the weave of the universe. If their life forces were entwined. She saw the man before her drinking heavily as burly men looted his home.

  The woman by his side wasn’t happy. Rather she sat with dejected, dead eyes as the men raided her meager possessions.

  A stout man hefted a heavy axe over his shoulder. “This be why you don’t go a’ gambling, worm. The Lord giveth and we taketh.” He cut off the man’s hand.

  She grimaced at the nightmare, then met their eager gazes. A horrible future easily corrected without verse or the boiling of oats or toads. “Beware your gambling and heavy drinking in the future, if you want to remain together and whole.”

  The woman let out a gleeful cheer as she shot to her feet. Quickly, she pulled him up and dragged him away. As they vanished into the crowd, Eeri could hear her letting him have it about his drunken tendencies.

  She spent the rest of the day dispensing similar fortunes. They were all simple people with simple lives, but she would have it no other way.

  Yet all too soon, the sun set and the night grew cold. A chilly breeze sought to drive her from the village, back into the woods and up the hill. Even so, she’d made a pretty penny and it was time to retire for the night and bring her ingredients home.

  As she was packing her ball, she felt a peculiar presence near that caused the hair on her arms to stand on
end. Until then, she hadn’t noticed that the night had become unbearably quiet. No sound could be heard. Not even the barking of a dog.

  Only her heartbeat in her ears. Until the sound was overtaken by the heavy footfall of a stranger. The sound grew louder with every step as he came closer and closer still. A figure wrapped in utter darkness, walking straight toward her.

  She wanted to run. Needed to run. But fear had paralyzed every muscle in her young body until the stranger was upon her.

  Tall and muscular, he had the swagger of a warrior and the confidence of a king. This man was legendary. Without breaking stride, he took a seat at her makeshift fortune-teller’s table. Still wrapped in silence, he pulled out a bloodstained invitation and dropped it beside her hand.

  She gulped audibly. What he held was rare indeed. A favor card given by the witches to someone who’d once gone out of his or her way to pay them a kindness. It meant that the bitches now owed him a favor in turn.

  Those they hoarded more closely than gold as they never wanted to be beholden to anyone.

  Who was this man? She was desperate to know. Yet she could see no trace of any feature. It was as if all light avoided him. As if it cringed from him. All she could make out was a subtle sneer in his dark visage.

  He tapped his card three times and her senses returned. As frightening as the man was, he must be close friends with the witches on the Hill. Only one of those rare breeds would have such a card. So she dug out her crystal ball to tell one last fortune for the night.

  Cradling it like a babe, she moved her hands over the ball. She saw the man standing proudly next to a flaming pile of dead witches.

  A lot of dead witches.

  “Witchkiller,” Eeri breathed.

  With a cruel smile, he leaned closer like a predator before the kill.

  Her heart pounding, she yelped and knocked the table over. She heard her prized ball shatter against the cobblestone road as she sent the witches’ supplies scattering. Nothing mattered to her at the moment, except saving her own life.

  He was evil! Terrified, she ran as fast as she could, and dared not look back in fear that the man would catch her.

  I have to warn the others! She might hate them, but no one deserved the deaths she saw.

  By the time she reached the small cottage, she was shaking and weak. No one had caught her. Thank the old gods! Relief poured through her.

  Until she heard the laughter from inside.

  She peered through a window and saw Enyo sat before the fire, playing a game of chess with Dieno. Safe and warm, the sisters were recounting tales of the kingdoms they’d seen crumble in their prophecies.

  Life’s not fair. Righteous anger filled her. Why should they have a family when she had no one? She’d never harmed anyone and yet here she was, alone, in the dark, being threatened, while they laughed and carried on.

  Let them die!

  They deserved it. It would serve them right. After all, she’d been gone for hours and they weren’t even looking for her. For all they knew, she was dead, like the others. And did they care?

  Not a bit.

  So, why should she warn them?

  Let him have them and you’re free.

  What she had always wanted. Who would know? Licking her lips, she glanced about. It was true. She knew where Enyo had money hid. It would be enough to see her through.

  Aye, this was her chance…

  Stealthily, she crept away from the cottage and back into the woods.

  “I will find you, money mine.

  “And we’ll be together for all time.”

  After all, that was the only thing she really needed. Her money had been lost in the village. She’d been so startled by the man that she’d left it behind. So it was only right and fair that she take from the sisters.

  They deserved it.

  “Help! Help! I’m caught in a trap.”

  Eeri froze at the masculine voice. No one should be in the woods tonight. But there was no mistaking the man. She wanted to ignore him, but the bastard was in her way. There would be no way to leave without his seeing her.

  And she remembered the card.

  A favor for a favor. Mayhap if she saved him, he’d help her escape the Witchkiller. She didn’t know how to fight, but this man might.

  So she followed his calls until she found him hidden in a small copse of trees. A handsome, beautiful man in the prime of his life with dark-blond hair and glowing green eyes. Caught in a bear trap, he hissed and snarled as he tried to get himself loose.

  “Hello?”

  He righted himself at her voice and turned to face her.

  Startled, she realized that he was dressed just as the man she’d seen earlier. Same black clothes and lethal aura. Yet not quite as bloodthirsty.

  His peculiar gaze swept over her body, making her instantly aware of how unappealing she appeared. Covered in dirt and grime, she dripped with enough sweat that he could probably smell her from his distance. Her long hair had come loose of its braid to tumble around her thin shoulders and she was certain he must think her hideous.

  But instead of cringing, he laughed. “I’m glad to see someone is faring worse than I.” His laughter ended in a hiss of pain.

  “Hold still.” She went to bend down next to him.

  Ugh! The trap was so tightly clamped around his leg that she couldn’t budge it. All she did was hurt him more.

  After the third time of her clamping it more tightly to his ankle, she wrinkled her nose at his pain-filled grimace. “I’ll go get help.”

  But she didn’t. As soon as she was clear, her common sense returned and she remembered that he wore the same suit as the man who was out to kill everyone like her. He was her enemy.

  Do unto others before they do unto you!

  Aye, better he should die than should she.

  And so she ran away from the village and the Carrion Hill. Just as hard and fast as she could.

  Or so she thought.

  Confused, Eeri came upon a village that looked strangely familiar. Nay, it was familiar! And it was crowded with others dressed just like the man from her table and the one she’d left to die. Men holding swords…

  She started to turn away, but something wouldn’t let her. An unseen force kept her there, then suddenly, it felt like her soul had been ripped from her body.

  What is happening?

  The man in black appeared in the crowd. They parted so that he could walk through them and climb to a small platform and speak for the first time. “I stand before you, not above.

  “Never plotting against those you love.

  “Speak no evil, not in life.

  “Never tarry and cause no strife.

  “Yet they stand above us mortal men.

  “Plotting against us at their whim.

  “We are helpless against their guile.

  “Until we’re choking on our bile.

  “But no more sway will they hold.

  “And no more lies will be told.

  “Brothers, sisters, is this not what I promised you?

  “That there are those who will get their due?

  “Savage ends for savage beasts.

  “Come tonight, we shall feast!

  “Fetch your torches, sword and all.

  “A hundred witches tonight will fall!”

  Gasping, Eeri turned and almost ran straight into the man she’d left in the woods.

  He tsked at her. “With Ate by his side come hot from hell. Shall in these confines with a monarch’s voice cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth.”

  “Beg pardon?”

  He laughed at her question. “You can beg all you want, little one. But you judged your sisters for your crimes and for that you are damned.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Thorn stepped back so that she could see her table, toppled and littered with the sisters’ supplies. And there lay her body. “You didn’t escape the Carrion beas
t. Nor did you pass my test.” Shaking his head, he looked to the hill, now ablaze from the horde. “Come, Misery. I have a place where you belong.”

  LAST STOP ON ROUTE NINE

  Tananarive Due

  Gracetown, Florida

  “I thought you said you wouldn’t get lost,” Kai said.

  Charlotte’s teeth tightened to match the pressure of her hands on the rented Toyota’s steering wheel. They were already a half-hour late to the luncheon after her grandmother’s funeral in Tallahassee, a drive her navigator said should have taken an hour and five minutes heading west on the I-10. She’d been doing fine until they got off of the freeway and passed the collection of quaint shops on Main Street in the throwback town, but the last few turns had plunged them more deeply into the swampy woods bordering each side of a two-lane road.

  No other cars were in sight. No houses. No anything.

  “We’re not lost,” she said.

  Kai glared.

  Thin pines and oaks with branches draped in hanging moss choked the road, which the clay soil had ground red, as much dirt as asphalt. Mud from earlier rainfall was slick enough to splash the tires. The air conditioner was on full blast, but the sun burned her skin through her sleeveless black funeral dress. The burr of insects around them was loud enough to penetrate the closed windows. Her car sped past a derelict shack wrapped in weeds, its wooden walls gaping from missing planks. The rusted tin roof made Charlotte wonder if it had been a sharecropper’s shack. Or a relic from slavery.

  Charlotte’s twelve-year-old cousin could have joined his parents and aunts in the limousine after the burial, but since Charlotte had to drive anyway because the “stretch” wasn’t as big as they’d expected, she’d asked Kai to ride with her to escape the limousine’s sadness, and he’d happily agreed. (“I only met her a couple times,” he’d shrugged to Charlotte privately.) Until now, he’d been bobbing his head to his ear buds, his face stoic beneath limp braids, his tie loosened with the knot at mid-chest. Like a noose, she couldn’t help thinking.

  Charlotte hated the South. Her mother had fled Florida at her first chance, never coming back to Gracetown after she’d gone to UCLA as a freshman, just like Kai’s dad, her Uncle Harry, who had joined the Army the day he graduated from high school. Uncle Harry loathed the town. He had spent six months in Gracetown’s notorious Reformatory when he was Kai’s age, and he had blamed his parents for his imprisonment.