The days became long and grey. Not because of the changing season, no; Ala Mhigo knew war once more for the first time since they tried to take the forests to the south. Yet it was not elementals and the pale-skinned southerners who hid behind them that they were fighting but rather themselves. Mother remained tight-lipped upon it, preferring instead to shake her head and pace about the house. One sun, Delial took to watching her, trying to read something in the routes she took and the soft words she muttered. After several bells and no logic found, she gave up.
The drapes were kept drawn and the windows shut. No one was to answer the door unless it was knocked upon just the right way. It did not matter, for no one knocked anyway. Their street was rarely a busy one by any means even in better times: the carts and wagons passed through now and again usually in time with the seasons when the crops from outside the city proper were ready to be sold within, and when livestock was ready for the market. When Delial was brave enough to peek outside she saw mostly warriors with swords and spears. On the better days, there were no bodies at all.
The family last shared their dinner table several nights before but it had remained largely unoccupied since. Conversation was clipped and stiff when her brothers took it upon themselves to relieve the rest of them from the stifling silence. Their father remained as a storm cloud throughout: dark, oppressive, and simmering at the edges with crackles of lightning and the underlying roll of thunder yet to be unleashed. He stared hard between his sons as he silently chewed his meat and his bread. Garren was not a man of strong emotion but even Delial could tell there was something troubled rushing beneath the hard grey of his eyes. He had all but confessed when he failed to meet her gaze over and over and over again.
The next morning they were gone.
Lyra left plates and crusts of bread and utensils scattered on the table, as though that might ease some of the loneliness away. After Mother snapped at Delial the first time, she ceased trying to clean it up. They took their meals with the bones of meals passed, neither willing to speak of the happenings outside their door.
She gave her daughter tasks instead. On on sun, Delial was made to pore through jars and bundles of dried herbs until she could recognize at least half by scent alone. On another, Lyra sat her before a row of twelve candles and told Delial she would not eat until she had lit every single one with a word. Mother watched when she did not pace, and did not interfere save to blow out a candle for every bell that went by. By mid-day, Delial was exhausted and starving and had only two candles lit to show for it.
They sat together for lunch and watched the flickering wicks and Delial knew her mother’s eyes were upon the ten that remained absent of flame. When she approached her mother with her conundrum, Lyra braved a smile. “Can you not feel them, duckling?†she asked, looking over her daughter as though she wanted nothing more in the world than to remain distracted by her presence. The melancholy caught up with her quickly enough, however, and it was with a pat on Delial’s head that she returned to her restless motions.
Delial was still vexed, but she did not trouble her mother further. There were ten candles yet to be lit and several long bells before supper. When she could not hear her mother padding about the far end of the house, she moved to quietly gather their plates. One or two drawn away from the haphazard settings would not draw mother’s ire, no, and they had need for--
It was the chill she felt before she turned. She could not stop herself despite the alarm screaming in her head. Delial knew that her fingers had failed her somewhere along the way, that in her fright she had withdrawn her hands from the plates she balanced upon them, and she braced herself for the inevitable shock of ceramic shattering upon old wooden floors.
It never came. Her ears rang regardless.
Tall, black, willowy, a figure bent with a spider-legged hand holding a perfectly stacked pair of plates by the ends of curved nails. Stormy eyes (lidless they must have been, piscine, deep as the heart of the oldest sea) fixed upon the frightened child before her, and then mercifully slithered to take in the candles flickering weakly atop the table.
“This,†said the Witch, “Shall not do.â€
Her mother was calling her name, soft and and indistinct as if heard from above the surface of a deep, black lake.
The Witch did not smile, exactly: it was more of a grimace of lips cracked into a sharp tear in a sharper face, a twitch of instinct that reached beyond things like amusement or pleasure. “I wait,†she rasped and sighed and growled.
“Delial?â€
“Come.â€
Plates shattered at her feet. There was no trace of the Witch save but for the chill that clung to her skin, but even that was quickly shorn away as panicked footsteps slapped around the corner and the warmth of her mother’s embrace overtook her. In the absence of that spectral thing, Delial felt her eyes tugged down admit the ruined shards of dinnerware. Glinting from the center of shards near perfectly arranged like petals on a brittle, jagged flower, shone a tiny round clasp of silver.
The drapes were kept drawn and the windows shut. No one was to answer the door unless it was knocked upon just the right way. It did not matter, for no one knocked anyway. Their street was rarely a busy one by any means even in better times: the carts and wagons passed through now and again usually in time with the seasons when the crops from outside the city proper were ready to be sold within, and when livestock was ready for the market. When Delial was brave enough to peek outside she saw mostly warriors with swords and spears. On the better days, there were no bodies at all.
The family last shared their dinner table several nights before but it had remained largely unoccupied since. Conversation was clipped and stiff when her brothers took it upon themselves to relieve the rest of them from the stifling silence. Their father remained as a storm cloud throughout: dark, oppressive, and simmering at the edges with crackles of lightning and the underlying roll of thunder yet to be unleashed. He stared hard between his sons as he silently chewed his meat and his bread. Garren was not a man of strong emotion but even Delial could tell there was something troubled rushing beneath the hard grey of his eyes. He had all but confessed when he failed to meet her gaze over and over and over again.
The next morning they were gone.
Lyra left plates and crusts of bread and utensils scattered on the table, as though that might ease some of the loneliness away. After Mother snapped at Delial the first time, she ceased trying to clean it up. They took their meals with the bones of meals passed, neither willing to speak of the happenings outside their door.
She gave her daughter tasks instead. On on sun, Delial was made to pore through jars and bundles of dried herbs until she could recognize at least half by scent alone. On another, Lyra sat her before a row of twelve candles and told Delial she would not eat until she had lit every single one with a word. Mother watched when she did not pace, and did not interfere save to blow out a candle for every bell that went by. By mid-day, Delial was exhausted and starving and had only two candles lit to show for it.
They sat together for lunch and watched the flickering wicks and Delial knew her mother’s eyes were upon the ten that remained absent of flame. When she approached her mother with her conundrum, Lyra braved a smile. “Can you not feel them, duckling?†she asked, looking over her daughter as though she wanted nothing more in the world than to remain distracted by her presence. The melancholy caught up with her quickly enough, however, and it was with a pat on Delial’s head that she returned to her restless motions.
Delial was still vexed, but she did not trouble her mother further. There were ten candles yet to be lit and several long bells before supper. When she could not hear her mother padding about the far end of the house, she moved to quietly gather their plates. One or two drawn away from the haphazard settings would not draw mother’s ire, no, and they had need for--
It was the chill she felt before she turned. She could not stop herself despite the alarm screaming in her head. Delial knew that her fingers had failed her somewhere along the way, that in her fright she had withdrawn her hands from the plates she balanced upon them, and she braced herself for the inevitable shock of ceramic shattering upon old wooden floors.
It never came. Her ears rang regardless.
Tall, black, willowy, a figure bent with a spider-legged hand holding a perfectly stacked pair of plates by the ends of curved nails. Stormy eyes (lidless they must have been, piscine, deep as the heart of the oldest sea) fixed upon the frightened child before her, and then mercifully slithered to take in the candles flickering weakly atop the table.
“This,†said the Witch, “Shall not do.â€
Her mother was calling her name, soft and and indistinct as if heard from above the surface of a deep, black lake.
The Witch did not smile, exactly: it was more of a grimace of lips cracked into a sharp tear in a sharper face, a twitch of instinct that reached beyond things like amusement or pleasure. “I wait,†she rasped and sighed and growled.
“Delial?â€
“Come.â€
Plates shattered at her feet. There was no trace of the Witch save but for the chill that clung to her skin, but even that was quickly shorn away as panicked footsteps slapped around the corner and the warmth of her mother’s embrace overtook her. In the absence of that spectral thing, Delial felt her eyes tugged down admit the ruined shards of dinnerware. Glinting from the center of shards near perfectly arranged like petals on a brittle, jagged flower, shone a tiny round clasp of silver.
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