A creature growled inside the little house. The low, angry sound made Chuggie's neck hairs stand up.
Something hard and bony grabbed Chuggie's right shoulder. Thinking another tree had snagged him, he turned with his mouth all set to curse at it. Instead, he found himself face to face with a grinning scarecrow. It clutched at him, but Chuggie slipped away. He stumbled on a pumpkin vine and toppled backwards.
The scarecrow grabbed his chain.
The door to the shack flew open. A growl rumbled through the air. Silhouetted in the green light, something fiendish, ferocious, and wild stomped toward him.
Chuggie heaved at his chain. The scarecrow gave some ground, but it didn't let go. As Chuggie fought to get away, he saw an army of scarecrows, rocking in the wind as they crept closer and closer. As he struggled to get away, the wind howled like it was part of the fight. Or was that the creature from the house? He couldn't be sure. In his state, it was all a loud, dark blur, spinning around under three poison-green moons.
As hard as he tried, he couldn't seem to get to his feet. The snarling, shadowy, monster was almost upon him. The thing crouched just beyond arm's reach, huffing with fury, but it didn't pounce.
"Who?" it growled.
Before Chuggie could answer, wooden hands covered in straw grabbed him. He tried to break free, but their grip was too tight. The scarecrow hands lifted him up and forced him to look at the crouching figure.
"I said…
who
?" it shrieked.
He heard madness in its voice. "Ah… no harm, no harm. I'm jus' lost an' tired. Name's Chuggie, an' I'm only tryin' to pass on through." He groaned as the scarecrows wrenched his shoulders. If someone had worse luck than Chuggie, he wanted to meet them. Wait, no he didn't.
"You're from that
town
!" wailed the shadow. "Carrying that bag just like a… a… thief!
City thief!
" It shrieked its fury into the gusting wind.
"No! They turned me away. That's how I come to be here."
The shadow leaned closer to him, and Chuggie could make out the features of a very old woman.
"You lying to me? You lying to old Shola?" She tilted her head to the side. "Ain't you that boy that's so
thirsty
?"
Chuggie blinked and blinked again. "How do you know that?" he managed to ask. Whatever this creature was, it knew he was thirsty. The idea made his head swim. He wanted to be far away. Instead, the scarecrows gripped him tighter and tighter like they were never gonna let go.
Her bony shoulders bounced with her dry, wooden chuckle. She shuffled over to him and got her face right close to his. At a nod of her head, the scarecrows released Chuggie. She stepped back and held out a bony hand, but he doubted very much she could help him get up.
"Come." She turned and made her painstaking way toward the house.
He climbed to his feet and dusted himself off. Chuggie got himself a closer look at the wooden men all around him. Their expressions wavered between dead and insane in the green moonlight. As Chuggie glanced at the ancient woman, his hand went instinctively to his anchor. He trusted none of them.
"Failed…" Haste mumbled. "Help me sit up."
"What did you see?" Kale asked. He enjoyed these late night sessions. Haste clearly didn't have the energy for them. Seeing the man run himself ragged and sputter out was almost as much fun as backhanding his cleaning lady.
"The traveler… the guardsmen failed. Help me to my desk." Haste breathed heavily. Sweat dribbled down his face and soaked his silk shirt as Kale guided him to his chair.
The fat man scribbled frantically, filling page after page. He took care not to smudge the ink with his sweaty hands.
"What's all that?" Kale leaned over to look. He doubted Haste's vision had turned up anything useful.
"Wait." Haste covered his writing with his arm. He tucked his notes under his blotter out of Kale's view and took out a new sheet of paper. He wrote with heavy unsteady strokes then pushed the paper across his desk to Kale.
Kale looked down at the page. The handwriting looked like a brain-damaged six-year-old scrawled it.
Kale snatched up the paper and read with a perfunctory nod. He rose to leave.
"I think it's time I saw the old man, my friend," Haste said.
"Why is that?" Kale narrowed his eyes in disgust as he looked at the sweaty Chief Magistrate in his plush, expensive, chair. Lazy bastard. His lavish lifestyle made even his leadership sloppy. The man had no concept of discipline. And now, too fat and slug-like to find his own answers, he wanted the guidance of Arden Voss, his old mentor. Leave it to Haste to take the path of least resistance.
Haste's voice wavered. "The things I see…I get the impression that this is old trouble coming back around."
Kale clenched his teeth. He saw the path forward — clearly — it didn't involve Haste.
"I'll arrange it."
Chuggie leaned into the doorway of the tiny house. Going inside seemed like a bad idea. The old woman had stacks and stacks of junk piled high, just waiting to be toppled. He didn't think it would take much to bring the whole place down.
"Let's see, it's an old leather case… around here somewhere," said the old woman. She dug through the piles, not noticing that Chuggie was about to collapse in her doorway.
"Yeah, maybe we jus' wait for daylight, an' I'll join the search. What, ah, did you say your name was?" Chuggie wobbled, nearly fell headlong into the house, then found his balance again.
"My name is Shola. Ah, here it is!" she cackled. She shoved past him. "Sit." She pointed to a rickety chair next to a crude table.
"I hope you won' be offended if I happen to forget your name again later. I'm bad with names and… damn near falling over. My name's Chuggie," he said loud enough to make his voice heard over the wind.
"So you said," she called back. "This wind just won't do."
Shola cast a squinty glare at the sky. The air went still. Clouds dispersed, and the three moons shone down.
Chuggie barely noticed, however. He struggled to keep his eyes open and was quite busy slapping himself on the cheek and rubbing his eyes.
The case rattled as Shola set it on the table. A bright green light bathed her wrinkled face as she opened it, as if the case held a moon of its own. She pulled out a stick of glowing chalk. With it, she diagrammed the moons upon the table. She drew X's for stars and connected everything with an intricate web of lines. She hummed with her hoarse croaking voice as she drew.
"That's some fancy chalk," Chuggie said. "If you know where I can get some for myself, I bet I'd get a good price outta that."
"Put your hands out," she said.
Chuggie stuck his hands out in her direction.
"No, palms up, together. Like this." When she had his hands where she wanted them, she emptied a pouch of bones onto his palms.
With hands full of green-tinted bones, Chuggie asked, "You a witch, Shola?" If this turned out anything like the last time someone did this to him, Chuggie would wake up in the morning buried up to his neck.
She paused and looked at him. He could see her smiling in the moonlight, but he couldn't tell if it was out of amusement or madness.
"Sure, I am a witch." She hooted unpleasant laughter. "You may drop the bones."
When he did, they fell quite randomly onto her glowing pictograph. Some touched moons, some touched nothing and some fell off the table onto the ground.
"My, my," she said. "How interesting." She turned her face up to the night sky, then back to the bones, then up to the sky, and so forth. Green moonlight glinted in her eyes, and an eerie grin touched her lips. On the table, the chalk glowed brighter then dimmed, pulsating as if in time to some phantom heartbeat.
"You've been expecting me," he said.
Still facing skyward, Shola answered, "Oh, a bit. My scarecrows might have mentioned something about you in passing."
"Scarecrows don't move on their own like that," Chuggie said. "How did they attack me?"
Shola calculated his reading. She didn't look up as she spoke. "Oh, you mean that business in the garden?" She shrugged. "I thought you were from
Stagwater.
Monstrous people in Stagwater. They've been out here before, a long time ago. But then I saw you in the light, and I knew you weren't from there." She threw her head back and smiled a crazy smile, causing Chuggie to flinch.
"How'd you know that?" he asked, certain there were bigger questions he should be asking.
"They're all ugly," she said, matter-of-factly. "Uglier even than you!"
"I'm… I'm…" Chuggie tried to finish his thought, but couldn't. He stood, walked five paces, and dropped to his knees. He truly felt he had something more to add, so he raised his arm, index finger point up. Then he dropped onto his face.
All night long, a cold layer of autumn's dew settled over Chuggie and soaked his clothes, making him shiver. As the sun rose, bringing a little warmth with it, his fitful dreams subsided, and he felt like he could at last get some sleep.
His hostess was up and about, however. She directed a scarecrow in drawing a bucket of rusty water from the well near the garden. She hobbled alongside as the scarecrow placed the bucket next to Chuggie's head.
Chuggie lay very still and peered out at Shola through eyes squinted almost shut. His foggy mind couldn't recall where he was, but he knew it couldn't possibly be time to meet the day.
She cackled and poked him with a stick, tittering and tormenting him as a morning bird sang on a far off branch.
When she finally jabbed him hard enough, he snatched the stick from her. He growled, broke the stick in two, then curled up and tried to go to back to sleep.
"No use sleeping, traveler. It's morning, and you've work to do." Shola produced another stick and resumed jabbing Chuggie's ribs.
"How 'bout you jus' kill me instead," came Chuggie's muffled voice. "A lil' fire'll do it, jus' make it quick."
"We can see to that after you clean up my garden," she said. "There's a bucket of water next to you."
Chuggie pushed up to his hands and knees. With great effort and concentration, he peeled his eyes all the way open. He looked around, trying to figure out where he was and how he'd gotten there. He looked at Shola for a long minute as some of the details returned to him.
"You're some kinda witch, right?" he slurred.
"My name is Shola," said the old woman.
"And I came here when they ran me off from that town. That's right. You have you anything to drink out here, Shola?"
"I told you, there's a bucket of water next to you." She pointed a bony finger.
He lifted the bucket and drained it, dumping only a quarter of it down his chest.
"Got anything stronger?" he asked, drying his mouth on his shirt.
"Perhaps I do. I made breakfast." She led him back to the table near the cliff edge. The previous night's chalk scribblings had turned black. On top of the table sat a steaming skillet. Potatoes, turnips, mushrooms, and possibly even eggs, were all fried up in a steaming heap and smelling like a king's kitchen. She scooped a massive helping onto a plate for him and a smaller portion onto another for herself.
After getting his first real look at her, the old woman's eyes struck him. Her left was bleach white, while her right was a creamy blue. They were both sunk deep in their sockets.
"What's the story with that town north o' here? Why would they push me along?" Chuggie shoveled up a forkful of breakfast into his mouth.
"That place is suffering hard times. They're fools led by thugs. What did they say to you?"
"Said I was suspicious, and I had to go. They told me to go around town to the north, but I came south."
"The north?" Shola cocked her head. "Interesting. What did they say you'd find there?"
"That's what I asked 'em. They told me it was easy walking up there with an old bridge to get across the river."
Shola looked to the north with a calculating expression. "And you were going to go North like they said?"
"I was at first, then I fell asleep. I woke up to this anchor falling outta the tree and smashing me in the stomach." He tapped the anchor.
"I'll bet they bewitched you."
"That's what I figure." He picked up a nearby stone and threw it over the cliff. "But their bewitching didn't last for long."
Chuggie's anger over the attempted bewitching floated away in a sigh. He'd put the city behind him, and there it would stay. He got back to his meal. "So you know this town?" he asked with a mouthful of food.
"I do."
"You go there much?"
"I never go there." She laid her fork down, apparently no longer interested in her breakfast. "I'm stuck right here. I never leave this place." Her mouth curled into a vicious sneer, making her face look like a shriveled jack-o-lantern.
"So… How long you been here?" He shifted in his seat. Her mad expression gave him a chill.
"Thirty years? Seventy? My old mind can't keep track anymore. Many long, lonely years up here on this cliff." Her sneer turned into a weak smile.
"Why don't you go? Why not get yourself to some civilization?"
"I'm… I can't." Shola rubbed her index finger against the blackened chalk on the table.
"Seventy years, though. Alone?" Chuggie asked. He sympathized with her lonely plight. Isolation could do strange things – could play cruel tricks on the mind.
"I have my scarecrows. They keep me company and take care of me."
He couldn't tell if he saw sadness, madness, or both in her eyes. But as they spoke, her features had softened. She no longer looked like such a skeleton in rags. Color returned to her skin, and her wrinkles didn't cut so deep.
"Why is it you can't leave this place?" he asked mid-chew.
"I was banished, exiled. Here I'm bound." She finished in a whisper, dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief.
Great, all he needed was a crying woman on his hands.