Short Stories

Spirit Into Speck

By Thomas McAuley

(Note: This story was published in Tales from the Moonlit Path in their November/Halloween 2009 issue, and as of this update (100731) can still be found here. Please enjoy it here or, while you're at Tales, check out all the other stories and consider giving to the publication as it is a free publication.)

           When morning’s light reached the saddle between two distant western hills, Getsch studied the wall of darkness there. From her high vantage point, the storm appeared innocuous, like the surface of a still lake. She had witnessed such blizzards; she recognized their calm approach, their sudden stabbing attack. She barked at it and turned to descend the rocky hill.

A simple thing, a cord of wood, might prove to be the difference between life and death to her today. But she was old beyond old, alone and a long walk from home.

After midday, she reached the small forest clearing around her shack. She had pushed her brittle body hard. Along the way, she had discarded the two feather-weight rabbits she had caught earlier as they had proved too heavy. White saliva ran from her mouth as she panted and leaned against a rotted barrel. Her head and joints ached as the air thinned. When she recovered, she allowed herself a look to the West. The storm had slowed as it transformed into a black column. Its every point churned like dog’s milk in tea. In short hours, she would be engulfed in excitements of fast wind and burning cold rain. Already a deceitful wind ran snake paths around the trees. Leaves showed their pale underbellies. New branches bent like horse whips.

* * *

Getsch sat naked on the dusty floor of her dry, crumbling cabin. As a younger witch, she had wielded a formidable mind but now she suffered ever more frequent bouts of forgetfulness. With fly’s sharpness, she inspected her limbs, her torso, her unwashed and forgotten parts, for any mark that might remind her where she had mislaid the thing she desperately needed now. Faint tattoos, four hundred years of secret symbols and syllables, crowded her gray, dried skin.

"No!" She pinched and twisted the spiteful picture on her arm as if doing so would punish it. She searched further. "No. No. No!" She screamed until the cabin’s warped panes shook. She lifted her black spider-thread dress around her.

* * *

Even more than she cursed her mind, she cursed her witch’s temper. Years before, she had charmed into her bed a traveler named Kalou, a dark gladiator of a man. She had put on the appearance of a wide-eyed forest girl with lush red hair and sweet plum buttocks. In this guise, she secured in him a protector, a hunter and a laborer. But deceitful enchantments require sustained concentration and, in a clumsy moment last summer, when she thought Kalou was away, she let the illusion fade. He saw her, withered, scabbed and stooped her through the window as she ground owl bone into powder. His scream warned her too late to resume her false appearance.

She spoke three words and, young again, fled after him. She offered herself wholly to him.

"Anything," she repeated with a Siren’s honey-slow guile.

His groin pulsed and he hesitated but he unearthed the strength to refuse her.

Failing that final attempt, her anger swelled. Light bent toward her like as if toward a dark star. He backed away, searching for blind steps on rocky ground. She uttered an imprisoning incantation which she’d learned from a coiled, toothless bug-eater in his coughing language.

She spat the final line. "And draw spirit into speck." Kalou’s body shook and folded backwards upon itself. The giant man was struck mute and dumb as if by venom. He dwindled before her like water into a drain until his mass had reduced to a putty-like clump the size of a fava bean.

In her natural form again, she picked the clump from the soil and licked it clean. She then hid it in a place she could not forget.

However, now that she needed Kalou to gather wood, she could not recall that unforgettable hiding place. Once found, the clump was the final ingredient of a simple restoring potion. She could only hope a burst of memory would return before the storm’s full force arrived. Feeling the chill already, she set about obtaining the potion’s other ingredients. She wandered into the time-worn forest and baited rat traps with oily cheese, collected spider egg sacks from the soft rotting skins of fallen trees, plucked a sleeping bat from a damp cave.

On her return from the rocky hills, she was pleased to find rats in three of her traps. These she bound alive by the necks with filthy twine. When she found a whimpering squirrel crying in a fourth trap, she ground her heel into its head.

Inside the shack, she pierced a vein in her wrist with an ivory needle. Dark blood sizzled in the cast iron pot hanging in the hearth. She added the living bat which shrieked once, piteously, before going still. She pared tails and limbs from the terrified rats and exhaled a raspy laugh as she watched them toss their necks about. Without a thought, she dropped in the tails as each of the animals died on the floor. Pin-point spiders escaped up her wrist as she sprinkled their siblings into the brew. These survivors, she dabbed up with spit on her stained fingers. She pushed them past her decayed, peg-like teeth. An effervescence and a burnt stink filled the air. Only the clump was missing.

Outside, the storm’s front edge dropped like an icy nighttime in the heart of day. Wind swung down like a scythe. Trees’ branches scraped against the shack’s grass roof like hands tearing from the grave. Nearly too late.

Getsch set about a frenzied search for the clump. She threw open chests and tossed their contents behind her. Was it a stone? A key? She balanced herself on a three-legged stool to reach and unlid every container in every cupboard. These pickled ears? This driftwood doll? She turned up nothing and her memory refused to assist her. She tossed the doll across the room.

Lowering herself to the floor, she cursed and sliced at her face with cracked and fungus-ravaged fingernails. Mad with anger, she reached for a tarnished cleaver, its ragged edge clogged with hard tissue, and chopped off her left thumb. She dropped the knife onto the cutting board and wailed in agony, clutching her gushing hand.

Getsch did not notice the gory thumb stub slide off the chopping block or inch itself toward the fire. She did not see it rock to a stop against the hearth’s stone edge.

Her squealing ceased the instant she saw her reflection in the side of the bloodied cleaver. Though she shook from the growing cold and the pain she had inflicted upon herself, a wicked smile cut open her face. There, on her nose, sat a dried wart the size of a fava bean. With one hand, she dragged the cleaver off the block.

Fixed on her image, she forced her chisel-like nails under the base of the wart. Its roots clung hard. When she pulled and twisted, blood as thick as sorghum bubbled out and drained over her dry gray lips. Her eyes zigzagged and watered freely as she hissed in pain.

The clump lost its hold with a wet rip. Getsch breathed out in hot pain, spraying blood across her makeshift mirror. She loosened her grip on the cleaver and it fell to the floor beside the still-warm rat carcasses.

The clump’s exposed side closed smooth as she watched. She laughed through blood-tinted yellow teeth as she dropped it into the pot. She was saved.

But seconds ticked by and with no change. Getsch’s stomach tensed. Had her mind devolved so that she had forgotten this apprentice-level potion? Soon she was vindicated. A velvety blue smoke, thick as a sea monster’s ink, rose and spread through the shack’s interior.

"Ah, yes," she said under her breath. The stifling cloud was the part she had forgotten. She backed against the freezing cabin wall to escape its advance but it surrounded her soon thereafter. Moments later, breathing was impossible. She passed through spinning hallucination into unconsciousness just as a naked raccoon-sized arm thrust out and onto the side of the pot.

* * *

Getsch woke disoriented yet surrounded by warmth. Her eyes remained closed, a relic of the potion’s exotic fumes. Red pain returned to her hand and face. She recoiled but her movements were inhibited. She opened her eyes to confirm her fear. She was bound tightly with rough cord to her short bed.

And she was no longer alone. Kalou stood at the fire, arms crossed in front of him, tall, dark-skinned and fully naked, a bronze bull of a man. If he had noticed her stirring and moaning, he hid it well.

She held her tongue as she scanned the cabin’s interior. No wood. Her heart raced. Snow fell in a solid stream. Heavy wind tested the cabin’s walls.

"You stupid worm," she said.

Kalou rocked side to side but gave no indication he had heard her.

"No wood?!" she said. "You’ve killed us, you idiot!"

He showed the side of his face. She detected a grin.

"Ah, Sleepy-head." He pointed into the fire. "Dat your thumb there."

She craned her neck. The remains of her glowing thumb segment, barely a flake now, danced as if on a stage, the sole object of the hearth.

"Hour upon hour dat been burnin’," he said. He warmed his hands for some seconds.

Hour upon hour? She had neither heard nor witnessed such concentrated energy. The segment popped and sprang on end as it released the last of its four centuries of unnatural life as steady heat, animated flame and spinning gold sparks. The moment the last flake disappeared, a chill swept through the cabin.

"Dat dark magic in you, she burn slow and hot." He turned slowly and with a dead-eyed smile to face Getsch.

She pulled against her restraints. She whispered "Drehen Yoo Ashah," the same words that had failed to reclaim his trust months before. Her coarse hair softened. Her wrinkles smoothed and her teeth filled in. Her black gown flowed against firm features. She dragged her feet close and allowed her knees to separate. The black cloth slid up her thighs until she was exposed.

"Spoil me now." Her voice was velvet, intoxicating. She narrowed her eyes, opened her mouth, project lustful desire.

Kalou’s eyes tracked along her curves. His breathing did falter. His cock did twitch. But he shook his head, clenched his eyes and backed away.

He lifted the driftwood doll from where Getsch had flung it and snapped off its arms and legs. Getsch writhed and screamed until he forced it as a gag across her mouth. He secured it behind her head with twine.

"Hold your witch’s tongue old girl."

As she struggled, Kalou retrieved the chopping block and cleaver. With his eyes fixed on hers, he flipped the knife and caught it by the handle. He spoke as he swaggered to her side and knelt.

"It mighty cold outside, no?"

Getsch was an ancient woman again, a shivering leaf, as she abandoned the image of the beautiful girl. He could not be tempted. She bit the doll’s torso with all the will and hate she could muster. Teeth on both sides of her mouth buckled with a grinding noise. Her eye rolled back. Her body convulsed and she let loose a series of animal grunts.

Kalou petted her temple with the back of his hand and smiled down at her. She had done the same before squeezing the life from birds.

"Hush now, woman," he said.

She calmed.

"You gonna warm Kalou dis wintah, now."

He slid the chopping block under her right knee and forced her leg down. Her fight was nothing against him. He grinned and spoke slowly as he positioned the cleaver over the knee cap.

"This gonna hurt from hell."

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