“But I’m...at a loss. You look human, you have magic, and Vedikus knows about you. How have you survived in such a horrid place alone? I’ve seen more...things die trying to capture me than I can name, even chasing me across the terrain.” She thought about the centaurs, of Alepos’s burning horseflesh.
The hag broke off a piece of wax and began to move it between her hands. It changed shape, taking on the malleability of putty but did not drip between the girl’s fingers. Eventually, it took on the shape of a doll that resembled the hag, down to the details of the wrinkles of Calavia’s rags.
“Creatures such as me have nothing to offer but their ability to manipulate. I was born here in this very bog, long ago, back when the labyrinth was smaller, and the walls bordered the mountains. Prayer was a bordertown that protected the lands of humans from what was within. The day I was conceived was the day this place succumbed. Everyone who survived, including my mother, became a thrall except for me. It happens that way sometimes.” Calavia placed the doll back onto the mountain of wax where it lay within its shape, undisturbed. “Bad things always have a bad start. My mother is still alive, wandering through what is left if you’d like to see her.”
Aldora shook her head and wiped her palms against the folds of her shift, remembering why she was there to begin with. “The curse made them that way,” she stated more than questioned.
“Yes.”
“Vedikus brought me here because you could cure it.”
“I can.”
“Will you cure me?”
Calavia reached into her shirt and plucked out a small vial-shaped cylinder made from the same wax she sat next to. Like the rest, it was a pale, pasty white with a tinge of yellow, but smoothed to a gleam even beyond that of the detailed doll. “Everything comes at a price.”
Aldora would pay it. “What is yours?” She could already feel other changes happening within her body beside her abrupt loss of smell and taste. Her hands had yet to leave her belly, and she clenched them together.
“A life.”
She immediately thought of the possibility of the child that could be in her womb, and the fear she hadn’t felt earlier crashed into her. “I don’t have a life to give,” she breathed, dropping her hands.
“I think you do.” Calavia pointedly looked at Aldora’s stomach.
Aldora stiffened but didn’t take a step back. “I don’t. I can’t give you that, please ask for something else,” she said, leaving the words unspoken between them. Did she want to know if she carried? Part of her screamed to know while the other part flooded her with panic.
The hag laughed softly and placed the makeshift vial down next to the doll. “Is that too steep for you, Aldora?”
“Yes.”
“I would ask for the life of your unborn child.”
She stilled. “So I’m pregnant?” she rushed out.
Calavia dipped her head. “I don’t know.”
“Then how can I give you something I don’t have?”
“You own your own life, do you not?”
Vedikus owns my life.The words sat on the tip of her tongue.Vedikus has taken everything there was left of me.“I don’t.” An odd sense of relief came upon her when she admitted it. A burden lifted. Vedikus owned her and she accepted it, even felt safer, freer, now that the choice was out of her hands.
“You own the minotaur,” Calavia said, breaking her thoughts once again.
A laugh escaped her lips before she could stop it. “I don’t have it in me to make a claim such as that.”
“You have his seed still running down your legs. Don’t deny it. I can smell it over the soil, but how would you know that? Minotaur semen is potent and you’ve lost your sense of smell.”
“You seem to know a lot.”
“More than you.” Calavia smiled eerily. “You have exactly what I want.”
Something ran down her inner thigh and she knew what the girl wanted. There were only so many ways to bring life into this world and the minotaur’s seed was one of them. The hag wasn’t bargaining for her unborn child, but for the potential of giving old semen another chance. Was it hers to give?
“What would you do with it?” Aldora had to know before handing it over. The thought of Calavia swelling with Vedikus’s child made her bristle.I’ve earned my place.Her hand went back to her stomach. She’d grown used to being by his side, within his presence, even in the harrowing, short time they had been together. If she was damned to this place, and even given what she’d seen, there was no place she would rather be. Safe. Protected. And well away from the monsters that sought more than a piece of her soul.
Calavia shuffled on her knees. “We all need things to survive in this place. Seed such as his will help me protect this land and myself.”
