Page 25 of A Serpent in the Garden

We had her attention now, though she didn’t know we were two. She didn’t know until a voice came out of my mouth, mine but not totally, ringing higher and colder than usual with the unmistakable edge of inhumanity.

“That one’s mine,” It said, nodding at Serich.

A few seconds passed in silence as she stared. Then a surprised laugh burst from her mouth as she moved closer to get a better look at us. She crossed her arms, one dirt-caked fingernail tapping out an irritated beat against her bicep.

Its fear was a venom, poisoning whatever vestige of hope I’d had. Was this my bloodrose come to life? Would she disarticulate me, scatter my limbs like those fallen petals strewn about the earth?

She took a step forward and we took a step back. “And you are?” Her red eyes smiled along with her rosy, laughing lips. But her amusement was short-lived, rapidly devolving into agony when It took the opening, hurling the shaft of the arrow into her eyes, one after the other.

She didn’t look so beautiful with old black blood pouring from the smoking sockets.

Her scream sent the fig leaves shuddering; wild, unearthly, reverberating. I felt It shrink back, letting me steer. I grabbed my satchel, stuffed the clothes with faerie blood back into it, screaming for Serich, who stood there blankly, a handsome, dirty shell. Waiting for his mistress.

“Serich!” I stood right in front of him, shaking his shoulders, yelling into his face. “Serich, please, we have to run!” I might not have said a word for all the good it did me.

She still thrashed around like a landed eel behind me, screaming like she was dying, but she couldn’t die, not even when It was at the helm. She would heal eventually and be madder than ever—

Her screams will bring more, It said. More of them than you could ever imagine. How many graves did we pass on our way? RUN.

“Serich!” I slapped him. Nothing.

And so I stabbed him with the arrow through the firm meat of his shoulder, wrenching it hard enough for the steel head to cause serious damage, twisting it until his eyes filled with agony and blinked away her thrall.

“Run!” I shouted, yanking him to his feet as he made to sag to the earth in pain.

We ran. Ran and ran, until my lungs burst into flames and I was breathing smoke, dodging nests of tousled roots, silvered grass flashing by on either side, plunging through the light fogs which had traveled from the stretch of wood I could just make out up ahead. Ran until I couldn’t feel the stitches, the fire in my throat; ran for the only thing you could ever run that hard for: your life.

Serich was right on my heels; I felt his feet pounding the earth as the grass thickened. Malicious flowers snapped at our ankles as we passed, trees turning into frequent obstacles we were forced to dart around.

I couldn’t tell for how long we ran, didn’t care. Didn’t bother to look at anything that wasn’t right in front of me. That was why I didn’t see her until she stepped into my path, forcing me to either veer around her or mow her down.

In trying to avoid her, I stumbled, my ankle twisting beneath me. Rolling to the overgrown grass, I pushed myself up on my hands as she loomed over me. Tried to crawl away and keep her in my sights at the same time.

She was old, human-looking, hunched, a body God must have designed with a cylinder in mind. And also hideous, squinting down at me. Her hair was a white wig of tangled thorns, her nose a vicious beak. One long white eyebrow crossed the wrinkled shelf of her brow.

“One of those hellbitches after you?” she asked, her hands on her generous hips.

“You look like you could use some help.” She seemed cut from a twisted fairy tale, engraved with wrinkles, revoltingly embellished with moles sprouting whiskers. Her grizzled hair sprung out in every direction, her eyes pouched and sunken, the waterlines pink as a rabbit’s.

I will admit her brazen hideousness gave me certain pause, but I felt sure that it was frank assessment I found in her rheumy eyes, not evil schemes. She hardly stood taller than a child. I could knock her flat on her backside if I had a wish to.

My chest heaved as I looked up at her. “Can you offer it?”

“For a price.”

Is she evil? I asked, my blood still pumping hard, shunting through muscles. How long before we had a pack of monsters upon us?

I don’t know. She’s not a demon.

In a second, I sized up where I’d fallen. Some sort of overgrown garden. I lay in a tangle of vines, the damp earth sprouting sharp shards of green leaves every few inches. She’d been tending her plants by moonlight. A thatched little cottage stood some twenty feet away with merrily yellow windows and a chimney belching smoke. Then why does she live here?

She might not have a whole lot of choice. A hag can hardly live in the human world without men with pitchforks eventually showing up on her doorstep. They’re not inherently good or bad. They’re whatever they choose to be.

Serich stood beside me, one hand clapped to his shoulder, where blood flowed freely through his fingers. “We have no coin to pay you.”

Her laugh was more of a wheeze, and she didn’t remove her gaze from mine. “I’ve no use for coin.”

Serich looked down at me, apprehension etched upon his face, and I stared back at him, still quivering in the dirt. She could want anything. A firstborn child, a limb.