“A Humble Request”
“This one only requests but only the most meager of drops,” the visitor insisted. “A mere prick on the thumb will sate this one, rest assured.”
The visitor was a pale ghost of a man, with pits for eyes and the continence of a brown spider, Jory was not sure what to say. Of whether to acquiesce or tell the apparition to abscond. And though Jory was strong in the back, her thick, hard forearms telling the world of her station, she was clever enough to know what it was she was dealing with.
And that she needed to heed carefully.
“Sire,” Jory said, for there was no doubt to some noble heritage to the spirit. “Perhaps if you would allow me back into my home, this would be to my pleasure.”
The visitor seemed to sink.
It arrived earlier in the day. The fields were emptied henceforth. But Jory was coming from out by the river with a tow of her cattle, their coats comely and of a sheen, and thus had not received word until old man Porbisk passed her at a speed very unlike one who’d earned a title of ‘old man,’ raving in his wake of the Warlord’s direspawn out to cull. That and the subtle stench to the spring air of death and hunger — a compelling thrust of which everyone knew well its portents— told a seasoned herbwoman like Jory what it was to prepare for.
None of that helped when she saw the visitor outside her very own hut.
“May this one come in too?”
“Sire, we are strangers. And, as an unmarried woman, I can not play host to an unwed gentleman, no matter how gentle.”
“Hss…” the visitor said.
This was Jory’s first encounter with one of them. The Warlord’s accursed spawn, forever wandering the countryside by way of moon or black sky. Stealing children or livestock or whatever happens to be the most valuable item the teller so happened to treasure. It was easy to doubt their words. To see the want for sensation, to stir. But even though Jory’s calves were sinewy and hard as oak, her mind was not soft.
She saw the fear.
Knew it very intently as her heart beat through her fist, ready to rush into her hut.
Dealing with a visitor was imperative. Haggle — by the gods even run them by their teeth, selling a deed to a bridge that does not exist — but never, never, offend them.
And though Jory had a millstone for a stomach, she was not so keen on noble sensibilities.
“Perhaps I can offer you a milkskin?” she offered, feeling the heat rush through her cheeks.
The visitor stirred, its eyes seeming to glow.
Jory stammered, “or perhaps wine. It is of a poor vintage, yes, but Sire, you would enjoy it much more than… than my poor sense of somm-e-lier ever could.” Jory couldn’t say where she heard the word, but it was prissy enough to sate the visitor.
“Blood.” The visitor said, somewhat mollified enough that Jory, as it began to speak, took a few steps heavier than she’d ever had. The visitor seemed not to mind the change of dynamics, with Jory having officially crossed her threshold, the cloves of lionflower and turmeric swaying above her head. “This one requires only one drop.”
“I’m afraid I will not be able to oblige, good sire.”
The visitor twitched. Its hair was matted and slick, swaying to the floor in disheveled clumps as it slumped over its shoulders. If Jory’s cat wasn’t even more clever than Jory herself, she could imagine the feline attempting to swipe at the hair as it nearly grazed the dirt. But there were no meows. No anything. Even the cry of the cicadas ceased.
“What then, can this one offer you?”
Jory let out a breath she’d not known she’d been holding. Here was the important step. Here is where her life hung between.
Folk dimmer in their faculties would have thought the day won when they’d found themselves with a door between them and a visitor. But that only lasted as long as the next night. The next sheep gone missing. The next sound of a bucket crashing into the well. Those dimmer folk would try to leave. Try to bargain. Try all there was to do short of brokering with the Others, all to no avail. No, clever folk like Jory would have to settle this here. Trade something of a like. For everyone knew the visitors never stopped at one drop.
“You can offer me peace of mind.”
“The world is chaotic. The middle kings yearn for war. This one can offer no such thing.”
Jory cursed under her breath, though when the visitor twitched, the phrase died in her throat.
She feigned a cough and said, “Mayhap, sire, you can offer me safety, so that I may enjoy a bout of rest from a long day’s labor.”
“This one asks from whom do you seek respite?”
Jory whistled in a breath, holding steady. “From the terrors of the night.”
The visitor stood there, unmoving, waiting.
“Of those with Beastly fangs. Long claws. An appetite for the flesh of Man.”
“Where arte such a creature? Perhaps this one could be you its ridder?”
“I can not give you my blood.”
“Not one drop?”
“Not a hint of the essence of a thimble.”
“What else?”
“The wine was a measure of my hospitality, sire. But I can give you the fruit of my trade. Herbs, poultices, potions, reductions, powders, rouges.” Her life’s work.
There were those who called her a witch. The dim folk who have signed their own doom were they in her shoes. But she made potions, items to be used on the body for either healing or more base pursuits. She also played the midwife, but her services in this realm were unfortunately without value, given the nature of her interlocutor.
“This one has no need of such worldly objects.”
“Then surely, good sire, there is something we can both find agreeable.”
It smiled. Jory’s heart seized, but there was no doubt; it was smiling.
“You are hale.” The visitor said.
Jory stammered a “Yes.”
“You are of good marrying stock.”
Jory nodded.
“Even now, you have many suitors.”
Jory knew before she knew, of what the visitor intended.
“It could be you, tonight.”
“Or my first born son,” she finished.
It was forgone, really. She’d tried so hard to avoid this. Kept it from even the rolling thoughts of her mind’s penny theatre. What else would one of them want? The firstborn son may well have been a king’s ransom to a peasant.
“This one will have its due, its drop of blood,” it whispered as in its hand formed from the mist a contract. The paper was fine, seamless pulp. The quill, in its other hand, was a sable-black raven wing. “One way, or the other.”
Jory nodded.
She had options. Maybe she could have all daughters. There were herbs — never used, funnily enough, unlike its wildly popular counterpart — that could ensure the birth of a daughter. She’d had stock piles of it. It grew easy in her county. Or, hell, maybe she could never conceive. There were herbs for that too. But those options all seemed that of the resolve of a dimmer person.
Jory was clever.
“Fine then, sire,” she said, but when the visitor moved, just a subtle movement, she added, “A most generous offer. I simply can’t refuse what is so small an ask.”
“Correct,” it said, handing her the contract. There was her name, already there in block print. The details of the contract… though she could read, thank His holy spirit for that, it was of a jargon that was hard even for her to follow.
“There, of course, would be no trickery in such a finely produced legal document.”
“Binding, of course.”
“Beyond measure, I’m sure,” she said, pricking her thumb with the ravenquill.
The drop of blood rushed through the thrush of the wing, surfeit through its stem as it tinged the black in an reddish hue, hard to see by moonlight but there nonetheless.
There was the notion, that though she won this night, there would come that future day of revelation, when she would reap what was today sowed. But Jory for all her life was a sore loser. Not posey’s ring, not doe-see-doe, not a pot on the day’s portent of weather was an occasion where she would simply lose on account of having, as they said, lost. No.
She signed the document, and felt something from her drain, pulling from her body, into a nothing beyond nowhere, into a place untouchable to her. That hollowed place, the Otherside.
“It was a pleasure conducting business,” the visitor read the contract, which appeared in its hand as she scribbled the last letter of her signature, unpracticed, blocky as any else. “Joriska Constantine.”
It was Jory’s turn to smile. “I looked forward to our next encounter.”
And she watched as the visitor melted into the night, in its wake the crashing world of sound coming to fill the once void.
Now was time to prepare.
