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Little bugs buzzed around the wild grasses and weeds in the overgrown dell. Its borders were lined with ferns of different sizes, and they swayed as if there was a breeze. The wildflowers, scattered throughout, colored the landscape with welcoming richness.
Had Val not seen the horrors of this place, she would have thought it quaint and lush with life.
There were quite a few notes about the Hag in the hunter’s journal. It listed likes and dislikes, deadly traps and tricks, and one entry simply said in the poorest handwriting:
Head off, doesn’t stay off, three days.
That entry had been done after. Because of her.
She stepped forward hesitantly, expecting something to happen when she crossed the threshold into the Glade. But, nothing had. She looked back at the Bandureek, but he stood still among the ferns, both hands on the walking stick.
“Care for another riddle?” He asked.
“No, thank you.” She answered quickly.
“Suit yourself!” He smiled at her once again. “Should you find need of me again, you know where you can find me. Meanwhile, sort out your gods.”
“Can I call you anytime I need?” She asked, thinking that perhaps it was not such a bad thing to have a guide in the Deep Wood - even if he did threaten to eat her every few miles.
“As long as mortal souls will wander, for riddle’s answers I will barter.” He replied, then chuckled to himself and stepped behind a tree - his presence completely gone without her seeing him walk away.
Val stood a moment, turning to the hut atop the hill. Her stomach twisted at the familiar sight. She spent twelve years there - a slave living in agony and ceaseless fright. The things that were done to her there by the Hag had been so horrible and cruel –she dreamt of them for years, waking in terror.
But, this had been her only hope to change things now. And, with the Hag captured by the Northern King, the Glade stood empty and devoid of the menacing presence of the Nothing.
At least so far.
Val hoped that this had not taken all of the power out of the Glade, but she would find out soon.
She was unhurried walking the field of sedges and rushes toward to hill. The sharp blades of grass brushed her legs and threatened to cut her with their thin edges. Thorns stuck in her shoes, and she could feel them with each step - but they had not broken through.
Knowing what they were, she eyed the white boulders anxiously—calcified, ground bone of the victims of the Hag. Captured and eaten, these piles of ash and once organic matter stood lining the winding path just as she had remembered.
Reaching the hut, she stood in front of the heavy wooden door, looking up at the gable where a hook hung, without the bundle of herbs she was required to hang there daily. The hooks at the eaves were also empty. The walls did not breathe anymore.
The hut stood tall with thick walls made of roughly chiseled logs. There were no windows, no locks on the door. She tugged at it, and it came open easily. The strong, musty smell of old air, mothballs, and herbs rolled out as a tide making Val take a deep breath and hold it until it passed.
She walked in, and the single room had been exactly as it was when she left. A metal chest, two cots, and a large brick stove. There was a table with two chairs and a set of cupboards. Hemp lines ran along the ceiling with dried herbs tied to them, many already crumpled from time.
Setting her pack down, the first thing Val had done was light a lamp. The oil for it was plentiful, stored in a clay vase on the table. There was enough for her to use it for two months - longer if she was conservative with its light. Then, she stripped the bed linens off the cot that she knew the Hag had slept on and threw them into the stove to burn later in the night.
She spent the day cleaning the hut and ridding it of the Hag’s presence. It was no easy task.
She threw out all things that Val was sure had not been Nothing-touched. Although, some curios had caught her eye as entirely out of place - a necklace made of tiny fine finger bones, a lap harp, a tablecloth too rich, new and colorful to have ever been used, and an ornate clay plate that did not match the wooden ones set out on the table. Val tucked these away in the metal chest.
The next day, she’d gone out into the overgrown garden where the weeds had choked the vegetables and nearly overtaken it completely without anyone to tend to it. It would take her a full day to clear it.
The same had become of the well, vines stretching into its depths and loosening the surrounding stone wall. But, the water she pulled from it was cool and tasted of spring.
Val picked herbs and specific flowers, ones that she had picked thousands of times.
She had not known the reason for hanging them outside the hut, but, throughout her time there she had known it to be very important. And, she was set to do everything as the Hag had, in hopes that the ties of the sorcery here would return.
Coming back to the hut, she saw that a giant bird had perched itself on the roof closest to the door. From afar, it looked large as a sheep, its red and blue feathers oily and reflecting the sun.
Val kept the hunter's knife at her hip, even if she did use it to chop through some thicker weeds, and that gave her the courage to approach slowly, wanting to find out what the creature was.
The closer she got, the better she could see the bird. It had large, sharp claws. Its legs had been like that of an owl - spotted with darker feathers on a background of white. Long blue and red feathers protruded from its wings, tucked close to its body. But perhaps the most curious of all was that instead of a smooth round head with a beak, it had a woman's head.
It had not been too humanoid, the face and scalp still covered in small fine feathers. But, unmistakably, the sharp chin and dainty nose gave way to a pair of neat eyebrows, and cascading straight hair looked as if it was made of smooth vanes of a feather. The one incredibly unsettling part of her face had been where the eyes ordinarily would sit atop cheekbones - instead, two beak-like glossy bones protruded from beneath her browbones.
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As Val crept closer, the bird-woman turned her head toward her and cocked it, giving her a non-threatening curious stance.
“Hello,” Val said carefully.
“Hello.” The bird-woman repeated, her voice scratchy like that of a bird mimicking a person. This had done nothing to reassure Val that this creature could understand her.
“My name is…” She stopped, again feeling foolish. How easily she was willing to give away her name, even now, standing in the Glade where it had caused her so much suffering. “...not important…”
The silence was awkward. Val felt this in her bones, regardless of how strange the company had been.
“Keep it.” The bird-woman said. “I’ve no need for it.”
Sighing with relief, Val felt her back muscles relax when she had not even known how tight they had been.
“Who are you?” Val asked. The bird-woman cocked her head to the other side now.
“Sirin.” She said.
“Is that your name?”
“It’s what I am.”
“Hm.” Val nodded her head. “What can I do for you?”
“You shouldn’t ask things in the forest that question,” Sirin answered. “But, I want nothing of you.”
Val waited for the bird to say more, but nothing came. Perhaps she was content just sitting on the roof as a chickadee. She moved to head inside, and the bird-woman flapped her wings and landed on the ground not ten feet away. Up close, she looked far more uncanny.
“Why do you come?” She asked.
Val stood in the doorway, her hand on the door frame. She considered the question but was not about to answer it honestly.
“This was my home for a long time.” She said finally. “Now that its mistress is gone, I seek to make it so again.”
“You lie.”
She was taken aback by the quick jab.
“My reasons are my own,” Val said, still uneasy. “Why do you come?”
“You do not answer, but I am not as rude as you are,” Sirin remarked. “Now that the Mistress is gone, I return to my hunting grounds. I smelled you and you smell of sugar rot and sadness. I came because I carry happiness on my wings. But I cannot give you this.”
“What is sugar rot?” Val asked, unsure if she should be insulted.
“All mortal souls smell of sugar rot.” The bird shook her head - a motion that almost looked like a shrug. “But yours stinks more than others.”
“Oh.” Not knowing what to say, Val glanced inside the hut, wishing to leave the conversation. But, she still had not known if the bird-woman had been dangerous.
“I wish to have a loaf of pumpernickel bread,” Sirin demanded matter of factly.
“I do not have any,” Val answered. Of her provisions, only a loaf of wheat bread remained, and she was not about to hand it over to a bird.
“Do you not have a Cloth of Plenty?” Sirin let out a sound akin to laughing.
“A what?”
“A Cloth a Plenty, you do not listen.”
Val thought to the colorful tablecloth she saw inside the hut. Without closing the door, she went inside to retrieve it.
“This?”
Sirin bobbed her head up and down.
“What do I do with it?” Val ran her hand across the red and gold embroidery.
“What you do with any tablecloth!” Sirin exclaimed. “Or were you raised in a barn with sheep where there are no tables, Nameless One?”
Val glanced at the small table inside.
“Won’t you come in?” She asked politely, looking to appease the creature. But, the bird woman shook her head rapidly.
“I do not wish to get eaten.” She said.
“I will not eat you,” Val assured her, and the expression on Sirin’s face became grim.
“Not you, Ill-Mannered One.” She corrected Val, “The hut.”
“The hut?” Val looked up at the ceiling and walls of the home.
“The hut. You again do not listen.”
Val shifted on her feet uncomfortably, Sirin sighing again.
“Barbarians, all.” She said, and with a jumping flight-like motion went to the split logs and a stump a few feet away from the walls. “Take this and use it as a table. The logs as chairs. Or must I teach you to do that as well?”
Val did as the bird-woman said and set the tablecloth down on the stump. As she unfolded it, to her surprise, all sorts of dishes appeared on it, their smell rising as if they were freshly baked, mixed, and stewed. There were fruits, breads, butter - sweet and salted - jams, dried and pickled fish, milk, cheese, and other various plates. Where the cloth did not fit the stump, the dishes rolled off the side, broke, and spilled on the dirt. Val went to grab them, but they melted into the ground before she could.
“You aren’t careful!” Sirin cawed. But, she skipped forward until she perched atop the wooden stool and bent her head to take an entire loaf of pumpernickel bread into her mouth and swallow it whole in one gulp.
Val ate to her heart’s desire, tasting everything on the table and having two whole servings of cream pudding. At this, Sirin looked at her with disgust.
“You’ll get fat.” She told Val, at which she put the spoon down, embarrassed.
“What did you mean that you did not wish to be eaten?” Val asked when they were both full and sitting back.
“Would you?”
“But why the hut?”
“You do not know, oh, One Who Has Lived Here for a Long Time?” Sirin mocked.
Val just shook her head no.
The bird-woman nodded toward the gable, the eaves, and the hooks
“You do not feed it, I see. It has stood hungry for a long time. I am surprised it has not eaten you.”
Val stared at the hut. She had not yet hung the herbs and flowers on the hooks.
“And how is that?” She asked, expecting the bird-woman to reprimand her.
“You do not set the bait. And so, the spirits do not come. It sits, and it starves.” Sirin laid out plainly. “You have to set the bait, so that the spirits come. And when they come inside, the hut will eat them.”
“What spirits does it attract?” She asked suddenly, the thought of being surrounded by them inside her new home unsettling her greatly.
“The dead,” Sirin said simply, at which Val frowned.
“Whose dead?”
“Does it matter? The dead.” The bird woman was annoyed, and showed it with the raising of her claw and idle picking through her feathers as if Val had not been there at all.
Val thought of how tragic it would be if all the loved ones that people had lost and buried had ended up eaten by the hut. How far would its reach be?
“It matters to me.” She insisted suddenly.
Sirin stopped what she was doing.
“Irritating AND rude.” She declared. “Our brothers and sisters, dead. Those that do not feed enough, do not run fast enough, or come across the path of killers smelling of vinegar and sugar rot alike. It returns them to their birthing place, to rest.”
Relief must have shown on Val’s face at these words.
“Cruel girl! Cruel and irritating and rude!” Sirin exclaimed, flapping her wings. “You sit and smile at the death of others!”
“At the death of cruel things,” Val argued. “Things that kill, things that wish to cause harm and pain.”
“And you do not cause harm and pain?” Sirin demanded. “I smell much blood on your hands, Nameless One. I smell the blood of a water mistress, a dreamweaver, and more.”
She paused meaningfully, her head lowering in distrust.
“I smell a hunter’s blood on you.” She nearly hissed.
Val took a fast breath and felt her face fall at the mention. She said nothing.
“Ah.” It may have been a caw, “I see. The grief you reek of is for the hunter’s blood. It permeates your hands, you know. A hypocrite to preach to me about death when you have walked alongside death itself.”
Again, Val said nothing. They sat silently, looking out onto the clearing below the hill.
“I will return,” Sirin said, “and I expect you will learn some respectable behavior when I do.”
With that, she flapped her wings and rose to the sky, flying fast, considering her great size.
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