Marge is left. In her leaving, she lingers in the residual warmth remaining in the poultice worked into the skin of his temple, his belly, his feet. Those spaces, throbbing in life, stars of being in a eternity of dark which has grown to fill the bones, the skin, the hair which were his but a short time ago. All around, the winds howl soundlessly and deep underneath the cold ground a small spark hides, trembling.
Wren makes no sound. The roots of the great cedar above shake and tremble, a chill seeping into them even as the great tree stretches for those stars overhead. The tree groans whether from effort or from the strain, and each groan thrums through the slender spine of the hiding soul. It shakes, this mouse like light, curled in on itself with a slender tail tucked over it's trembling nose. If it remains still, quiet, then what roams through its body will not find it. The hunger leaching warmth from Wren, will not finish off its meal.
Oh but it must remain so very still. Barely breathing, its eyes keep watch in the absolute darkness, tiny ears twitching at each silent cry of the great tree under which it is hid.
Marge is gone and her work, slight as it had been, begins to dim. Light and warmth recede as the cedar soaks in every living spark of it in an effort to warm its roots.
The air feels heavy as Marge comes upon the field. She catches at her breast and pants, her eyes wide as she takes in the boy kneeling in the cemter. The magic of the land rises, touches him, swells, and then flares to such brightness that even the untrained eye can see it. Around her, the gathered villagers murmur in confusion, milling about like uncertain sheep. The healer stifles the empathic response of fear and focuses on the boy in the middle of the light.
What had the mason's son wanted? Perry had come to her side, his small hand on her hip a summons. He'd looked up at her as she worked over Wren's quickly cooling body and there was something other about his voice, a second tone under the soft whisper he'd given as she'd been compelled to lean so that he could demand, “Come.”
As she'd straightened once more and looked down at him, the boy had shook and all but burst into tears. He was a young thing, only six summers, and willing herself to leave her friend's side, she'd nodded sharply to him before following him out of town.
The magic is not anything she is accustomed to. Marge holds her breath and watches as the boy manipulates the river of power which underlies their town. Any other time, Marge would have tried to stop such a thing, unwilling to allow a simple court mage to play with the very life's blood of their land. At her side, Perry's small hand holds tightly to her skirts now that the pair of them are there. It is too late, is it not? He's already drawn it out, already begun to shift the power around himself, test it. Strangely enough, there is no taste of wrong in the air, no scent of burning organic matter as often she's come to expect from magic gone wrong. No – the magic twists like a bird in the snare, a fish on a line, but there is nothing cruel in the wind and the hedge-witch breathes in easier.
Wren. She watches as the boy in the field plies the magic about him like a skillful artist and she knows. Here is a powerful touch which can work even with one on the edge of lost. Here is her tonic. She steps forward and the light flares into a brilliant sun – bursts, then closes and the boy screams.
The villagers rear back as a flare, like a fox in a thicket, skates off from the boy and through their legs. Behind it, grass bends under the resultant wind and Marge takes note of the fact that it heads for the village. There is no doubt where it goes to, she knows it. There is something here, more than a tonic in a powerful mage's hand. No – here is far more. Here is magic of a kind her great grand mam would have told tale of as a child.
As the boy has collapsed on the ground, Marge directs Oreth one of Farmer Dogget's older sons. “You, take him to my hut. Quickly, now.” She pauses only long enough to bark, “gently” at the boy before rushing back toward town, toward where the light's passing has burned an afterimage into the air.
Within the healer's hut, the large weaver's body has begun to wither, paled to bone, it lies as quiet as death. From the door, a light flares momentarily, color finds and wreathes about the body, then as if it were a snake, coils around Wren's neck and begins to seek out a crack in the stone of flesh to creep inside. It goes dim, the draw from within the skin of the man wolf-like and hungry.
Were it not for the sudden writhing of green and blue on the man's face, the desperation of the magic calling for its kind, the small figure in the corner by the coal shuttle may not have ever moved. He was accustomed to the healer managing quite well on her own. Besides, it wasn't as if healing were his specialty. Instead, he tended toward cleaning the bins, sweeping the hearth, drinking a bit of ale now and again. Never enough to be a disturbance but enough to be recognized.
But then, the healer thought him a brownie and he is not that. No brownie would be able to thrive with the spare magic fallen in curls on the wooden floors. Brownies do well enough with dust but left over power tends to trip them up and make their skin itch.
No brownie this. Hibble snorts at the idea. If a brownie were here, as they are in the nearby mason's home, it would be squeaking in fear and trying to climb the flue.
Hibble shakes himself and stands. In the corner, he could have been an extension of shadow but standing, he is slender and no larger than a very small child. His knobby knees and pale, round face with too large eyes complete the sense of child likeness. There the similarities end, however.
Hibble is old. His pale skin is parchment thin. Folds of thin flesh hang upon his tender bones and he moves stiffly. Most of his kind do not live so long, dead within the first two centuries. Hibble has lived past the times of many of his own get. Scars mar his neck and one his ears is half gone, but such are the ways of goblins. They are the guards, the guides, and the revenge-beset.
Despite his age, however, he uses no supports to move and his teeth, when he alights upon the table, grimacing at the light, are shiny black and sharp as flint. His luminous eyes watch while the magic both attempts to reach within the dying man and simultaneously free itself from what is inside of the body.
There is nothing the healer can do to save such a one. She had muttered to herself that it did not strike right such a man as the weaver was to be attacked so. But under this one's skin, the goblin has seen the years of travel making pocks and fissures in his spirit, ways in which living away from the land have left him at a disadvantage. It is in one of these cracks that the mage's tender magic settled and pried open.
Or so Hibble had assumed. Now, however, as he leans in closer, careful not to touch, he can see the crack has the signs of medicine. Like a scalpel might remove deadened skin, so is the break. His hedge-witch hasn't such skill, nor do the tainters of magic, so the kirin mage would not have managed such a cut. No, if Hibble can recall such cuts so many ages ago, this was done by something else.
Someone else.
Hibble hisses in frustration. The old ones get blind to how biddable humans are the more ancient they get. They forget the tendency toward self agency which humanity has clung to over the ages. No doubt, the weaver hadn't even noticed the wound and if he had, he'd ignored the directive. Now, instead of filled with the bond, it has become an entrance for a parasite, a spirit long denied.
“Cannae rid ye o'it,” Hibble licks his gums as he roots in a pack at his waist. “Cannae do wot ye'll 'after do ye'self, wot wi't in yer an all.” His eyes glint and the small, blood red beetle from his packet squirms between his forefinger and thumb.
The goblin shows no signs of hurry, even as the magic's struggles begin to weaken. It is a slender thread of ribbon, not a scarf of power as it had been meant to be. Within, the hunger has not been appeased and deeper within, Hibble can sense the tiniest glint of life. Best that the weaver had been born to the land or he may not have known how to hide. Things like this voracious one prefer stone streets and gas lights. Any born in town would have been swallowed at once, leaving nothing behind but a husk.
Squeezing lightly, the goblin reaches to the weaver's eye and draws back a lid. The man's gaze is rolled back into his head and he does not respond. At the soft pressure, the beetle begins to make a high pitched metallic sound of discomfort. To prompt its pain to end, it ejects a drop of foul smelling, clear liquid. The goblin lowers the bug's abdomen until it almost touches the human's eye and there, deposits the drop with a gentle shake.
The liquid spreads and the goblin quickly replaces the beetle into his pack before he slaps a wizened hand upon the man's face. Fingertips as broad as spoons press on the man's cheeks and mouth and one pushes down on that eye. When the body under his touch jerks, a physical response to anything when given a poison such as the beetle is wont to create, the goblin grins and in a gutteral voice, deep as mountain chasms, speaks.
In that cold dark, what remains of Wren, shivers and feels death. The cedar groans, the taproot at its spine shudders and gives. In response, the tiny, furry soul, cries out only once in fear.
Then all is silent. Overhead, the stars are out, yet a ribbon of light runs across the sky like the lights of the north. It is faint and weak as it seeks the tree and twines itself down the blackened trunk. Once there, the magic shoots more quickly now that it has something to grasp, and like a lightening strike, makes its way toward the roots where it spreads so thin as to be almost invisible.
As the earth where the roots are set warm slightly and the small spirit raises its head. It blinks, surprised to find the hollow in which it hides beginning to glow.
Hibble sneers down at where the hunger squirms just behind the right side of the man's face. It is pinned, held captive in the man's cheekbone. The beetle's poison, let in through the soul's windows rather than the door or that foolish crack, has done its work. It is not perfect, no, for even as the hunger begins to settle and still, it remains alive. But it is bound now. Weakened.
The goblin twists at the sound of pounding feet outside the hut and slips into the rafter shadows just as the door opens and three young men enter bearing a kirin in arm. The captive is not senseless, but looks to be terrified, surrounded by three large men who all glower down at him even as they set him upon the floor gently enough.
Soon behind, the goblin's healer charge enters, her face poppy red from exertion. She rushes to where the weaver lies upon the table and grasps his wrist, seeking a heartbeat.
The boys rumble in uncertainty and one of them keeps small eyes fixed on the kirin, his fists clenching and unclenching.
Marge takes in a shuddering breath, then looks to the boy. She is not certain what she ought to have expected, but some response to the flare of light beyond a thready rhythm below his skin. She glances between the weaver on the table and the boy huddled on the floor and with a sound of frustration, reaches out to him, to pull him to his feet and draw him to the table.
“Here now,” she bats at Orten's younger brother who glares at the boy as if he had done something wrong, being born with an affinity to magic. “None of that. G'on all yer.” She jerks her head at them even as she comes to the kirin's side. “And you, you'll fix this.” She gestures to where the weaver lays still and barely breathing upon her kitchen table. “It was you who started it, any how.”
