A Gift for a Gift: Chapter 1
For the first one I had the idea that they both died during the Salem Witch Trials. The woman because she was labeled a witch, and the man because he threw himself into the fire as she was being burned at the stake because he couldn’t live without her. They died embracing each other as the flames consumed them.
How about the woman was reborn as an actual witch and they slowly start to experiment with that during sex?
Chapter 1:
Circles
The morning sun had crested the treeline in lazy ease. Markus rose with it, the cock’s call one none could ignore. It reminded him of tuning his lute-though, with the wire always strained. The woodsman gave a grunt, and rolled from the side of his bed. The frame held sure as the day he’d built it, and didn’t give a single creak. That suited Markus just fine. Lizbeth laid within, her black hair splayed like a silk shawl about her. He saw just a sliver of her caramel face, and smiled. Then the rooster called once more, and away he went. With a grumble-but none could blame him.
Markus stepped past the rough-shod hole of their hovel, and raised a hand to his face. As he scratched, he surveyed his yard. The garden looked just fine. The chickens-save for the incessant rooster-nipped and nicked about as always. He counted them, happy to see there was still thirteen. His eyes knit tight as he glanced towards the field, the peak of which kissed the morning sun. The cow-Ol’ Nell-stood stock still. Her face held no warmth or recognition, but her jaw moved all the same. If the woodsman knew no better, he’d swear it was the same cud.
He took a step forward, and closed his eyes as he exhaled. The morning sun warmed his face, his chest. He took a deep breath through his nose, and raised a hand.
“Hail Sunna, She of the fair hair and chariot” he said. He let the breath go, and opened his eyes. Though Markus didn’t particularly believe the words, the sky always looked a touch brighter when he said them. It also made Lizbeth smile when he did-and hers brought his own. As he stepped further into the yard, he veered left towards his smithy. His thoughts-as ever-turned to his wife.
She’s getting plump. Mayhap next summer, he thought. His smile-a slight twitch he’d tried to deny-widened. A son, one to tell about the gods and his home. Or perhaps a fair little girl to dote on. Either would make him happy. Like with Sunna, just the thought was enough for Markus. Thought alone could keep a man-or anyone-quite happy he’d found. He bent his head low, and strayed his fingers over his anvil as he stepped into the lean-to. Light seeped through the sticks that composed the walls. The axe was easy enough to find-it was the one thing that glint, regardless of the light around it. An odd thing it was, the axe. But just as thought could make someone happy, Markus had found its absence so as well.
As such, he tried very hard not to think on the axe beyond when he needed it. It made his head awfully sore. The axe would glint all the same, regardless of his existence. Why bother, then? Besides, it had been a gift. Markus knew better than to question a gift. He hefted it over his shoulder, and turned to leave the lean-to. As he did, he caught something in the valley that made him squint.
Dark, thin shapes against the dirt. Ones that hadn’t been there before. Markus blinked, and when his eyes met the road again the shapes had grown. Larger and more defined, they were still too soft. Markus’ grip tightened about the axe-and he gave another blink.
“Allo, leather-head!”
Markus spun on his heel, the axe raised high as his blood pounded in his ears. His breath seized in his throat when he saw the three before him-the round one, the thin one, and the one that was a bit of both. He lowered the axe, and gripped a hand to his chest. The gimgaws there ticked an angry melody to his palm.
“Oy! You three gave me a right scare! Why, what if I’d swung?”
The round one giggle, her double chins shaking as she pushed her glasses up. Her shoulders rolled as her head tilted.
“Well, I’d be likely knee level with you after. And I don’t know a man that would refuse a lass on her knees,”
As Markus felt his cheeks flush, the round one laughed. Her honey curls escaped her pointed black hat-until her head was knocked forward. The thin one, her demeanor so drawn and tight, snarled as she smacked the round one’s head.
“Shut it! You, arseface-” she said. She jabbed a bony finger towards Markus, her eyes bright as a fire’s light.
“Lizbeth ‘round? We’ve words with her,”
He clenched his jaw then. He never liked the thin one. “Aye, she is. Still asleep in her bed, chest rising soft. This urgent, I gander?”
The thin one gave a grim nod. She eyed the house, the round one turning with her. Markus blinked-and the two were gone. In the hovel he called a house-but the third sister stood, her arms crossed as she turned to face him.
“How’s our sister?” she said, her voice neither sweet nor scathing. Markus had always liked her most-more like Lizbeth she was, and less like the others. He smiled, and rested the axe head to the ground.
“Getting fuller every day,” he said. When his cheeks warmed this time, he didn’t hide it. The witch grinned, and took a step forward. She raised a hand to his bearded face, and Markus felt the hairs along his neck stand on end. Not in alarm or fear-but rather a wholly different feeling. One he’d felt only once before.
When they’d given him the axe.
She patted his cheek, her blue eyes centered on his.
“You did right by her, man. Few could do that. Thank you,” she said. Her hand fell away, and she turned towards the hut. Markus lifted the axe once more, and took a step towards the treeline.
“Well, how could I not? It’s her, you know?” he said.
He heard the witch-the one so in between the other’s extremes-laugh. She turned her face back towards him, a shade lighter than Lizbeth’s own. The term “sister” seemed to suit so much more than the others. She gave a small nod, and turned back.
Markus blinked once more, and she was gone. He stood there a moment, and let his head pivot. No matter where he looked, the three weird sisters weren’t to be seen. He glanced back up the hill, towards his home. As he stood and watched, the first curl of smoke coming from the chimney. Ah. So they were to stay then.
The woodsman gave a grunt, and turned back to the pines, and towards the day’s firewood. Odd lot, but blood is blood, he thought.
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The axe was quite a bit heavier than when he’d began.
Not that using it was much effort. The axe, shiny oddity that it was, slipped rather than chopped through wood. It did so with the ease of a hot knife on a wedge of cheese. Markus had been astonished at first. He had profusely thanked Lizbeth’s sisters. He’d asked how best to care for such a miraculous tool.
They had simply smiled, and told him to keep it with him always. Easy enough for him. Not so easy for the trees. Markus had cleared most of the forest around him-though never took more than he needed. His thoughts had been towards expansion that morning. Why, they would need a bigger home with a child. With a smile on his face, he swung. Trees fell, and his dreams came closer to his grasp.
He paused as a single drop of sweat finally broke above his eyes. He sat on the logs around him-nothing too thick or thin-and wiped himself on the back of his hand. The axe sat across his lap, the head radiant in the few rays that caressed it. He stared at it for a while, his mind puzzling it’s surface. All was still, all was quiet. It was moments like these Markus held close above all else.
They were broken by a scream. The sound made Markus jump, his fingers inches from the blade. He blinked, and twirled his head towards where the sound had come. It was past the mouth of the clearing, over the fell logs of his work. Up the hill it came again, loud and piercing right into his heart. The woodsman rose, his grip tight on the axe. His feet carried him from that place, but stopped as the hill came into view.
Markus knew not who the strangers were. Out so far from the village, they rarely got company aside from the sisters. He and Lizbeth very much liked it that way. He knew these people not-but he knew very well what they carried between them. He had seen it in other villages, in other places. Some of which he’d called home right until they arrived.
Before they turned it all to cinder. Before they had ran the women and children through. Before they had condemned them all to a place none had heard of. It was all divine punishment, they had proclaimed. All from a god with no name.
The cross was raised, it’s arms wide against an orange evening sky. A chill ran through him then, and it was then his feet began to run. Not away from the danger, not like the other times.
No, Markus ran towards it this time. The axe was firm in his grip as rage bubbled from his gut. It filled his veins and thoughts with a warmth his father had spoke of. It snarled it’s way up from his stomach into his jaw. His lips curled, ears pinned against his head as another scream cracked through the air. This one, though-this was broken by the muffled words of strangers. A furious sermon punctuated by the high-toned tittering of the sisters.
“Stop screaming-stop screaming, you wretched heathens!”
The warmth grew to a blaze, one that burned through his veins. His thoughts became singular and base. The flames of anger gripped his skull as he took the hill in leaps. The sisters screamed-but then came another voice. Another sound that gripped his heart and squeezed. He knew it all too well.
He had dedicated his life to it.
Markus didn’t believe in the gods. He didn’t believe in the sister’s or Lizbeth’s ways. But he believed in the voice that spoke from the flames of his mind. The one that bound him over the hill, axe raised as the damnable missionaries came into view. He believed in the fear he saw in their eyes as they turned, mouths agape.
He believed in the heft of his axe as it came down, as it cleft the bald pate of a monk in half. The sound that escaped his throat wasn’t one Markus knew he could make. The axe slipped through the man’s skull, and kept going. Down, down the blade fell as easy as it had with timbers. By the time it reached the monk’s hips, he’d already begun to fall apart. Markus yanked the axe from him, blood and viscera following. It splattered against his chest, his brow. He thought it funny, that-funny that for all he’d heard of the monks, all the fighting they caused-they had managed to get a baptism.
The laugh came from the back of his throat. But it wasn’t that of a man-the sound was horse and low. The caterwauling of a starved animal. Markus raised the axe and his eyes, and gazed about him. The scene came in cuts.
Lizbeth, the round and the thin sister tied on great beams. Kindle all around them. The one sister, the one so between the others, held by two men. Both bald as the one before him. Her jaw clenched, lips pulled back to reveal her teeth. Two other monks stood near the sister’s and Lizbeth. One held a massive book. The other a torch-fire bright and so very, very close to the kindling.
All, save for the man with the torch, gazed at him as some kind of horror. Markus hefted the axe behind him, and charged towards the pyre. The monk that held the torch didn’t move, didn’t waver. His eyes held on to Markus own, even as his lips curled into a thin smile. The torch dropped from his hands onto the kindling. There was a sound, like that of rushing wind. The flames grew in an instant. Greedy and insatiable they were, even as Lizbeth cried. Even as the sisters screamed, and the axe’s gleam fell from sight in a wash of gore and blood.
All of this happened in seconds. The axe rose and fell, the exhaustion Markus had felt gone. All that remained was the sound of men and women screaming, the sound of the axe splitting monks in half. He couldn’t look at the pyre, not now. Doing so would mean admitting it, and he wasn’t ready for that. Felling men like timber he could do-but not that.
He went to raise the axe again, blind from the blood and sweat in his eyes when a hand met his throat. Only then did he pause, only then did he finally blink the vicesera away. When he saw clearly once more, it was the middle sister that stood before him. Her hand disappeared within the folds of his beard, but he felt it all the same. It carried with it the strength to rip the skin off of him.
His chest rose, every breath more forced and ragged than the one before it. Heat pelted his back as his arms shook, weary and heavy. The axe hit the ground as his mind twitched and spasmed. He went to speak, only to let out a scream. One which turned to a wail without the animal malice it had before.
It was his own voice now. His own body, his own bloodied hands which met his eyes. The sister’s grip slackened at his throat. It pulled away entirely as he fell to the ground and pounded his fists against the slick, soaked earth. His fell grew cold, but not because the blood upon it had.
The tears came at last. The sister-the last one of the trio-placed her hand upon his back. The grip was firm again, but in a way so different than before. It held him there, steady as the fire roared behind them. Even when his shoulders hitched, even when he cried out against the gods.
The fire died away, the orange light against the blades of grass before him dimming.
Only then did he turn to see.
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He didn’t move from the spot for two days. He only knew it had been that long because the sister told him so. He sat there, rocking upon his knees as he stared at the ashes that had once composed his wife. The gray cinders that had smiled at him once, charred bones that had helped carry him so far from home.
Then came the grip on his shoulder, and a single command. One from a voice he’d heard so often in the last two cycles.
“Rise.”
And so Markus did. His legs trembled like a fawn. Twice the sister grabbed him by the hair, and hauled him right again. Markus didn’t glance up from the ground-there was nothing there, out in the world. Nothing left for him to see or care for. Only when the verdant ground gave way to brown, then puddles did he gaze around. He stopped, his eyes wide as he turned in a circle. This place held none of the comforts of home. The trees here were crooked, dark and strange. Their anemic branches clutched at a gray sky. The ground around him fell to mush and puddles. The very air itself reeked of rot, death and soiled underbrush.
But it was the house that caught his attention. The house, a hut not unlike his own, on stilts carved like chicken’s feet. Or rather, were chicken’s feet as Markus grew closer. Their color was smudged by their environs, but the talons gleamed in a familiar way. He blinked, and wiped his hands at his eyes. They were dark and tacky, and served to only smear the mess of his vision further. Markus blinked again, and beheld the woman that had calmed him.
She wasn’t decked in the attire she had been. The black tunics of the sisters had been plain affairs, simple sacks of cloth cut below the knee. Dyed the color of the night sky, they would have been imposing were not for their simplicity. Topped by a pointed hat, they made the sisters more caricatures than people. Funny things to laugh at.
She wasn’t laughing now.
Neither was Markus.
Before him she stood, head crowned by the bleached skull of a massive animal. Perhaps a bear, perhaps a wolf. It’s snout was as long as it’s teeth, and it was big enough for her head to fit within. She gazed at him from the hollow sockets, the warmth of her eyes replaced by something far more. The rest of her body was nude-saved for the blue, swirling ink that embraced every inch of her. Painted on by a rough hand, it alarmed Markus more than the fact she wore nothing at all.
His tongue went to move-but the sister held up a finger. She turned back towards the hut, the muck beneath her heels threatening to suck her down with every step. She placed a hand upon one of the massive feet. A rope ladder descended from on high with a clatter. She pulled away from the stilt, and made her way up.
Markus could think of nothing else but to follow her. He gripped the first rung, and the rope cinched around each grip. He craned his neck, and stared up into the hut. Above him there was a rough cut hole-and beyond that, nothing but darkness. A black so deep and thick it could have been infinite. He wavered there for a moment-and then the voice called again.
“Come,” it said, firm and feminine in a way that made his spine straight. “Or are you the man I thought you were?”
Markus rose into the warm embrace of the dark, the ladder swaying beneath him all the while. As he rose upon the ladder, the air grew cold. He seemed to climb on for far longer than needed. He tilted his head down, and received a sight that rolled his empty stomach. There was nothing below him-nothing but the roiling endless dark that had once been above him. His whole body trembled as he looked above-and saw the warm glow of a fire from the precipice.
Markus moved like he hadn’t since the day Lizbeth last kissed him.
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What was within the hut didn’t surprise him.
If Markus were to guess, he’d have imagined a place like this. Shelves festooned with jars, vials and boxes. Not a label or sense of organization between them. A few books, massive things with vellum yellow pages, lay here and there. Roughshod tables and chairs were dotted around, pock marked with use. A massive cauldron crowned the hearth, which billowed into a wide chimney. All of these things Markus easily could have imagined-the sisters were a weird lot. But they were real, and real things fell into certain rules.
It was what he saw before the fire that vexed him. He brought his fingers to his eyes, the stray thought of hunger hysteria crossing his mind. Perchance even foul thoughts had afronted his vision-real things. Things that had rules, things he could understand. But no matter how much he blinked and rubbed, the Sister still sat cross legged before him.
Levitating in the air, the skull mask of her head focused towards him. The sockets were dark as the void below, and bore into him with an unerring gaze. His heart pounded in his ears, every beat punctuated by the steady pace of his breath.
“Come forward. Sit,” said the Sister.
Markus rolled his dry tongue over his lips. There came a twitch at his brow, his eyes fluttering as he stared at her. He shook his head, and took a step back.
“I-I don’t know that I want to,” he answered with a rasp. His fingers spasmed at his side.
Looking for an axe that wasn’t there. They clawed at the air as Markus took another step back. The sister, mask and all, floated stock still.
“You don’t have to take the offer,” she said, her voice like wind on dry leaves. It rolled from the mask in a tone Markus had never heard before, even in all the times he’d known her.
His mind raced then-it whirred and clicked like the gimgaws of his chest. He tried to remember a single story about the sisters Lizbeth had told. Some stray scrap of thought or warning. He could remember their approach from before-before the axe was in his hand. Before the snarling and the-
“But you will. Won’t you, mutt?” said the sister.
His thoughts froze-fixed on that day. Those dark shapes that came winding down the path. In his sight but not. The concept of people, but not the flesh and sinew. Not like the monks. His eyes cinched tight as his mind curled. His hand shook as he lifted it to his brow.
That image, the solitary one of them. It was all he had, no matter how hard he-
“It’s not over. Not nearly yet. Circles never end, do they?”
As his eyelids lifted, so too did his gaze. It settled upon the sister, with the fire behind her. The flame rose, crackling to a meal only it knew. As it did, shadow consumed her utterly-all was dark, all was but a hint of what it had been.
Markus finally found the will to speak.
“Who-what? What is this? What is all of this?” he said. His throat pained him as he spoke. It was just as dry, just as cracked as the rest of him.
The sister didn’t speak. Not for a long moment. She sat there in the air, the fire glowing into a hot yellow over her. It lapped the sides of the cauldron, and for the first time Markus realized it was bubbling.
“Oh, you know me. Just as I know you. Just as I’ve always known you. The two of us-we’re always around in one form or another. The tragic hero, the wise. We may not know it-but we stand eternal all the same. From Ymir to Ragnarok,” she said. She shifted then, her shadow growing as her feet met the ground at last.
She took a step towards him.
He would have dared to run. To fight, to scream. But his feet stayed where they were, not straying even for a moment. In the warm darkness of that space, she gripped his chin. He smelled her breath as she drew near and kissed him. It was like mead and blood. Her lips felt like Lizbeth’s, but only in their most base of moments. She pulled away, and Markus felt himself shaking.
“There’s fire in you yet-good. We’re going to need it. Tell me, Mutt-what have you felt the last two days? Is it remorse? Anger?”
Markus didn’t answer for a long moment. Not for lack of trying-his mouth opened and closed several times, the answer always ready to leap from his tongue. He wanted to say those things, wanted to tell her he was angry. That the bloodlust from the days before hadn’t left him. But Markus didn’t feel that way, not even a little bit.
He felt hollow inside. The fire that had been there had sputtered out with the last monk. In its place was the dull, aching throb of memory. He told her as much, though the words came in a mumbled slurry. The sister listened, and gave a nod. She turned towards the massive cauldron, and reached towards the wall. On an iron hook there was a massive ladle. She lifted it, and dipped it within the bubbling, writhing mass.
“Good,” she said, her voice a measured timbre, “I’d hoped you would be honest with me. And the lot of them are dead. Vengeance would do us a fat lot of good,”
Markus swallowed, his parched throat quenched by saliva. Words began to sort themselves in his skull as he opened his mouth again.
“Then of what use, this place? Or you or I?”
The sister stopped, her profile dark against the cooking fire. She lifted the spoon from the mass, and tapped it three times against the pot. She turned towards the wall, and hung it back. But she didn’t face Markus. Her attention, in its entirety, seemed on the broiling pot.
“Vengeance is the scope of a man. Brief and bright, but it burns out. Like oil to a fire. Here one moment, then gone with a cough. No, we’ve already had vengeance. What we seek, dear mutt, is to win,”
She turned to him at last, and from within the sockets of her mask her eyes met his. A lesser man, a feeling man in that moment would have soiled himself.
Markus didn’t know if he could feel anything at all anymore. Or, if he did, that it would matter even a teenth.
“Come closer, Mutt. Let’s fill you, shall we?” said the sister. She crooked her fingers, and beckoned him forward. He thought to deny her-but as he blinked, he stood before the pot. The ladle was in her hand. She raised it towards his lips. Markus gazed at the liquid, a steaming amber sludge made from gods knew what.
“Fill me with what?” he said.
The sister cackled, and lifted a finger. She wagged it at him, and practically hissed as she spoke.
“Such a curious thing you are. Curious of this, curious of that. I’ve already killed far too many cats for this kind of inquiry. You came, yes?”
A thin peel of steam wafted to his nostrils-one not unlike the sister’s scent.
Blood and mead. Mead made from the sickly smell of an orchard most foul.
“Well, I-”
“You did, mutt. And what a good job you did listening,” said the sister, the ladle inching closer. When she spoke again, the sound didn’t come from beneath her mask. Rather, it reverberated within his skull. A single echo that bounced hundreds of times within moments.
“But I’ll spare you this-we’ll fill you with purpose. With who you truly need to be. Sup deep, now-and when the time comes, do as I did for you. Would you kindly, deary? I’d so love that,”
He parted his lips to protest-only for the ladle to press against them. Sizzling and hot, burning his lips, his mouth, his throat. Down the brew went, and even as he raised to push it away-Markus found that he couldn’t. The arm that lifted, he saw, was a lithe parody of his own. One that thinned and dried each passing second. He lifted his other hand, only to watch it stock-still horror as it mimicked it’s peer. His once pale complexion ruddied and darkened, the skin turning the complexion of a Yew.
He would have screamed, had his muscles moved when he commanded. He found that no part of him could though. Neither his lips nor his tongue-nor his wooden hands.
“Oh, I’d so love that,” said the sister, her humming voice a din within his mind, “for circles never end, boy. And neither do we,”
By the time the sister finally pulled the ladle away, Markus felt at last. The hollowness within had filled at last, just as she promised. In that space came awareness-never ending, constant screaming awareness of his own existence. When the screams-ones only he could hear in the comfort of his own mind-died at last, the void was filled by thinking. By listening. By learning as he watched the sister, she the last of her line. She would talk to him, tell him every little detail of the world and it’s goings. Almost every question Markus could think of, she answered in time.
So he stayed for nearly 800 years. It would have been 800 more, perhaps.
But then the sister brought the axe.
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Chapter 2: Coming Soon!