The Haunting of Corwell, Part I
It awoke with a start and and trembled. It was no use. The stone at the seat of it was immovable while the stone above it barely trembled.
Magic AT LAST! But where?
All was silent again and it shook, causing a faint tinkling of iron against silver. A muffled voice spoke in exclamation. Wood scraped across stone, then the stone above it was jostled. It wiggled again even though it's energy was so very dull and threatened to send it again into sleep quickly.
“Win-sun, there's a crik-ket under here. I hear him!”
The five-year-old girl bent double over in her short red woolen jumper and sensible wool leggings that kept out the chill of the bitter Fall wind that swept across the island. It hurried along to chase the last chores of the harvest. Marpenoth was melding in to Uktar and the great rotting molds would claim any exposed fruits and any uncured meat in a most foul powdery mildew. High-Harvestide was upon them again and after the terror in Caer Calidyrr of a few years past, it was reported that Queen Alicia had personally inspected the sewers, posted extra guards, and had employed ten wizards from off-island to stand guard on the great stone-walled capital of the Moonshae Isles.
Windsun Blackbough set down his school book, the brown leather cover well-worn, but finely embossed with a delicate tree with stars for it's fruit. He sighed reluctantly, then crawled down on leather-patched knees to peer at Rosa. She squeezed her curious little fingers in a crack of a loose cobblestone, her two blonde braids dangled over either shoulder, as her simple gold necklace caught a bit of the firelight as it swayed at her efforts.
The basement they called home was entirely made of such cobblestones, grey, some flickering with mica as granite is prone to do, rounded by the sea, and sealed together with sand, straw, and mud. This one, Windsun noted, had been covered up by a board, shoved in the corner. Detritus in the shape of the board marked the loose stone had been covered sometime and he could not remember seeing that spot though he swore he knew every crack and crevice being he crawled and learned to walk on these very cobbles.
“Here Ro-ro, let me get a poker to pry it loose. I'll save this poor cricket for you.” He grinned briefly and went to the fireplace which was flickering to embers after a long day of churning out pasties and pottage for the sailors of Corwelltown.
Mama was aboard ship too. The lanky Inn-keeper often sated her wanderlust by frequent travels to various ports for supplies. Her Inn itself was a shrine to Shaundakul and place where for a day or a week a consummate wanderer could find rest and honest work to replenish themselves both in spirit and in body. There the tawny-skinned proprietress ruled as queen as priestess, confessor, and sometimes bouncer of the ebb and tide of those who washed up in the bustling port.
The two children could hear their Grandma upstairs, snoring now, her head propped on a keg by the bar, as her self-fortification from tap provoked a most sound sleep. The door was latched down against the wind, the tables cleared and scrubbed, the cuspidors emptied, and every non-essential candle was snuffed. The guest were all tucked in their beds as well.
With a gritting creak, Windsun pried upward, his black bangs slipping loose of his small ponytail and over his own tawny slightly-pointed ears.
“Win-sun, it's a treasure!”
His keen hazel-green eyes peered into the darkness, as he moved the stone aside, he naturally could see a bit more than his foster sister leaning over the hole. It was a tiny silver box, rectangular, and not much wider than the span of the seven-year-olds palm. It dull tarnished silver, almost black from it's internment, but inlaid with flat cut ruby chips, malachite, and mother of pearl in a very familiar pattern.
“Tis the death's head, Rosa. This is from the pirates!” He exclaimed in wonderment. Rosa reached down and lifted up the little box, and again pried at with her strong little fingers. It had no clasp and no latch, and the lid seemed to be soldered shut.
“It won' open. Is stuck! Fix it Win-sun.” She handed to him and as she did, her hand to his, it shook a little.
Windsun jumped a little and nearly dropped it. Rosa shrieked slightly and jumped back.
“You kids KEEP IT DOWN! Gram-maw has a 'ead ache. Ack!” The rough woman's head thunked down again and was followed by a loud snort and snoring.
Windsun bit his thin lip and gulped, his voice quieting to a whisper. “It must be stuck shut from bein' under the stone all this time. An' somethin' is definitely inside it.”
“I am gonna keep it to show my friends at the festival at High-Harvestide.”
He frowned a little as he watched her soft pink lips set into a firm, stubborn line. He knew the look all too well and shook his head a little.
“Can I take it to the Circle first? I bet the brothers or sister can ope' it up for us.”
“NO! I want to show my friends first. It's my treasure. I found it!” Rosa stomped her foot again and stared at him furiously with her oddly golden brown eyes.
“We should at least show Mama when she gets back. I bet she put it there for a reason or somethin'”
Rosa yawned drowsily and took the box from his hand and nodded. “I'm sleepy now. We show Mama Trapper tomorrow.”
He picked her up, grimacing at the weight and the little jeweled box in her hand, and set her in their bed. He pulled off her boots and pulled on two thick wool socks. Then he got in their bed and pulled a thick eiderdown coverlet over them to keep out the chill of the night. As Rosa drifted off, he carefully pried the box out of her hand and set it on the shelf by the bed which held pretty stones, a string of fall leaves of just the right colors, feathers, and various other treasures they found in the wood.
****
Six hours rang out on the morning bell which signaled the start of the workday. The dawn sullenly brightened to a snappingly crisp day still haunted by the nacreous swirling of cloud over sun.
With a rough creak, the back door of the Inn was unlocked. The lank shadow of a hooded woman laden down with two huge leather saddlebags cast over into the darkened Inn. She cursed in a deep whisper as she passed her Mama. The stout barmistress was now snoring on the couch of the Inn, buried under a sheepskin rug, snug as a bug, ale mug asunder on the floor nearby.
With a sigh she moved swiftly down the stairs, peeked in the curtain on the children, stowed the saddlebags in the kitchen, and stripped down to bare, scrubbing over herself with hard lye soap, then splashing off again at the wash tub, a full-body shiver rippling over her corded muscles and goose-fleshing her brown hide.
She threw on an overly large man's tunic and fell into her bed, alone, exhausted, and curled into a dark ball, under a thick cover. It was not long before a deep sleep overcame her and all was forgotten.
The box trembled a little on the shelf above the children but not enough to wake them. A trickle of magic slipped around it and fed it. It nursed off of the tiny waves of it, noting that the closer the female child came to it, it was cut off from that delicious nourishing tendril and it did NOT like that one bit.
With a rocking motion forward, it rolled off the shelf, on to the thick cover over the children, and with a careful rocking, it landed on of a pile of close, then began to walk itself, corner after corner toward under the bed where the Inn mistress slept.
scrape, scrape, scrape
It settled itself there then drawing on the thin tendril of magic it feeding it, the lid slowly opened.
In her dreams, Trapper was laying in a bed, a much finer bed than in Corwelltown, with fine pink silk curtains woven with stars that sparkled in the lantern light. She was wrapped in silken sheets, her nightgown something transparent he had bought in Waterdeep, that skimmed the tops of her thighs barely. The servants had burned sandalwood chips that day as they cleaned and the bed linen reeked of it. It was a good memory of a time that had long passed.
He was there now, his long muscular body slid over her, his finely trimmed beard pressing against her bodice, as his hands pulled down the sheets she had pulled up modestly to her neck.
“I want to see you in the silk gown, why do you hide?”
She blushed red. “Ain't accustomed to wearin' clothes just for bed. Do you like what you have wrought?”
He grinned, a smile only his face could frame. It was one that never failed to warm her from the tip of her nose to the tips of her tawny toes.
“I am just sad no one else is here to see ya in it, luv. You look like a princess of the deserts.”
His hands pulled the sheets down farther as he pressed his hands up across her belly, through the rosy silken cloth, and then bent to kiss her navel again through the cloth. Gently his large hands pressed the silk against her sinewy thighs, the fingers so deft they could tame stirring notes from the roughest instrument.
In her bed, Trapper straightened out, and plainly writhed, the sheets unnaturally tangling around her limbs, pulling her taut, as her breath quickened in the dream. Her body lifted from the bed, fell back, as her mouth hoarsely called out his name, “Lett!”
He moved over her, his lips so close to her, and kissed her deeply. But his tongue was cold, an then squirmed oddly there in her warm mouth so she opened her eyes. The face above her had bloated, the skin that of a drowned corpse, his eyes filmy white with death, seaweed clinging to his hair, and floating there as if he was immersed in the sea. She turned cold as ice, this corpse pressed against her body. It pressed down on her chest, his tattered clothes floating as if immersed with bits of bone showing through encrusted with barnacles. He floated there, his mouth opening and closing like a fish on dry land.
She screamed but no sound came out. She tried to move but her body would not move in the least. Even her breath had stopped as the incredible terror of being completely at the mercy of the visage of death that loomed over her.
BREATHE! Just take one breath. Move your finger. Scream! Do something.
Her thoughts raced as she struggled to gain control by sheer force of will and shoving aside the heavy weight of a sadness that threatened to crush her chest and stop her breath forever. And then it was gone and she sat bolt upright, tears streaming from her eyes, and a small hand in hers. Rosa had climbed into bed with her as she often did and cuddling close, which then had woken her up.
“Mama Trapper, why are you crying?” she whimpered and hugged close to her. Her foster mother shuddered and held the girl close, “Tis nothing, little one. Jus' a verra' bad dream. I think the worst I evah had. You go back to sleep now.”
Trapper matter-a-factly retrieved the bedsheets that were terribly tangled around her legs and the coverlet pulled down to the foot of the bed and covered them both. But she did not fall asleep again that day and with eyes wide open, stared at the ceiling in utter shock.
The boxes lid had snapped closed the minute the girl-child had gotten close to Trapper. It struggled in frustration, it's powers repressed, denied the living essence it so needed to feed. It stayed sullenly still there until the girl and the woman had risen and passed far away from it.
****
“Mama, Windsun, Rosa. Come on down here to the basement for a bit. There is somethin' I want to show ya of a great importance.”
Still looking a big frayed around her edges, Trapper Wind sat at her shop table on a short wooden stool. It was cleaned off for once and a strange assemblage of things were spread out there. Windsun could see a fat skin pouch with a wood stopper tied to the spout, a wood block with holes cut into it, a sheaf of parchment papers, and some small silver and grey lumps spilling from an accordion pouch there. Trapper smiled with a wary look in her eye.
“Now I am jus' tellin' you this for the sake of the safety of the family. You are to promise to nevah' touch my tools and nevah' tell any of the Ffolk around here about this. I met me a Lantan Gnome in Caer Callidyr down on his luck and he sold me this.”
She opened the wood box in her lap and there nestled in quilted velvet padding of deep golden brown was a strange device that not one of them had ever seen the like. A long brass pipe, scrolled with a fine design of roses was attached to a fine rosewood handle, with ridges carved in and polished. Windsun could see it was to be gripped by the hand. And it had a round chamber with four cut in ridges which Trapper snapped open to show the chambers empty inside and snapped it back.
“It's called a “Star-Wheel” and it is a terrible strong sort of weapon. I traded me good ring for it and a bit more. But it shoots lumps of lead or metal, like bullets from a sling. But the feller told me all the forces of propel-ment' come from a little patch of powder ya stuff into the casing with the bit of metal.”
She paused, narrowed her cloud-gray eyes, and slapped back Rosa's wee paw lightly from the shiny brass barrel. Rosa pouted and shoved her arms at her side.
“I don't want you touchin' it EVER! I won't be keepin' out so you can use it or in a way you can use it. It's for real emergencies for the gnome says, unlike a bow, the bullets press the flesh away from the body and either lodge there poisonin' the blood or leave a bloomin' hole. He sold me on that it is the best weapon there is for gettin' rid of the Were-cursed with the firin' of bullets cast in silver pure.”
She took up fat pouch in her rough brown hands and shook it at them.
“This is the skin of powder now. Whether by magic or gnomish what-not, a spark will make this sand make it's own fire but real hot and flashy-like. So do not touch it neither! This is all I got I got to use 'till when the airship from Lantan makes ground in here once spring rises again and the clouds clear.”
Her mother picked at her teeth and noodded keenly raising her voice, “That be worth a good bit of scratch now, eh? You expectin' theives and such to come creepin' looking for this star-blasted-wheel and for what is worse, you plannin' on shootin' a hole through some man? Doesn't seem very sportin'”
Trapper frowned with a sigh. “This is what is what Mama. You keep your trap shut about this. And I'll keep this tool of mine for my own games: those bein' making wrong into right as I see fit. Now you all promise me, you won't speak of this, and you won't touch it none.”
The family members nodded, her mother still frowning, arms crossed over her more-than-ample bosom. The Innkeeper nodded to herself and softly set the weapon in the case then locked with a small brass lock, and hooked the key to the ring on her belt. Her dusky voice softened and she took Rosa up into her lap as she examined Windsun, staring at her, his mouth in a straight line of indecsion.
“In a few days time, I'll take ye out of town so you can see how it works exactly. You kids need to be educated in the way of the Gnomish for it will be to you benefit in dark times.”
****
A broom swooped down and caught the box up and into a dustpan and then suddenly it was grasped by a set of freckled sausage-like fingers bedecked with gold rings set with flashy semi-precious stones.
“Oy, what 'ave we 'ere? A snuff-box. A fine and dandy one too.” With a smirk she lifted it up and tried to open it. It did not open, so with a snort of derision she tucked it into her apron and went on her merry way muttering, “I'll gets the blacksmith to pry ye ope' wee box. I likes me a bit of snuff now and then.”
Soon it was hanging over the bar, dangling helpless in the grimy pocket there. But the magic it had absorbed had strengthened it and it burned with stolen passion now. The pocket browned, the cloth gave away, and with a curl of smoke it fell down behind the bar and into the floorboards.
It trembled in frustration at first. But then the circumstances revealed themselves as it had landed in a dessicated rat carcass. With it's new purpose inflamed, bits of bone and dried flesh reassembled themselves around the box until it was most entirely a rat. It flexed it's dry little claws as the magic wove itself sinews and muscles to move, the simulacrum crawled up and out behind the barrels. It slipped quietly under the benches of the Inn, avoided the feet of the late breakfast crowd, and scuttled out into the late morn upon the docks.
(Part II coming soon)
