The Omen Machine

Jit cradled the jar with the filthy brown water containing what had been under Henrik’s fingernails in the crook of her arm as she made her way back into the dark opening. The brown water sloshed around as she walked. The lid kept most but not all of the water from spilling over. Henrik saw big brown bugs emerge up out of the weave of the twigs and branches to feed at the drops that did escape, run down the jar, and drip onto the floor.

Bishop Arc glared with bloodred eyes as the familiars went about their work of finding the correct containers out of the hundreds hoarded throughout the room. The dark symbols covering his flesh made his obvious rage seem all the more dangerous. The six remaining familiars avoided meeting his gaze as they worked at finding what they needed and pulled them out of the wall or plucked them up from the floor.

Each of the familiars collected an unwieldy stash of jars clutched in the crook of their arms. The one without a hand couldn’t hold as many but she did the best she could. As soon as they had what they needed, they hurried with their cargo to catch up with their departing mistress.

For her part, Jit took a staff that was leaning against the wall as she carried the single jar in her other arm. She looked back over her shoulder at Henrik and let out a series of short commands in her strange, screeching, clicking language. The familiar without a hand circled back and shoved him into line behind the Hedge Maid and in front of the rest of the familiars.

“Jit says for you to hurry up and come along.” She glanced back briefly at the bishop and then leaned closer. “When this is through,” she said with venomous delight, “I am going to suck you dry and feed what’s left of you to the cockroaches.”

Henrik froze stiff in terror. With a soft cackle, she shoved him to get him moving again.

As he stumbled forward, he thought of how much he missed being with his mother. He wanted to be back with her in their tent making bead goods. He wished that she had never brought him to the Hedge Maid in the first place.

Ever since he had realized that he was being chased back into Kharga Trace and that the Hedge Maid was going to have him in her clutches again, he had feared that this time he might not be leaving.

The bishop took up a place at the end of the line as they followed the Hedge Maid along the dark passageway lined with hundreds of strips of leather holding everything from small dead animals to empty turtle shells, to the skulls of little creatures with sharp little teeth, all hanging from the walls in layers. Henrik saw the eyes of the people in projecting areas of buttress walls watching them as they passed. When Bishop Arc met their gazes they quickly looked away. Not a peep came from the people in the walls. Henrik imagined that if he was trapped in the walls he would have trouble not crying out for help.

But there was no one to help the poor souls trapped in this terrible place. There was no one to help him.

Making their way through the labyrinth that was the Hedge Maid’s lair, Henrik began to hear insects buzzing, birds calling, and other creatures whistling and chirping. As they reached an opening and emerged out into the night, the swamp creatures abruptly went dead silent.

The low clouds gliding swiftly by overhead were lit by the moon from somewhere above them so that they cast a faint glow. The ground all around was elevated enough in the midst of the dense, swampy forest to be bone-dry. The dark shapes of hulking trees surrounding them, trailing long curtains of moss, looked to Henrik like arms of the dead trailing burial shrouds as they gathered around the living.

As they crossed the clearing, he saw that the flat rocks lying here and there were not placed randomly, but arranged in circular patterns. Each stone was also placed atop slightly mounded dirt. The mounds with stones appeared to lead to the center of the open area, where the Hedge Maid set about making marks on the ground with her decorated staff. The marks she was scratching in the ground with the point of her staff were not unlike the tattooed designs all over Bishop Arc.

Iridescent blue feathers, orange and yellow beads, and a collection of coins with holes in the center hung on buckskin thongs from the middle of the Hedge Maid’s staff. Henrik wondered why the Hedge Maid would be so interested in coins that she would use them to adorn such an obviously important object. After all, what good would money do her out in Kharga Trace?

Then he realized that it actually wasn’t of any value to her as money, the way it was to other people. The coins must have been taken from those poor souls encased in the walls. To the Hedge Maid, shiny coins were merely decorations, like the shiny feathers. Both were tokens of the lives she had taken.