A Charm for the Nameless Child #133

She dug around in the various sacks and satchels, bags, gourds and little wooden lockboxes that hung from her person. “No,” she muttered. “Not that…” pulling a softly glowing stone orb from one bag, putting it away again. “No. No. No.” A piece of soapstone with scratched snake-shapes all over. A lifelike little mouse that appeared to have been carved of wood, and which jumped to life when touched: it scurried on her fingers just like a real creature, before she plopped it back into a glass bottle and stoppered the lid. It returned at once to a small lifeless carving. “No, No.” A flower cut from delicate rose-pink crystal. A twisting piece of glass, which moved like a lick of flame. “No.” A bone flute that made faint, plaintive music before it too was stowed away. Finally, her hand lit on what she was looking for. “Ah. Ah. Yes. Good. Here we are.” She produced in her clawed fingers a bowl: perfectly round, perfectly black and polished to the same hard gleam as freshly cooled glass. “Now. Some water–” she patted herself down. “Do you have any? The source doesn’t matter, so long as it’s been taken from a stream, river or lake. It must be water of the earth. Not rainwater. Not fresh-melted ice. And absolutely not seawater. Don’t ever fill it with sea-water. Not unless you want to summon something very evil.”

“I filled our waterskins awhile back,” said Caewen. “At a little brook down in the farmlands.” She fetched one waterskin from Dapplegrim’s saddle. The witch uncorked it, and sniffed at the damp, chill and dewy surface of the old leather. “This will do. Yes. It will do.” Upending the nozzle, she glugged water into the bowl, messily, spilling most of it in wide sloshes all over the ground.

It didn’t seem to matter, or bother the witch-boggart for that matter. She kicked one foot to shake some wetness off, but otherwise let the water flow liberally. Once the bowl was full to the brim, she righted the skin–ceased the water-flow–and watched–and waited a moment. She was looking at the ripples move, settle. Apparently satisfied, Gloranthorgth corked up the bottle-end and handed it back to Caewen.

“Now,” she said, holding out a big-palmed hand, claws all splayed and waiting. “I need the piece of antler.”

Caewen definitely hesitated before handing it over this time. There was a slight quivering sense of reluctance in her poise, and in the nudged little furrows that suddenly creased her brow. But she shook the moment away, held out the fragment of broken antler, and Gloranthorgth took it. She held it above the bowl, keeping it perfectly still, and she leaned down, gazing intently. That internal flicker of light shone again in her eyes: yellow and red and sallow white.

The water began to move. It turned and swirled, like a maelstrom in a tiny sea. Gradually, it changed colour too. From clear to grey to black, and then it was all darkness and midnight, but spattered by the star points up above. “You must do this under starlight, and under starlight only. No moon. No sun. No other lights, bar that of the inner fire of your own magic: if you have it. The goddesses can spy on you through the moon and the sun.”

“What about the fire?” said Caewen. “That is a light.”

Gloranthorgth shook her head. “The Great Goddess of Flames in long dead. Don’t worry yourself about flames. That is a lost dynasty, overthrown at the dawn of time.” Her thumb and forefinger unclenched, and the antler shard dropped soundlessly into the bowl. The surface was disturbed for just a moment. Then, the antler spun around, as quick and as confused as a startled dragonfly. As it settled on a direction, a shimmering image, like a ghostly dream appeared on the surface. It appeared to be reflecting, but it was a reflection from somewhere else, somewhere very far off.

The reflection on the water showed a vast and dark chamber. Faint sparkling drips of water fell from the ceiling. Huge heaps of tarnish-black coins and intricately weird treasures lay in the field of view. The piles of tarnished silver seemed to be pocked with stars, just like the sky: but on a closer look, it was possible to make out that the nearest of these stars was actually a pearl. It was a treasure of blackened silver and huge sea-pearls. Somewhere in the darkness, coins rattled, and something cold and awful and vast moved a coil of muscle and scales. There was only a bare glimopse of it, before it vanished from sight behind a hill of dark treasures.

The antler jabbed itself into the rim of the bowl, tapping three times, and making a sound like a small bell.

“The fragment shows the way.”

“Hur.” Dapplegrim had leaned over and was watching. “A Bowl of the Wandering Dame. Not seen one of those in, well, not in a long, long time.” He snort-snuffled. “I wonder where you got it from. Interesting.”

“Interesting, indeed,” said Gloranthorgth. “Useful, certainly. Mine? No longer. I give it freely and wholly to you, Caewen, Grower of Turnips, Queen of the Root Veges. Drop any piece of a broken thing in this bowl–as long as the requirements are met–and it will point the way. Tink. Tink. Tonk. Three taps in the direction. And a phantom reflection of an echo of a knowingness, snatched from that far-away place.”

“Thank you,” said Caewen.

But the she-boggart scowled and shook her head. “Don’t thank me. Repay me–that is–if you ever do find the lost bit of the runes. I do not ask it. I do not demand it. The bowl is given freely. But I would appreciate kindly remembrances upon me and my tribes, at some future date.”

“I will, if I can. What do I do with–“

“The water?” A dishevelled, disinterested heave of a shrug followed. “Tip it out. Drink it. It doesn’t matter. It’s just water. The magic is in the bowl, not the water within.”

Caewen lifted the bowl up, removed the fragment of Old Great Spell, spilling a little water as she did. She then upended the bowl, emptying it. The water made a small spray of rubies on the air, lit momentarily by red hot firelight, then gone. Caewen dried the antler fragment carefully before putting it back in its box, and tucking the whole thing away.

“Before you go,” ventured the she-boggart, “may I see the other one? I am curious. That is all. It has such an unusual smell to it.”

Now Caewen paused and looked genuinely surprised. “Ahhhh… what other thing? Do you mean–” she cast around, and looked at Dapplegrim, the shadow, finally at the child.

“No, the other thing you are carrying.”

“You mean, besides the Old Great Spell?”

“Huh.” Gloranthorgth stared hard, barely moving a muscle. Finally, she whispered, “Is it possible you don’t even know that you carry it? I wonder? Fool. Power. Fool. Who’s to say.”

“Carry what? Do you mean my sword?”

“What, that? No. No. That’s just some fane-wrought trinket. A nasty little blade: made to slice boggart hearts in two. No, I do not mean that at all. The other thing.”

But Caewen just stared blankly, whilst at the same time patting herself down as if she were expecting to find an ancient object of power that just happened to be in her pocket, long forgotten. 

“Hmm. Perhaps ignorance could be for the best,” mused the witch. “It does have a most strange air and scent. Most uncanny. What is asleep is perhaps best left sleeping. Dawntime and springtime will come soon enough, I don’t wonder. But: how strange to have it about your person, and not even notice it. How strange. I suppose you don’t want to see it, and it doesn’t want to be seen by you. How strange. Well. Well. And well. Or perhaps I am mistaken. I have perhaps just gotten myself confused about the smell of the ivory box, and your demon, and your other demon, and the jellied monster-eyes, and that other weird bookish thing the boy has. Silly me.” She didn’t sound very convincing. “Must be I was mistaken. Now, and so, and so.” Immediately on mentioning the ‘bookish thing’, Gloranthorgth looked directly at the boy, really, really looked. All her attention and focus fell on him, and she paused and narrowed her predator’s eyes.

Meanwhile, Caewen was clearly flustered and still unsure what had just been discussed. She fumbled with the bowl and her bags. After she had put bowl away in a satchel, and the ivory box away in another, she turned her eyes again, warily and uncertainly to Gloranthorgth. “I say again, thank you. I think now, we should be going.”

“Yes. Yes. Perhaps. One supposes you do need to be moving, and quickly. Armies are afoot and marching… going this-a-way and a-that… and… now, now–” Gloranthorgth stopped mid-sentence. Her eyes remained fixed on the boy. “Here now. I didn’t notice it before. But I see it now. And now I cannot unsee it. It is a lucky thing, too. Little boy. Come here, little boy. I think I need to have a word with you.”

“Me,” said the boy.

“Yes. Very much indeed. You. There are no other little boys here. There is you, and it is you that I beckon. It is you that my keen eyes have set upon.”