Page 26 of The Blight of Hollowmire

Nibblebones scampers off through the front door and I head back down to the stream to refill our waterskins. I check in on the horse, who seems to be dozing peacefully, and refill his empty feed bucket with water, as well.

Though I can hardly see the sky through the canopy of dying leaves, I can scent the birth of storm clouds high above. Rain will come tonight—possibly sleet. Fortunately, the roof of the lean-to will protect the horse from the worst of the storm, but the human and I will be decidedly less comfortable in our cottage—rotting and open to the elements.

Eyeing the holes in the roof, I summon a surge of mycelium and send it up the walls, directing the hungry filaments to the rafters above. With a little encouragement, several large flat mushrooms erupt across the ceiling, siphoning up the damp rot and effectively plugging the holes in the roof. It’s a temporary solution. In a few days the mushrooms will devour the roof entirely. For now, however, the human and I will at least remain sheltered, warm, and dry.

Inside, I offer a small amount of water to the fitful human, tilting his head up and tipping the waterskin in. He sips at it, which gives me no small amount of pleasure, and I dab a bit of my healing salve on his cracked lips. I must remember to tend to him often, so that his fragile body does not wither away like so many other things beneath my touch.

Nibblebones returns as I’m getting a fire going in the hearth, a young rabbit clutched in her bloodstained jaws.

“Oh, well done! Thank you, darling. This human at least had the foresight to pack a kettle, so we can have rabbit stew this evening.”

Ever the ideal companion, Nibblebones takes the heart and innards of the animal while I skin and prep it for our meal. In the small pot it goes, along with a few small brown mushrooms I summon from a patch of bare earth near the hearth. I’m certain these are safe to eat, even for humans’ sensitive constitutions. A quick jaunt around the outer edges of the cottage yields a scraggly bunch of wild thyme and a few mellow alliums, which will do nicely.

With the modest stew bubbling away over the hearth and the human still sleeping soundly, I peruse the outer boundary of the cottage grounds. Young fae used to come here for clandestine romance, but it seems that whatever has begun to siphon the joyful harvest from our land has also infested our people with a dark malaise. There are no recent hearts carved into wooden beams, no evidence of sweet, fumbling trysts, just a peculiar sense of foreboding that would have warned any more sensible fae from this place.

Perhaps I should be more sensible. Down at the stream again, I cannot shake the sense of being watched. All afternoon it has dogged me, but reaching out with my senses has not yielded a predator or unearthed anything other than my own paranoid imaginings. Mayhap it’s the latent effects of stress after what was a truly devastating departure from my home, but something tells me there’s another force at work than just lingering emotional fatigue.

Frigid rain begins to mist down between the gaps in the trees, and what small sounds I’ve become used to in the forest are now lost behind the whisper of water droplets upon leaves. The human might be getting cold—I should return to him.

Before I go, I act on some deep-rooted, protective impulse and sink to my knees, plunging my fingers into the earth and sending out another network of mycelium—this time in a wide ring encircling the cottage and stable. I dig deep into the darkest reserves of my power and push, and a ring of knee-high toxic red toadstools begin to fruit along the filaments’ path. Things that are determined will make their way through, of course, but the poisonous growths are enough of a warning to keep smaller threats at bay.

Wiping the loamy crumbs from my fingertips, I make my way back inside the cottage. The smell of fragrant stew sends a hunger pang through my belly, and I reckon the human must be hungry, as well. Filling his small cup with a bit of broth, I sit gingerly at the top of his bed and pull his head gently into my lap. His eyelids flutter and he moans softly, but he does not fully rouse.

“You should drink. Your body seems determined to empty itself.” I tip the cup to his lips and murmur encouragements as he consumes it in little sips. When he’s drunk almost the full cup, I refill it from the kettle and serve it to him again in the same way.

Satisfied that he’s had as much nourishment as I can provide, I fill my own belly with the heartier portion of meat and mushrooms, saving the best bites for Nibblebones. The fire in the hearth blazes and I wish I’d had the foresight to bring some tea, but all in all, it’s a moderately comfortable evening. Rain dances along the ruined thatch and spatters against the mushroom caps plugging the roof, and the muted staccato softens the edges of my anxiety.

When the human finally settles into a restless sleep, I sink into the crooked chair beside the hearth and pull the small ancient book from my pack.

Opening it feels strangely like exhaling after holding my breath too long. Goosebumps lift on the moon-pale canvas of my skin in anticipation.

The clasp gives way easily, and I suspect it has been a long time since the small lock kept anyone out. The pages are as I initially believed—less a formidable magical or historical text, and more a young writer’s private diary.

The first several pages are undated entries, containing the sorts of entries one might expect from a young mage’s apprentice—complaints about endless copying exercises, notes about lectures half-understood, and the occasional triumphant remark about successfully transmuting something minor into something equally useless.

My focus is beginning to blur with exhaustion when I come across a page that snaps me awake.

Today was market day, which should have been unremarkable except that a seer passed through the city and took up residence outside the ruined temple. The shepherd Axel wished to send her on her way and entreated us, so I was sent to deal with her. The woman would not be moved. She laughed most eerily and spoke of the Blight Mother—an ancient decay goddess the priests no longer pray to. She will come, the old woman said. When I pressed her, her eyes rolled white and she intoned her words with many voices. According to her, the Blight Mother is not born so much as called by the other gods when the land requires it.

Heart thudding so loud I fear I’ll wake the human, I tilt the book closer to the fire to ascertain the next part.

She said the world moves in long seasons of balance, though we rarely notice them while we are living inside them, and that imbalance grows quietly in the corners until the scales can no longer pretend to be level. When that happens, the gods themselves grow impatient, and something must be done to correct the weight.

She said the Blight Mother is the hand that tips the scale. She is an eventuality, as all fae and humankind tend to push the world towards imbalance.

There is a blot of ink there, almost as if the young mage paused—his quill poised over the paper—before continuing.

Most of the older texts describe her as an ending, which I suppose is not incorrect if you happen to be standing on the side of the world that is about to fall apart. The seer laughed when I asked why the Blight Mother must destroy the world to find its balance.

“Destruction?” she scoffed. “She simply refuses to preserve it.”

A low swear falls from my lips. I close the book slowly and tuck it back inside my pack, turning the words over in my mind. No matter how I rephrase them, I can find no comfort in them.

“Well, shit,” I murmur to Nibblebones, who dozes in a ball in my lap.

Outside, the forest breathes softly in the darkness, the trees whispering against one another in the drizzly wind.

Sleep soon tugs at my senses, and I lay my bedroll out next to the hearth and curl up with my equally exhausted corpse weasel.