MIK

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

A woman stood in front of us, she wasn't overly tall or big advantage height and very slim but her presence loomed over me as if she were a giant. She had black stripes within her warm brown hair braided elaborately over her skull, making her head look like a tribal tattoo. Her sunken in soulless gray eyes bore into me as I cowered in her presence.

"Is this the boy?" she asked, seemingly with no apparent accent. She seemed to lean in as she spoke too, her black cloak, giving the appearance of darkness creeping towards me. I wanted to recoil but I knew it wasn't wise. I had to stand my ground.

Juno's cheerful demeanour didn't crack, despite the woman's proud and omnipotent one, and smiled up at her as if it were a daily thing to be standing before such a presence, "Yes this is Torsten."

The woman looked over to me, "Come inside," she muttered quickly and threw the door open, stepping out of the way for us.

Juno was quick and careless to walk in, I however, took much more caution in doing so. The scent was something I couldn't put my finger on, a completely foreign herbal scent filled my nose. The interior was dark and seemingly about to fall apart. The floorboards were rotting and a variety of moss sprinkled it. The moss had also been messily sprinkled all over the walls and had started to grow all kinds of leaves. There seemed to have been paintings on the walls however they were now so dusty and uncared for they were decrepit and black with dirt and being strangled with vines. Still the gold of their frames stone with a dull gleam as if trying to reclaim some former glory of what the house might had been. The woman lead us down a long hallway so silent it was suffocating. Juno jumped over untrustworthy and broken floorboards as if it were her own home. She must come here too often.

The woman stopped suddenly, so did Juno. I tried and almost stepped into a gap in the floorboards, I grabbed onto Juno's shoulders for support. She looked back at me and we were so close I could see pink in her long eyelashes and smell her sweet sugary breath. All I could manage to break the awkwardness was, "Your eyelashes are pink?"

She giggled, "Yep!"

The woman opened the door for us and we walked into another musty, mossy, ruin of a room. She gestured for us to sit down on a formally velvet couch. I could feel the moisture on my legs which was extremely uncomfortable. Juno was unfazed by it although, tucking her legs underneath her. The woman sat in a throne-like chair, once had red cushions now they were a dark brown.

"I am Sylvia," She told me while staring seemingly into my soul, "I am a witch."

She was very blunt about it and everything about her was so serious. In any other context I would have thought this to be a joke or some kind of prank but now....

"Prove it," I told her sounding way stronger than I felt.

She gave an irritated sigh and flicked her hand towards a dust-covered bracelet that lay on the mantelpiece. Before my eyes, it turned into a snake and slivered away. Shit, this is real. I tried not to reacted too much to it but ended up flinching a little when the snake brushed past my ankle and I could feel how real it's scaley body was.

So that monster in the forest could really have been any kind of demonic beast.

"It's ok," Juno reassured me, "She won't hurt you."

"I won't, I promise you Torsten," Her voice was cold however it was firm and truthful. Despite being on edge I was comforted.

"So.... can you explain why I have these teeth... I mean what I am?" I asked her, avoiding her gray eyes.

She stared at me, "This is going to be very difficult for you to hear," she started.

"I don't care, I need to know," I told her.