Custodian | Prudence Night/Blackwood (CAOS)

Chapter 20: A Midwinter's Tale Part 2

"Hilda!"

"Oh, Zelda! Oh!"

"Oh!" Aunt Zelda gasped in relief.

"Oh. It's okay." the red-headed woman took the baby and sushed her.

"Why is she so warm?" the youngest Spellman witch asked.

"Oh! She was in the oven..." aunt Hilda explained, and whispered lowly in fear. "I was preheating it." she finished, while holding her face in panick.

"Bun in the oven..." Cordelia scoffed in anger. "These ghosts have a sick sense of humour."

"She's fine. She's fine, though." Aunt Hilda assured her niece and sister. "But look, Zelda." she pointed, showing tiny children footprints from the flour on the floor.

Just then Ambrose walked in breathlessly.

"And where have you been?" Aunt Zelda asked him, accusingly.

"Tying down all the corpses
in the embalming room, bolting all the hatches shut. We have an infestation. We have poltergeists." he breathed out, always prepared.

"Not quite." Aunt Zelda gasped out, just as a doorslammed loudly, making them jump in fear.

"Wh...what now?" Aunt Hilda, stammered out, tiredly.

Both the twins grabbed a knife each, from the kitchen table, as the entire family headed towards the foyer, where they heard the slam.

The youngest two at the front, with their knives up.

Finally, Sabrina stepped in casually, looking at the state of her relatives.

"What's going on?" she asked, perplexed, as both twins dropped their knives on the nearby table. Cordelia laid her forehead on the back of her brother's shoulder in exhaustion. While both the Spellman sisters comforted a cooing Leticia.

"So, it's not poltergeists, it's the Yule Lads... " Aunt Hilda explained. As everyone once again was gathered in the living room. Cordelia gave her brother a mug of eggnog, which only reminded him of their previous conversation.

"Impish spirits of children that come down from the mountains every midwinter to cause mischief in the unguarded homes of witches..." Aunt Zelda continued, while lightly playing with Leticia from next to her chair. "They must have gotten in when the Yule fire went out."

"Right, so we banish the buggers." Ambrose simplified it.

"Well, that's not so easy, love. The Yule Lads are like bedbugs. Once they get in your house, they're difficult to get rid of." the blonde aunt explained to her nephew.

"Indeed, they won't leave until their mother tells them to." the eldest witch added.

"Their mother being Gryla." Aunt Hilda informed, with an eyeroll.

"Dare I ask? Who's Gryla?" Sabrina asked.

"A very dangerous witch."

"Not much of a disciplinarian..." Cordelia commented, referring to the Yule lads behavior and destruction of the house. Her aunt Zelda shrugged in response to that as she continued.

"During a famine, she and another woman from her coven made a pact.
They would eat their own children
to survive."

"Seriously, what is it with witches
and cannibalism?" Sabrina asked, annoyed.

"They cooked and devoured Gryla's son first, her only child, and then the other witch broke their pact. Devastated, Gryla's spent the last
thousand years trying to replace her lost babe. She's forever adding children, particularly orphans, to her so-called family."