Heart's Desire

Chapter 17

The door opened on a tiny room. Inside the room was one window. The window shined a light on a single cot. A man was kneeling over the cot weeping. At least that is what Myka thought he was doing. He was the source of the sound she had listened to at the door. The man was old. His head was balding. The few hairs that remained were white and wiry. His cloths were plain and covered in dust. His skin was the color of burnt toast. She could not see his face. He must be the farmer Myka thought.

"Sir," she asked him tentatively. No response.

"Sir?" she asked him again. This time she raised her voice. Maybe he had not heard her before. Still there was no response. Myka looked to Sae. Sae sighed. Ada looked for Sae to Myka trying to make up her mind about something. She walked over to the man and shook him. Myka was half expecting him to fall over dead. Surely he must have heard them and if he had heard them he would have responded before now.

The man did not fall over dead. Instead, he turned his face towards them. His eyes were red from crying with deep black circles under them form lack of sleep. His face was shrunken from malnourishment. In total, he was a moving pile of bones, but the acid that spilled from his lips when he spoke proved he was more.

"What do you hags want?" he asked. Each word felt like a blow. Myka recoiled from them.

"Have you come to take us away to the end?" he said. Us? Thought Myka. Are there two of them? Myka looked around the room to see if someone else was hiding somewhere like in a closet ready to spring at them. Nope, no closets. The only door was the one leading into the room. This had to be the only room up here. The man saw her looking around and laughed. He had surmised what she was looking for Myka guessed.

"Me and my daughter are the only ones here," he said, "You already took Debra."

All three of the sisters looked at him quizzically.

"Debra," he repeated, "My wife. Do you not remember her?" He looked back at them and then down at the cot.

"She was one of your first. And she was all I had. Do you truly not remember?" the man asked. He looked agitated, as if they had angered him some how. The sisters looked back and forth from each other. They could not think of how they had angered him. This man was truly insane. They had no

"I know you can talk!" he yelled. "I heard you before. Why aren't you talking now?" he asked. He sighed. "It doesn't matter now." He got up off the floor then and proceeded to brush himself off. "I've been waiting for you," he said matter of factly. "It has been a long wait, but I can be a patient man." He stood and faced Myka. Resolve was etched into every one of his decrepit fetchers.

"My daughter," he said when he turned away from the cot.

"She's dead," he said. He pointed back to the cot over his shoulder.

Myka looked past him to the cot to see if his words were true. Indeed, there was a girl lying there unmoving. She was small and frail looking. Her body was shrunken from lack of food. Her face was bruised badly. Black and blue spots covered most of her visible fetchers. In better circumstances, the girl might have been considered lovely, but the corpse in front of them had lost any charm it once might have possessed. The poor creature was as hideous as Myka's sisters were dirty.

Realization finally dawned on Myka. He though we are here to kill him. She quickly worked to rectify the situation.

"We have not come here to harm you," she said.

"We have come to help," said Sae following Myka's lead. The man looked at them skeptically.

"I have nothing to offer you for your help," he stated flatly. "As you can see I have nothing but this house and this cot and both are falling apart." He extended his arms as he said this to illustrate his point. These were facts Myka was well aware of.