Marrow Charm

Bonus Story: The House of Seven Smiles

Safiya shuddered, the backwash of death slamming into her. Her heart pounded against her ribs as she dashed for the door, edging around Gran's corpse.

The Mire was throbbing with violence.

The metallic scent clotted the air, mixed with the fetid smell of decaying plant matter, bitter to the taste. Intermittent screams and bellows rang out into the night, the echo of pain, and the short, sudden silence of the fallen. Safiya clutched at the door, staring out into the Mire. Death washed over her, familiar death, strange death, the death of her neighbors and the invaders they took down with them. The witch's fought and fell around her, battling brutish misshapen creatures straight from her nightmares. The Snatchers.

How? How had they broken the wards?

There was smoke without fire, curling inward and tinged red. It flowed toward a boiling column, a concentrated storm in the center of her village. Sparks of lighting lit a figure in its center, hands raised, fingers spread. Her gaze fixed on him. The smoke seemed to spew from his hands until she saw the mouths, like open wounds, lined with conical teeth and embedded in his palms. They winked open and closed, inhaling the sparking smoke, the magic. He must have eaten through the wards.

Safiya caught her breath as Mama Fiend appeared behind him in the writhing storm, a vengeful wraith. She made a grasping gesture at his back and pulled on the air. His bones jettisoned from his flesh. The man never had the chance to scream.

The magic dispersed but the wards guttered, weak and broken, the damage done. Her mother staggered towards their home. She never saw the Snatcher's clubbed fist descending toward her skull. Safiya screamed into the night, screamed and screamed, trying to banish the sounds of cracking bone. She screamed until the Snatchers smothered her cries with a bag over her head.

Time means nothing to ghosts. Safiya existed in a fugue state, her senses fuzzed out to the world. She drifted in the veil between worlds, searching for the comfort of her mother's kisses, of the tug on her curls, only to feel the phantom touches on the edge of dreams. It was maddening. She wanted to sink into delirium and never return, but her body refused to let go.

There was the rocking sensation, near constant, though in the dark confines of her cage. The Snatchers could have traveled by land or river, she was none the wiser. Bruising fingers forced watery gruel down her throat from time to time, a sustenance that kept her barely alive and weak as a newborn. Safiya knew it was a calculated process. The Snatchers wanted her market ready. In the Mire there were a few haggard witches who'd escaped Avergard. They told their stories from scarred lips in full detail, anything to grind the lesson into the young ones. To never leave the safety of the wards.

The pain gripped her fresh, squeezing her heart. The lesson meant nothing, not when the Snatchers brought monsters who ate through all their protections. The hurt wouldn't let her go, wrapping her so tight she gasped for air. In her mind's eye, she saw the last moment of Mama Fiend's life. She cried, for the first time in days, weeks, who knew how long, the tears flowed thick and fast, pooling beneath her cheek.