The Witch and The Dead

The Pit

The trio hiked through the winding mountain pass, slowly ascending up its bank. The air grew cool. Dirt turned to gravel, then rock; early morning turned to early afternoon. Anna looked up at the sky. The day of the moon would come any day now, what the demon had called the eclipse. The village would ask one more time for her to read the stars, and finally, they would know what all her father's teachings had amounted to.

If she ever made it back, of course. Shame squeezed her gut, and they trekked over one last ridge.

The pit welcomed them.

It was a cavity that led straight down into the rock and was considerably wider than any of the three of them were tall. Surrounding it was more strange equipment like that around the abandoned workshop. A dry, wooden box with round carved pieces attached to the bottom that spun when it was pushed. Ropes wrapped around wheels that ran down the pit. Tools like sickles with a crescent, metal top, but sharp only at the tips, all worn with scratches. A layer of sand coated everything. No one had touched them in a very long time.

"A wagon, a rope and pulley," Valoor observed, examining them. He tugged on some of the nearby rope. "Strong enough to lift a man in armor, I would think. It is beyond these simple people."

"Likely the Rackwa from the Kingdoms she mentioned," the White One spat. "Whoever he was."

Anna pressed together her lips. She had never met the man who built the workshop, but despite what he had wrought she had never heard anyone speak of him with such malice. Nor had she heard of any kingdoms.

But she understood what a rope and pulley were.

"It's here," she told them, standing over the pit. Her calves burned from the hike and she crouched at the pit's rocky lip. "Down."

The Espin peered down in the black abyss. Beneath two hefty stones a frail, ladder made from dried hemp and vine swung down into the depths alongside the ropes from the pulley. Both disappeared in the darkness like a line into murky waters.

"The impact must have deposited it deep into the mountain. Erosion and debris burying it on the exposed side."

"Or," his partner sneered, "this Matix has led us down a false path. What do you say, Walken?"

He prodded her with the hilt of his pike.

She gazed into the black. "It's here," she murmured. "I know the stories of this place."

He nudged her again. "Then, you first."

She teetered at the edge. Magic wasn't real, the demon had told her. No hexes, no curses, no terrible omens, save for that creature's.

Then why did those who died in this place not sing?

"Go, Walken," said the Espin. "Or your screams will measure its depth for him. And your father has need of his bag of meat."

She looked back at him with a mix of pain and disappointment. Nothing of his vulnerability of the previous night remained. Somehow, they shared everything and nothing.

She swallowed her fear, and swung her legs over the opening. Her swollen feet pressed against the rungs, and they yawned under her weight. Carefully, she descended, the bright opening to the world of the living shrinking like a closing maw.