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Thursday, February 19, 2009 at 12:31 PM
Twigs snapped under the murderer's feet as he tried to creep through the dense forest. He'd left all sounds of pursuit well behind him, but still his breathing was ragged, his heart pummeled his chest, and his forehead beaded with cold sweat. Crumpled in his right hand, with sweat leaking into it fibers, was the key to his freedom. The single piece of parchment the old gypsy had given him was his last chance to escape the hangman's noose. He didn't care if it *was* a bunch of magic hoke. He would try anything, even an addle-brained witch's old spell. She'd promised that he would be undetectable, unrecognizable, and completely safe from retribution for at least seven years with this spell. And if it didn't work . . . well, there was an old gypsy witch who would soon be added to his list of victims, before the law managed to catch up with him.
The murderer broke from the heavy cover of the trees into a silver-lit clearing. The moon was eerily bright, though it was nowhere near full. The fat crescent of it grinned down at him from a cloudless sky. He looked around nervously. This was the place, just as the gypsy had described it. In the center of the clearing a lone ash stump squatted, charred black by some long-ago bolt of lightning that had severed tree from trunk. The murderer took several deep breaths, suddenly frightened. He didn't actually know what this spell would do, precisely.
He heard a long howl in the distance, followed by wild barking. The dogs. They'd picked up his scent again. Forcing down his panic, he convinced himself to step into the clearing. There was no time to lose. Any moment, those dogs would be on him, trailing a troop of soldiers intent on upholding the law. Taking a deep breath, the murderer pulled a short blade of pure copper from his belt, strode to the stump, and plunged the blade hilt-deep into the scarred wood. Then he smoothed out the parchment, cursing the large sweat stains that blurred the spiky, scrawled words. He squinted at the page, glad for the bright moon as he deciphered the smudged writing.
"On the sea, on the island, on the empty pasture shines the moon. On an ashstock lying in a green wood, in a gloomy vale, the horned moon gleams." He glanced up, remembering that farmers often called the crescent moon "horned." He shivered, but read on. "To the ashstock wanders a shaggy wolf. Horned cattle fall under his sharp white fangs." A pair of yellow eyes appeared at the edge of his vision, peering at him from just beyond the clearing's edge. The murderer's breath caught, but he found he could not tear his eyes from the page to get a better look. The spell flowed now from his tongue like the words of a song, rolling and dipping and gaining force, and he couldn't break it off.
As he read the last words, a sudden heavy silence crushed down on the clearing, pressing in on his eyes and ears. The yellow eyes at the edge of the clearing suddenly sprang forward, revealing a huge, shaggy wolf, its mouth open in a silent snarl. The murderer's scream was swallowed by the silence as the wolf leaped.
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Mirena sucked in a breath and stuck her finger in her mouth, tasting the coppery tang of blood. What on earth? But already the strange . . . thickness . . . in the air was dissipating. Mirena was tempted to think that it hadn't really been there at all. If it weren't for her finger, which she'd pricked on her needle the moment the thickness descended, jerking her awake . . . but of course that was it. She'd been starting to doze over her work, and had gotten careless with the needle. Satisfied with that explanation, Mirena shrugged off the last of the eerie sensation, stoked the fire, and returned to her embroidery.
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