She laughed at that, a raw cackle that took an eternity to dissolve into coughing. She hawked, and spat a gob of phlegm past his ear.
“Been that long, has it, boy? Can’t get a girl from the village, not looking like you. Maybe even they have taste, eh?” She sniggered, and Marius felt the life leave his face. “No, it is not that. You know that yourself. If you had simply wanted her, you could have rolled her on the sand. You allowed yourself to be led here. Your soul recognises the purpose, even if your mind does not.”
Marius closed his eyes and let her words sink into his skin. Finally, “No, you’re right. Not that.” His shoulders slumped. He had hoped to get through this without admitting his fear aloud. It seemed he had no choice. Whatever this old woman was, she knew his mind better than he did. No hope of escape, then, without the penalty of disclosure.
“Where I come from…” he waved a hand in the vague direction of “away”. “They’ve charged me… this… this task. I can’t do it. It’s impossible, a ridiculous thing. And I don’t think… I don’t think I can escape. I need to know…”
He straightened himself again. Do this properly. Negotiate from strength, and if you don’t have strength, fake it.
“I need to see my future. I need to know what path to take. I have to escape. But I need to know: can I get it back?”
The island woman stared at him for ageless seconds, her hand sneaking out of its wrap to juggle the rings between her fingers. Marius stilled himself, lest the noise of his fidgeting influence her decision. Finally she nodded once, and rose, bones popping. She scampered over, drew him to his feet by the simple expedient of grabbing his jaw with one claw and pulling him upwards. He loomed over her, his jaw several inches above the top of her head. Still, she didn’t let go. She examined him, running an experienced eye along his height. He had the unpleasant sensation of being measured up for a pot.
“Undress.”
“What?”
“Get out of your clothes.”
“Hang on a tick…” For no reason he could think of, Marius was terrified at the idea of standing before her, naked and exposed to her judgement. “Is that really necessary? There’s a time and a place, you know.”
“Oh yes,” the old crone laughed, “Any time and any place, as long as you can dive between our young girls’ legs.” She waved a claw at his clothes. “Clothes cover your true nature, dead man. Pretend to be what you are not, or learn what you really are. Your choice.” She nodded toward the world outside, and he understood the implication. Either lose his modesty, and undress, or make his way back to the ship with questions unanswered. He drew himself up, and refusing to meet her gaze, began to remove the clasp of his cape.
She waited with arms crossed, eyeing him as he disrobed. He saw the speculation in her stare and turned away, ignoring the queasiness in the pit of his gut. She made no comment at the sight of his hairless chest, the thinness of his legs, the length of his manhood. Marius had never been at ease with his weaknesses. Without money, or beer, or any of the thousand other shields he could place between him and scorn, he was as exposed as he had ever been in front of a woman, and he did not like the sensation. He folded each piece of clothing as he removed it, laying it in a pile on the ground behind him. When he was finished he stood with arms crossed over his chest, shivering despite the oppressive heat. The crone nodded in approval.
“Now you look like a man, and not a shrouded corpse, hmm?”
He ignored the remark, staring past her at a cat-o-nine-tails folded like a sleeping snake against a far corner of the hut. The witch clucked her tongue, then shot out a hand and grabbed his testicles in a grip like old hardwood.
“Hey!” The reaction to pull away was automatic, and he immediately regretted it. Her hand did not move, and the pain forced his knees to lock together, lest he fall to the ground and be suspended from her hand by his balls.
“Stand still, boy,” she whispered, her mouth at ear level as he curled over in pain. “Where else do you think your future springs from?”
She tightened her grip. With the other hand, she reached out to enfold his member. Despite her age, the warmth of her grip did the job. He felt his member rise.
“Oh, for the Gods’–”
“Shush.”
“I was kind of hoping that Ishga…”
“I said shush.” She squeezed, and Marius shushed. In less than a minute he spurted up her arm. Marius kept his eyes closed, hating himself for wanting more of her knowing fingers. When finally he was able to trust himself to speak, his question was less sarcastic, and more pleading, than he hoped.
“Are you finished?”
“Almost.”
She shifted her grip on his testicles. While Marius did his best not to whimper she drew a razor-sharp nail across the skin of his scrotum. Blood dripped, and she caught it in the palm of her hand. Just as Marius was deciding whether or not to faint she let go, and he slumped to both knees, head bowed, fighting the rise of bile. The witch slid her hand down her other arm, depositing his ejaculation onto the blood. She moved around the hut, rummaging amongst the detritus, pulling out earthenware jars and sniffing the contents. One by one she dropped a pinch of their contents into the mixture on her palm. Marius slowly cupped his ruined genitals in his hand.
“Why now?” he silently asked the Gods. “All this time with no sensation at all, and you decide now is a good time to give it all back? What have I ever done to you?”
The crone crossed the room to squat in front of him. Her free hand grabbed his jaw. Marius lacked the strength to resist. She raised his head and wiped a finger across his wet cheek, transferring the tears of his pain into the goo.
“Good.” She clapped her hands together, crushing the contents into a thick globe, kneading it in her palms until it became a round, muddy parcel no bigger than a sheep turd. Once she was finished she placed it in her mouth, and swallowed.
“Well?” Marius managed to croak.
“Wait.”
She folded back into her blanket. It wrapped around her as if of its own volition. Within seconds she was once again the anonymous lump he had first seen. Marius knelt before her, uncertain, unwilling to move lest it should break whatever spell she had commenced. The ache in his balls intensified, and he swallowed, trying to keep down the sourness that threatened to fill his mouth. One dose of the old woman’s special kind of love had been enough. He had no desire to repeat the dose.
The old woman remained still. Marius turned his head slowly, waiting for some sign to emerge from the gloom. An itch began between his shoulder blades. He ignored it. I am dead, he told himself. The dead don’t itch.
The dead don’t come either, a voice answered. He ignored that, too.
After an eternity of waiting, the witch raised her head. Marius opened his mouth to speak, then stopped, and simply stared. The old woman was looking through him, and her brow wrinkled in response to sights he could not hope to see. Her eyes had changed colour, he realised with a burst of fear. Where the outsides of her eyes had been a dully milky yellow, borne of years of malnutrition, now they flashed more intensely than the flowers adorning the island hills, and her irises had brightened, moving from dull brown to iridescent red. When she spoke, her voice was deep, and resonant. No longer the whisper of an ancient crone, it filled the hut with the lilt of the young island men who lay on the hillside above the beach each day, taunting the Scorbish sailors as they loaded the boats.
“Death,” she said. “A wave of the dead, never ending. They are angry, and you stand at their head. And never peace, never to know the rest that does not end. Never to embrace that which you hold most dear.”
“But…” Despite his uncertainty, Marius leaned forward, willing the crone to talk. “My family? My… my mother?” A thought struck him, and he was shocked at the pain it brought with it. “What about Keth?”