Cogling
Authors: Jordan Elizabeth
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© 2016
Jordan Elizabeth
http://jordanelizabethmierek.com
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ISBN 978-1-62007-738-2 (ebook)
ISBN 978-1-62007-739-9 (paperback)
ISBN 978-1-62007-740-5 (hardcover)
For my father, Lawrence Stanley Mierek, who asked for a watch and has received a book instead.
reen smoke snaked up the side of the tenement and drifted over the sill of an open window. A breeze blew the vapor into a column before it solidified into the shape of a stout, young hag. She shook her crimson curls away from her face and straightened the hood of her cloak to keep her kohl-lined, silver eyes shadowed.
The scent of lavender clung to her robes, washing over the small room. Two brass-framed beds crowded the floor. Blankets covered sleeping children. A little boy wheezed against the head of his stuffed bear, drool dripping onto the wool.
The hag squinted to see the goldenrod dream cloud above his head—a dream about seeing his father again. She frowned at the other bed, where a sleeping teenager lay with a threadbare blanket tugged around her chin. Even squinting, the hag couldn’t make out a dream cloud. The girl was too old to be of any use.
The hag slithered to the boy’s bed and, from the folds of her cloak, drew out a rectangular box four inches long, with a circular indentation on one side. She set it on the floor to remove a vial and rag from her skirt pocket, the rough wool of the rag irritating her fingertips.
“Do it, Simone,” the hag muttered to herself as she willed her hands not to tremble. “Make the Dark Mother happy.” She couldn’t fail at her first mission.
Holding her breath, Simone dribbled three drops onto the rag, yanked the teddy bear away, and shoved the drugged cloth against the boy’s mouth. His eyes opened, his gasp muffled, and his body jerked. Simone stiffened.
The girl moaned. Her mattress rustled as she rolled over to face the wall, brown curls shifting over her pillow.
Simone’s heart thudded. By the seven Saints, she should’ve cast a sleeping spell over the girl. The Dark Mother preferred humans to think hags were harmless healers, not thieves who kidnapped children.
The boy writhed, squeaks emerging from behind the rag. Simone pressed harder. She needed his breath in the wool to disguise and fuel the machine.
The potion took hold and the boy collapsed. Simone’s thick lips curved over her broken teeth. She lifted a pocket watch from around her neck and positioned it into the crevice in the metal box. As the two pieces connected, a chime rang out. She set the box beside the limp little boy and draped the rag over it. Even though she should wait to make sure his breath stuck in the machine, she couldn’t risk waking the girl.
The metal stretched to become his replica as if it were made of putty. With a second chime, the metal shimmered and dulled into the pale peach of his flesh, becoming an exact duplicate of the child.
“Mine.” Simone hefted the little boy into her arms, leaving the duplication on the bed, and transformed to smoke before the chimes awoke the girl.
Ring of magic, hear my cry.
ine,” a voice breathed.
A bell chimed near Edna’s ear and she swatted the air beside her head to make the noise leave. The chime sounded once more before fading. Light shimmered near the window, but when she turned her head, squinting in the darkness, the green glow vanished.
Edna stiffened. “Harrison? You awake?”
Her eight-year-old brother’s stuffed bear lay on the hardwood floor beside his bed. Beneath Harrison’s red blanket, his chest rose and fell with each breath. At least he wasn’t wheezing.
The darkness didn’t stir in her veins, so it couldn’t be that. It never woke her in the night.
Perhaps her father had returned early. She sighed; no, he wasn’t due back for a while yet.
Edna sat up in bed to peer out the room’s only window. Through the glass panes, she saw the bricks of the tenement across the alley, with moonlight reflecting off a window below. A damp wind stirred the checkered curtains she’d sewn last year; Harrison must have opened their window.
A chill would make his asthma worsen.
Edna slid her feet out from beneath the blanket to the floor. Coldness seeped from the wood to permeate through her socks into her feet. Shivering, she wrapped her arms around herself and padded to her brother’s bed.
“Harrison?” She pressed her hand over his forehead to find his head dry, rather than flushed with night sweat. Edna brushed his brown hair away from his ear. The strands felt more velvety than normal, almost like the skin of a leaf. His dark eyelashes fanned over his round cheeks, his lips rosier than usual.
The ticking of a watch toyed with her, but they didn’t have such trinkets in the room. It must’ve been someone in the street, perhaps a hag selling enchanted baubles.
