Children of Fire Read Free

accomplish nothing. She took a deep breath before speaking. “The child still lives within me. I know it.”
    â€œHow?” Gretchen demanded. “Have you felt it move?”
    A lie would be pointless here in the light of the enchanted fire.
    â€œThe child lives. I just know.”
    The hag nodded and laid her stick to the side to pick up another tiny bone. As she cracked and chewed it, Nyra noticed that the stick used to stir the embers was itself a long, thin animal bone, blackened by years of smoke from the hag’s fire.
    Once more Gretchen spit into the fire. Again a shower of sparks, but this time the rising smoke was blue. It smelled faintly of the rich, pungent manure her husband used to spread on the fields.
    â€œWhat have you brought me?”
    Nyra reached down to the deep pocket at the front of her dress and felt for the small leather pouch she had stuffed inside before beginning her journey. It was awkward, fumbling around her stomach’s girth to explore the pocket while sitting on the ground. For a brief second she could not locate the pouch, and she feared it had been lost during her stumbling journey up the path. Then her fingers closed around the loop of drawstring. She pulled it out and held it up for the hag to see.
    Gretchen reached across the fire with eager hands to seize the offering, undaunted by the heat rising up from the flames. She snatched it from Nyra’s grasp and poured the contents into her wrinkled palm.
    The small collection of coins and jewelry amounted to a substantial sum. Nyra’s husband was not a rich man, but he was hardworking and successful. And he loved to buy his wife beautiful and interesting trinkets from the traveling merchants who passed through their small village. Before she had left her home this night, Nyra had selected the most valuable items from her collection, along with the small stash of gold coins she had saved up over the years.
    â€œIt’s not enough,” Gretchen declared after appraising the contents.
    â€œI … I brought nothing else,” Nyra stammered in surprise.
    She had expected the cost of what she asked to be easily covered by the generous gift. The value of her offering exceeded two years’ pay for a field hand working on their farm.
    The hag eyed her with her milky orbs, a greedy gleam poking out from beneath the white of her cataracts. “Your ring.”
    Nyra recoiled, her hands clasping together over her wedding band as if she could hide it from the hag’s greedy gaze. She had been hoping Gerrit would never miss the small stash of jewelry she had taken, but if she came back without the ring he had given her on their Union Day he would surely notice.
    â€œNo! My husband will ask what happened. He must not find out I have been here.”
    Gretchen shrugged. “The ring or nothing. That is the price of your child.”
    Nyra hated her, this wretched old woman who held the life of her unborn baby in her ugly, twisted hands. Slowly she removed her ring, struggling to get it over the bulging knuckle of her swollen finger. In a flash of spite she threw it at the hag with all the strength her weary arm could muster. The old woman’s hand snatched it from the air with the speed of a striking serpent.
    After examining the ring for a brief second the hag stuffed it into a hidden fold of her garments, along with the rest of the contents of the leather pouch. She tossed the pouch into the fire, where it was quickly consumed by the unnatural flames.
    Reaching down Gretchen picked up another small bone and offered it to the young woman. Despite the fear in her breast Nyra reached out to accept it. She turned it over in her hands, trying to determine from what animal it must have come. The bone was thin and light, like a bird’s. It was too large to be from any chicken she had seen.
    As if reading her thoughts the hag said, “A young griffin. No more than a week or two old by the size.