Chapter 8
CHAPTER EIGHT
I woke up bright and early thanks to my alarm. But honestly, even without the Ding-ding-a-ding-a-ding-ding-a-ding I still probably would have been up. I’ve been a baker too long to be able to sleep in. Even on the one day a week I take off, I still wake up at the crack of dawn.
Strangely, the first thing on my mind wasn’t Malik or the adventure he’d taken me on, into the past the night before. That all seemed like a dream to me—one that was already fading from my mind.
What I was most concerned about at the moment was the Golden-Skinned Warbler Pears—I had a very strong feeling that today was the day they would be ripe. Call it whatever you want—women’s intuition or a witch’s instinct—either way I had learned to trust my gut and the feeling was too strong to ignore.
But still, the dream lingered—it was too strange not to. I sat on the side of the bed, rubbing sleep out of my eyes, and looked up at the wall, expecting to see the portrait hanging there and the smug-faced Demon staring down at me.
Only a blank spot on my wall greeted me. And when I let my eyes drift downward, I saw an empty picture frame with cracked glass.
I put my head in my hands and let out a groan—oh no, it hadn’t been a dream after all! But if that was so, then where was Malik now?
A quick check revealed he wasn’t in bed beside me. The quilt and sheets were rumpled, as though someone had been lying there but he was gone. Where was he then? The bathroom? Did Demons have to go, like humans did? There was only one way to find out.
A look in the bathroom showed it to be empty and the rest of the house was likewise lacking evidence of any supernaturally sexy demonic presence. I began to have a cautious sense of optimism. Maybe Malik was gone for good. He must have been lying when he claimed he had to fulfill my deepest, darkest fantasy and when he realized I wasn’t going to sleep with him, he’d decided to skip town.
The thought filled me with a confusing mixture of relief and regret. After all, it had been a long time since any man had showed me such intense sexual interest. It was nice to feel so desirable—it spoke to the core of my femininity to be lusted after like that.
Then I gave myself a mental kick—what was I thinking? What I had told Malik the night before about not sleeping with strangers still held true. I had too much dignity for that, I told myself firmly. I was not going to allow myself to be sucked into a sexual relationship—however brief—with a man I didn’t know. Especially since the man in question wasn’t even a man—he was an Incubus—a sex Demon.
Only you do know him—in a way, whispered that contrary little voice in the back of my head. Haven’t you been dreaming about him for the past six months?
It was true, I realized as the half-formed dreams I hadn’t been able to remember suddenly came rushing back. Malik had been in every one of them, taunting me, teasing me, doing all kinds of erotic things to my body no man had ever done before…
“No!” I said out loud and then jumped at the sound of my own voice echoing through the empty house. Empty—that’s right, the house was empty because Malik was gone. So it was time to stop stressing over a problem that had solved itself and go check on the pear tree.
I slapped on a little makeup and put my hair up in ponytail. Then I got dressed quickly in Yoga pants and an old t-shirt. I would change into my baking whites later at the bakery. I always kept my work clothes there so they wouldn’t get dirty going back and forth.
Before leaving the house, I grabbed the enormous wicker basket that Sarah had given me just the other week. I was extremely excited to use it because she’d bespelled it to make anything I put in it extremely light and easy to carry.
As I said before, I can hold my own when it comes to lifting heavy things but pears aren’t a light fruit and the more of them you have, the harder they are to handle. And since I can only pick from the tree once in an entire year, it’s not like I can go back and forth and get more. So what I gather in that one picking is all I have to work with. Which meant for the past few years I’d been breaking my back hauling an enormous heavy basket jam-packed with pears back to my bakery.
Sarah, being a Natural Witch, hadn’t even had to do much. When I explained about the problem in gathering the Golden-Skinned Warbler pears, she simply asked what basket I was using. When I pointed it out to her, she touched it and said, “lighter,” and that was that.
I couldn’t help being a little envious but then, my own witchy powers came naturally to me as well—it just so happened that they all had to do with baking. Sarah’s power was much broader but she was so nice about it I couldn’t really begrudge her. And of course, I was extremely thankful to have the basket.
I carried the basket—which now weighed almost nothing—down the path that led away from the back of the house my Great Aunt had left me. It ran right along the edge of the magical bubble that enclosed all of Hidden Hollow. As I walked, the white stone walkway glowed faintly in the early morning light.
It wasn’t very long before the trees behind my house ended and the path was bordered on the left by a high, wild, evergreen hedge. I didn’t know who had planted it, but it was badly in need of a trim. The hedge varied from around the height of my shoulder to a few feet above my head. I had never bothered to try and get around it because it was completely impenetrable and besides, I was happy to stick to the path.
Around a curve I finally came to what I had been looking for—the Golden-Skinned Warbler pear tree. Or at least, part of it.
I say part of it because the trunk and most of the limbs of the tree grew on the other side of the hedge. In fact, only a few long branches hung over onto my side. But those few branches produced an enormous amount of fruit when the tree was ready to yield.
To my delight, I saw that my instincts had been right—the branches hanging over the hedge were so heavy with pears that they were dropping nearly down to the ground.
I stared happily at the golden fruit, gleaming in the rays of the rising sun. This was possibly the biggest crop I had ever seen and I could smell the sweet, ripe scent which was like a mixture of pear and honeysuckle long before I got close.
“I knew it!” I exclaimed out loud. I was so happy I did a little dance right there. There were so many pears here! I was going to be able to make so many tarts which I knew would make all of Hidden Hollow happy.
Before I started picking, I took a moment to examine the branches and make my plan of attack. As long as I was actively picking the pears, they would stay good, but the minute I stopped picking for any length of time the pears still attached to the tree would start getting overripe. Eventually they would blacken and shrivel and fall to the ground where they would make a slimy patch on the path and soak into the ground on either side of it. So once I started picking, I had to keep it up continuously until I was done.
As I planned what branch to start on, I couldn’t help casting a glance over the top of the hedge to the other side. Many times I had thought about trying to find a way over so I could pick pears over there too, but several things stopped me.
First, I wasn’t sure if I could get a huge basket of pears over the top of the extremely prickly hedge which had spiky leaves and inch-long thorns on its branches without hurting myself. And second, I didn’t want to go anywhere near the haunted mansion.
No, I’m not talking about the ride at Disney World—“the haunted mansion” was what I called the old dilapidated house I could see on the other side of the hedge. It was an enormous, rundown structure—clearly it had been built for someone or something that wasn’t human. Possibly a Troll had once lived there, I thought. Or maybe a Giant? How big did they get, anyway?
I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Giants, Trolls, and Ogres are on the list of undesirable Creatures with evil tendencies. Their anti-social natures make it impossible for them to live and mingle with other, more peaceful Creatures and human magic users and I for one wanted nothing to do with them.
So I had long ago decided to ignore that side of the hedge and just gather all the pears I could from the branches that hung over it. And today I had a lot to gather.
Ignoring the broken and boarded up windows of the haunted mansion which seemed to stare at me like blind eyes, I put down my basket in a good spot and started picking.
The pears were humming in the sunshine, their golden skins bursting with juicy goodness. They were so ready to be harvested they practically fell into my hand as I reached for them. Every time one dropped into my palm it let out a musical little “tra-la!” as its stem parted from the branch, which let me know that the fruit was indeed perfectly ripe and ready to pick.
I rapidly filled my basket to the brim taking all but one pear—the most beautiful one of all which I was saving for last. In the past, I would have had to leave some pears behind, but now thanks to the bespelled basket, I could carry them all easily back to my bakery.
Humming happily, I picked the very last pear on my side of the hedge and sank my teeth into its golden skin. True, I would be singing for a whole hour after I ate it, but it was totally worth it and besides, I would be working alone in the bakery so it wouldn’t matter.
The delicate pear flesh melted on my tongue unlike any other fruit I’d ever had and I took my time eating it. This was probably the only one I would allow myself to eat—all the others were going into the tarts—so I wanted to savor it.
It wasn’t until I was down to the core and licking the sticky juice off my fingers that I noticed some movement on the other side of the hedge.
The last bite of pear seemed to stick in my throat as I saw the door of the haunted mansion open and an enormous figure come out of it.
He was hairy all over with a long, greasy, dark orange pelt that covered most of his body. It hung down over the dirty brown shorts he was wearing which appeared to be his only clothing. His head was as big and lumpy as a prize-winning pumpkin and his yellow eyes seemed too small for his face.
I wanted to look away at that point but I couldn’t—I felt frozen to the spot and my mind kept cataloging the Creature’s lumpy, frightening features. Hairy pointed ears flapped in the breeze and his mouth was filled with long, sharp, curving fangs that seemed to interlock together like the teeth of a bear trap. Overlong arms hung down so low that his knuckles dragged the ground like an ape’s as he shambled towards the hedge.
If you’re wondering how I could tell for sure that he was male, well it was obvious. There was an enormous, long bulge along the inner thigh of one leg of his shorts. The head of a perfectly huge penis, the size and color of a bruised apple, was hanging out of the shorts, down near his knee. Disgusting .
My first thought was that this must be what Bigfoot looked like—only uglier and way smellier. Because the breeze was bringing whiffs of his personal odor through the hedge to me and even the sweet aroma of the Golden-Skinned Warbler pears couldn’t drown out the rotten stench.
My second thought was that I needed to get away— fast .
I didn’t think the hairy, smelly Creature—whatever he was—had seen me since I was watching him from behind the hedge. It occurred to me that he might be tall enough to step right over it and I didn’t want that. Slowly I picked up my enormous basket—which was still light as a feather, thanks to Sarah’s magic—and started walking quickly and quietly back down the path.
I was hoping to get around the curve in the road before he could spot me, but luck wasn’t on my side. A moment later I heard a deep angry voice bellow,
“Who’s that walking on my path? Who dares to come and wake my wrath?”
Seriously? I couldn’t help thinking. But at least his rhyming gave me an idea of what he was—Great Aunt Gertrude had taught me several ways to tell the different Creatures apart. Giants were, of course immensely huge and usually completely bald. And Trolls almost always had more than one head, according to her. Ogres spoke in rhymes. So the hairy, smelly creature behind me must be an Ogre—not that I wanted to hang around long enough to be sure.
After a quick glance over my shoulder to be sure he wasn’t following, I sped up my pace and kept walking. But then the Ogre spoke again.
“Girly, I can see you there! Did you come to steal my pears?”
I sped up some more. I was nearly running when I heard the rustling, cracking sound of a huge body breaking through the hedge. Great—he hadn’t even bothered to step over it—he’d just crushed his way right through it!
I started running in earnest then, though I still kept a tight grip on my basket. After all, it wasn’t heavy at all, so it wasn’t slowing me down. I might as well hold on to my valuable harvest of pears—or so I told myself.
I was nearly to the curve in the road when the Ogre spoke a third time—and this time his words had power in them.
“By the laws that bind us all, I bid you now to stop and stall!” he roared from behind me.
His roar shattered the early morning quiet and the birds which had been singing in the nearby trees suddenly fell silent. I tried to keep going and ignore him but, to my horror, I found that my footsteps were slowing. Suddenly it was like I was moving in slow motion, with every step getting harder and harder to take. And every minute I could hear the Ogre getting closer.
I dared to turn my head again and saw that he was only a few paces behind me. His long greasy hair was whipping in the wind and his putrid scent, like unwashed genitals and rotten garbage left in the sun, was suddenly all around me. His long, curving jaws were open and I could see a horribly long, red tongue behind them, reaching out as though he wanted to taste me!
I opened my mouth and screamed for help—only because I had eaten a Golden Warbler pear, I sang it instead.
“Help!” I cried and it came out sounding almost operatic—like a soprano singing a high note.
The Ogre let out a grating laugh.
“No use to cry, you’ll soon be dead. I’ll grind your bones to make my bread!”
My heart was pounding as though I was running a marathon but my feet were now stuck to the ground as though someone had super-glued the soles of my sneakers to the stones of the path.
I could feel myself starting to hyperventilate. Oh God, was I really going to die here and now? Aunt Gertrude had tried to warn me about evil Creatures—she’d told me I shouldn’t wander too far from the house near the edges of the magical bubble that surrounded the town. But I hadn’t listened to her and now I was going to pay. This was the end—the Ogre was going to bite my head right off my shoulders! Or else he would literally tear me limb-from-limb. He would?—
There was a rushing sound in my ears and suddenly Malik was there, right beside me. He was dressed less formally than he had been last night, in jeans and t-shirt that strained over his broad chest, but I barely had time to notice his clothes.
Before I knew it, the Incubus was putting himself between me and the Ogre and glaring menacingly up at my would-be attacker.
“Get back!” he growled, his voice deep and menacing. “And remove the spell you cast on my woman!”
I was able to turn my head enough to see the Ogre scowl at his words.
“If she’s your woman, take control! She trespassed on my ground and stole!” he declared.
“No, I didn’t!” I said but again my words came out in song—a squeaky, high, frightened melody that was in all minor keys, probably because I was still scared to death. I appreciated Malik standing up for me, but the Ogre was taller than the Incubus by several feet and his big, meaty fists looked capable of crushing a person’s skull with one blow.
“She stole, she stole! Look at her bowl!” the Ogre insisted.
“If you mean her basket, I don’t see any problem,” Malik said coolly. “She was simply harvesting fruit.”
“My fruit she took! Just take a look!” the Ogre grated.
“I’ve been picking pears from that tree for years,” I sang. “He never claimed them before and besides, I only picked from…from the branches hanging over the hedge.”
My voice was starting to wobble because I was still so afraid. Also, the Ogre’s scent was nauseating. I just wanted to get away from him but my shoes were still stuck to the path. And what if Malik decided to just give up and let the Ogre have me? I didn’t know the Incubus well enough to know if I could trust him to stand by me or not.
But despite my doubt Malik stood his ground.
“You heard the lady,” he said firmly. “She only took fruit from this side of the hedge—you don’t own the path. It’s not on your property.”
“But the tree belongs to me!” the Ogre declared.
“I don’t give a fuck,” Malik growled, clearly losing patience. “Now are you going to take your stasis spell off her or am I going to make you do it?”
As he spoke, his eyes began to glow with a Hellish light and he seemed to increase in stature. His shoulders got even broader and he was suddenly a head taller and even more muscular. The sharp points of his curving horns gleamed in the sunlight and even his tail looked ready to attack. It hovered in the air beside him like a cobra about to strike.
The Ogre stared at the Incubus uncertainly. He was still taller but despite his size, he was clearly mostly flab and hair. If it came to a fight, I didn’t know who would win but I thought even if Malik lost he would make the other Creature pay dearly in the process.
The Ogre must have thought the same thing because at last I felt the magical grip on my legs loosening. He pointed one finger with a long, dirty fingernail at Malik and me.
“For now go free, but you will see that you can run but we’re not done!”
Malik glared at him.
“Stay away from my woman,” he growled. “If you threaten her again, you’ll be picking your teeth out of your asshole because I’ll fucking turn you inside out you hairy bastard! Oh, and take a bath—you smell like sewage.”
Then he put an arm around me and urged me forward on the path.
I found that I could move my feet again and I set off at a steady trot, still clutching the basket of pears. I dared to toss one quick look over my shoulder, only because Malik was at my side. What I saw wasn’t exactly comforting. The Ogre was staring at me with a look of such hatred it made my blood run cold.
Hatred and something else. Was it…hunger?
As he saw me looking, the long red tongue I had seen behind the curving daggers of his teeth shot out and licked sloppily around his thick, rubbery lips.
I felt my stomach turn over queasily and I turned quickly away. But I couldn’t get that hungry expression out of my head or forget how close I had come to dying right there on the path behind my house.