Chapter 6 #2
Isi ignores my hesitation and knocks three times on the door. One hard knock followed by two quick light raps. The door swings open. I can’t see anything inside, it’s too dark, but Isi waltzes in unafraid and vanishes into the shadows.
I look behind me, trying to determine if I should run and take my chances with Berttom.
I then turn to face the gaping hole that is the doorway to this particularly gruesome establishment.
I can’t leave Isi here, especially when I don’t know what she plans to do.
With a long, frustrated exhale I step over the threshold into darkness, the cool air caressing my skin.
The door slams behind me, making my heart skip several beats.
I reach for my dagger at my calf, fumbling in the pitch blackness.
It may not be the best place to keep it, but it’s the only place Bottom doesn’t usually touch.
I’ve managed to hold on to the gift from my father through living on the streets and the past year at the bordello.
Its new sheath was the first thing I bought with my earnings.
It’s rough and irritates my skin if I wear it for too long since the leather was not properly treated, but the old one was worn through and hanging on by a thread so I didn’t have a choice.
I refuse to not have my blade on me in the likely event I need it.
I walk with my arms out straight in front of me, dagger in one hand, trying to find a source of light, or better yet, Isi, so I can haul her ass out of here.
“Isi,” I hiss into the darkness.
A hand reaches out from the somewhere in the darkness in front of me, wraps around my wrist, and pulls.
I release a small squeak as I’m pulled through a thick, velvet curtain into a large round room.
So large, in fact, that it doesn’t seem like it should fit inside the hut.
It’s dimly lit by torches crammed into the mud on the walls and on every table, bench, and chair are piles of hair.
There are even bunches of it tacked into the wall.
“What the fuck?” I whisper.
“Language,” Isi chides beside me, “and put that thing away before you take someone’s eye out.”
I glare at her sideways. “Maybe I’ll need to take someone’s eye out.”
She shakes her head. “Not here.”
A tall, slender woman with skin as dark as night, eyes a strange color that I could swear was almost rainbow, and black hair braided down to her ankles emerges.
She looks youthful, with only a few wrinkles around her full lips, but something about her feels ancient, wise.
Her eyes though. I’ve never seen eyes like that.
They seem to shift from nearly white to pastel rainbow. I wonder if she’s blind.
“Hello dears,” she greets us with a bright, kind smile, eying each of us up and down. Not blind then. Something in her voice conjures up visions of Death and villains from children’s stories. I fight to suppress a shudder.
“What can I do for you?”
“We need a wig. Now.” Isi has gone stiff beside me, her expression guarded, her fists clenched at her sides. Sweat that wasn’t there before despite the summer heat dots her brow. She’s afraid. My grip tightens on my dagger.
“Well dears, wigs don’t come cheap. What will you offer in return?”
“We don’t have any money,” I tell her before Isi can say anything. I won’t let her spend what little coin Bottom gives her on this.
“Did I ask for money?” The woman looks between us.
“If not coin, then what do you want?”
She looks to Isi, recognition flashing in her strange eyes. “She knows.”
Isi won’t look at me. I reach out and touch her arm. “Isi. What is it?”
“Years,” she says. “She wants years.”
“What do you mean ‘years’?”
The wigmaker clicks her tongue. “I haven’t the time for your questions, girl. Do you want a wig or not?”
“Yes,” Isi says.
“No,” I say at the same time. I don’t know what she means but I really don’t want to find out.
The wigmaker grumbles. “I take some of your youth for myself, I give you a wig. Simple transaction, dears.”
“How can you take our youth?”
“Magic,” she says with a sly grin.
I have to swallow a laugh. Magic doesn’t exist. It’s just some made-up nonsense to make the poor feel small. I look at Isi, expecting to see the same disbelief and humor mirrored back to me, but she just looks solemn, her head bowed, shoulders hunched.
“Isi. Seriously? Magic?”
“Vayna.” Isi finally turns to face me. “When I told you Otyx would kill you, I meant it literally. I know him. I’ve seen what he does to undesirable artifacts.” Her throat works a swallow. “He won’t want a bald girl.”
I knew this, but my heart sinks all the same. “Does it really matter? I don’t whore for him anyway.”
Isi shakes her head slowly, her eyes dull, defeated. “Just trust me on this. Please.”
I stare at her for another heartbeat.
“How many?” I ask, not taking my eyes off my friend, trying to suppress an eye roll.
“That depends. What kind of hair? My best will cost you ten years.” She wanders slowly to a table with a wig on a stand.
She picks it up and brings it over to me, stroking it reverently on the way.
It’s a beautiful shade of yellow, with red, brown, and gold streaks throughout.
“I got this one from a wealthy merchant’s daughter.
She was hideously ill and only wanted a few more years of life. My price was her stunning hair.”
She whips around, taking the wig back to its stand, smoothing it out lovingly as she returns it. “She’s dead now of course. The hair only bought her four more years.”
My stomach hollows.
“My worst will cost you one year.”
She glides back toward the clumps of hair secured to the mud wall.
She rips one down roughly and comes toward us with the hair gripped in one hand.
“This hair came from a man who wanted a few extra years after his wife died, to spend with his young mistress. When I came to collect the hair, he’d already shaved it all off and offered me a terrible wig clearly made of animal fur instead.
” She shakes the terrible toupee, bugs falling from it and scurrying across the dirt floor.
“Well, I took back the years I’d given him, his awful headpiece, and, for good measure, I took his lover’s hair as well. He died shortly after, a bald, decrepit old man.” She nods toward a pile of hair on a bench. Its color is similar to mine.
“How much for the lover’s hair?” I ask, shoving the animal wig away. It smells like death and other things I don’t want to think about.
The wigmaker places her hand on her cheek, thinking. “That’s fine hair.”
She walks toward it. “Five years,” she says picking it up.
I eye the wig. This is all bullshit anyway. I can say I’ll give her five and then fake it. I’m a decent enough actress. I think.
“How about a deal?” Isi says beside me.
“I’m listening.”
“We give you the hair she’s removed.” She pulls my discarded hair from her pocket. “And four years. Two from each of us.”
“No. By the abysm, no.” On the off chance this is real, I won’t let Isi give up any of her life for me.
“It’s fine, Vay. I don’t have much to live for anyway. What’s two years?”
“Isi, stop. You have lots to live for. You’re only nineteen! One hope to the next, remember?”
“That’s why I’m doing this, Vay. My hope is to keep you with me for a long time.” She turns to the wigmaker. “Two from each,” she says with finality.
“Deal!” the wigmaker says.
“No! No deal! I’ll give all four years.”
Isi is already walking toward the curtain on the other side of the room. I move to follow, but an enormous rough hand reaches out and grabs my shoulder, stopping me. I scream and slice at the hand with the dagger I still haven’t returned to its sheath. The hand doesn’t budge.
I look over my shoulder to a towering figure.
It looks like a man, but he’s not breathing or blinking.
I rip my shoulder from his hold and turn to see he’s completely made of the same mud the house is built from, the same fibers sticking out from his body.
And he isn’t moving anymore. I poke his chest, then his cheek, but he still doesn’t move.
I step away, not taking my eyes off him.
I didn’t hear or see him move, but his hand is still suspended in the air, right at the height of my shoulder.
Surely, I imagined this thing grabbing me.
I must have stepped back into that hand, though I don’t remember seeing the statue when we came in.
I’m still staring at the mud man when Isi and the wigmaker emerge from behind the curtain.
“Ah, I see you’ve met Boldroc. Don’t mind him. He’s just a mindless statue. One that will kill you if I command it.” The wigmaker giggles. “Come dear. Your turn.”
I look at Isi. She looks the same. I breathe a sigh of relief.
Bullshit. I knew it.
I follow the wigmaker through the curtain.