Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Fifty-Seven: Curse Lifted

Some Time Later

I crept behind a large rock, the sinew of my makeshift but serviceable bow pulled taught, a whittled arrow fitted into its stone arrowhead nocked and tracking a lone fae-zombie who had wandered through this infernal dark hell too close to our camp for my comfort and it's continued existence.

Fae-zombie was the term Nick and I had settled on for these mindless, dangerous creatures who mostly roamed in packs. In Irish mythology, they probably have a name neither Nick nor I knew, but zombie was the most accurate description we coulded assign them. Though they looked nothing like the tv version of zombies that currently popularized the human realm-the fae-zombies here didn't rot and didn't hiss and didn't even stink—they were nevertheless zombie-like in their single-minded determination to gnaw on any living thing which they could catch and subdue.

As I lay in wait for the dead monster shuffling toward me, lead by its nose rather than its wholly black, blank eyes, I reflected that perhaps we should call them wraiths instead of zombies, because they were by and large ghostly and ghastly. They were all manner of creatures, really. Some were tall and thin and fine-boned and had once been beautiful elves. Others were small, compact, and relatively quick for zombies, like little imps. The winged versions of Fae-Zombies behaved like drunk versions of very large Tinkerbells, often crashing into trees and momentarily stunning themselves before picking themselves back up, shirking their broken wings back into flying shape with blank expressions on their faces, seemingly incapable of feeling what surely should be the pain of resetting their own wing bones.

Creeping anxiety spread over my skin just thinking about the flying fae-zombies and the sickening sounds of their wing bones snapping back into place. Sometimes I had nightmares filled with that sound. In my horrible dreams, I would follow the sound of the crashing, cracked creatures, but then the creepy echoes would turn into a different kind of bone-crunching sound. The sound of the winged Fae-zombies feeding upon some helpless soul.

In my nightmares, I would almost always stumble upon them feeding on Tavish.

Nick usually woke me up from my horrific dreams at first sounds of my sleepy whimpering, because screaming in this place attracted the attention of the very things causing my nightmares.

And worse things. Things that weren't mindless.

But this elf-like zombie currently following its nose toward me was mindless, and I wasn't dreaming, and Nick was out hunting something we could actually eat, and I was tired of hiding while Nick fought off these fucking monsters in close combat with my two tiny daggers, so recently—or perhaps for the last five hundred years, I have no fucking clue how long we've been here—I've been learning to shoot a bow that Nick helped me fashion from a strong yet supple branch. The bowstring was made from the sinew of what I'm pretty sure the Irish mythology writers called a Questing Beast—a creature that was lionine in body and ferocity, snakish in both head and tail, with the legs, speed, and agility of a deer.

The one Nick took down while in wolf form was juvenile, but useful to us nonetheless. From it's horns, bones, tendons, serpent's tongue, tail and fur hide we fashioned most of our survival gear, including our clothes, our portable shelter, our fishing gear, and a number of highly treasured tools. We were able to make a drinking cup from one horn, and the beast's serrated teeth I used as arrowheads, dipping them in the poison we covered from its venom sacs.

We stripped the skin from one haunch and carefully dried, seasoned and molded it over the fire until we were able to draw its ends upward, lacing strings of gut at the top to form from it a waterproof sack, which now holds our drinking water. It was strapped across my body now with a strap made from the braided mane of the Questing Beast, and I gave the strap a brief tug, making sure it would hold if I had to run from this fae-zombie. Nick had been teaching me some hand-to-hand combat moves and making me practice knife-fighting, too, but I was better with the bow. However, I wouldn't waste more than a handful of precious arrows on one lone monster.