The Demon Boy

Day Five - Midday

     The bag of gold grows heavier for each step Casper takes. He suspects the eggs are multiplying when he's not looking, but the bag's contents remain decidedly inanimate. There are five eggs the first time Casper counts them. There are still five eggs on the twelfth, most recent counting. Heavens knows where the extra weight is coming from. May as well chalk it up to magics and call it a day. It'd save him a headache.

     He pauses mid-stride, rewinding his train of thought back to-

     Magic. Not coin tricks and sleight of hand that entertains and distracts small children and possible marks alike. Real, inexplicable, impossible-

     Magic. The stuff of legends. The stuff that turns eggs into gold.

     Magic. The trade of witches... Or witch men.

     Casper has a sinking feeling all of a sudden. The bag of gold weighing on him is reduced to a small part of his apprehensions. He knows who the Glenholm witch man is. He shares a roof with him.

     The bag falls. It strikes the earth with a hard thud, sending chunks of the gravel path flying. Casper doesn't want to touch it, but it's too late, isn't it? He knows what's in the bag. He's touched  them, even run his fingers all over their cold, dead shells. And now he knows where they came from. He can't take the knowledge back. He knows what he knows. What he wouldn't give to unknow it.

     Why can't life be simple and easy? It doesn't have to be both at the same time. He's not picky. He can bargain. Either one of them is better than what he's got now.

     Casper has his pity party. He wastes more time than he should, than he has, wallowing in his self-indulgence. Then, when he's good and done and drained from his nerves running him ragged (again), he bends down and picks up the bag. He holds it warily by the drawstrings, but holds it nonetheless. He follows the downwards spiral of the path before of him, as if he didn't have a minor meltdown, as if nothing happened. He's still got a job to do.

     There can't be many things worse than sharing a roof with a witch man from who knows what heathen hellscapes. Sharing a roof with a witch man who you've pissed off with your inability to perform simple tasks is one of those few worse things. Casper doesn't want to see worse. He vividly remembers Balor's reckoning yesterday. He remembers how the man's wrath made him grow ever larger to heights Casper thought impossible for a human being. Except he's no mere mortal, is he?

     The gold weighs on Casper. Those eggs were alive once upon a time, perhaps not long ago. They were once little lives that could've hatched to fly and sing in the sky with the other birds. Now they're objects. Assets. Things to be bought, bartered, and sold, with no other value save their carat and weight. This could just as easily be Casper's fate.

     He can see it so clearly in his head. He goes running his mouth again, smart enough to know better, too stupid to stop himself. Balor decides he has more use in twenty carats than as an errand boy. The next thing you know, he's thrown alive and squirming into a boiling cauldron of bat spleens and comes out shiny and golden. He'd be tucked away in the coatroom for storage, left to gather cobwebs and dust with the broom. Or maybe he'd be smelted down to ingots.

     Casper swallows back the bitter taste in his throat. He picks up his pace to better distance himself from the object of his fears. He tries to clear his head with the sensation of the earth beneath the soles of his shoes, of the air moving against his face. Before you know it, he's running down the hill, half tripping the way over his too big footwear. His haste reclaims the time he lost earlier and then some. He's within sight of the town flushed, panting, and early.