Fing the Child Taker

‘Twas a blustery, bone-chillin’ night like this when the Fell Wind first howled down from the Dragon’s Backbone. The harvest moon hung huge and yeller in the sky, castin’ long, wicked shadows cross the frosty mud. That’s the season when parents pull their wee ones close to the hearth and whisper the old rhyme of Fing the Hagginafin, to keep ’em from wanderin’ the dark. You ken the one:

Lock the door and hide the key,
Or Fing will smell where the children be.
Blind as stone but sharp of ear,
The Hagginafin draws ever near…

Most folk thought it nocht but twaddle to scare skelpie children into their beds. Ork thought the same.

Ork was out on a crisp autumn night, chasin’ a bit o’ loot in Potter’s Alley. His taking was off to a slow start, and his Took Book was feelin’ right skint. He slipped through the window of a cramped little house, quiet as a shadow, lookin’ to pinch a copper pot or a warm blanket. But as he crept past the hearth, somethin’ caught his eye what turned his blood cold as a steelfin.

A wee bed in the corner sat empty. The bedclothes were unrumpled and cool, as if the parents hadn’t bothered to check. Ork frowned, scratchin’ the wart on his chin. He slunk back out the window and moved to the next house down the alley. Another empty bed. And another. House after house, he found the same skatter-wit parents snoring away by the embers, whilst their children were gone.

Unsettled and cold, Ork abandoned his taking and strayed into Shady’s pub. The usual roar of the Fireday crowd was missin’. It was a tomb, save for the crackle of the fire, drunken mutterings, and the wind rattlin’ the windowpanes.

Ork sat at his regular table. Glamwart plopped down across from him, lookin’ as if he’d seen a ghost.

Shady set two blood grogs on the table. Glamwart, still rattled, licked his lips and ogled the tankards.

Ork pulled a sip from his, pushed it over to Glamwart and dragged back the other grog to drink. Glamwart snatched up the tankard Ork gave him, took a long, gully-washin’ draught and banged it down on the table.

“Ork, mate,” Glamwart whispered, leanin’ in close. “Somethin’ muckle wrong is happenin’. I took a bowl o’ me wife’s chicken soup to old Helga for her sick boy. An’ you ken what she told me? Told me to take it back, ’cause she ain’t got no boy. Closed the door right in me mug!”

Ork furrowed his brow. “Was she burnin’ up with the horrors?”

“Nay!” Glamwart scoffed. He took another healthy draught from his tankard. “Then I go to the market, and I ask the grocer where his lad is—the one what always helps me carry me turnips. He stares at me dumb as a stump and says I must have him mixed with another man. Says he ain’t never had a son!”

Ork scanned the room. In the corner sat Dooldin, a scarred warrior from the Coyote Clan, a man he knew to be a widower raising two girls on his own. The man was staring into his tankard, looking hollow.

Ork walked over. “Evenin’, brother. Where are the lasses tonight? You leave ’em with a neighbor?”

The warrior looked up, his eyes soulless. “Lasses? What lasses?”

“Your daughters, man. The wee ones.”

The Coyote warrior stood, his face crumpling into sudden, feral rage. “Are you mockin’ me, Ork? I ain’t got no wee ones! I stand alone!”

The bell over Shady’s heavy oak door rang and in strolled Axegrindel. When Ork turned back to the table, Dooldin threw a wild punch, knockin’ him into a nearby chair. The chair splintered with a crash. Ork scrambled up, ducking the second swing, and the fight was on.

Ork got in a couple licks and Dooldin got his share. Suddenly, Ork crouched, punched the man in the stomach and came up with his tankard to Dooldin’s chin. The Coyote warrior popped up on his toes like a pole and collapsed in his chair. He shook his head and rubbed his jaw, gawkin’ at Ork all chops-fallen.

“Why’d you hit me so hard, Ork?”

“‘Cause yer actin’ like a clodpole, you dolt!”

Dooldin frowned, stood up and cracked his knuckles into fists. “Well, dinna stop there, you squeakin’ bellowsbag!”

The drunk warrior swung his meaty mallets again and again, but in his state, he was no match for Ork. And Ork, bein’ done with him, just ducked and spun and moved until they were halfway to the door. At that moment, Shady, Axegrindel and two others dragged the furious battler to the door.

“That’s enough!” Shady barked. “Out wif ya! And that’ll cost ya for the chair!”

The Coyote veteran glared at them, tossed a few silver on the floor and stumbled out into the biting Fell Wind. His desolate howl blew into the pub as Axegrindel shut the heavy door. Shady picked up the coins, cleaned them on his apron, and brought Ork and Glamwart a fresh pint of blood grog.

“Drink up! Courtesy o’ the chair fine,” Shady said, his unusual bluster dimmed. He wiped the table with a rag and scanned the sparse room. “It’s too quiet lately. Folks actin’ like they lost somefin’ but dinna ken what it is.”

Ork didn’t touch the grog. His mind was spinnin’ faster than the mill wheel.

(Clever Ork.)

Without a word, he took a sip from both pints and left the pub, marching straight up the hill to Catchrat’s lodge. He banged on the door until the ancient chronicler opened it, squintin’ through his one good eye and holding a flickering tallow candle.

“By Baldhammer’s Ghost, Ork!” Catchrat scolded, his reedy voice cracking. “What hour is this to be wakin’ your betters?

“I need to see the Blood Tome,” Ork said, barging past the frail old man into the study.

“Och, absolutely not! I’ll not have a fuddled oaf like you foulin’ the sacred pages with your grubby hands! Wheesht now, and get out!”

“Children are missin’, Catchrat,” Ork said, his tone hard as iron. “And their parents have forgotten they ever existed. I need to know about Fing.”

The old man froze. The crabbit scowl melted from his wrinkled face, replaced by a blanched stare. He set the candle on the reading stand and unlocked the heavy clasps of the massive, red-leather Blood Tome.

He flipped through the crackling parchment pages until he reached a section dark with age.

“The Hagginafin,” Catchrat whispered, tapping a long, bony finger on the text. “She comes only once every four generations or so, during a Harvest Blood Moon—when a blue moon and a blood moon share the autumn sky, and the veil betwixt the living and the dead runs wispy thin. She sleeps blockin’ her cave by day, hard as granite, they say. By night, she hunts.”

Ork leaned over the book. “Says here she’s blind.”

“Aye, blind as mud,” Catchrat replied. The chronicler lifted his finger, prodded Ork back, and pointed to a scrawled note in the margin. “But knows flame from shadow.”

“What do you think that means?”

Catchrat shrugged. “I’ve never found another chronicler with a similar story. This monster is surely our own.”

“So, someone could slip past her, right?”

“Well …”

“You said she was blind as mud.”

Catchrat returned to the middle of the page. “Aye, I did. But her nose can sniff out the sweet flesh of youth from miles away, and her ears can hear a snowflake land on a pine needle. She fears nocht but the dead, and feline spirits—that’d be cats, especially black ones.”

“And the parents?” Ork asked. “Why do they forget?”

“The Hagginafin is a thief of a darker sort, Ork. She uses an ancient Rhyming Magic. When she steals a child, she steals the very memory of them from the minds of their kin. So long as the child is in her clutches, the parents will never seek them, for they dinna ken what they have lost. But the magic only lasts while she walks beneath the blood moon. Once the moon wanes to a crescent in four days’ time, she will sink back deep into the earth to slumber for another century, draggin’ the children down into the dark with her forever.”

“Can the children be saved?”

Catchrat frowned at the moon phases drawn at the bottom of the page. “I don’t know. Whatever you do, best do it fore the new moon seals her magic.”

Ork stared at the flickering candle, scratchin’ the wart on his chin. A monster what takes, and erases her tracks with spells.

(Clever Ork. How do you cross-bite a monster?)

*

The next night, Ork crouched in the damp bushes outside Ampleblood’s lodge on the island. The biting Fell Wind whipped through the canopy, showering the yard in drifts of crimson, yeller, and amber leaves. Ork had come to do a bit of taking, sure, but his mind was cluttered with crescent moons and missing children.

Just as the moon peeked through the racing clouds, the heavy latch on the kitchen door clicked. The door crept open and a wee lad stepped out. He walked barefoot through the cold mud without a flinch, clad only in a thin woolen night-tunic. He was the orphan what Ampleblood had taken in years back—the very same lad Ork had rescued from the streets.

The boy’s eyes were dull orbs staring straight ahead. He dragged a bulging pillowcase behind him that clinked with silver candlesticks and copper cups, and swelled with root vegetables, apples, and a greasy hunk of smoked ham.

Ork held his breath. He let the mooncalf child wander past the garden wall, far enough away so as not to rouse the house guards. Then he slipped from the bushes and fell in step beside him.

“Keep movin’, lad,” he whispered, reachin’ out to grab the boy’s shoulder. “It’s time to wake up!”

Before his fingers touched the boy’s tunic, a foul stench hit Ork’s nose. A horrid mix of stagnant mud, rotting roots, and rancid bones.

Somethin’ massive dropped from the branches above, blockin’ out the moonlight. Ork scrambled back, but the beast was unnatural fast. A giant, shriveled hand clamped around his throat and slammed him against the trunk of an oak.

He gasped for air, starin’ into the terrifying face of Fing the Hagginafin. She was a towering, saggy nightmare with a misshapen, lumpy spine, clad in nocht but a filthy loincloth. Her milky, pale eyes stared into the dark from broad, bagged hollows, and her breath blew hot and rank over his face.

She leaned in, caressin’ Ork’s cheek with a finger ending in a dirty, dagger-like claw. “I wants to eat it,” the Hagginafin whimpered, her waxy face twitching as she sniffed him. Her coarse thumb stroked his neck. “So stringy… so tough… but I wants it… Oh, me… Tender giblets pie… Aye…” Her long, black, pustuled tongue fell from her scabby lips like a dead fish and licked his chest, pasting his shirt down with sticky phlegm.

Ork glared back at her. The monster hissed, “My, my, aren’t we the brave child? Heart beating so strong for me… so strong.” She dragged her claw down his breast and affectionately skin-wrote heart shapes over his heart. Her voice ground like two  millstones, hissing with dark Rhyming Magic:

“A shadow creeping in the cold,
Your flesh is bitter, tough, and old.
But though I crave the tender sweet,
I think I’ll chew this stringy meat…”

The rhyming spell clouded Ork’s mind, makin’ his limbs heavy as chains. But Ork was Coyote Clan, and he weren’t about to be someone’s midnight snack. Fightin’ through the magical fog, he drew his cold-iron dag and drove it upward in a vicious arc.

The blade caught Fing’s hand. The frosty metal hissed against the monster’s flesh, slicing clean through three of her filthy claws.

Fing shrieked—a deafening, unearthly wail. She dropped Ork and blindly backhanded him. The blow struck like a charging bison and knocked him through the air. He crashed hard onto the cold mud, his sight awash in bursting stars. The monster snatched the entranced boy by the scruff and vanished into the mist. The sound of her enormous, gnarled feet slapping the ground retreated behind her. Then, the world went black.

(Poor, battered Ork.)

He woke an hour later with a pounding head and bruised ribs. He spat a mouthful of blood into the dirt, sheathed his dag, and limped his way home.

When he stumbled through his front door, the warm scent of autumn spices filled the air. Burkta was up early by the hearth mixin’ up ingredients for her harvest festival treats. She took one glance at his muddy clothes and how he held his side, and flew into a tizzy. She rushed over, fussin’ bout his muck-poached boots and blackened ribs while he kicked ’em off and wrapped ’em up tight.

“Shady toss ya out on yer ear?” she asked. “I ken you ain’t gettin’ this wretched inside.”

Ork shook his head. “I was out.”

Burkta helped him roll the long bandages around his chest. “Fine, don’t tell me then! Keep yer secrets, ya old fool!”

“‘Tis nothin’, Burkta.”

“Nothin’, he says. Nothin’!” She poked him in the ribs to watch him wince. “An’ I suppose nothin’ did that.”

Ork scampered fore she could poke him again. “Honest!”

He raised his hand and she rolled her eyes.

“Honest,” she muttered as she tucked in the tail of his bandages. “Tis a good thing lightnin’ don’t strike indoors. Or I’d be dead twice-over for standin’ next to ya.”

Ork spent a restless night, his head bangin’, ribcage yellin’ and brain on fire. At last, the willa bark and exhaustion forced the monster from his thoughts, and he fell into a deep sleep. He woke in the evening, rose with a grimace and rewrapped his ribs.

“You’re not goin’ back out there,” Burkta ordered, her accent waxin’ thick as the peat bog what midwifed her.

She pulled a fresh squealerky pie from the hearth and sat it on the table. “Sit down. Eat. Let Grimhand’s men deal with what give you that beatin’ last night.”

“I can’t stay,” Ork said, pullin’ an autumn coat over his wrapped ribs. He shoved a handful of fresh candied pecans into his pocket from the table. “I’ve got business what can’t wait.”

Burkta gave him the stink eye. The kind of look what could melt an iron lock. Ork knew he couldn’t fool a Wolf Clan woman, but a smart Coyote kens when a will-o’-the-wisp chase is the best way out of a trap.

“Fine,” he sighed, waving a hand in surrender. “I’ll take a piece for the road. Just to keep me strength up.”

He snatched his lucky hat and a warm slice of squealerky pie, took a big bite to appease her, and hurried out the door before she could badger him further.

As he trudged up the track from his farm, his mind returned to his fight with Fing. She had overpowered him so easily. But a taker what’s been bested doesn’t just let things lie. Ork marched back to town, chewing his pie, his eyes sharp. At least he knew now his cold-iron could harm her. Twas a mite of hope to hold on to.

He stood a hushed spiery on the wealthy lodges of Bent Hill, lurkin’ in the shadows. Sure enough, a hair past midnight, a ragged wee lass emerged from a lodge, her eyes blank, shiverin’ in a mud-stained sleep-shift, carryin’ a pillowcase of loot.

This time, Ork didn’t try to stop her. He stayed back, quiet as Wee-Chuck, and followed. He kept a startlish eye on his thereabouts, waitin’ for the Hagginafin to drop on him, but the beast didn’t show.

The lass marched straight down the hill, over Dregs Trail, and into the shanties of Hamshackle. Their path took them down the narrow road what cut beside the old graveyard. Dense fog seeped from Hob’s Thicket into the bottom of the draw. As Ork crept behind her, the Fell Wind whipped up, blowin’ the cloying stench of wet earth and moldering leaves off the graves. It clotted at the back of his throat. Ork wrinkled his nose, but he kept going.

He tracked the girl down the draw and toward the river. Instead of taking the Low Bridge, the entranced child veered into the brush and sauntered across a slick, mossy log and a series of treacherous stepping stones bridging the cold rushing water.

Ork cursed under his breath. He followed her o’er the secret path, his boots slipping into the chilling mountain runoff. As he pulled his wet feet onto the muddy bank, he realized the bitter truth. It’s too much of a bottleneck, he thought. I can’t bring a dozen waking children back across these slick stones in the dark. We’ll have to take the long way back through the scrith.

They wove through the grasping, thorny ironwoods of Witchwood until the mist grew thick. Ahead, rose the ruins of the Old Mill Bridge, a massive stone arch, sunk deep in the swampy mud, abandoned generations ago when the river changed its course. The broken end pointed toward town, covered in moss and rotting debris.

Ork hid behind a twisted trunk as the lass ambled down into the damp, muddy tunnel beneath the bridge.

There, blocking the entrance like a fallen piece of the Dragon’s Backbone, was the Hagginafin. She was sleeping, her pale, granite-hard flesh blending with the old stone of the bridge. As the entranced child approached, Fing cooed and budged enough to let the wee lass squeeze through the gap and into the darkness of the lair.

Ork scratched the wart on his chin. The monster was too immense to fight, and her nose and ears were too sharp to sneak past.

But a puzzle was just a lock what hasn’t been picked yet. Ork turned his back on the Old Mill Bridge and slipped deep into Witchwood. It was time to call on a friend.

*

Ork didn’t waste a moment more than he had to. After some chin scratchin’ and a turnabout in some brambles, he found his usual clearing, struck a flint, and built a wee fire. He settled on a log and warmed his hands, grateful for the candied pecans in his pocket. He didn’t have to wait long.

A ball of light drifted down through the twisted canopy, circled the smoke, and flashed into the shape of a pale, green-eyed youth.

“More fun?” Scrithams asked, his pointed ears twitching with a polite, innocent curiosity. “It’s a mite early.”

“Nay, Scrithams. Not tonight,” Ork said, his face grim. “Tonight, we’re huntin’ a monster what nabs children. I need your magic, and I need it fast.”

With no more prattle, they made haste back to the farm. When Ork burst through the door, he didn’t stop for frothy gabbin’. He gathered Burkta, Korka, Isslerud, and Scrithams round the hearth and laid out his plan; a scheme so mad, so full of moving parts, only a locksmithin’ Coyote could have dreamed it up. He gave them each their orders, keepin’ the in-and-outs locked tight in his brainpan.

Ork grabbed a heavy poke-bag and headed back out into the chill. He hied straightly for the Hamshackle graveyard and direct to the dark crease by Hobb’s Thicket where the gravestone moss grew thickest. Keepin’ a stag’s eye on the twisty, wind-bent shadows, he scooped up heaps of the wet, black earth and the cloying, moldering autumn leaves blowin’ o’er the tombstones. It was dirty, grim work for a taker, but he dared not flinch.

When he returned to his barn, the place was a flurry of magic and motion. Scrithams’ ears were glowin’ bright as torches. A whole patch worth of fat, yeller and amber harvest pumpkins were scuttlin’ through the barn doors on thick, quickened vines. They crawled across the floor like clumsy, orange spiders before detaching from their stems and settling into a neat pile on the straw.

Burkta stood at a workbench, tying off small pouches of fabric. She looked up and asked, “How many you reckon?”

Ork dumped his sack of graveyard sludge onto the table and scratched his chin. “By my count ‘tis an even baker’s dozen, but make two big’ns for Scrithams and me, just in case.”

Burkta didn’t blink. She grabbed her old, cracked cauldron and pudding paddle, and mixed the foul, wet rot with her most pungent baking spices—heavy handfuls of sage, crushed cloves, and sharp kaskan bark. The resulting odor was a stomach-churnin’ mix o’ festival bakin’ and open graves.

“This’ll mask their scent?” Burkta asked, scowling as she packed the small pouches with the fragrant mud.

“Aye,” Ork said. “Fing hunts the sweet scent of livin’ flesh. We rubs these on the wee ones and tucks it in their clothes, and to her nose, they’ll smell like nocht but dust and dead things.”

Over in the corner, Korka and Isslerud were busy with flour and seed sacks and chunks of black charcoal.

“Make ’em good ‘n’ scary,” Ork instructed, watchin’ them draw on the rough fabric. “Skulls, ghosts, and black cats. An’ make the cats brawly mean. She’s afeard of cat spirits.”

Ork grabbed his sharpest knife and turned to the pile of pumpkins. With quick, deft strikes, he lopped off the tops, scooped out the guts, and carved terrifying faces into the rinds. He set a tallow candle inside the first one and lit the wick. The pumpkin seemed to come alive, its fiery eyes and jagged grin blazed in the dim barn. Thick, greasy smoke curled from its mouth.

Isslerud stared at the glowing gourd, his almond eyes wide with wonder and a touch of fear. “What is it, Da?”

“It’s a decoy, lad,” Ork said, carving into the next pumpkin. “Ya know, when I served in the Wolf’s Legion, there was a scout named Jack. A bit of a dafty, old Jack was, but brave as a badger. When the fog rolled soupy an’ the hobnails were huntin’ us, Jack would light a hooded lantern and carry it out into the mist to draw their fire away from the camp. We’re gonna use these just like old Jack’s lanterns. We’ll leave ’em in the woods to trick the fiend and lead us home.”

“Jack o’ the Lanterns,” said Burkta.

Korka whispered, tryin’ the words on her tongue. “Jack o’ … Jack o’ the … Jack-o … lantern. Jack-o’-lantern! I like it!”

(Clever, crafty Ork. Usin’ Coyote tricks to fool a monster.)

They worked til the wagon was full. Isslerud hoisted the very last Jack-o’-lantern into the back, gruntin’ with the effort, and nestled it amongst the others. Burkta pulled the heavy canvas tarp over the load and tied down the corner tight to the wagon bed.

She turned to Ork and rested a warm hand on his chest, right over his bandaged ribs. “Keep yourselves safe,” she said softly, the fierce Wolf Clan fire burnin’ in her eyes. “Bring those young’ns home.”

“I will,” he promised.

Ork and Scrithams climbed onto the wagon bench. The day was all but gone an’ night was comin’. Ork gave the reins a flick, and the horse pulled them out into the bitin’ Fell Wind, leavin’ the warmth of the farm behind.

An hour later, deep in the thorny sprawl of Witchwood, the storm was brewin’ fierce. The wind howled through the ironwoods, but Ork and Scrithams worked with quiet precision. They had placed a solid line of the burning gourds right across the Low Bridge, a fiery barricade meant to stop a half-blind monster dead in her tracks. Now, they were layin’ a trail of breadcrumbs—or rather, a trail of glowing, grinning faces.

Scrithams walked ahead, his ears gleaming as he floated the heavy pumpkins through the woods. Ork plucked two of the Jack-o’-lanterns out of the air, trudged through the leaves and mud, and set them atop two splintered stumps bracketing the path.

Scrithams pointed a finger, and a spark of magic jumped from his hand, lighting the tallow candles inside. The terrifying faces flared to life, their orange glow cutting through the creeping fog.

The last streaks of fiery autumn dusk fled into the west.

Ork reached into the back of the wagon and hauled out the poke-bag full of charcoal-drawn masks and spice pouches, slinging it onto his back. Scrithams floated the remaining two Jack-o’-lanterns out of the bed, lighting them with a twitch of his ears. He held them aloft, one floating over each shoulder, casting dancing, hellish shadows across his pale face.

They halted their trek at the last of their lanterns. Ork checked the cold-iron dag and hatchet at his belt. The weight of the sack and weapons felt good. It felt like taking.

He looked to his magical companion. “You ready for this?”

“As humans say, ‘As ready as I’ll ever be,'” Scrithams said, though he eyed the dark path ahead with unusual caution.

Ork nodded. They turned their backs to the safety of the glowing trail, and began the long, silent walk toward the ruins of the Old Mill Bridge.

*

The Old Mill Bridge loomed out of the mist like the ribcage of a rotting mammoth. The Fell Wind couldn’t reach down into this sunken, swampy hollow, leaving the air thick, still, and reekin’ of stagnant water.

The Hagginafin slept blocking the tallest archway like a slab of pale granite.

Ork crouched behind a mossy log and gave Scrithams a nod. The youth smiled, his pointed ears flarin’ to life with a bright, magical glow. He lifted his hands, and the two Jack-o’-lanterns floated high into the misty air, their fiery, jagged grins casting wild, dancin’ ribbons of light and shadow against the stone.

Scrithams opened his mouth, and out came the deafening, unearthly screech of a hundred angry cats. The yowls and hisses echoed off the stone bridge, sharp enough to curdle milk.

Fing woke with a violent jolt, bangin’ her head as she withdrew from the bridge. Her hands flew to her wilting oversized ears. Whimpering, blind and panicked by the shrieking feline spirits, she scrambled away from the arch on all fours, diving into a half-collapsed, muddy culvert beside the bridge to hide.

Scrithams giggled. He floated the glowing pumpkins down toward the culvert, chasing after the cowering creature like a lad playing tag.

With the foul thing distracted, Ork lit a tallow candle and slipped into the dark, gaping maw of the lair. The stench inside was enough to choke a buzzard. He kept a stag’s eye on the shadows as he crept deeper, until his boots crunched on somethin’ hard.

The floor was littered with animal carcasses, and in the middle stood a massive cage fashioned from rancid bones and lashed together with muddy roots. Inside, a baker’s dozen of huddled waifs sat in the muck in their filthy sleep-shifts, mindlessly sortin’ piles of taken loot—silver cups, tarnished coins, and moldy turnips.

Ork hacked the cage open with a chop from his hatchet and went straight to work. He opened his poke-bag and pulled out the pungent, mud-soaked spice pouches. Moving from child to child, he smeared the foul-smelling graveyard sludge on their arms and chests, then tucked the wee pouches deep into their tunics and pockets. Lastly, he slipped the charcoal-drawn sacks over their heads and made them hold hands.

In a matter of moments, the children were transformed into a silent, creepy procession of ghosts, skulls, and snarling black cats reeking of the grave.

“Alright, follow me,” Ork whispered, grabbin’ the hand of the last child. The entranced kids stood and shuffled after him, linked hand-in-hand like a chain of little haunts.

He led them toward the mouth of the tunnel, his heart hammering against his bruised ribs. They were almost to the muddy bank when disaster struck.

Outside, Scrithams was having a bit too much fun. He had terrified Fing out of the culvert and was now chasing her. She tore around in circles, holding her ears and tugging her straggly hair as the screeching Jack-o’-lanterns bobbed round her head. Suddenly, she zagged around a tree to escape the glowing gourds and barreled directly toward her lair—colliding head-on with Ork and his line of scarpering children.

The Hagginafin shrieked in surprise. She snatched up the closest child, lifting the wee ghost into the air.

“Sweet flesh!” she hissed, her waxy face splitting into a hungry, toothy grin. She brought the child close to her scabby lips to take a bite.

But instead of the sweet scent of youth, her nose was assailed by the cloying stench of moldering graves and bitter spice. Her pale, weak eyes struggled to focus on the child’s face, finding only a terrifying, hollow-eyed skull starin’ back at her.

Fing shrieked in absolute horror and dropped the child into the mud. “Dust and bones!” she wailed, clawing at her own face. “Nought but ash! Woe’s me, my children are stowen!”

Ork didn’t give her a second to recover. He stepped up, snatched one of the floating Jack-o’-lanterns out of the air, and shoved its jagged, smoky grin into Fing’s face.

At the very same instant, he drew his dag and slashed across her forearm. The magical metal hissed and sparked bitin’ into her curded flesh. Fing jerked back from the searing pain of the cold-iron and the terrifying, glowing orange face burnin’ her weak eyes. Instinctively, she swatted at the Jack-o’-lantern, squashin’ it against a nearby tree.

For a moment, the monster paused and sniffed the air. She took another deep whiff.

But Ork wasn’t done. Drawin’ a mighty breath, he unleashed a guttural battle cry from his days in the Wolf’s Legion. Beside him, Scrithams’ ears flared, and the youth magnified Ork’s voice with magic, turning it into an ear-splitting roar that shook the stones of the bridge.

The thunderous peal proved too much for Fing. She collapsed backward into the mud, thrashing and clawing at her bleeding arm and ringing ears, completely deafened by the assault.

“Run!” Ork bellowed.

He scooped up the fallen child, grabbed the next in line, and bolted. Scrithams floated the remaining Jack-o’-lantern high to light the way, and together, they herded the procession of masked, graveyard children into the stormy dark of Witchwood, racing toward the first glowing face on the trail.

*

The Fell Wind was howling good ‘n’ proper now, whippin’ the icy rain sideways as Ork, Scrithams, and the string of masked scrithlings fled through Witchwood.  The storm tore through the ironwoods, snapping the branches of lesser trees and thrashing the darkness, but Ork kept a misdoubtful eye locked on the grinning faces of the Jack-o’-lanterns guidin’ their way.

Behind them, a hair-raisin’ scream split the earth and all manner of creepy-crawlies climbed out. Fing had recovered!

“Hurry!” Ork urged, haulin’ the string of blue-cold children along.

Finally, they burst from the scrith and scrambled cross the Low Bridge. Ork spun round as the massive, lumpy silhouette of the Hagginafin broke through the tree line. He jumped in front of the wee spooks baring his dag, hatchet, and every tooth he could muster. “Get ’em in the wagon!” he yelled.

Fing moved with terrible speed, her long, quaggy arms pullin’ her misshapen body through the trees and mud. But as she reached the edge of the bridge, the fiery barricade of Jack-o’-lanterns flared in the gusting wind. The monster skidded to a halt. Her waxy face twitched as she caught the scent of the bitter smoke and felt the heat of the flames. In her fuddled, pain-wracked mind, she grabbed her arm, remembering the searing bite of cold-iron from those fiery orange faces. She shrieked, swatting at the air, but dared not cross the line of fire.

Fing paced the bank like a caged beast, sniffed the storm-tossed wind, and, with a bone-rattling wail, turned and vanished into the darkness of the scrith. The flames of the lanterns dimmed and Ork let out a breath he dinna ken he was holding.

“We did it,” he panted, turning toward town. The children were aboard the wagon. Beside him, the glowing ears of his companion dimmed, and Scrithams pulled down his lucky hat, taking on the familiar, pimpoxed guise of cousin Scritch. Ork felt his bare head and nodded.

But a taker’s work ain’t done til the loot is fenced.

They hurried to the rain-slicked street of The Island. Ork marched the first wee ghost up to a carved wooden door and banged his fist against it. After a moment, a groggy, scatter-witted Ampleblood peeked out, holding a flickering candle.

“What’s all this racket?” grumbled Ampleblood.

“I brung back your wee one,” Ork said, pushing the masked child forward.

The stout man squinted at the skull-faced figure smelling of graveyard rot. “I dinna ken what you mean, man. I ain’t got no child.”

Ork removed the child’s mask. “But look—“

“Be off with ya fore I call Grimhand down on yer grog-addled hide.”

The door slammed shut. Ork stood in the rain, dumbfounded. He put the lad under the tarp in the wagon and went to a house off Market Square. The same glaikit stare. The same slammed door. He tried once more round the corner up Potter’s Alley. But Fing’s black magic still held their minds tight as a rusty lock. You canna just hand back what’s taken if the victim dinna ken it’s missin’.

Ork rubbed his bruised ribs and scratched his chin. He thought back to the ambush outside Ampleblood’s lodge. The monster had spoke in rhyme. In the dark spell stuff of the Black Bone Anglers.

How do you break a taker’s magic? he thought. Then it struck him: with a scout’s trick, of course!

(Clever, clever Ork.)

In the Wolf’s Legion, when the fog was thick and you couldn’t tell friend from foe, a scout couldn’t just walk into camp. You needed a countersign. You needed to make a trade to prove you belonged. Sometimes a word, sometimes a token. To break the taking magic, Ork couldn’t use force. He had to trap the child’s parent in a blind bargain. If a mother’s hand could be guided by instinct, not memory, her own kindness would sever the monster’s curse. The thing was to make it easy.

He paced and shoved a cold hand in his pocket. All at once he stopped and withdrew the last, linty candied pecan with a smile.

Ork knelt on the rain-slicked cobblestones and gathered the shivering, masked children around him. “Listen to me, young’ns. When the door opens, hold out yer hands and say exactly what I tell ya.”

He marched the lot of them back to the first house on Potter’s Alley and pounded on the crooked wee door again. The same crabbit father threw open the door, his face red with anger. “I told ya—”

Before he could finish, the wee skull-faced child held out her small hands and piped up in a trembling voice:

“A trick of the night, or a treat to share,
Give a sweet from your cupboard, if you dare.
A trade freely made breaks the dark’s deceit,
We stand at your door for a trick or a treat!”

The father blinked, thoroughly addled by the bizarre sight. He just wanted to go back to his warm bed. “A trade, is it? Fine, fine. Hold yer wheesht.” He reached into his pocket and placed a stale bite of honeycomb into the child’s hand. “There, child.”

The trade was struck. The treat freely given.

Ork stepped forward and slipped the flour-sack mask from the girl’s head. The father’s eyes widened. He dropped his candle. His bottled memories shattered like shell ice under a ram’s hoof.

“My lass!” he cried, tears spilling down his cheeks. He pulled her into a desperate hug. “Oh, by Baldhammer, I thought… I dinna ken what I thought! What a nightmare!”

(Happy, lucky, clever Ork.)

They marched through the town like a swift, unearthly wolf-chain. From Potter’s Alley to the high lodges of Bent Hill, the chorus of wee voices rang out; trick or treat! Sweets were handed over, a mask was plucked, and a family was restored. Word wouldn’t spread till the next day, fore the night was too dark and cold. But house by house, doors and flaps were closed up tight as weeping parents drew the foundlings close to their hearths, swearing to never let them out of their sight again.

Ork delivered the last child to Ampleblood’s lodge, securing a pocketful of sweet rockahominy knots for his trouble. He stood in the street with Scritch, the storm washin’ the remnants of graveyard sludge from his boots.

“That was brawly done,” said Scritch, smiling and munching on a treat. “Is it time for pie now?”

“Aye,” Ork said, feelin’ a deep, full-shelves warmth in his chest. “Time to go home.”

“What’d you get?” asked Scritch as they turned up the main road and stepped onto the low-water bridge.

Ork opened the flour sack in his hand and held it out so they could examine the contents. “Well, looks like a honey-parch, sap-lump, couple pemmican-sweets, rockahominy knots, and, oh, a bog-tart! What about you?”

Scritch opened his bag. “Pumpkin loaf, pemmican-sweets, sugar-plum …”

“What’s a sugar-plum?”

“That.”

“Oh! A sap-lump.”

“The humans call them sugar-plums.”

“Cute.”

Scritch shuffled the morsels in his bag. “Oh, and I got some hearth-crumbs.”

“Oh? I’ll trade ya a honey-parch for a hearth-crumb!”

“Sure.”

As they finished crossin’ the lake and turned toward Market Square for their waiting wagon, a rustle in the alley caused Ork to stop. Out from the shadows limped a half-grown dog. Her motley coat was soaked and matted with mud.

“Aza?” Ork whispered, dropping to one knee.

The flop-eared pup let out a pitiful whine and buried her head in Ork’s chest. His blood went cold as winter frost. Running down the pup’s flank were three deep, nasty gashes. Ork didn’t need to guess what made them. He’d slashed off the filthy claws himself.

Fing hadn’t fled into the scrith when she turned away at the Low Bridge. She hadn’t given up at all. She had caught the scent of the man what wounded her on the wind, and sidestepped the entire town.

The kids! Burkta!

Ork sprang up, his heart hammering against his ribs. He turned to Scritch.

“Wind-walk us,” he demanded, grabbing the pup tight to his chest.

Scritch’s eyes widened. “But you hate wind-walking—”

“Just do it!” Ork roared.

Scritch didn’t hesitate. He grabbed Ork’s arm, his hidden ears flaring with bright, magical light. The rainy street dissolved into a dizzying vortex like a paddock full o’ spooked painted ponies, and Ork was siphoned into the storm.

*

The sickening swirl of colors collapsed. Ork, Scritch, and the pup slammed into the yard, some twenty feet from the farmhouse porch. The Fell Wind was thrashin’ the trees, but the sight before Ork turned his bone-marrow to river-ice.

His heavy front door was splintered off its hinges. Burkta stood her ground at the threshold, clutching an iron fireplace poker in both hands. But her arms were tremblin’, and her peepers were glazing over.

Fing the Hagginafin loomed over her, pale, wispy glimmers floating twixt their eyes. The monster had Korka and Isslerud tucked tight into the flabby folds of her monstrous left arm, their wee feet kickin’ the wind. With her free hand, she stroked Burkta’s face with her claws like a gentle, soothing mother, her voice croaking out a dark Rhyming Magic:

“A mother’s love runs fierce and deep,
But weary eyes are prone to sleep.
Forget the faces, lose the names,
Your children vanish like wee flames…”

“No!” Ork roared, drawing his cold-iron and splashing through the muck.

Beside him, Scritch thrust out his hands, his hidden ears flaring with such intense magic it blew off Ork’s lucky hat and instantly transformed him. A thin wedge of light shot betwixt Burkta and Fing, severing the scintillating wisps.

Burkta blinked, her eyes snapping back to a sharp, she-wolf glare. Seein’ the terror a breath away, she let out a fierce cry and clubbed Fing squarely in her waxy jaw with the poker.

The Hagginafin shrieked. She swatted Burkta aside with the back of her hand, sending Ork’s wife tumbling through the doorway. Enraged, the monstrosity stomped down the steps, crushing them into the muddy yard.

Ork clanged his cold iron weapons together. They rang with their icy voices.

At the same instant, Scrithams slammed his palms into the muck. Thick, thorny roots erupted from the earth, entwining Fing’s massive, gnarled legs and shackling her to the ground.

The wretched brute was stalled.

“You’ll not leave here with my children,” Ork commanded.

Fing hissed. Cornered by Ork, Scrithams, and Aza, she gripped the screaming children tighter and began a new, much darker rhyme. The air started to shimmer and warp around her. The ground shook. A jagged tear split open in the yard—an abyss of pitch-black nothin’ness. The howling storm shifted direction, funneling rain, twigs and autumn leaves into the dark realm. She was pryin’ open the threshold back to whatever foul place had spawned her.

“The shadows call, the void awakes,
I claim the flesh my hunger takes,
Through shattered stone and blackened bone…”

“Not my young’ns!” Ork bellowed. He bounded to the porch and leapt onto the monster’s hunched back. He drove his cold-iron dag and hatchet into her leathery shoulders. The magical metal hissed and spat, sending showers of blue sparks flyin’ as it burnt the beast’s pale carcass.

Aza charged in, barking and snapping at the Hagginafin’s ankles. The pup’s high-pitched yaps assailed Fing’s bloated, pointy ears like a murder of crows striking a fox for its dinner.

Overwhelmed by the searing pain on her back and the deafening noise, Fing howled in agony. She dropped Korka and Isslerud to claw at Ork. Burkta dove from the porch, snatching her children from the maelstrom of the abyss.

With her prizes gone, Fing reached back, grabbed Ork by his coat, and hurled him through the air. He hit the freezing mud with a heavy splash, the breath knocked clear out of his chest. She turned her blank, furious eyes toward him and, tearing her legs from the roots, lunged, her scythe-like claws extended for the kill.

“Ork!” Scrithams yelled, throwing a blinding, magical flare into the monster’s face.

Fing flinched and Ork scrambled to his feet. And in that singular heartbeat, the storm clouds broke.

The first brilliant ray of dawn crested the eastern peaks of the Dragon’s Backbone and transfixed the Hagginafin. She froze mid-lunge, her waxy skin turning gray and petrifying into solid granite.

Ork raised his hatchet and swung with every ounce of Coyote strength he had left.

Just as the blade bit deep into the monster, the retreating tempest unleashed one final, earth-shaking lightning bolt. It struck the cold-iron hatchet. BOOM!

The thunder clap knocked them all to the ground.

When Ork opened his eyes, the void had closed, and the granite hell-haunt was gone. In her place was a smoking crater of gravel, dust, and wet leaves.

He breathed hard and pushed himself up on his elbows with a pained grunt. Somethin’ in the crater caught his eye. Small globs of molten metal were seepin’ from the shattered stones, rapidly cooling in the icy rain puddles. He crept forward and picked them up. They were flawless pearls of solid silver. But amongst the score of glimmering drops rested one heavy, pitch-black pearl.

Ork scooped them into his purse and turned to see Burkta hugging the kids on the remnants of his stoop. Scrithams sat grinning beside them. As usual, Aza was busy tryin’ to nuzzle in on the hugs.

It was over.

Silence fell over the farm, save for the gentle patter of the dying rain. Then, a sweet scent cut through the coppery thunder’s breath.

Burkta’s nose twitched. “My pies!” she yelled, jumpin’ up and dashing into the battered house.

An hour later, a fire was roaring in the hearth. Ork sat at his kitchen table, wrapped in a blanket. He opened his Took Book, dipped his quill, and enshrined Korka, Isslerud, and the thirteen scrithlings of Rancor as his official spulzie for the year. He closed the tome with a satisfied pat and poured out the silver pearls in a neat little pile on the wood. The lone black pearl plunked down like a lodestone.

Scrithams came in through the door he had fixed, placed Ork’s lucky hat on its peg, and announced, “The steps are all fixed.”

“Kurah, kurah!” yelled the children.

“Thank you, Scrithams,” said Burkta.

“Aye, thank you,” said Ork.

“My pleasure. Hey! Where’d you find those?”

Ork held up the weighty dark pearl. It was cold to the touch. “In the yard. These’ns be silver, but this’n  I ain’t never seen before.”

Scrithams sat and eyed the dark sphere. It had the smooth, black skin of a star-fall stone but it drank the firelight like it would drag the whole world into its core. His ears glowed and blinked out. He cocked his head.

“What is it?”

“I can’t say for certain, but it fits what I’ve heard of Abyssal Bronze.”

“What’s it good fer?”

Scrithams shrugged.

“Put those aside, you two,” said Burkta, coming from the hearth.

She set a steaming, autumn-spiced squealerky pie in front of them. Ork didn’t say a word. He just ate. One slice, then two, then three. Feelin’ a deep, full-shelves warmth spread through his battered body, he propped his feet up on Burkta’s empty chair and passed out asleep, with Scrithams nodding off in the seat beside him.

The house was quiet. But the magic of the night weren’t quite done.

Driven by its own dark magnetism, the heavy black pearl began to roll. It slipped off the edge of the table and dropped into Ork’s open palm.

Ork’s cozy slumber vanished. His mind plunged into a fever dream. He was soaring like a hawk o’er a cold, dusty plain beneath a sooty canopy. A jagged, Stygian peak shrouded by unnatural storm clouds loomed up ahead. Purple lightning cracked the sky. He was drawn down into a rayless ravine, where a faint, rhythmic chanting resounded off the wet rock walls. As he entered a tomb-like cave, the chanting grew louder, weaving an ominous rhyming spell.

“…The silver burns, the dawn is bright,
Abyssal Bronze drinks up the light.
A thief has touched the blackened stone,
And wakes the Anglers on their throne…”

As the last sinister utterance echoed in the forgotten cave, a slitted, amber eye snapped open in the dark, staring right into Ork’s soul.

Ork gasped, trapped in the terror of the vision.

Then came a sharp clack.

One of the silver pearls had rolled off the table. It dropped into Ork’s hand, smacking the black pearl out of his grasp.

Ork jolted awake, panting. The welcoming light of his hearth flooded his gaze. He looked down at his hand. The moon-glint pearl sat in his palm, glowing with a faint, comforting warmth, driving the cold from his finger joints. He eyed the floor, where the freezing black pearl rolled away into the shadows.

A white-metal drop what blocks the dark.

Ork slowly grinned. He rubbed the wart on his chin, thinkin’ of willow branches, sinew, and feathers. He’d weave these lunar pearls into webs to hang o’er the beds of his children and the thirteen hag-ridden waifs of Rancor, catching their nightmares before they could take root.

As for the black pearl in the corner… well. A puzzle was just a lock what ain’t been picked yet.

(Clever, foolhardy Ork.)

* * *