Illness is rampant. It keeps me alive, ironically. If people had no use for my remedies, they'd have already lopped off my head and torn my heart from my chest. I am too strange for most people in this world.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Dragos felt his way through the straw to his box and slid it over his shoulders and crept on hands and knees until he found the ladder. The scratching remained soft and constant on the low wood of the burdei. His questing foot found a rung, and then another as he lowered himself to the earthen floor of the barn.

  He stepped on a goat. With a startled bleat, Dragos was flung into the ladder. He clung to it as the goat scuttled into the lumps of darkness settled on the floor, upsetting more sheep and goats. The man made his way through them as they reshuffled themselves and settled down.

  It was not black as pitch. The moon’s disc hung in the sky; its light studded the ground where it pierced the sparse walls. Dragos crept to a broad gap in the slats and peered out.

  Silvery moonlight washed the world in the palest of hazes, and by it, he could see. Not well. Just enough. A figure by the corner of the house, with gangling arms and black fingers that tapered to vicious points, a few hooked, like bent knitting needles. Long hair spilled, unbound, around narrow shoulders.

  As if she felt his sharp gaze upon her, she turned. Her eyes glinted, star-bright with malice. She stepped away from the house’s shadow into the pale yard, her hands swaying unnaturally beside her angular hips. Her smock was caked in mud, her feet gnarled and bare. But it was her mouth that transfixed Dragos.

  Her angular face framed a lipless mouth, set in her head in a diagonal slash. The black teeth within gnashed, sparking like flint as she approached the barn.

  Dragos did not suffer true terror often. For one sparkling moment, looking in Samca’s eyes, he felt it. Primal in its surge. He wondered at it as it devolved into curiosity.

  “Vestitia, Navadaria, Valnomia, Samca…”

  The figure stopped.

  Dragos paused in his recital, not because he wanted to give the monster a moment to turn back, and not for drama.

  He couldn’t recall all the names.

  “Would you like me to go on, Samca? Does every name burn? Leave now, or I will banish you forever.” Dragos's voice carried none of the irritation he felt at struggling with the lore.

  He bluffed with complete confidence.

  Mirel would have beaten him for forgetting, had she been there.

  The Unspoken hesitated, then took a shambling step toward the barn.

  “Sina.”

  Its teeth ground together, sparks scattered, bright orange pinpoints that sputtered to nothing on the ground.

  What were her names? There were nineteen—

  The moment hung as still as the moon in the sky. Stars peered down with their glittering, cold faces and waited along with Dragos. The shadowy form blurred. He heard the sound of her footsteps tearing off into the night.

  With a soft, disappointed sigh, he leaned his forehead against the wood and stared out into the gap. Not at Samca’s retreat, but at his own forgotten lessons.

  He waited for a time, but she did not return. After his weariness caught up with him, he returned to the loft. He’d have to find a way to explain this visitation to Dimi while also dodging the obvious doubt for a stranger’s words.

  The warm breath of animals lingering on his skin, Dragos left the barn at first light. He went straight to the spot where he’d seen Samca scratching at the house. A collection of slender lines marked her passage, proof that she’d been there.

  Dimi and Coman left the house a minute later, as Dragos rounded the corner.

  “Domanule, I have something to show you,” Dragos said, giving his hood a tug forward.

  Dimi sent his son off to the barn with a pat on his shoulder. Coman’s disappointed frown was noted, but Dragos couldn’t care less about family decisions.

  Unspoken things were afoot, and to head off any accusations flung his way, he had to explain some things.

  “Did you hear the scratching last night?” Dragos asked as Dimi warily approached.

  The man shook his head, gaze flicking between the wanderer and the spot where he stood. “My wife hears scratching at night, but there’s never anything when I go to look.”

  “Did you not see this?” Dragos pointed at the wood with a bone-pale finger. Fine fibers furred the surface.

  A frown tugged at the man’s bearded face. He leaned in, a big palm flattening against the wall. He stroked a finger over the striations and humphed. “Not ‘till now.”

  When his gaze returned to peddler, it was suspicious. “Maybe it wasn’t there until now.”

  “Without you hearing? Look,” Dragos took his knife out and dragged it over an untouched area of wood. He did it a few times, then pointed at his compared with the others. “These are different. Something with a broader tip, and here, see this?”

  He plucked a splinter away. “Where there are deeper gouges, a hooked blade was used. Domenule, I understand your doubt, but you know that things Unspoken make their way into people’s lives, regardless of belief.”

  Dimi stroked his beard, jaw set, the flicker in his eyes suggested that he did in fact know. He didn’t quite believe. He didn’t disbelieve, either.

  The animals trotted out, some pausing to nip at grass, others heading off to other grazing spots. They meandered across the green along the stone wall that kept them from the field.

  “Your wife suffers from Samca’s attention,” Dragos stated with certainty.

  The man’s lips thinned, his cheeks paling a shade at the name. He knew of her.

  Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.

  “Why?” The man demanded.

  “Shall we discuss this over breakfast?” Dragos asked. His was a wanderer’s stomach, always ready for food.

  Dimi frowned archly, as if he were being extorted, though the day before he’d promised porridge and ale.

  After another stroke of his beard, he grudgingly nodded and gestured to the bench beside the door. “Wait there, I’ll fetch you some.”

  Dragos sat. The heavy clunk of his peddler’s box rapped on the wall behind him. Dimi brought out a bowl of porridge and a mug full of ale a moment later. Dragos took it with gratitude and ate a bite, then looked up at the man.

  “Sir, you must feed your wife better than this, I hope.”

  Dimi’s face reddened. Dragos kept the smirk off his face as he sipped the thin ale, which was no worse than what he’d had the night before, amused eyes shielded by his hood. The farmer huffed like an angry bull.

  “What do I know about cooking?”

  “Apparently not much, but the important thing is Samca,” Dragos said, redirecting the conversation. He didn’t need the farmer erupting before the problem was solved.

  He sipped his ale and smacked his lips.

  “Well? What can we do?’ Dimi grumbled, scowling openly, hands on his hips. He was still clearly offended.

  “I know some lore about her and what you can do to protect her,” Dragos said, then glanced toward a soft step beside the house. Coman’s shaggy hair peeked out from his hiding spot.

  “Well, spit it out then, stranger,” Dimi snapped.

  “This is a tale about a poor woman whose husband neglected her and the striga she became because of it,” Dragos began.

  Dimi held up a hand and scoffed, “Samca kills children and women with child, this I know.”

  “But knowing why will make the appeasement more effective,” Dragos counted, chin tilted down to catch another spoonful of grayish slop.

  Dimi had nothing more to say, for, when Dragos resumed, he listened.

  “Samca was a woman of many names. She traveled with her husband, a knave that would use her to lure in men that he would then rob and leave bloodied in ditches. It is written that she was lovely, once…”

  “You know how to read?” Coman came around the corner, then.

  Dragos’s lips quirked, and he nodded. The boy who played with sun dogs also thought reading was wondrous. Most peasants would declaim reading and writing as useless except for tallies.

  Dimi frowned at his son but waved at Dragos to continue.

  “Once she was pregnant, her husband neglected her. She sat in a lonely burdei, knitting infant’s clothing until her belly was round and the food her husband left her scarce. Under the full moon, she died in childbirth, trying to tear her own child from herself with knitting needles.”

  Dimi clucked his tongue. Coman’s dirty hand covered his smudgy mouth. The boy shook his head and looked at his father with undisguised horror.

  “That won’t happen to your ma, boy,” Dimi said firmly.

  Dragos's brow arched, but he only asked, “Samca is stalking your wife, and isn’t it so that most babes come on a full moon?”

  “Tomorrow night,” Coman breathed, his knuckles whitening.

  Dragos's hood dipped in agreement.

  “You have an appeasement, you said?” Dimi’s question echoed with guarded misgivings.

  Dragos could hardly blame him. Dimi was a typical Calruthian, witness to common misery and inhumanity.

  “I need to recall Samca’s names. There are nineteen of them, but I can only freely remember six. If there is an elder in the town who knows lore, seek them out and find out what they know. Meanwhile, I’ll wrack my brain. With those names, I will create an amulet for your wife, and anoint your house against her… but I can’t do this freely.

  “Samca will come for me, instead. Anyone who writes these things will suffer her wrath,” Dragos said.

  “What would you ask?”

  This was a chance to restore some of the things he’d had once. Of course, Dimi would likely say no. Witchcraft was witchcraft, no matter the purpose. No matter the healing properties of what he would request.

  “Some of your wife’s secundinae,” Dragos said, and waited for the fallout.

  “What?” Dimi was already frowning, hadn’t stopped, really.

  Dragos flicked a look up to see the man’s broad face go from red to a near purple with restrained rage.

  Coman’s face screwed up in confusion. “What’s that?”

  “Afterbirth,” Dragos explained, and paused again, gaze flicking between the two.

  Coman sputtered and took a step back.

  “Absolutely not,” Dimi barked.

  Dragos nodded and continued without concern, ignoring the disturbance completely. “Then I will teach you the words to write, and you will write them.”

  Stunned silence echoed from the two farmers. Dragos waited them out with a sip of ale and another spoonful of porridge.

  “You… witch! How can you ask for something like that?” Dimi spat.

  Dragos watched the man’s fists clench and replied honestly. “It makes powerful healing tonics.”

  “How do we know this is real?” Dimi snarled, his hands balled much as his son’s were, though likely he was more ready to strike than his trembling son.

  Dragos didn’t like the position he was in and stood up, shuffling his emptied bowl and mug to the end of the bench.

  He stepped away from the house and shrugged. “I say it is. You’ll find out for yourselves if you’d like me to leave now. I’ll go, though I don’t want to leave, knowing what your wife faces.”

  “Coman, go ask Elder Anca about Samca,” Dimi said, his voice harsh, though that anger was not meant for his son.

  Without another word, the boy broke into a run towards the small collection of burdei around the commons. Dimi’s arms crossed over his chest. His nose crinkled and he spat.

  “Nerostit? nonsense. I’ll hear nothing more about afterbirth or anything else.”

  That he stood there chewing on his anger instead of driving Dragos away let the wanderer know how grave and real it felt to Dimi.

  Good. It was.

  “Will you do the writing?” Dragos asked, not as a threat, only to clarify.

  Dimi’s expression fell, and he reluctantly nodded. “If the Elder says what you say, then… why not Coman?”

  Dragos rocked back on his boot heels at that. He hooked a thumb in the strap of his box, head tilted. “Why would you put your son in such danger?”

  “Bah, he’s not a child anymore. He’ll be fine. He’ll have learned a bit of words then, wouldn’t he?”

  Apotropaic symbols weren’t writing, and Coman was in that borderless space between child and man. Dragos rubbed his brow and gritted his teeth at the ignorance, but said nothing more.

  Dimi would not be protecting his child from the Nerostit?. No mere man could do such a thing. He would learn.

  “You’ll not be going anywhere until this is over, peddler,” Dimi threatened.

  Dragos cast a look over the sunny fields and the looming clouds on the horizon. The damp would not fade. Rain would come again. “I will see this through.”

  The farmer grunted and spat again. After a last threatening look at Dragos, the man strode off to the fields to tend them.

  The wanderer went back to the wall and plucked a long, thin fiber of wood from it, looking at it with his mind’s eye. Dark energy laced the woody thread. A dark aura lingered, marking the woman within. Likely the cause of her illness.

  It was just the beginning of her torture.

  Dragos went into the sparse woods beyond the little village, his mind’s eye wide. The air glimmered with spirits, and the earth crawled with them, half-witnessed and half-unknowable.

  He methodically tracked that which left no steps behind. If he found her… he’d figure out what to do if it came to that.

  Since The Owl's Bastard is Trending, if you want to see it keep rising, an Advanced Review is the easiest way to make it happen. It opens a new browser window.

  The next easiest is convincing friends to read. Which I support. So does Zgavra, who lowkey likes the chaos of attention. Dragos doesn't care. He likes the stars, though. More stars are better, in his opinion.

  Nerostit? (neh-ross-TEE-teh): Calruthian word for all things unnatural or strange, synonymous with Unspoken. Places, events, and situations can be referred to as this, as well as beings.