Post Chapter Four - Hazel (Patreon)

A\N This is assuming you took the romance route with Hazel in Chapter Four.

“I think you’ll like them,” Hazel was saying. She was inside the small thatched dome that she had made as a child. The one place that she had gotten to hide when the world became too much. Trowel in hand, she dug at the earth, the hole in question almost half her height, the solid earth becoming wet as it contained run off from the nearby creek.

“They’re so kind.  And they are good with a broom,” she giggled. “And the kiss?”  Hazel trailed off at that. Perhaps her brother didn’t need to hear about the kiss.  Though, he had tortured her enough with descriptions of him and Milo.

“When you get back, I think that you’ll get along with them.  They’re honestly easy to talk to. And they’re not judgy. Not too much at least.  Though, I suppose it’s okay to be a little judgey.  I find myself being more and more of that these last few years. Did you know that Mr. Hartin came in the other day and I nearly turned him away?” She shook her head. “I know you’d be proud of that, but it’s just not in my nature.”

Wiping her hands on her skirt, she took a deep breath.  “Now, if this works, I don’t want you getting mad, alright? Just remember, I’m doing all this for you.”

The little flickers of light up above doused to a dark green as Hazel knelt in front of the hole she had dug.  Raising her hands in the air, she plunged them deep back into the earth, her fingers reaching for the roots and old stone that she knew lay beneath. There was an entire city down below.  One lost to time and to the crumbling roads of the Night Market.  Hazel’s mother claimed she was from there. That she used to live beneath the earth and when they had risen to the top they had pulled the stars from the sky to light the world they now called home.  Hazel used to hang on every word of those stories when she was a small girl.  Malcolm had stopped caring when he turned about seven and claimed that their mother was lying. He didn’t stick around the house too much after that.

Beneath her, the earth began to crack, folding in on itself. She could hear the boughs from the trees outside snapping and bending towards the reinforced hovel that her child form had created.  With a deep breath, she pushed her hands further into the detritus, seeking out the old ways and the magic that still swelled deep beneath the caverns.  Small tendrils of root and forgotten memory wrapped around her wrists and fingers, pulling at them and trying to drag her below.  Hazel’s head snapped back, eyes a deep miasma of green and black, her lips darkening to the color of tar.

“I call forth Malcolm Albright. Son of the Night Market.  Gatekeeper of your walls. Give him back.  Return your rightful son.”

The walls of the pit before her began to crumble. They eroded, falling forward, down down down into a nothingness.

“Give back the one we call our own. Call back the soul that is yours.”

A hand burst from the pit. Covered in mud and something sticky and golden. Sap stretching between each finger.  Then, another. Two arms emerged, grasping onto the shelf of rock that was beginning to form.

“Come back to us, Malcolm,” Hazel intoned, her voice deep and filled with the ancestor's call. “The Night Market shall call you home.” Reaching from her side, she grabbed a curved blade, it’s edges jagged with bits of bone.  Slicing it across her hand, she let the blood sink down, splashing against the mud and dirt below. “Blood calls to blood. Follow my call.”

As the arms pushed upwards, shoulders emerging from the womb of the earth, a head began to form, gasping with an open maw.  The lights above flickered and the bottles hung with dried flowers cracked and shattered in a rain of glass.

“Hear my call!”

The body that was emerging arched back, tilting in a silent scream as the surrounding woods took flight. Long ago the animals had fled, but the trees had been given no option. They trembled now, the wisps dissipating from above and the trunks of the old growth cracking in two.

“Hear me!”

The body lunged forward, as if to pull itself entirely out.  But it crumbled.  As it clawed upwards, the dirt gave away to silt until the right arm eroded into a forgotten pile of muddy ash.

“No!” Hazel yelled, falling forward. Her hand was bloody, smacking against the ground. She squeezed the wound, trying to keep the blood flowing and give new life to the eroding form beneath.  But it was no use. The head turned towards her and for one heart stopping moment, she thought she saw the depths of her brother's eyes.  Then, the body fell, patching up the hole into the city below.  The lights above evened out. The bottles stopped their sway. And all was quiet once more.

“No,” she sobbed, bending forward.  She curled her bloody hand to her chest. “What am I doing wrong?” She looked around her, as if expecting an answer. But the bits of willow and vine that she had woven together were silent and once more, Hazel, was alone.

Later, as she crawled out from the small fort that her and Malcolm had made, she wiped her eyes on her apron.  She had bandaged her hand as best she could but would need to get to her supplies in back to be able to really make sure this did not scar.

“I’ll just have to try again,” she told the night air.  It was a coping mechanism of sorts. One that she used when she wanted Malcolm to hear her.  “I’ll keep trying,” she whispered. “I promise.”

Walking up the riverbank, she spotted the apothecary. The chimney was puffing out sweet smelling smoke.  Sage and basil had been added to the fire.

Wiping at her eyes, she held her wounded hand to her chest. She doubted anyone was awake in there. Everyone had departed for slumber hours ago.  Her shopkeep turned new-found love had been dead on their feet.  She supposed though that the wisps might have started the fire.  They sometimes did on mornings that Hazel was up far too early.

Coming through her garden gate, she sighed.  The small window up top was dark. It had been for a lot of years. The one next to it though, had the faint glow of a candle.  Often, they forgot to blow out their lantern at night.

They were something good.  She needed to remember that. Despite the failure, there was still good. Still a reason to keep fighting.

“I want you to meet them,” she whispered to Malcolm.

The breeze on the wind she imagined was him telling her ‘soon’.