I entered with some trepidation, not least because she did not bear the same appearance the scrying mosaic had revealed. Where the mosaic had been homely, this woman was beautiful, where the mosaic had been matronly, this woman was perhaps slightly plump, but with generous curves. The only similarity was the fine clothing, grey hair, and overall structure of the face. A sister, perhaps?

  “Blessings upon you and your household madam, are you perhaps Tom’s young aunt?”

  The woman blushed waved her wrist at me, “You flatterer. I’m Tom’s mother. Myrra Oldshoe, but please, call me Myrra.”

  Myrra.

  I’d heard that name before. On one of the books or scraps of parchment I’d long since lost. She was the sorceress who’d fled away to construct the Tomb of Secrets, and hidden herself therein. Was Bleak Fort the Tomb?

  Was the Bleak Fort her house? I’d kill Tom if that was the case, it seemed exactly like the kind of prank a Dobby would pull. I tried to keep my growing panic from showing on my face.

  “You’re not as I excepted, Madam. I saw a scrying of you. You were shorter. More... mature in appearance.”

  “Please, I said to call me Myrra. Madam makes me sound so old,” she waved the same hand airily, “no doubt you saw me at a different affectation. I’d go mad if I held one appearance for too long,” she patted the wall fondly, “it is the same as my house here. It never stays the same.”

  Indeed it wasn’t. I’d seen a vision of books and cauldrons and dripping liquids, scattered pages and broken tables. Now we’d entered a cozy cottage with a warm fire burning on one wall. Even the mess was cozy. Quilts were tossed about everywhere, over the couch and chairs, over the table, scattered on the floors. Rain tapped gently on the thatched roof above and dripped off the needles of the dark forest outside her windows. It was night now, though we’d entered her cottage mid-afternoon.

  “Well Mada—Myrra,” the slip up was intentional. Even if she was still human—if she had ever been human—she seemed now fey enough to appreciate the honour of the force mistake, “Tom has hired us to clean your house. Hired me, specifically, but Attar has agreed to help, where would you like us to start?”

  “Oh no no no. Attar is very kind, but I couldn’t possibly force the poor boy to fulfill another’s bargain. Besides, you know what Tom is like. He is a sweet boy and a loving son, but he is a stickler for promises. I wouldn’t want to invalidate your bargain. Attar and I will talk by the fire while you clean.”

  It was more than fair, and she was right. She may have just saved me from Tom’s ire. I’d agreed to clean his mother’s house, not to get his mother’s house clean. They were different bargains, especially in the mind of a hob.

  Myrra sat by the hearth and patted the seat next to her, “Come along Attar, dear, let’s let Oswic work.”

  I hadn’t told her my name, meaning I was now leaning more towards her being fey than human.

  I set about picking up quilts under her instructions, which she inter-spliced with all sorts of natter.

  “The quilts go in the closet just there. Yes, that’s the right, the one next to the bedroom door. Yes I have a separate bedroom. My house is smaller but it much nicer for having company over, wouldn’t you agree? I can sleep in there and nobody is disturbed least about me. No not that quilt, that one hangs from the south wall. I said south wall, that one over there. Yes. Wonderful. Thank you dear.

  “As I was saying, I don’t sleep often though. Reminds me too much of death. At least, I assume it reminds me. I haven’t died yet. I really would rather not. I’ve spent lifetimes avoiding it. How old do you think I am Attar? Go on! No? Well, you flatter an old woman, but I assure you, whatever you guess, I am older, far older. I have this fear, you see. Not of death—blue on top of green quilts please—I have this fear of the devil. The devil? Hmmm—an incarnation of evil. I’m sure you have similar in the Bronze Coast. Lamashtu? She’s a dreadful old nag. Perhaps? I see you nodding, but your eyes look confused. Well, you understand the concept. Anyway, my fear: Would not a supremely powerful and evil being be prone to causing as much torment as they could? And yet, there are only so many lives to ruin. But such a being, for evil is endlessly creative—that is why the gods allow evil you know, they recognize creativity is more important than the ubiquity of good—such a being might decide to expand its clientele, as it were, by imagining such clients up. Just think, we could be nothing more than a figment of the devil’s imagination, like a character in a book, created merely to suffer torment. And the moment he is done with is, well, no eternally blessed green shores leading down to the shimmering ocean, but oblivion. What was it all for? We ask God, or gods, and we hear no answer, for it was for nothing but the devil’s pleasure. Even the kind caring God cannot help us, for we never existed, we were just the devil’s passing fancy.

  “Terrible thought, isn’t it? I try to stay alive so that I need not count on God’s mercy. Instead I will avoid my final rest for eternity. I hope at least the devil’s torment is such that he delights in our continued existence. Otherwise he might grow bored of me even as I live, so I do try to be entertaining. Take your friend’s soul, for instance.”

  And indeed Attar had barely been paying attention to Myrra’s words, for he had been watching me clean with wide eyes. Every time I picked up a quilt he winced and jumped in his seat, as though a fire was lit under him.

  He jumped again as I picked up the next quilt, though I myself felt nothing.

  “What are those made of?”

  Myrra the Enigmatic smiled at him, “Experience. It is far warmer than even wool against the endless cold of time,” her smile became a frown, “Though your friend is failing to be nearly as entertaining as most who travel by here. The Delta boy was crushed by it, didn’t even remember his own name by the end. He forgot himself to such an extreme even his friends no longer recall him.”

  I stopped to glare at her—tried, but my body kept moving, mechanically picking up sheets and putting them away. Attar started at every one.

  “What Delta boy? Have you met with Brace and Erin? Who did you harm?”

  Myrra sighed wistfully, “Erin... Yes even my own magics can’t replicate her beauty, though I do see something of her in you. I can sense the spells upon you—a holy man’s work?—you certainly have a unique effect on women. I’m tempted to touch you myself.

  “I didn’t harm anyone however. It was his own curiosity. My house took him in, granted him lifetimes of memory, until the original portion of his soul was a very small thing indeed. (Yours appear to be made of sterner stuff.) What was his name? Sean? Yes. It is hard for even me to remember him at this point. I don’t know what happened to him. I doubt he made it far. Few do.”

  I could feel anger building within me, a pulsing in my forehead, tight around my eyes, “Tom meant to kill me, sending me here.”

  Myrra tutted, “Nonsense. Tom is not a bloodthirsty soul. Vengeful, yes, but he wouldn’t draw blood to save his own life. He sees things differently than you. Danger is a prank, not a death sentence. He may have even thought you could over come it. He may not have thought of the danger at all. He is such a dear sweet boy, and he knew how his mother needed her house cleaned. No one has yet succeeded. I myself don’t dare draw back up my experiences.”

  Attar crouched to study a quilt, but did not dare touch it, “These are all yours, then? A lifetime in each?”

  Myrra sipped from her cup, “Oh, do be kind, my dear. You make a woman feel old! I know I am old already, but it is polite not to notice.”

  “You’re replacing his soul with your own! Oswic, you need to stop!”

  “Pish tosh, look at him. He barely feels it. Something is settled about him, protecting him. Something dark. I shudder to look at him, truth be told, his shadow is older than I am.”

  The goddess who possessed me. The one who gave me her voice. She had control over time, and time was a dimension of experience. She wouldn’t be able to shield me entirely from whatever the quilts were and were doing, but all the same, endless time could contain a vast amount of experience. Though how I would know my soul had changed I couldn’t say, except to compa—I deliberately ran my finger along the crack by the windowsill as my body was forced to draw the quilt slung there into my arms.

  The dust on my finger... was merely dust. No revulsion, fear, or disgust met me. The book’s hold on my mind had been broken. Was that my soul changing, or was that the magic of the warlocks being overwhelmed by a far more primal source?

  Experience was the only path I could use to trace my way back to my own soul. My memories could be the guide of what had changed and what I had lost, but experience was what assailed me. Would I be tracing my own memories, or hers?

  If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

  All this passed while Attar was speaking, but I couldn’t react. Whatever it was that held me wouldn’t let me.

  It wasn’t holding Attar.

  Perhaps it couldn’t. That which bound souls would have little foothold against a necromancer of his calibre.

  Attar leapt to his feet and summoned an ogre to either side of Myrra. She winced at each one. I felt it too. A resonance with something dark and twisted as they were called into being.

  “Release him at once! I’ll not ask again.”

  “Is this any way to treat your host? I’ve granted you tea and biscuits, though you’ve barely touched yours! Really, do go on, they are fresh and the recipe is wonderful, it was my grandmother’s.”

  My vision flickered. The room pulsed with life. Not my life sight. Something else. Demons. Promises. Potential. Dread. The house itself was bound to Myrra’s will, every part of it a thing in her service.

  “Attar, stand down. The risk is too high. Not in her seat of power. Not even for you.”

  Myrra kept smiling pleasantly throughout. Bemused and polite as ever.

  The ogres disappeared. Attar could hear the truth in my words, and trusted my experience.

  “You must stop at once Oswic, please,” he tried again.

  I might have been able to escape, even now. Few things could nullify the natural order. A simple teleport spell might free me. Failing that, nothing resisted the magic of the warlocks, which was why they chose their easier path to power.

  But I had an oath to Tom to complete. Made under duress with foolish foresight, but the deal had been kinder than it could have been. Besides...

  “The goddess protects me Attar. Had we not found her, perhaps this task would destroy me, but she orders and digests the experiences for me."

  “There is a price. There is always a price.”

  “This is my price.”

  Attar collapsed back down into his chair, defeated. Myrra smiled.

  “I’m glad we got all that sorted, though that does bring us to my second concern.”

  Sullen eyes raised to glower from under Attar’s dark hair.

  “Yes,” Myrra continued, as though not under the threat of a literal death stare, “the devil is always in the details. Literally. If I am to be here for his amusement and torture, then the devil must be amused, and hardly anything here has been amusing.”

  “I can arrange for torture,” I said mildly. More to reassure Attar than to threaten Myrra, though I was happy to do both.

  She tutted loudly, “I was merely going to pull a prank over young Attar here, perhaps turn his clothes to motley, or make them whisper his deepest secrets to passers by, but now I shall have to punish you both. Really. Guests in my house behaving so rude. I had hoped Tom had better friends.”

  “The rudeness is on your head, as the threats imposed upon us are yours. You know enough of fey magics to know I speak the truth. You are still bound to be our host, as we have only answered you like for like, and mildly so.”

  She grinned and dashed up to me to plant a kiss on my cheek, “Wonderful. Wonderful. I like boys with spirit. Perhaps I shan’t curse you at all! Now please excuse me. I believe my house is about to demand its own recompense.”

  Myrra vanished with a clap of thunder.

  Attar and I exchanged startled glances.

  “Her house?” I asked. I’d sensed the bound furniture, knives and more but—

  Attar gasped, “The whole thing is alive. Its soul is vast. But warped somehow. An embodiment of the warlock’s chao—”

  And that was when we learned why cleaning Tom’s mother’s house was worth freedom from the Mushroom-King.

  ***

  Corruption spun outwards from every side and settled around us like a pair of cloaks. It settled into my skin, traced itself lovingly along my spellbook and the pathways of my brain. My magic—nature itself—twisted, screamed and begged to embrace new rules. Only then did the house release it.

  Nature wasn’t the only one. Attar was screaming as well. Senseless anguish, louder than humanly possible, a noise which reverberated and carried far beyond the walls of Myrra’s hut. It started low and went high, and droned on and on, an inhuman wail.

  Both of us fell to the floor, hands over ears. It was too loud. Too loud for mortals to withstand. It sounded like the end of the world.

  Attar closed his mouth and the sound faded, tapering off rather than ending as abruptly as it should.

  The noise had been a physical thing. Dust rained from the ceiling, a painting hung askew, and one of the quilts I’d not yet removed from the back of a chair had even slipped down from the floor’s vibrations.

  The sickening, roiling, twisted nature of my magic was worse. I feared to cast a single spell, lest Nature herself reject me.

  “What was that?”

  I could barely hear myself over the ringing in my ears.

  Attar tried to answer me, but instead that horrible wail poured from his mouth once more. His expression became one of horror and he bit down on himself so quickly he drew blood. It dripped down from his lower lip, but he didn’t notice, occupied as he was with his own fear.

  The house had taken his voice, and possibly my magic.

  And half the house still needed to be cleaned.

  I’d traded one problem for two others, as always seemed to be the case in these matters. Would I now have to bargain with Tom to save Attar and myself anew? The cycle of debt would become endless. Better to find my own path.

  I set about cleaning with a frenzy, not wanting to spend an instant longer than necessary in Myrra’s corrupted manse.

  Quilts vanished at a gratifying rate, alarming if I was more concerned with natural order than freedom. It seemed for every one I folded and put away, two more vanished along with it. Or that for every seconds effort, I produced a minute’s results. I remembered putting away every last quilt, but the actions were done in parallel, as though living through the same span multiple times, but this time all actions counted equally.

  Just as I was reaching for one of the three remaining quilts, the house struck again.

  Corruption suffused the air, settled into the floor and wrapped around Attar with zeal. For some reason I was left untouched by the brunt of the attack though the floor took on a sickly green hue which gnawed at my skin and caused my feet to itch.

  Attar’s hands jumped to his chest, to his face, to his hair, patting, searching, but the wave seemed to have left him uneffected as well, at least in the immediate sense. He didn’t dare speak his good fortune or to inform me of internal changes I couldn’t see.

  “Don’t stand on the floor, something is wrong here, it looks poisonous,” I said. The green of the floor was not something found in the natural prism, it was my life sight alone which had detected it, though it was twisted in a way I didn’t recognize. Fortunately, his chair was high enough that his bare feet had not yet touched the ground. If it wasn’t for the dwarf goddess’s blessing I suspected I’d quickly find out what was wrong with the floor. I’d long since lost my own shoes.

  I gathered up the last three quilts, one at a time, each taking three times as long as all the quilts before, but at last, with a final fold and laying of cloth, it was done.

  Wind howled and wood creaked, I could have sworn the house settled in contentment. After countless years, it was finally clean.

  Myrra didn’t appear to thank us. I guess she didn’t want to try her luck on the new floor either. Coward.

  I walked over to Attar and scooped him up in my arms, “I’m going to have to carry you out of here. I don’t want to risk touching the floor.”

  He nodded, then sneezed as a cloud of dust rose up around him from the chair. The cushions were falling apart. They hadn’t been before. Something to do with the house’s attack.

  I carried Attar over to the entrance, but was shimmied at the threshold. He I could lower through, but the air for my own skin was as impenetrable as my bone disc shields.

  Attar wailed, his lips barely moving, then pinched shut with a look of frustration. I suppose he’d just tried whispering, to no avail.

  I could guess at his question however, “The dust, I think. The house has to be ordered before I can leave, and we left a trail of dust getting you out of here. It shouldn’t take me too long.”

  I searched about for a dustpan and broom, but found neither. Nor could I find any rags, though I did find a pail of clean water. I’d have to provide my own cloth.

  I dug through my backpack until...

  Red velvet?

  The dress was in my bag. The one I’d thrown away in a fit of madness, before the quilts’ soul effect had cured me. Had Attar returned it? I would have noticed, surely.

  I removed the dress from my bag. It would do. The mystery of its return could be answered later.

  I dipped the dress in the pail, then set about picking up all the dust from the chair, the rest of the house was spotless. The whole process only took about five minutes.

  It was enough time for the house to leave me with one final parting gift.

  Something like a jolt of lighting (I should know) struck through me and into Attar, transfixing the both of us on the spot. Time slowed to a crawl. Stopped. An hour passed. Two. Four. Six. Seven.

  The sun rose.

  Time resumed, and everything was as it was. No time had passed, yet I knew it had, for my goddess had told me so.

  Attar gestured to me, and tilted his head with concern. I hurried over to him. He showed no sign he’d felt whatever it was I had.

  This time the doorway let me pass.

  My bargain was complete.