Chapter 10— Curse Eater

Moonthread, by Anthony Lee Phillips

Feb 04, 2025

Chapter 10
CURSE EATER

“If I’m not back by dawn, you’re on your own here, kid.”

Nala tongued her tusk.

Shouldn’t I be crying?

She’d never been more stressed out in her life, and yet…

Maybe it just hasn’t hit me.

mmm, hummed the ring.

Mmmm, hummed her belly.

Nala sat on a stool, and faced the potion room table. She held her Gran’s hand in both her own little hands.

She didn’t look like herself. Gran’s lips were all thin, and everytime she inhaled, her whole jaw shuddered.

Nala could see Gran’s skull beneath her greying green skin.

Akha was having some kind of horrible dream. She whimpered and kicked. Her eyelids clamped down ’til every crease was like a border on a map, but when the lids fluttered open, her eyes were all white. The slits weren’t even showing. Gran was sweating a lot, too.

Nala found a towel, and rushed outside to the creek.

The creek ran right through the middle of the applewood. Their house had been erected specifically to be near the stream.

Nala knelt down, and let the icy-cold water numb her hands.

She looked up. The night sky was filled with wispy tendril clouds. She wondered when it had stopped raining.

The moon peeked out from behind a cloud with soft edges.

The moon’s light reached out and shone like a yellow light. It only lit one green cheek on Nala’s young face.

Her tusks were thin as cat fangs. Her eyes were a wan, worried yellow, both slits dilating to see better in the dark.

“No sign,” she muttered without thinking.

Nala wondered how far up the mountain Ica had made it so far. She wondered why Ica didn’t teleport.

She can only ride shadows she already knows, said the voice in her belly.

mmm, agreed the ring that snaked around her knuckle.

I see, thought Nala, too numb to notice how strange it all was.

* * * * / * * * *

She waited so long.

A long, long time.

She hated this kind of waiting. It was sour waiting, like curdled milk that lingers even after you spit it out.

Nala wished that she was hungry. She never got hungry when she felt like this.

Or maybe this kind of waiting was more like a broken bone.

She waited beside Gran Akha, who stirred in her fitful sleep.

“Wake up, Gran,” Nala wished out loud. “Please? Please wake up?”

* * * * / * * * *

Time passed. The night was almost over.

Nala pulled the curtain to the window’s edge, so she could watch the stars. So she could watch the sky.

The sky turned, and it turned, and it turned. First, from charcoal to dark blue, to ocean blue, to sapphire.

Finally, the Sun began to threaten its rising.

Her lip quivered.

“On my own.”

The depth of her despair was deep as dark water, and vast as oblivion.

But then…

Then Nala saw a shape.

A figure, tiny against the bone-grey mountain, where nothing grew and nothing died. She saw a figure stagger out of the distance.

Squealing, Nala’s heart fluttered, and she ran to the door of the house. She opened it, and waiting, holding the door open.

Ica came into focus.

But now, she was encumbered. She had the boy slung over one of her shoulders. As soon as she was close enough, she tried to warp.

But instead, there was a lurch. Nala felt it in the center of her, and then…

mmmMMMMmmmm…

No warp.

Ica cursed loudly, a word Nala knew but knew not to use.

Unable to skip the shadows, Ica kept walking.

When she finally got to the house, she was flush-faced and furious.

“He’s—he’s—! Take! Take him! Take, please take!”

Ica’s knees buckled, and she crumpled to the ground before she could set him down softly. The boy tumbled, and rolled on the ground, but made no notice that he felt it in any way.

“He’s—!” huffed the witch, wheezing. “He’s—! He’s really—! He really is—! Possess—!”

The boy was an orc, though his complexion was unlike any Nala had seen before.

His face was the color of toasted sand, and there were red splotches on his shoulders and neck and the back of his naturally bald head. He didn’t have eyebrows, or hair of any kind.

Three long gashes crossed from one corner of his face to the other. They were. bleeding profusely, throbbing out blood in rhythmic little pulses.

“What’s happening to him?” Nala asked.

His eyes were rolled up into his head, so she couldn’t tell what color they were. Exactly like Gran’s sleep, only his sleep was not fitful. He barely looked alive, but—

Hhhh hissed the wind, coming in through the crack in the curtains.

Hhhhe breathed in suddenly.

“Hh?” gasped the witch quietly, looking.

“What?” Nala asked.

“No, it’s… Not like this…” Ica said.

Hhhh…

Something was happening.

“Nala,” Ica said, “I want you to listen very closely to me. I want you to get a knife from the kitchen, and k—”

HhhhHHHH

Ica’s one eye slammed open, and she clutched at her throat.

A gust swept into the potion room, and papers flew up into the air.

Three vials of Gran Akha’s best ink got knocked off the table by the sheer force of the wind. Ink of all colors spilled, spattering the cobbled stone floor with green and red ink, and blue ink, and gold.

The boy began to convulse, and so did (HHHH) so did Ica.

And so did Akhhha, hhhhh—

Nala could do nothing but stand there, and watch.

“Get the—!” Ica was trying to say. “Get—! Get thhhh—!”

Ica’s knees buckled, and she collapsed like a ragdoll, her limbs splayed out in every direction.

Gran almost seemed to wake up, but only enough to fall into a new trance. And the boy (still asleep) began to scream.

“AHHH! AHHHH! AHHHHHHHHHH—!”

The wind kept on swelling, in a horrid crescendo.

As all three of the two witches’ eyes slammed open, the boy’s eyes closed.

Then, silence.

Grim silence,

And seizures.

Ica laid on the ground. Gran was still on the table. Their eyes were wide open, but only showed white, rolled high up into their heads. And both were shaking, their bodies wracked as the red wind rolled over them.

Ica’s face looked pale green, almost grey, and Gran looked the same.

He breathed like someone who had just been saved from drowning.

The boy’s face was now… better. Even as he gasped for air, there was a sense that he was getting back to normal.

Hhhh…

The wind was mellow, and seemed to smile red.
Nala watched in wonder and horror as
The boy’s deep, flappy gashes… healed.
The wind seemed to seal up the cuts,
Until they were just three long, pale scars
That streaked across his face, still wet with blood.

Hhhh…

The worse Ica and Akha got, the better he got.

As the witches on the ground grew cold, the boy’s face grew hot as a kiln. The slick blood on his face dried into a dense brown, before cracking like a mask of frail brown clay.

The shivering witches stopped their seizures.

His eyes snapped open.

He was bleary-eyed at first.

“Wh—? Where am…?”

That’s when he saw Nala.

Their eyes locked, and it’s like they both knew at the same time…

Hhhh… hissed the wind.

Mmmm… hummed the shadow, pooled at every corner.

They both said, as if entangled, all at once—

“I know you.”

* * * * / * * * *

The boy looked around, and rubbed his eyes. And when he looked at Nala again, he was… He…

Is he grinning?

“What?” Nala managed to say, horrified and overwhelmed.

“Nothing,” he said.

“What is it?”

“Nothing! It’s just… Which way is the kitchen?”

He said it smirking, like he was making some kind of joke. Like he was lightening the mood. When her grandmother looked like that, on the table. It was…

It was too much. Nala lost it.

“How could you say something like that!” she screamed.

Nala had never been more angry in her life. She felt her limbs flailing, but wasn’t even really aware of what her body was doing.

“I’m sorry!” he said, sort of shouting out. “I’m—! Hey, would you just stop? Would you stop for a moment?”

Nala stopped and glared at him, fuming. Where the flesh had been flayed (only a few moments ago), there were now scars, freshly sealed, almost shiny.

“Can you just… tell me, uh… wh-where I am?” the boy said, exasperated.

And his confusion made Nala realize just how grim her situation was. It was the last brick in the wall, the… The last drop to… The dam broke. Whatever metaphor you like; the point is, it was too much.

A blur broke over her, and as her will finally gave out, Nala let herself begin to cry.

* * * * / * * * *

Next chapter: How to Cure a Curse

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