1 Halfkeys 1

Ha, ha, ha…

The voice of the panting woman didn't travel very far at all; she was near her limits anyway. She had been running for more than an hour now from something, something evil, and was unaware that the darkness had overtaken the day in the sky above. Perhaps she wasn't to be blamed, snow was still pouring heavily, and the land she threading was densely packed with the flabby white ice to the point each draining limp she took sunk her leg deep in the snow, good thing she wore her raffia boots, and it couldn't be worse, she was carrying a child; a baby in a raffia basket padded with jute fibers inside supporting the baby. Alongside her deep footsteps in the snow were splashed crimson spots which had sharp contrast on the snow which was dripping from her, she was bleeding, her right hand was holding down the wound on her abdomen while her left supported the dangling basket hanging around her neck.

She stopped and leaned against one of the trees in the forest which appeared sparsely populated due to most of the leaves of the trees already fallen off just before winter began. She closed her eyes while sucking in deep breaths, opening then to check the severity of her injury. She looked into the basket carrying her baby; the baby girl was relatively calm in her thick woolen blanket and gave a big smile to her mother. Her mother smiled back, and whispered to the baby "not long now."

The woman looked back, focusing hard at the land behind her. "They're close," she whispered to herself, as she left her lean on the tree and continued her escape ahead.

She was now thoroughly worn out, with stitches eating at her sides. She stopped at a clearing surrounded by trees, and leaned on the snowy ground. She levelled the snow there, removed the basket around her neck and placed it beside her. Using her bloody right hand, she drew on the snowy patch she cleared three circles , the bigger circle around the second biggest which was around the smallest. The circles were unusual, they were not drawn with the usual curving lines but rather strange signs were written in a circular path to make the circles. She then placed the basket carrying the child into the circle.

Saying a little incantation, she touched her injury again and lay the hand on another snowy part of the ground, and a blue foxlike animal appeared before her. The animal had unusually long eyebrows that pointed out and a thick furry tail. The animal nodded to the woman and climbed into the basket the baby was in, and cuddled beside it. Suddenly, tears dripped down the mother's eyes, but she didn't make sobbing sounds. She wiped the tears with her left hand. She reached around her neck and removed a rope which bore a key attached to it. She had worn it like a necklace. The key looked rather like a half key, as one side of the key looked complete while the other looked like a jigsaw along its middle. The woman placed it on the child, and looked again at her. She patted the baby's pink hair, which was more thicker in colour than hers', and kissed the child's forehead. She looked at the animal beside the child for some time, as if they were communicating telepathically, before removing her gaze. She tore a piece of her brown gown from the lower seam and placed in in the basket. She moved back a little, while kneeling on the ground, and bowed. She stretched her hands forward to the circles she had drawn over which the basket was, and started saying some incantations again.

Suddenly, circles formed around her hands. They were drawn in foreign signs similar to what she drew on the ground, and shone in blue lights. The circles she had drawn were now shining bright red, increasing in the intensity of the colour. She heard faint shoutings from afar, and knew she had to hurry. She turned back to see how near those shouting were and faced front again, whispering to herself; "come on, come on."

With a whoosh sound, the basket disappeared, and the woman fell to the floor looking very drained. "It worked, she's safe," she whispered to herself, and gave a soft smile.

The owners of the voices she heard were now upon her, three figures wearing cloaks that concealed their faces which were dark under the cloak's hood. One of them used his feet to shake her head on the floor, and said to the other two; "this one's finished."

Another of the three in cloaks bent down and looked into the woman's bright brown eyes and asked; "where's the key, and the child?"

"Where you won't find her, not even I know," the woman replied.

"Hmm, I see, too bad, you don't even have enough stamina to kill yourself, but seeing as you're going to be useless to us, we might as well help with that last part," the figure squatting said.

The woman, first filled with shock smiled, but the smile was rather pained. "You won't win," she said to them.

"We weren't after winning, you should have just given up the key and the baby as planned, and a lot of unfortunate things would have been avoided you know," the squatting figure said. "Hope it isn't too late to meet the rest of your family, or perhaps we should leave you to the wolves."

The woman looked at the dark space that was supposed to be the face of the figure with much scorn, and then looked away. "Party's over huh," she said to herself while looking up.

"Ya," the squatting figure said. He then touched the forehead of the woman, and a white light shone from there, after which the woman slowly stopped breathing, and passed away. The figure stood up, and looked at the other two.

"We'll leave her body there, the wolves will take care of it. We'll go back to council to report of our failure, and head back to Tóme."

"Hmmn," the other two replied affirmatively. They turned around and set off into the night back in the direction they came while chasing the woman. Their tracks had been mostly covered up by the pouring snow, and the woman's bloody trail was now a fading pink. The woman's lifeless body was left behind as it gathered snow in the chilling breeze which blew at her gown, and left icy deposits around her face. Poor thing.

The howls of wolves were now more visible in the surrounding area where the woman's body lay. Time had passed since she was killed and the three figures in cloak left, but the bloody stench of the woman never left, and it was what inevitably drew in the hungry predators, who would have thought the relatively fresh scent belonged to either a wounded animal or one that recently died, not one they would want to pass in the freezing cold night.

As they circled the woman's corpse in a frenzied manner, one of the wolves broke out of the circle and approached the corpse with much excitement as it hopped through the snow, its tongue out as it panted, and shook out the excess snow on its grey fur. As the wolf's muzzle touched the woman's side, a wild wind blew out forcefully from the woman's body with such force it threw the wolf away, leaving it whimpering some meters away from the body, and scattered the other wolves around on the ground. The shockwave of the breeze was visible in the snowy dust it displaced. The terrified wolves, in shock at the retaliation their proposed food had shown, scattered in the different directions they had been thrown before aligning ahead and fleeing the scene, howling hysterically as they ran away.

Soon after her frozen body had given off that vibration, a relative calm ensued, one that lasted a few moments.

Then, her eyes and mouth opened calmly, both emitting white light, and this was followed by three circles again formed with signs forming round the woman. A small white light, about the size of the thumb nail, emerged from her open mouth which was lit with the same colour, and rose above the woman's body. After the light rose a reasonable distance above the woman to about twenty meters, all other lights around the woman and from her mouth and eyes shut. The small light above her glided and drifted away like a wisp till it left the tree lines and faded away up into the skies. All that was left below was the corpse of the woman, one a certain park of wolves were now scared of.

Howls could be heard all over the forest as the intensity of the snowfall increased, and the night got colder. One half of a mysterious key and a child had been successfully saved and sent somewhere unknown by a mother who had died in the process.