LAYER 08: AGAIN
It was her that I heard before dawn this morning, in that awful forest, on my way to the well, that horrible sound again, that I thought before must have come from heaven, now coming from the staff she held at her mouth, a strange flute that seemed to breathe, although that's not so strange considering that everything here breathes. It is only when you think about it too much that it begins to seem strange, the way the path below your feet expands and contracts, how the tables and chairs and cots vibrate and look to be covered in a thin slime, disappearing at the touch. And now, the sun disappeared again behind dusk I behold her, beneath her giant hat her face half-shadowed, though in the shadow her giant eyes gaze through me, unassuming, though as if I happened to catch a cold brash wind spewing from her my arms fling themselves around my body unprompted even as I slowly approach. Her profuse and ruffled garb I gather is like that of a prophet. But she couldn't be one. She's frightening no doubt but she hasn't nearly that all-consuming darkness that stretches like angel's wings miles around a prophet's path (for I've never myself encountered a prophet, though I know for certain if one is near). As I come nearer and nearer to her, her gaze continues through me but never at me, as my own gaze tries to avert itself to no avail. She stops. As her staff comes down from her mouth, the trees around us slacken a little bit, the air clears of suffocating crystal, the ground loosens its grip from my feet.
She stands, and wordlessly she leads me, the forest clearing before her and closing sharply at my tail as I strain to keep up. And the whole time I follow, I dread each step I take, timid but exasperated. Suppose she leads me to my death. All the better then, I won't have to bear this cold land any longer. Perhaps I should have gone home though. What good can come from getting lost in these woods, even if to the tune of some creature greater than myself? I now sense the snark in the eyes of Old Man Hands as he told me that a song heard in the forest should be pursued. Whatever then, I shall contend with being suggestible if it gets me through each day.
She pauses, a clearing opens up around us, as it opens I behold to my horror a ring of Eggs around us. I cover my eyes.
"Is it not bad luck hide your eyes from the Eggs?" the first chiding words she whispers to me pierce my tight skin. Of course it's bad luck, my eyes sore from trying to flee without hiding fixate on her hollow eyes, but for certain it's worse luck to look at the Eggs. In the village where an Egg sits on every other street corner or so it is an easy enough feat to accomplish, but never before have I had to endure a circle of them. Desperately I kneel, she pries my mouth open and pulls up from it a serpent tongue, long by several meters and covered in steaming warts. The Eggs glow faintly, the only signal they give that they might be any different from a common stone, and the forest rebounds to conceal them again.
Night's wind seeps unhurriedly past every leaf of the forest. A straight path lies ahead. She leads me by the new tongue, originating from my throat and sitting atop my original short tongue, dangling and spewing out of my mouth. We arrive at the village square. She ties me by the tongue to the village bell.
"Tomorrow you will be free. Come find me again. You will be spared the Harvest."
She leaves swiftly. I notice that the two or three Eggs that normally populate the village square have vanished.
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