Chapter Text
Before Jon knew it, Wednesday had sprung on him. That was the thing about being old, he mused: time passed twice as fast even as half the number of things happened. The two days spent puttering around the workshop while doing his best not to antagonize Tim and Martin with questions felt like only a handful of hours; a morning spent frantically packing and counting and unpacking and repacking medicines while Martin flit from one side of the kitchen to the other, shoving things into his bag and scribbling notes and barking out instructions to Jon, passed in the twitch of an eye.
Jon had never ventured to the Hivelands in his youth, preferring to stay closer to the amenities of the capital, but Georgie had been a handful of times during her apprenticeship. The Hivelands were technically under The Watcher’s Eye, yet the borders between it and their nearest neighbors, a small subterranean nation of Deep and Creeping Growth acolytes called The Burrow, were often fuzzy, especially underground. She and her master had been sent to the Hivelands to investigate the unexpected dying off of crops, suspected to be the work of an agent of the Burrow. While Georgie had come back with no evidence of sabotage, she’d brought home plenty of stories about the towering, chimney-like mounds of earth and pulp that most in the Hivelands called home. She must have spent hours answering his questions, sparing no detail when describing the dank dark of the many tunnels that wound between and beneath the mounds or the sweet fragrance of blossoming fruit trees that carried along the orchards’ neat lanes.
But for all Georgie had told him of The Hivelands, she had neglected to mention the hum.
At first Jon had been too preoccupied with keeping up with Martin to notice it. Martin had been particularly snippy about any delay that morning. He’d bustled Jon out the three-ring door as Jon was still trying to cinch one of Martin’s massive, dark robes up enough that he wouldn’t trip over it and had audibly groaned a “Jon, let’s go” when Jon had tried to orient himself upon coming out of the door. After that Jon had to have a good internal grump over barely getting any time to glimpse what the door looked like from the opposite side. From the Hivelands side the door was rounded at the top to match the shape of the mound into which it was set. It appeared to be constructed of a reddish clay and stood only a little taller than Martin at his full height. There were a number of nearly identical mounds grouped around it, and every time Jon glanced over his shoulder to see more of it, he became less certain of which one was theirs.
“Do people live in those?” he’d asked, as he saw no obvious windows or ventilation.
“Not usually, as far as I can tell,” Martin, who was already several paces ahead of him, replied. “I think they’re used as, like, storage of some sort? For farm equipment? It was way cheaper than renting an apartment in one of the Central Mounds, and less likely to be discovered… for a while at least,” Martin finished glumly, no doubt thinking of the child who had come to the door the week prior.
Martin then let out an annoyed little cluck and glared over his shoulder at Jon.
“Come on, catch up. There’ll be plenty to see on the way.”
Martin, typically more sensitive to the limitations presented by Jon’s age, then sped up even more. Jon hobbled and huffed and puffed along behind him, muttering about long legs and the youth these days until the hum became loud enough for him to hear over his own complaints.
Jon stopped. They had been following a well-maintained dirt road that passed through expansive fields of newly-planted wheat and then gently curved to take them through an orchard. Trees bursting with pinkish apple blossoms flanked both sides of the road, and the air between the rows of trees burst with beesong. It was not the monotone buzz of a few bees perusing the selection of blooms for the choicest nectar; instead, it struck Jon as an orchestral swelling, a great mingling of humming voices beneath which Jon could catch the edge of a clear melody. If he could squint his ears to better hear, he would. He almost thought the song he could almost hear had words.
“Jon, where in the hell are you going?”
The discordant squawk of Martin's worried words made Jon flinch. He turned towards Martin’s voice which, strangely, had come from behind him. It was then Jon saw that he'd wandered a good ways down one of the lanes radiating from the main road.
“Following the song, I suppose,” Jon replied with a fuzzy sort of uncertainty.
“What song?” Martin asked sharply.
“It was coming from that direction.”
Jon pointed far down the dirt path, where the trees grew older and their foliage deeper. Even as he said it the hum abruptly dropped away, leaving only the buzzing of the bees.
“I don't hear anything.”
“Well, that's because you've somehow scared it off.”
“I’ve somehow-?” Martin started, but then he made a face and rolled his eyes. “Fine, sorry, whatever. Let's just get going. I’m already nervous enough without worrying about whatever music you're supposedly hearing.”
“A song, not music,” Jon snipped, feeling frustrated but not fully knowing why. He stomped down the path back to Martin and the road. No matter how intently he listened for the rest of his walk, no melodic hum reemerged from the bees’ drone.
Soon they arrived at the Central Mounds, the chimney-like vents of which towered so massively over the lines of people steadily streaming in and out that Jon couldn’t shake the feeling that he was more ant than man in the moment. Georgie had told him the mounds were collaborative constructs between practitioners of the Deep, the Spiral, and the Creeping Growth. Each mound could house a few hundred people, most of whom labored to feed all under the reign of The Watcher’s Eye. As they approached the entrance to one of the mounds, he saw Martin slow and draw his hood over his head. Martin’s transformation was no less surprising than the first time Jon saw it, his drawn-up shoulders and curled back paired with a geriatric shuffle that made even Jon look lively.
While the dawning of Martin’s disguise seemed purely physical in its changes, the immediate effect it had on the Hivelanders seemed nothing short of magical. Jon watched as a young woman turned in an abrupt and near-perfect half-circle to start walking back towards the wizard, while nearly a dozen children zigged and zagged through the crowd and back into the mounds to fetch family members. Hivelanders swarmed them from all sides. Worried words dropped from worried mouths as they all began to speak, and Jon found himself drawn up right against Martin’s side when the crowd pressed in and people started begging him for help. He was close enough to glance up and spot Martin’s face from under the drawn hood. Martin’s grey eyes darted frantically back and forth. They seemed to take on a glassy look as more people filed out of the mound and joined the crowd.
Overcome with a sudden chill, Jon shivered. He cursed his old bones and paper skin, wrapped his robe more tightly around him, and stepped away from Martin.
“Why don’t you all show a little more respect for an old man and the healer who’s come here to help you?” Jon snapped. He sent the crowd his most withering glare; several Highlanders looked away, while several more took a big step back. The cacophony of the crowd crested and fell. A moment later, Martin drew up.
“I understand that almost everyone in the mounds has a loved one who is ill. My apprentice has joined me today to assist in distributing as many of the potions we’ve brought as possible,” Martin said in his rough voice. He gestured to Jon and continued, “If your living unit is in the North or East towers, please line up to my left to speak to Old John. If your living unit is in the South or West towers, please line up to my right.”
The speed and ease with which the crowd shifted to form two neat queues impressed Jon greatly. Georgie had mentioned that the Hivelands thrived because of the harmonious diligence of its inhabitants, but Jon felt she’d truly understated how like a hive the inhabitants behaved.
Martin set the two large baskets filled with medicines—much to Jon’s perpetual frustration, the wizard had still refused to explain how they worked—on the ground between them. Martin caught Jon’s eye and nodded. The work began.
As person after person came up, Jon struggled to remember the questions Martin had taught him and what pill to give based on the answer. He refused to ask Martin; while Jon took a pinch of satisfaction in the way Martin likewise seemed to be struggling to keep up with his growing line, he knew distracting the wizard would only make things harder for the both of them.
“And is the cough rough or smooth?” Jon asked through the headache building behind his eyes.
The young man in front of him frowned in confusion. “Pardon me, sir, but I don't understand. A smooth cough?”
Jon swore under his breath as he realized he'd mixed up Martin’s questions.
“Sorry, I meant is the rash wet or—blast it, no, is the cough clammy to t-the-,” Jon pinched the bridge of his nose and let out a sharp breath. “How bad is it?”
“Seems real bad, sir,” the man answered immediately. “My mother’s been coughing for nearly two weeks. The cough’s real wet, and sometimes blood and mucus come up. She rests all day but never seems to get her energy back, and Father noticed a few days ago that she's starting to get these little, slimy welts on her back. They look-”
“That's good, thank you,” Jon said, and the man stopped mid sentence. He looked a little dazed as Jon handed him a vial of antibiotics. “The instructions are attached to the vial,” Jon continued, tapping the slip of paper tied around the stopper. “It's vital she take every single one, even after she starts recovering.”
The man scuttled away with hurried thanks, still seeming somewhat befuddled.
“Strange,” Jon muttered to himself with a shrug, “but not my problem.”
He waved the next person up and once again asked, “How bad is it?”
The new person rattled off symptoms for a sentence or two until Jon cut them off by handing them one of the vials Martin had marked for congestion and fever. Like the man before, they dazedly thanked him and rushed back into the mound.
Things continued in this way for a while, until Jon handed a middle-aged woman a vial not more than a moment after she'd started to speak.
“John!” Martin whipped around and scolded. “This is serious! You can't just hand out pills to people on a whim!”
The woman looked between Jon and Martin with wide eyes. She clutched the glass bottle in her hands as they bickered.
“I’m not doing it on a whim, Martin! I'm asking them about what's going on and then distributing the medicine accordingly.”
“This woman got, like, three words out before you slapped the vial in her hands.” Martin’s voice was losing the rough edge of his disguise, lifting into the higher, nasally tone it took on when he was particularly exasperated at Jon. He then beckoned the woman over, gently took the vial from her, and began running through his questions.
“I didn't slap them into her hands,” Jon grumbled to no one.
He put his hands on his hips and glared up at Martin. The one advantage of having shrunk even shorter in his old age was that Jon could watch Martin's face, shaded from the rest of the crowd by his hood, as it grew stormier with each of the woman's answers. After a few more questions, Martin sighed and handed the vial back to her.
“See!” Jon crowed as the next in line stepped up. Martin huffed and, instead of turning back to the next person in his line, crossed his arms over his chest and watched.
The five Hivelanders that followed were each given their vials after little more than a few words describing what ailed their households. Jon waited patiently between each one as Martin then followed what he’d described the night before as his “decision tree” with the five, only to come to the same conclusion every time.
“Fine,” Martin said brusquely as he turned back to his line. Jon took that as approval to continue.
The afternoon progressed, their distribution to the desperate Hivelanders interrupted only twice: once for Martin to request a chair be brought out for Jon, and once more when noon arrived and the lunch hour was called.
“Now isn’t that something,” Jon mused to himself as he watched the Hivelanders neatly break their queue and dissipate back into the mounds for lunch. “Do you suppose they’ll line back up in such an orderly fashion when lunch is over?”
“Yep,” Martin replied through a mouthful of bread and cheese. “Seen it plenty of times when I’ve been here before. Wish I had their level of organization.”
As he often did when candidly answering one of Jon’s questions, Martin’s face pinched in displeasure.
“So do I,” Jon said dryly. “It would certainly make organizing your disaster of a workshop easier.”
Martin spluttered out some sort of protest. He’d removed his hood once the last Hivelander had gone back inside, and Jon could now see Martin’s cheeks as they turned rosy. Between the cloudlike halo of his hair now released from the hood and the pink dusting his round face, Jon would have considered Martin quite fetching had he not a moment later kicked the leg of Jon’s chair. Jon yelped, but then Martin yelped louder, pushing back into the chair he’d been brought and letting out a disgusted, “Yeugh, what was that?”
Jon followed Martin’s repulsed stare at the toe of the boot he’d kicked with. The scuffed brown leather had been darkened by the squelched insides of what had once been a large, silvery worm.
“Yeugh,” Jon agreed.
Martin stood, rubbing the toe of his shoe in the dirt and looking over both chairs for more worms. It was Jon who spotted the next one as it slunk along the back of Martin’s chair. Martin smacked it off of the chair with the journal he’d brought, then stamped on it until they both heard a loud, wet pop. They exchanged revolted looks.
“I think I’ll stand,” Martin said, his face having gone from pink to pale green. Jon nodded and nibbled feebly at a slice of dried apple, stomach turning.
At the end of lunch the Hivelanders returned promptly to their queues and Martin and Jon’s work began again. Hours, vials, and Hivelanders dwindled until only a handful of each remained.
An older man—though still young by Jon’s standards—stepped up. Jon’s eyes were drawn to the man’s bare feet, which were clean enough for him to notice clusters of wet, tender-looking rashes blossoming across the skin. The man’s breath rattled thickly.
“How bad is it? Jon asked, but he already knew. Each time he’d asked before, it was as though his hand had moved of its own accord, reaching into the basket to choose the correct treatment. Yet now neither hand felt compelled to move anywhere other than the pockets of his robes, even as the other man reached out to him.
Jon listened silently to the man describe in painful detail his wife’s endless cough and bloodshot eyes. When the man finally stopped, Jon arranged his face into an expression he hoped came across as sympathetic.
“I’m afraid we don’t have anything with us that will cure you and your wife. I'm sorry.”
The man opened his mouth to speak but instead broke out into a bout of heavy coughs. From above the arm covering his mouth, the man's reddened eyes were wide with terror.
Before Jon could try to offer water or comfort, there was a hard yank on the back of his robe. Martin caught him by the shoulders before he tipped over, then harshly turned Jon to face him. Jon met two icicles honed to daggers in Martin’s sharp, angry gaze.
“What do you think you're doing?” Martin hissed.
His hands were heavy and frigid; Jon wriggled pathetically as he tried to escape the wizard's grasp. Martin released one shoulder to signal to the stunned Hivelander and the others in line to wait, then dragged Jon over to a nearby tree. For the first time Jon felt something like fear towards Martin as he stared him down.
“What could possibly make you think it's appropriate to say something like that to anyone, let alone an old man worried about his wife?” Martin continued, voice still low.
“He deserved the truth,” Jon said, clenching his teeth so they wouldn't chatter. “Why feed him false hope?”
“Because we're not! The medicines work. These people can get better.”
Yet Jon could hear the tinge of doubt-fueled-desperation in Martin's voice and shook his head.
“Not all of them, and you know it.”
Martin’s face twisted into an ugly sneer.
“No, I don't know that, John, because unlike you I'm not a prying, pessimistic know-it-all who refuses to acknowledge that I don't, in fact, know it all.”
Jon’s mouth, which had gone slack as Martin’s words struck him like an unexpected uppercut, snapped shut. He'd heard it all before, of course. This wasn't even the first time he'd heard something like it from Martin, but never with such vitriol.
“W-well,” he started with rising indignation. “At least I’m not a wizard who could be using his abilities to actually help these people instead of playing apothecary or whatever it is you're doing here.”
As if by magic the emotion vanished from Martin’s face. Jon, who had reached out to poke a knobbly finger into Martin's chest, faltered.
“There you go again, thinking you understand everything you see, when in fact, you're completely clueless to what's going on around you.”
Martin’s words were quiet, flat. Upon reflection, Jon should have seen it for the sign it was, but nothing blinded him like an argument where he was certain he was correct.
“I may be clueless,” Jon snapped, “but at least I'm not a coward too afraid to use my own powers.”
Martin’s laugh carried the shatter of thin ice over dark, fathomless water.
“Now I suppose we both know each other’s flaws,” he said.
Before Jon could respond, Martin crossed his arms over his chest and turned his head to stare back at the Central Mounds. It was as if in one gesture Martin had been possessed by a glacier; there was no way to penetrate the smooth, hard surface of Martin’s icy disinterest.
Jon’s anger dashed itself against the immovable wall of Martin’s, but instead of breaching it collapsed into a series of disjointed muttering and huffs. Words failing him, Jon did the only other thing he knew how to in such situations: he ran away.
“Fine,” he managed to spit out as he turned on his heel and hobble-marched back down the road by which they’d arrived. “Fine.”
By now the sun was nearing the horizon, and the road was teeming with workers coming in from the fields and orchards and heading back towards the Central Mounds. Beesong had been replaced by noisy human chatter, making it impossible for him to simmer and brood without being interrupted by the laughter of someone with the audacity to be in a cheerful mood. Jon sped up, sticking to the edge of the road where the human traffic thinned some. Despite his best efforts, Jon still found himself being jostled about by knots of young workers whose raucous yelling and end-of-day roughhousing rendered them insensible to the existence of little old men.
“The absolute disrespect,” Jon muttered darkly after receiving his third chortled apology. “Imagine having no self-discipline.”
Yet he couldn't help the twinge of envy in his bones. Even when he’d had all the youthful energy in the world, had he ever laughed like that? Jon suddenly felt very old and alone indeed.
“Road’s too busy,” Jon said to no one in the crowd. “I think I’ll much prefer the scenic route.” And with that, he turned off the road and began shuffling down one of the long orchard rows.
Jon, insomuch as he’d planned his sudden detour, had planned on reaching a smaller crossroad that he could take to an adjoining aisle of trees, allowing him to loop back to the main road some ways down. Yet the longer he walked, the longer it took for any such crossroad to reveal itself. By the time the sky above had taken on the purpling bruise of dusk, Jon had nearly convinced himself to turn back around. He glanced over his shoulder but saw only the outstretched fingers of dark branches that reached across the path. He was so far from the road by then that all he could hear was the rasping of his feet through the dirt, the soft flutter of winged nighttime hunters, and, suddenly, the hum.
The song came back, nearer and clearer than it had been that morning. Jon looked to either side of the path and then back behind him. Between the dark, the trees, and his own age-fogged eyes, he could see nothing of the source. When he turned back to look ahead of him, there stood a woman.
Despite the dark, and the trees, and his own vision, Jon had no difficulty making out the features of the pale woman standing a short distance away from him. She was dressed in the Hiveland way, her feet bare and clay-coated and her dark red dress worn. But unlike every other Hivelander Jon had encountered, her hands were filthy. Her fingernails were black and cracked, and her thin fingers were caked in dirt and wet-looking scabs. Dress and skin alike were pocked with ragged holes, under which Jon refused to see that something appeared to squirm. Her dark eyes shone with a fevered intensity. And from all around her, the hum swelled to a crescendo.
“There you are,” the woman crooned around the hum. “Our song wasn’t working on that stuffy wizard of yours, but you’re not so far removed from our world, are you?”
The hum pressed in closer and from all directions, as if a very part of the trees and the dirt. The woman in red might have been a wizard or a witch, once, but like the Spiral creature in the door she had at some point become utterly corrupted by her own magic. He peered into the trees, as if he might catch sight of a witch drawn by silken strands or a massive spider poised to threaten and then save him. Besides, it felt better not to look at the strange pulsing of the woman’s shape.
“I’m sorry, do I know you?”
Jon willed his words to come out unafraid, but they trailed off as his eyes did. Whatever wriggled under the woman’s skin resisted Jon’s attempts not to see it. The longer he looked the more certain he was that the woman was filled entirely with worms.
“No, but I’m certain you’re familiar with my work by now.”
The woman smiled, treating Jon to an unfortunate confirmation as he saw something thin and maggoty poke its way through a hole in one of her rotting teeth. He shuddered in revulsion and then in fear as the worm dropped from her mouth with an abnormally loud squelch and began crawling directly towards him. The squish as he took a hasty step back allowed him to turn his gaze from one horrible thing to another: the ground behind him now seethed with white, larval bodies, identical to the ones Jon and Martin had found before on their chairs. The way their dark heads all turned and seemed to glare up at him made it clear that retreat was not a viable escape option.
“I think…” Jon began, swallowing hard, “I think I would remember encountering this many worms before.”
“Of course your stupid, silly little Eyes wouldn’t understand,” the witch scoffed. She flung her arms wide and maggots sailed through the air with the force of the motion. “What is a body but a Host for a Hive?”
Jon glanced down and found that he was surrounded on all sides by worms. Their roiling had stilled; it seemed now as if they were all poised, bulbous and quivering, to launch themselves at him.
“I’m an old man,” he wheezed through the fear clutching at his throat . “I don’t think I’d make for a very… substantial Hive.”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t fill you with worms.” The woman rolled her eyes and, yes, there Jon saw another maggot pushing out from the corner.
“No, you’d be host to my Master’s Hive,” she continued with a leering, squirming smile. She took a step forward and the worms parted around her. “Just a little touch,” she reached out with one putrid claw, “is enough for my Master’s Hive to spread, to feed on you from the inside and grow stronger as you grow weaker.”
Jon took a step back, worms be damned. Another abominable squish. The woman glowered. It gave her the look of a carved pumpkin that had begun to collapse under the weight of its own rot.
“After I kill your wizard, that is. My Master’s Hive would have already spread through the whole of the Central Mounds if not for his silly little healer act.”
“So it was a curse!” Jon crowed as he felt a surge of poorly-timed vindication rush through him.
“My Master’s Hive is a blessing!” the woman screeched. “We should all be so fortunate to carry his Hive in our bodies, to feel the connection between us sing as we give ourselves to its growth, to know as it passes along to those who call themselves our ‘loved ones’ that we have never experienced a love so complete as that of the Hive.”
Some self-preserving part of his mind recognized the extreme danger that he was in—worms seemingly impatient for a signal that they could chew through him like a mealy apple, warped witch eager to infest him with her malady—and shouted at him not to antagonize her. Yet the part of Jon’s mind that typically controlled his mouth contemptuously demanded, “Are you saying you did this all because you were feeling a little lonely?”
This sent the witch into paroxysms at a speed that told Jon his guess had hit true; she shrieked and stumbled forward, limbs twitching, this time crushing worms under her even as the worms began to writhe up his boots. A sharp pain pricked his calf. He attempted to retreat, but the worms had so piled up in their rush to get at him that he tripped over the hill of their bodies and fell back, hitting the ground with a nauseating squelch that rattled up his bones. The worms not caught under his body wasted no time in crawling up his hands. Jon tried to stand up even as he frantically brushed the worms away, only for his shaking knees to collapse under him.
“That’s kind of funny, actually, isn’t it?”
Martin’s flat voice drifted from behind as a frigid fog pooled all around Jon. As the fog touched the worms they slowed, and then stopped, and then curled up. The dying worms flopped off of Jon, hitting the ground with a sound like falling sleet. Jon turned to see Martin walking—no, floating—down the path. Although the wizard’s expression was impassive, Jon still felt Martin’s threat presaged in the wave of opaque mist that rolled before him.
“You!” the witch exclaimed, and Jon whipped back around to face her. “Come for your little old man?”
“Yeah,” Martin replied, stopping when the fog at his feet was a few inches from where Jon still sat on the ground. He glanced down and lifted an eyebrow. Dread shot through Jon’s chest as he saw Martin’s grey eyes had gone as cloudy as his fog. “Couldn’t even keep him out of trouble long enough to get back home.”
Jon made a half-defensive sort of sound, but ultimately couldn’t argue the point.
“You’ll want to get out of the way, John,” Martin continued.
For once Jon listened without question, scrabbling through heaps of dead worms until he was fully off the path and ensconced in the low branches of the apple trees. Martin drifted closer to the witch and now as the worms disappeared in his impenetrable cloud Jon heard their angry, dying squeals. The witch tugged at her matted hair and screwed her face up as if their agony was her own.
“You think you can stop me?” she howled. “You think you can stop us?”
Impossibly more worms appeared in the path, dropping from trees and emerging from the leaf litter. They ignored Jon as they rushed past, charging with such unnatural ferocity that for a moment Jon was certain Martin was in mortal danger. Yet the wizard barely glanced at the onslaught.
“I must have really scared you,” Martin said to the witch. “I bet your Master told you that infecting the Mounds would be easy. So easy that it wasn't even worth him doing it himself.”
The witch tore her hands away and shook her head fiercely. “This was my test to prove that I'm worthy of The Hive, and once I kill you, there will be nothing stopping the spread.”
“A test, huh? What did your Master promise you if you passed?”
The witch’s eyes took on the gleam of someone who thought themself superior for having a secret.
“My very own Star,” she hissed in glee.
The air was so cold that steam puffed from Martin’s nostrils as he snorted in disdain.
“Your Master is a liar,” he said flatly. “He's using you to gain power for himself.”
All around him worms froze and died in ugly cacophony, yet it was Martin's unmoved disinterest that chilled Jon even more.
“No one who has a Star wants to give it away,” Martin continued.
“Nothing to stop us from taking it,” the witch spat.
Martin remained unimpressed. He was staring boredly off into the distance, arms crossed over his chest, as he and his fog pedestal drew up a few feet from the woman. Begrudgingly, Jon felt a sliver of admiration for how the witch held her ground as she glared up at Martin.
“And you've got something of value to offer that Star you're going to ‘take’?” Martin asked.
At the witch’s frown one corner of Martin’s lips ticked upward. There was no humor in it.
“Master didn't tell you about that, did he?” he hummed. “Hard to believe he'd trust you with a Star when he won't even trust you enough to share the most basic information.”
“The Worker doesn't need to understand everything in order to serve the Hive,” the witch started. A shiver passed through her body. Jon noticed tendrils of mist reaching out from Martin's feet to probe and curl around her legs and arms. He also noticed that the remaining worms had given up their dogged pursuit of Martin and were inching back into the brush, retreating from the frigid mist.
“But The Worker does have to do their job and do it well. And you're not doing your job very well right now, are you?” the wizard mused. “The infected in the Central Mounds are getting better. The spread is starting to slow. And you're out here, all alone, destroying yourself just to scare one little old man.”
From behind the witch's head the fog rose up like a wave on the brink of cresting. Now not only the worms on the path were trying to make their escape, but the ones inside the witch’s body. They wriggled sluggishly out of her mouth and the rips in her flesh. Most fell to the ground frozen and dead, but some managed to make it to the trees.
“I'm not alone!” the witch cried. She slashed at the fog but her movements were weak and jerky.
Jon couldn’t see Martin's face from where he hid between the trees, but he could see the way Martin's shoulders slumped.
“We’re all alone,” Martin murmured.
The wave of fog crashed over the witch, drowning her in its frigid damp.
“I am not alone!” she screamed, “I am part of the Hive!”
Jon could barely see her through the mist. All around him came the hissing whine of worms as, even in their attempt to escape, they died.
“You failed your Hive,” Martin said coldly, “and they've abandoned you for it. But it's too late for them and it's too late for you. You're all alone.”
Only the faintest silhouette as she collapsed could be seen in the fog. Her screams faded to sobs, then whispers, then nothing. Martin turned away. He took a step down from the magical platform and the cloud rushed hungrily to join those twisting and curling where the woman had stood.
Despite the leaf litter and dead worms strewn across the path, Martin moved silently, a pale and incorporeal shade. Jon could in fact see the hazy glow of moonlight permeating Martin’s head. He was struck by the notion that if he were to reach out and try to take Martin's hand, his own would slide right through.
“Martin…” Jon managed through chattering teeth.
The wizard blinked and, now reminded of Jon's presence, made his way noiselessly over to where Jon was still tucked between two apple trees. Martin made no attempt to help Jon as he struggled into a standing position, shedding dead worms on the way up.
“All right, John?” Martin asked in the voice of a man who wouldn't truly care what the answer was either way.
“I-is she gone?”
As curious as he was to see what the fog would do to the rotted witch, he was struck with the odd feeling that if he looked away from Martin for too long, the other man might disappear. With great effort he tore his eyes away from the fog.
“She's gone somewhere,” Martin replied with a one-shoulder shrug. “Nowhere she'll be missed.”
“Well, either way… thank you. For saving my life even after…” Jon bit the inside of his cheek as he reflected on what he'd said to Martin at the mounds. “After everything I said. You were right… I really didn't know it all.”
Martin’s clouded eyes stared off into a nowhere space between Jon and the witch-eating fog and hummed in uncaring assent.
“You're not a Wizard of the Spiral at all,” Jon croaked.
“Nope.”
“You're a Wizard of the Lonely.”
Martin hummed again, this time in distracted agreement. He and his thoughts seemed miles away, a distance Jon was at a loss for how to bridge.
“That's the long and short of it. Now come on, Tim’ll be getting cold.”
And with that Martin turned and began down the aisle, back towards the main road. In no rush to be left alone with the fog and the dying worms, Jon scampered to catch up. He glanced over his shoulder once and saw that the mist shrouding the witch was beginning to dissipate. The only remaining trace was a small pile of twitching worms.