She regains consciousness on a bed of coals. She scrambles in the sand like a mad thing, that damned jade…

the jade is gone.

The distinct shadow of a mound falls over the cave. It scuttles like a crab, a dark eclipse. The obscene sound of curdled screams fills the air, a loud CRACK, followed by the crunching of bone. Ligaments are twisted in a snarling mouth. Before long, Alysia watching as if in a cruel, horrible nightmare, the contours of this foul creature come into the light.

Alysia is faced with the ugliest hag she has ever seen, its black eyes sparkling in glee and so hideously demonic it could have cracked a thousand mirrors in an instant. It isn’t for a moment until she gets her bearings and makes out a fenced enclosure and through the gaps, the fearful eyes of children; bloodshot, shivering and cowering in defeat. She was in a lair.

Then…if they were not animal bones….? Alysia covers the remaining distance of the cave in a matter of seconds, her stomach twisting - it takes everything she has to stop her meal from ending up on the floor. She presses against the toasted rock, the sizzling, stinging pain, anything to distract her from the hag tearing the head from a child and crunching down on its bloodied skull like a wild beast.

Alysia scans the cave for an exit, for a weapon, anything to defend herself from this vicious monster that devours small humans. She had heard stories of mountain witches, those who built huts in forests, or disguised themselves as beautiful women all the better to fool you. They cooked children in their ovens or pots, and picked their teeth with their bones. Never in her wildest dreams did she believe these fairy tales were true.

The cave yields no opening, no hole of filtered light, nothing but a large black gap in the corner of the cave, a small stream of water trickling down the rock face, presumably where the witch gathered drinking water.

The hag moves slowly, shuffling across the sands towards a huge brass pot. “Oh, my pretty thing, what tasty morsel you’ll be, once I devour the flesh from your bones…” It crouches, fingers splayed out to gather in the pale blue flames, making an obscene sucking sound, its tongue grazing the bits of meat trapped between those sharp teeth.

Alysia squints through the rising heat of the barren crater, yet there is nothing else she can pick out beyond the rocks. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. The ear is the best part. Lovely bit of cartilage.”

If it wasn’t Alysia’s overwhelming knack for survival, she would have fainted on the spot. “Is this the underworld?” she stammers. She could be cunning. She who escaped from the tower with nothing but a vow and a courage spirit born.

“You’re in the land below, there are no rules here my child. Come closer to the light, I wish to see you.” The land below the castle, through the clouds, is this a trick of the mind? Nothing but a dream within a dream. So, she had not escaped, neither had she died. And there, in that cave, fallen in the cracks and the spaces between things, Alysia knows what she must do. Finding the jade is her purpose, reclaiming a life that is hers and with it, to find the answers to questions she has been yearning for.

“Suppose I made you a deal? There must be something you want. Something from the earth.” Alysia watches the long tongue flicker, scanning the surface of jagged molars, thinking. “I know of many villages in the real world” she continues, “…that have the most stupendous, delicious children. Far more than you could ever find here in years’ worth of looking!”

“You lie to save your skin.”

“I would never!”

The hag cannot help salivating. Such a repulsive creature. Alysia almost feels sorry for it. Almost.

“Tell me more. I have need of a courier between worlds, to slither through the gaps and steal the stinking twerps from their beds. The winter nights are awfully cold for my old bones…an abundant source of flesh…” it lapses into a silence that feels to Alysia like an eternity. “Well I will need leverage…”

“What?”

“I will need a piece of flesh if we are to strike this bargain. There’s no use gaping like a suffocating fish. You wish to wake from this land, then you had better heed my warning. Bring me the children and return duly.”

Alysia needn’t have bothered. The way to the dark uninviting gap is blocked by the hideous creature. “If slow death is what you really want my dear, I can easily oblige. Just an ear…” grins the hag, stepping closer with her cleaver. “Just a tasty bit of cartilage…a deal is a deal.”

And perhaps it is her years of experience catching fast moving limbs, or merely its hunger and the delicious thought of all those specimens down below on earth, but it launches forward and snatches Alysia around the waist, tossing her up in the air.

The poor girl kicks and screams to no avail. Alysia is pinned down to a wooden slab before she can process what is going on. With one movement like the swish of a thousand lights flashing, the blade of the cleaver comes down.

It is a moment before Alysia feels the all keening stab of pain, the adrenaline racing through her body as she clutches the bleeding stump of where her left ear had been. Not until she staggers to the hole, hearing the PLOP! as the ear falls, sizzling into the depths of the creature’s stew pot. Alysia teeters to the edge of the gap, her mouth a great big ‘o’, and falls, down, down into the hollow.

The perverse sound of laughter trails in her wake, as gradually, she is swallowed by night.