Our approach to the shack at the back of the vineyards was steady and clear. We weren’t trying to sneak up on her after Last of Autumn’s warning that she was aware of our presence via supernatural means. Supernatural means was starting to get factored into a lot of decision-making trees. The Rangers were quick to adapt so they might overcome.

Captain Knife Hand’s security team lead the way with a patrol wedge. Last of Autumn and PFC Kennedy were following, with me along for the ride in case the witch spoke any currently dead languages that weren’t so dead after all.

So far, my pre-enlistment intention to not be at the tip of every spear was proving to be a false hope. But every soldier will tell you their recruiter lied about something. Usually it’s Hawaii as your first-pick duty station. Everyone falls for that one.

Meanwhile ground strikes of the closing giant thundered and rumbled in the distance like an unrelenting countdown timer that was imminently more real than any end-of-the-world movie prop had ever aspired to be.

We needed to get a move on real fast.

As we approached, it became clear that the shack, a sprawling affair with what from the outside could well have been one lone two-story room covering the spread of the place, was… oddly constructed. Angles didn’t make sense. Visually speaking. Except when you concentrated on them, then they kinda did even though the image of them left a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach. The roof above the perilously leaning second story was definitely witch-flavored. Sloped like a witch’s hat and badly constructed and even more poorly maintained. A lone off-kilter cross-hatched window leered down at us from up there. Within that strange room the greasy light of an unseen candle burned alone.

We got a better look at her now. Just a small shadowy figure, gently drifting back and forth in a rocking chair deep within the shadows of the dark porch. The roof there sagged and bent, looking like it would collapse down on her given the slightest breath from the breeze coming up through the dead vineyards. Later I’d wonder if the shack was trying to protect her.

And that was when I was sent out to parley. The security team stopped,

weapons ready and facing outward into the dead vineyard. The lone ember of the witch’s cigar burning off and on inside the shadows of the porch as she drew and released smoke ghosts in the night.

This whole thing felt sweaty and wrong.

The Rangers had better optics and were most likely running the last juice out of their night-vision peepers. Me, if I was going to attempt to communicate with an unfriendly indig then I figured it was best not to sport the alien-looking NVG optics. I could have used the Moon Vision right about then, but as I said that particular trick Last of Autumn had downloaded on us wasn’t working so well here. Just like, though I only realized it now, just like it had faded down in the gloomy cavern below the ruined temple. Near…

… that thing in the fissure that had pulled the centaurs and the goat men into its endless oblivion embrace. Luring them with some distant song I’d barely been able to hear in my mind. And never wanted to hear again.

The demon, Last of Autumn had called it. Don’t think about it, Talker.

“See what she speaks, PFC,” ordered Captain Knife Hand in the wind and the dark of the front yard between the shack and the rasping vineyards being pushed along in hushed broom strokes by the strengthening breeze coming up.

The wind was picking up now.

Weeeeee.

I crossed the hard-packed dirt of the yard and got as close as I dared to the overhang of the shadowy porch. I peered within the gloom, trying to get a better look at her.

Did I mention the giant was getting closer? The strikes were going off down in the valley below with constant regularity.

“Hurry,” muttered one of the Rangers angrily as I passed beyond their defensive formation to go out alone and talk to a witch.

I’d been thinking about what to try first on her of the eight languages I knew well. Which language might get us talking? Quickly. Time was obviously of the essence and if I didn’t stick the landing pretty fast we were gonna waste valuable get-out-of-Dodge time to avoid getting stomped flat by the impossibly huge giant coming down the valley and giving the impression more and more by the second that he was indeed coming

straight for us.

So, I’d been thinking…

When Old Man showed up. Or just Sims as he’d been known before some strange old lady effectively cursed him to become suddenly old in the middle of a fight. I thought back to his encounter during the second night of the battle on the island. When the witch had appeared at the forward fighting position and turned him into Old Man. She’d used Spanish. A very specific dialect. So I’d start there. Maybe all witches were part of some group, like a union or guild or professional networking association, and they spoke the same language?

And wouldn’t you know it? I got a hit right off the bat. Spanish worked.

“Excuse me,” I began. “But we need to pass through your land and we were told we needed to get permission. From you. Doña.” That was basically the gist of my opening volley. To the point and polite. I thought about calling her señorita. Sometimes older women in Spanish like it when you flirt a little. But she was a witch and all, so, I could see anything I did going horribly wrong and ending up with me getting turned into a toad, or this world’s toad equivalent.

I could also see the command sergeant major being disappointed with me and making me the new PFC Kennedy. Digging latrine trenches with tiny toad arms would be hard. And embarrassing. But I’m vain that way. So best to be cautiously respectful and see where that got all of us.

I started with my opening line and was rewarded for a few seconds with nothing more than the lonely creak of her rocking chair shifting back and forth against the warped boards of the rotting porch. She just rocked there, the lone cigar dancing in the dark, as she listened to the hovering silence between us.

If Central Casting needed a witch, they should get this woman’s number. She had the act down pat. So far.

But she didn’t keep me waiting for long. Maybe she was concerned about the impending giant too, on some base level.

“That big boy gonna be here soon, soldier from the other side o’ time,” she began in a very colloquial Spanish dialect. Her voice both croaky and whiny.

So that was… news. She was at least aware, if not concerned, about the

impending giant. But, full stop. In her hillbilly Spanish, as I’ve tried to transcribe and flavor for this written record no one will probably ever read, what was with the soldier from the other side o’ time stuff?

There was something to dig into there. Later of course. There wasn’t time now. Not with Cloodmoor of the No Doubt Massive Feet due on stage for his grand entrance. I told the captain we had a conversation going, thinking he was still behind the security team in the center of the wedge. He wasn’t. He was right behind me. No visible weapon. Or at least no weapon if you didn’t count the knife hand. Both hands were probably knife hands. So, two knife hands counting for two weapons. But he was right there. Almost as silent as Last of Autumn, he’d come forward with me to support the parley.

Which, now that she’d spoken to me in the creepy grandma witch hillbilly Spanish, felt good. Having him there. I swear, the air had actually gotten chillier as she began to speak. Her voice was a rusty old croak. Like a hinge that needed an entire can of WD-4O to get the squeak out of. A child talking in an imaginary friend voice that wasn’t cute. Or a clown you just wanted to punch in the face for reasons you couldn’t quite articulate. The witch’s voice was all those things, and old and papery too.

Captain Knife Hand nodded to me message received, continuing to watch her like some tiger in the dark. I like the occasional poem and it was at that moment I remembered a line from an old one I’d read once.

Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye,

Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

That was by Blake. And I would think of it every time I saw the captain after that night with the old witch. It was then, right there, in front of her falling-down shack, that I realized he was more than just a soldier. Leader of one the deadliest fighting forces in the world. The Rangers. He was an animal. A wild animal. And you took your life in your hands if you met him in the dark night.

I don’t pity the witch.

But she had no idea what she was dealing with. Or she didn’t

understand what her foreknowledge of us being soldiers from the other side of time actually meant. But even if she did… she had no idea how far the captain was willing to go to see his men through. I don’t think anyone did. But her…

She. Had. No. Idea. Who. She. Was. Dealing. With. Period.

“Elf girl say she can lead ya through my patch no questions asked and all,” crooned the old woman. “No prizes. No pretties for Sarita. No homage to a wielder o’ my incredible powers.”

That’s how the witch began. Whining about petty grievances and intimating threats of doom released. Indicating we’d gotten off on the wrong foot from the first step with someone of her apparently respected stature. To me it just seemed like negotiation. Like some local yokel who’s got you right where he wants you because he’s the only guy in Possum Trot Falls who sells tires in the nowhere town you just happened to get a flat in.

That’s all.

But she continued on with her list of slights and veiled threats.

“She and her kind… purty little elf girl… they know my price well enough. Ah got three. Three you can choose if ya ken, soldiers from t’other side o’ time.”

She paused to take a long draw on the stub of her smelly cigar. It glowed hellishly in the gloom under the hanging porch. Illuminating some of her crooked and haggard features by its brimstone coal.

“And you… will ye choose? Or…” She pointed the glowing end of the cigar at each of us. “Or ye want ta pass on none ’t’all and tell yer women ye lived and didn’t cross ol’ Sarita.”

I translated back to the captain.

A long moment of silence passed as he stood there, motionless in the dark, parsing what she’d offered. Then he simply muttered, “Ask her what she wants, PFC.”

At that moment I was pretty sure that whatever she named, sacrifice a goat, clean the Augean stables, whatever, Captain Knife Hand was gonna do it just to get us past this. And if, as of this reading, you’re wondering why we sat there and dealt with the old witch instead of just lighting up her homestead and moving on… well, two reasons.

Reason One was we were low on ammo and heading into the unknown.

Pretty sure we’d be forced to fight again at some point. There would be no parley if we got surrounded on open ground by the hunting forces trying to cut us off ahead on the other side of the windswept ridge we were trying to cross. So if we had a chance, an opportunity to talk our way through something, then it was probably at least a good idea to try. Save some rounds at the minimum.

Reason Number Two was a little bit harder to articulate at the time. But now, on the other side of what was about to happen, I understand it better. So I can at least give it a try. There was something dangerous about the old woman. Either it was the way Last of Autumn had treated her with an almost dangerous respect, or just the whole scene there in the lopsided shack among the dead vineyards going on close to the witching hour of three a.m. Oh three hundred. Between midnight and dawn. Halfway between Heaven and Hell. The feeling of loose power live and in the gloom… it was there and you could almost reach out and touch it. We all sensed it. Sensed this was something to measure twice because you’d only get one cut to try and get to the other side where you might get to go on living for a few more hours until you had to burn the last of your ammo on orcs or werewolves in some dead end.

It’s just… some of us were planning a different response, a different cut altogether, than what the captain was capable of in order to save his men. Us. Me. I was still in talk it out mode.

But there are some people, things, that can’t be reasoned with. She knew she had us in a tight spot.

“Ask her what she wants,” growled the captain in the dark, eyes shining like two pieces of coal on blue fire. Like a tiger out in the night and hunting. Like he was in a trance. Calm and meditative. Before the storm. The kind prizefighters go into before a big bout. Stone Cold Killer serenity.

I did as I was told and asked the witch what she wanted. “Ah got three… Talker.”

Talker. She knows my name. My nickname.

That’s completely crazy. But I soldier on ’cause I’m pro that way. “Three’s what I always got and none of them are easy,” she continues.

Ol’ Sarita, she called herself. “But all are true. You and yours do one and you can walk on by no harm come to ye and yours. Never mind now big boy a-comin’. Ah ’spect ah’ll be dealin’ with him directly in time ’fore

long.”

She mumbled and laughed to herself when I told her to go ahead and tell us what our options were.

“Well…” she said after a long draw on the stubby foul cigar. “Ah’ll take the services of yo’ best killah for a year. He’ll be slave to me and ah’ll send him into the east to deliver a message to the Witch Queens o’ Caspia. But really, know this, soldier ’fore the ruin, I’m a-sendin’ him to kill one o’ them beauties for an old wrong done ta me. Sheeah the Silent, she must die I say true. He may not return, the one ya give for the quest, but if he do… he’ll have no mem’ry o’ the time he spent under my sway. And ta end a year ah’ll return him to ye and you’ll be free o’ ta debt an passage cross’t my ol’ vineyard. The old hut won’t never hurt your trespass none.”

Okay, I thought to myself. There’s a lot to unpack there. But I got to translating and tried to block out the fact that the giant out across the valley was indeed getting closer. Dead leaves in the twisted vines dropped in clusters now with each thunderous ground strike.

And also the part about the hut won’t never hurt. That struck me as odd.

And it bothered me. But I didn’t say anything.

“Okay. I’ve told my captain,” I told her. “What’s our next choice?”

She coughed a wet phlegmy glop and spat off into the darkness, inhaling once again from her ghastly-smelling cigar when she’d finished clearing the ragged trench that was her throat.

“Out back and down ta pool is a ol’ pond. Tell you somethin’ true… It’s deep, Talker. Deeper than anyone ever know. Way down ta the roots there’s an underground cavern down there, and a race that ain’t never been a-discovered. Got themselves a king right-like. Around his neck he wears ta old black pearl that was lost to me long year’n ago. More powerful than that ring you got hidden where no one can see, Soldier Boy. It’s a Pearl of Annihilation from the Ol’ Ones o’ Tarragon-y all gone now. You and your men swim down inta there and wipe ’em all out and bring me back ta black pearl… why then you can pass and keep all ta gold that’s down there and ye and your’n manage ta find. The old elves used t’ come here a-long ’fore the hut made its home here. Before the time o’ Elmyra who was my mother inta the Darkest Arts which is my fearful powers. She rode the hut then. But ’fore all that, that old deep dark pond was a lucky place to the firsts. Elves o’ Tarragon came here ta make their wishy-wishes and some went down ta

there and found they an ol’ cavern and stayed like hermits going blind. Become a new race that breathes waters like the Kro-Ma-Taugh frog-mans o’ ta southern waste swamps. They worship a dark and angry god they-uns do, you be sure. Won’t be easy, even for ye and your’n killahs… Talker. But ye make the slaughter down there in the lightless depths and ye can pass on. Hut will have it so.”

I translated.

Again I noticed her speaking of the hut as a kind of living thing that had some say in this transaction. There was something about that that tickled a memory of a myth I’d heard once back in my scholarly other life. But the giant’s steps, louder by the second, were distracting me from total recall of all the useless knowledge I’d ever accumulated.

I finished her insane offer for us to swim down into a dark pool and kill our way through some aquatic race with home ground advantage. So far, sending Sergeant Thor off to be a zombie killer of some sort sounded like the most rational of options. And even that sounded seriously crazy.

I doubted Captain Knife Hand would go…

The captain keyed his radio mic and spoke. “Sergeant Major. Get moving down the road and to the other side of the ridge. We don’t make it out of this… keep moving. Get the wounded clear now. We’ll link on Rally Three. Warlord out.”

The witch cooed like a pigeon at this in the silence that followed. “Ahhhh… well well well… ah see yo cap’n’s made his choice then…

Talker. Foolish o’ him ta want t’ fight it out with the likes o’ me. But my vines hath needed a good drink o’ fresh warm blood for some time ere the ages o’ Sut… and they’ll have it tonight I ’spect.”

All around us the sound of dry crackles and sharp snaps began to rise and echo out of the dead vineyard. Vines, the horns of planted demons, twisted and moved forward, reaching out for us, slithering in, sealing us off from the trail that led back to the main road that would take us over the ridge.

The witch was cackling. Of course.

The captain shouted from the yard like he was directing fire on an enemy heavy machine gun nest. “Talker, tell her we pass, or she dies in the next thirty seconds.”

Captain Knife Hand wasn’t interested in playing any of her occult

games.

But the witch was right back like this was some poker game, calling the captain’s bluff from the darkness of the porch with her ancient-screen-door whine.

She cackled with delight and pointed a crooked finger at one of the Rangers. A green ray shot forth and knocked that Ranger to the ground.

“Ah’ll turn ya all into creatures o’ the darkest darkness and ye’ll serve me well before I send ya off to the Black Prince…” she screamed with delight.

Then the captain popped the safety pin on the M14 thermite grenade he’d brought and concealed, stepped forward, and tossed it right through the open door of the ancient shack. Her… hut. Thermite kind of explodes, but not really. What it does do, is burn real hot for a long time. An old wooden shack like that was going to go up in seconds.

The witch screamed suddenly like a stuck pig and a banshee. She was out of her rocking chair and running for the black void of the door that led back into the hut. Where the captain had tossed the thermite.

At the same time the captain pulled his sidearm gunfighter fast and started putting rounds into her as she ran. She never reached the void door and instead collapsed in a pile of old gray rags near the threshold and on the warped boards of the porch, moaning softly as the flames began to rise within the… twisting hut?

Inside the shack, the flames from the intense and unrelenting fire of the detonated thermite grenade spread quickly. Greedily licking up the wooden slats and catching old curtains with strange symbols sewn into them. As the entire place began to heave and convulse.

She was moaning on the porch. Over and over saying the same words. “Ma’ hut. Ma’ poor hut. Ma’ beautiful hut.”

We pulled back, the Rangers hacking at the flanking vines as PFC Kennedy invoked the dragon staff and blasted a flaming path through the main tendrils and clusters leading back to the road through the vineyards. By the time we’d cut our way back to the teams hauling the wounded element along the road over the ridge and down the other side, the hut was fully engulfed in leaping flames.

And it was twisting. Writhing. Writhing like it was in agony from the flames consuming it. Writhing in pain I believe are the right words. The hut

was. An inanimate object… suffering.

File that under things you thought you’d never see. A building tormented like a living thing on fire and engulfed in spreading flames.

We were over the ridge and we could hear the witch screaming from back there in the burning ruins. Her shrieks and moans floating over the smoldering vineyards. Inside my head I could hear her whispering in that cold cruel croak she’d spoken to me with. “Ye have no idea what yer man just burnt up, Talker. There were worlds in there. Worlds inside ma’ hut.”

And then, heading down through the dark trees on the other side of the ridge, getting ahead of the walking giant and finding the beginning of the stream that would take us down to the edge of Charwood Forest, her voice stopped and all I heard was the echo of it fading across the last of the night.

“You’ve no idea. Talker. There were other worlds in there.”

Worlds inside the hut.