Old Aunt Toothache, Old Aunt Toothache,Can you hear our song?Now that we are wise and sweet,And our mouths are fresh and clean,Like the purest peach,We want you to teach;That is our treat!
We know that if we misbehave,And eat more sweets than we should have,Even those we cannot reach,Will make you very sad.
You would turn us into rats,To wear as your shoes, and cry:‘Children, you have been very bad,My pantry is empty, full of bats:Dust is all I can descry!
Here is your reward: a toothache—And if your shaking teeth are about to fall—They will be in my pantry for your wrong:Followed by your tongue!’
-Old Children’s song.
Night had spread her damp and misty mantle in her reverie. No owls hooted. No stars shone. No winds howled. The trees were silent. The grass was still with its budding flowers. A faint drizzle nursed the earth. Then the dream broke: boots stepping in mud, the din of arms against mail, shield and hauberk, with the slow heavy noise of wood pressed against stone. A cart.
It was pulled by an old mule—wet, muddy, and tired—and loaded with foul-smelling wheat: rotten. Abed on it was a dying boy, nursed by a lady: fair and cold. Ethereal. Her clothes were wet, muddy, rent and tattered. Once the finest finery, now barely a thread. The knights around them fared no better: barely a score: haggard, half-starved, with dented swords, broken shields and ragged surcoats where once their proud crest—a moustachio—had stood.
The luckiest kept their footwear, the rest walked on foot. Then they saw it from afar: a wooden hut. It was circular and round—a perfect sphere in shape with strands of what once was a thatched roof—now hesitating to fall. Fixed to its wall was a pen: with fat pigs and chickens as big as horses. The windows were holes without rhyme or reason. Bizarrely set: up, down, in the middle and the roof—big and small, wide and thin—shapeless and shapeful.
A warm light peeked out of them, but nothing could be discerned of the inside. The door was the head of a giant bear, as fresh as if it were alive, with its eyes and mouth closed.
‘Open up, you old witch!’ shouted the leader of the company when they were within reach.
‘Old witch!’ a crackled old voice replied angrily from the inside.
The mouth opened and a fuming old woman stood in the threshold. As fierce as the bear.
‘I thought I taught you better than that, Lancelot.’ Said the old woman with her crackling voice. ‘Don’t try to hide, my sight may be poor but I can still recognise you, Gwayn. You should be ashamed of yourself! Hiding from a fragile old lady. Helin, Meliun, Marhaus, Ladinas; you are here too, and all grown up. It’s good to see you. Let’s hope your manners are better than Lancelot’s.’
‘Ser Lancelot,’ corrected the knight, unmoved.
‘Stop your nonsense with meaningless titles. Look how well they have served you! You are living even worse than you did before. Ah, but you have brought me some presents, I see. How considerate. A dying boy and a foreign girl. No children this time?’ said the old witch disappointed, rushing back inside the house as fast as she had left it—interest lost. ‘What are you waiting for, for an invitation? Bring them in! Take the boy to the fourth floor, Silvereyes will mend him as best he can.
‘The rest of you can wait in the living room. I will heat water in the kittle to ready some herbal infusions. Supper is on the table. Fire in the hearth. Lancelot, I will bake your favourite cookies in the oven we need to talk.’
Merry laughter ensued, as it may often happen for no particular reason. A familiar voice. A good day. Or simply happy chance. The tired knights were refreshed by it, reinvigorated. The damp drizzle bothering them no more. They welcomed it as a refreshment where before it had weighed on them as a burden.
The beasts woke. The wolves howled and the river sang. The grass stirred and the flowers bloomed. Night peered curiously with her pale round face, an argent bath upon the earth. The old witch was Old Aunt Toothache, but nobody called her that. She was old, older than the eldest tree in Sweet Woods, children sang.
On her head she had a mill where all sorts of minuscule birds were pleasantly perched. Her feet where inside two giant rats, pretty much alive: Left and Right she called them, in case her memory failed. A white lion’s pelt was the only shelter of her wrinkled old body. And her hair was long, bushy, and dirty.
The lushness inside her house betrayed natural perceptions of the outside. The hall was as long as if a man, from the tallest of mountains, beheld the world in its entirety. Brooms swept the floors. Dishes were neatly cleaned. Animals freely roamed about without causing concern or trouble. Yes, she had every thing an old lonely lady may require and more.
Above, floor after floor after floor as different as the stars climbed to an endless ceiling—linked by stairs, as different as them—and as strange. There were houses there: palaces of marvel, realms yet unknown, undiscovered mysteries… and doors. Common folk whispered. Never trust a door in Old Aunt Toothache’s house. ‘You don’t know where they may lead you,’ she often warned. If this was true, no one knew. No one had been past the fourth floor. Nor had the ceiling ever been seen, this it shared with Old Aunt Toothache’s teeth.
Now the old witch was comfortably sitting by a merry fire, sipping her tea. Sitting in front of her—split by a table with a tray of cookies—was Lancelot. Despite the merry fire—the comfort and warmth of soft cushions, mattresses and a hot supper—the house was unusually cold. Their breaths a barely noticeable mist. Thickening.
The foreign girl was close by, alone in a corner and silent. She had not eaten, nor drunk anything she had offered her, but politely refused it. She had been as polite before crossing the house’s threshold—graceful, exquisite, well-mannered, reserved—and cold. She was pleased with her. She had been well-raised. She had no criticisms.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Old Aunt Toothache turned her attention away from the girl to focus on Lancelot. The fire crackled. A charred log fell.
‘What is it this time?’
‘We need shelter.’
‘That’s plain enough to see,’ said Old Aunt Toothache. Her temper rising. ‘Now tell me what happened to you, or you won’t have your cookies! You look like beggars and outlaws. You are lucky you know this place. It can’t be found.’
And Lancelot told his tale.
‘Two fortnights past we were summoned by Lord Eyebrowbrush to his keep. He had a labour for us, he told us. To escort a wayn, loaded with no stores, safely to port. We were ordered not to inquire about its contents, and in no case to behold what was inside—under no circumstance, no matter what came to pass. If aught else was required we only had ourselves to rely on. So we oathed.
‘He also added another condition. “The wayn must cross every town, city and village you come across. Do not fret, you shall be well rewarded.” Knowing Lord Eyebrowbrush’s extravagances we asked no farther questions and did as bid. We passed across every town, city, and village, as accorded. The first days we were happily greeted and welcomed thanks to Lord Eyebrowbrush’s passage; in others there was only unrest. But no hurt sullied the cart we oathed to protect.
‘By the third, events turned awry. A lesser bannermen requested to inspect its contents, in case we were in liege with Lys: turncoats and traitors. The bannerman was Ser Willfull Touch, member of House Peel, under the servitude of House Banana. An impatient, short-tempered man. Deep in years.
‘We were outnumbered, barely a score against a host. Peaceful dialogue led us nowhere. Lord Eyebrowbrush's passage was ignored. We declined. There was bloodshed. We lost. I did as requested, as obliged, and unwillingly drew aside the curtains to reveal its contents. We were as astonished as Ser Willfull Touch’s men were pleased by its contents; her ladyship of Yi Tai and the Kingslayer, with sufficient supplies to take care of the dying stripling’s health for a few sennights.
‘We were torn. Who had not heard the rumours? Their protection would make us knaves. Their death would make us slayers. The die was cast. In a last desperate attempt we fought and managed to flee. The stores were lost. The wayn a wreck, and a mule slayed. Scores of good men perished. Thenceforth we were treated as knaves: hunting, surviving best we could. But our purpose was clear and our knighthood oath unbroken: to protect the White Lady, the stripling, and their safe reyse to port.’
‘That foolish girl, meddling with Moustachio,’ reprimanded Old Aunt Toothache. The room temperature slowly rose as they spoke. Lancelot ate a cookie, tired and wary of the talk. And of everything else.
‘We are to see her ladyship and the stripling past—’
‘And then what?’ cut Old Aunt Toothache harshly. ‘You get out of this house. Leave. Cross the country, however well you can, and reach the outskirts to the Land of The Three Lords. How will you cross them? How will you keep, not just your half-starved men alive, but yourself and that foolish girl?
‘How will you feed them? Tend to their health? Where will you find safe refuge, and not some damp muddy forest in the middle of nowhere? How do you plan to sail across the Green Sea? Minor and mayor lordlings stir uneasily in their castles and their keeps, their bannermen rising in arms to hunt for this boy. Hunting parties have been sent. Sellswords in every inn. Villages swarmed with thugs and brutes for a lordship they promised. Even common folk can sense something is wrong.
‘Nobody knows who that boy is, and nobody cares. These old bones can tell as much. But nobody wants a war with Lys.’
‘We have safe passage—’
‘If Moustachio had truly wanted her out of the country he would have done so himself and arranged for their parting: safe and unnoticed.’ Cut Old Aunt Toothache. ‘He doesn’t lack the influence to do so, not for them to travel safely across Bruttania, the Green Sea, and if he wanted to: Lys. You know that. Instead he gives her a broken cart, an old tired mule about to die, and the boy of the rumours. Barely alive! Nothing better to call attention to yourselves and have you trapped here.
‘He wants that girl. That much is clear. She must have offended him somehow. I can only pray her fate is kinder than the others. He always had that wit and charm around him, even when you two were but boys. You didn’t. You were too naïve, too impulsive, too rash, too thoughtless and quick to trust. It hasn’t served you well. And the boy still remains in the man.
‘But you have a good heart, and that must amount to something, even if this world rarely recognises it. But a bear is still a bear, no matter how many sers you add before his name.’
The conversation was done. Old Aunt Toothache rose with difficulty to check on the boy. Lancelot remained deep in thought, the cookies untouched.
Wearily she climbed the steps. One after another, after another. The Night was still and pleasant. Faint laughter and carousal rose from downstairs. It would be a good night, she thought.
Then she heard it.
Kill them all. The voice came from nowhere and everywhere: unsubstantial, voiceless, cold. Old Aunt Toothache was as still as a statue. Heart in her throat. A dewy tear of horror fell down her temple. A dismayed expression on her face. Laughter and carousal continued downstairs, undisturbed. They had not sensed it.
Kill them all, it repeated. But this time something was off. It had an echo. It had substance. Careful step after careful step, stealthy as a cat Old Aunt Toothache followed the reverberating echoes. They led her to a tall chimney, closed by a lid of iron, and when she opened it a shadow leapt out of it. She nearly died of fright!
‘Silvereyes, was it you?’ said Old Aunt Toothache, half annoyed and half relieved.
‘Was it me, what?’ purred the black cat with his deep husky voice.
‘The voices, what else?’ said Old Aunt Toothache, her temper rising.
‘What voices?’ said the old cat feigning confusion. And before Old Aunt Toothache could ask any more questions to the old cat, he vanished with a pop!
Wearily she returned to her task. Her mind ill at ease, disturbed. Until she reached the room. When she opened its door, a gust of icy cold welcomed her, pushing away any trouble or worry from her mind. Freezing her in place. The room was colder still. Her breath turned to a dense fog before her eyes. Her limbs trembled. A thin film of rime dyed her hair, an ice coat her limbs. Her face was tight, cold and red, unfeeling
The walls were crying. The wooden floor treacherous and slippery. And the hearth was dead. Its only light was the glossy sheen from the walls: bright and sad.
The girl. It was that girl! She didn’t like her one bit. She frightened her. The girl was kneeling before the bed in her pulchre white clothes; silent, cold, still as a statue. That’s where her whole attention was.
‘Get out!’ yelled Old Aunt Toothache. But the girl remained as still, cold, and silent as before. Another piece of ice. ‘Now I won’t be even listened to in my own house.’
Laboriously she crept to the dying boy and put her hand on his forehead. If the journey hadn’t killed him the cold would certainly have. To her surprise his temperature was stable. But black dreams were his only company. Groanings, turning, coated in sweat and blood. The arm had been treated. It had a dreadful appearance and smelled badly of decay, but the bandages had been skilfully changed. Cleanly. The old ones were by the girl’s side; ragged and worn, but spotless and neatly folded. In a silver bowl near her were pieces of the arm and blood, as if it were falling off.
And his lips… dark blue, almost black—colder than the rest of his body.
Three heavy knocks at the door. Old Aunt Toothache awoke from her reverie.
‘What is it now!’ she yelled to her new guests as she opened the door.
‘Apologies for the interruption, my lady.’ Kindly said a knight in pristine armour, his crest a banana. ‘We were looking for these men. Have you seen them?’