"I'll give'ee careless love, ye virgin bitch," the old woman said. She could smell the sour reek of sweat from under her arms, but that other moisture had dried up again. "I'll give ye payday for walking in early on old Rhea, so I will!"
She passed her fingers over the lock on the front of the box, but it wouldn't fasten. She supposed she had been overeager to have it open, and had broken something inside it when she used the touch. The eye and the motto seemed to mock her: i see who opens me. It could be put right, and in a jiffy, but right now even a jiffy was more than she had.
"Pestering cunt!" She whined, lifting her head briefly toward the approaching voice (almost here now, by the gods, and forty-five minutes before her time!). Then she closed the lid of the box. It gave her a pang to do it, because the glass was coming to life again, filling with that rosy glow, but there was no time for looking or dreaming now. Later, perhaps, after the object of Thorin's unseemly late-life prickishness had gone.
And you must restrain yourself from doing anything too awful to the girl, she cautioned herself. Remember she's here because of him, and at least ain't one of those green girls with a bun in the oven and a boyfriend acting reluctant about the cries o' marriage. It's Thorin 's doing, this one's what he thinks about after his ugly old crow of a wife is asleep and he takes himself in his hand and commences the evening milking; it's Thorin's doing, he has the old law on his side, and he has power. Furthermore, what's in that box is his man's business, and if Jonas found out ye looked at it... that ye used it. ..
Aye, but no fear of that. And in the meantime, possession were nine-tenths of the law, were it not?
She hoisted the box under one arm, hoisted her skirts with her free hand, and ran back along the path to the hut. She could still run when she had to, aye, though few there were who'd believe it.
Musty ran at her heels, bounding along with his cloven tail held high and his extra legs flopping up and down in the moonlight.
CHAPTER II PROVING HONESTY
1
Rhea darted into her hut, crossed in front of the guttering fire, then stood in the doorway to her tiny bedroom, swiping a hand through her hair in a distracted gesture. The bitch hadn't seen her outside the hut - she surely would have stopped caterwauling, or at least faltered in it if she had - and that was good, but the cursed hidey-hole had sealed itself up again, and that was bad. There was no time to open it again, either. Rhea hurried to the bed, knelt, and pushed the box far back into the shadows beneath.
Ay, that would do; until Susy Greengown was gone, it would do very well. Smiling on the right side of her mouth (the left was mostly frozen), Rhea got up, brushed her dress, and went to meet her second appointment of the night.
2
Behind her, the unlocked lid of the box clicked open. It came up less than an inch, but that was enough to allow a sliver of pulsing rose-colored light to shine out.
3
Susan Delgado stopped about forty yards from the witch's hut, the sweat chilling on her arms and the nape of her neck. Had she just spied an old woman (surely the one she had come to see) dart down that last bit of path leading from the top of the hill? She thought she had.
Don't stop singing - when an old lady hurries like that, she doesn't want to be seen. If you stop singing, she'll likely know she was.
For a moment Susan thought she'd stop anyway - that her memory would close up like a startled hand and deny her another verse of the old song which she had been singing since youngest childhood. But the next verse came to her, and she continued on (with feet as well as voice):
"Once my cares were far away,
Yes, once my cares were far away,
Now my love has gone from me
And misery is in my heart to stay."
A bad song for a night such as this, mayhap, but her heart went its own way without much interest in what her head thought or wanted; always had^ She was frightened to be out by moonlight, when werewolves were said to walk, she was frightened of her errand, and she was frightened by what that errand portended. Yet when she had gained the Great Road out of Hambry and her heart had demanded she run, she had run - under the light of the Kissing Moon and with her skirt held above her knees she had galloped like a pony, with her shadow galloping right beside her. For a mile or more she had run, until every muscle in her body tingled and the air she pulled down her throat tasted like some sweet heated liquid. And when she reached the upland track leading to this high sinister, she had sung. Because her heart demanded it. And, she supposed, it really hadn't been such a bad idea; if nothing else, it had kept the worst of her megrims away. Singing was good for that much, anyway.