1 - Beginning (part 1 of 2)
Hin Langoleer had not been born a lucky child.
o-o-o
He had thought the hut was abandoned. The thatch was overgrown with moss and mildew and the boards of the narrow porch creaked and shattered under the cleats of his sandals. The walls of wood and paper and adobe were crumbling and worm-eaten. The door opened easily and the inside was dark, damp and dirty. It was old and out of the way. Perfect for a someone wrongly accused of theft to hide, even if it did feel like malignant spirits were peeping from beneath every cobweb.
But it seemed to be bigger on the inside than one might think from looking at it. As Hin crouched in a corner, waiting for the drumming of his heartbeat to quiet, he peered through the gloom to the far corners of the interior. It stretched for many paces in all directions and there seemed to be doors leading into other rooms. He knew better than to investigate. Lucky he was not, and so he had learned not to look gift horses in the mouth. The sound of shouting and footsteps running along the path outside caused him to jump and hunch like a cornered rabbit.
"Think he went in there?" someone asked as the footsteps slowed to a crunching halt.
"Not if he knows what's good for him. That's Baba Mayuko's house, isn't it?"
Baba? This was a baba's house? Hin could have died right then of a stopped heart. Laughter designed to hide chills skating up spines sounded outside and the footsteps retreated hastily to avoid the witch's wrath.
o-o-o
Hin Langoleer had not been born a lucky child.
Or perhaps he had. In any case, he'd been cursed when he was born and so any luck he might have had was taken away, so it was close enough to the truth to say he hadn't. The baba who cursed him hadn't been invited to his christening and that was what had done it. His father had been trying to save money at the arrival of this, his seventh son. With six healthy boys ahead of Hin, not to mention the three sisters before all of them, and a baba having been invited to each of their christenings at great expense, he thought that perhaps this last child could enter the world a bit more humbly. Surely, he was not expected to put out the invitation for the seventh son, who was bound to be of no consequence, when he had nine other offspring to feed?
She had appeared anyway, and as little Hin Langoleer was rubbed with rice vinegar and the wax was still cooling on the family naming papers, the light bulbs up and down the room burst and the baba had appeared at the cradle's edge.
She looked like a baba should, but that wasn't enough on its own. Everyone knew half the babas in the world weren't really. Any old hag could hang a crow's foot or sack of garlic from her neck and frighten everyone with muttering. But Hin's father had always believed in better safe than sorry. He lost his faith a little when the last nine blessings had come to naught for his family, but as this baba reached into the crib and gently took out the three-hour old Hin, a crackle of power skittered along the ceiling.
"Little Hin Langoleer," the baba intoned without even having glanced at the naming papers, "you have a mark of greatness on you."
This normally would have been a cause for celebration and a showering of gifts upon the family for having provided such a child, but the baba spat the words like fish bones to rattle on the floor. The only light was the candle that had been used to melt the wax and it cast long streaks of orange across the baba's face.
"A mark of nobility too, and of grace and wisdom." Each word hissed with venom, like grease in a fire. "And yet you seem to think you need no blessing to help you on your path."
Hin's father would have been the last person to point out it hadn't been the child's fault for not inviting the baba to his own christening.
"And so," she continued, still holding the baby carefully in the crook of her arm, "I curse you, little Hin Langoleer. You will never bring fortune to your family. No person shall ever bow to you. And your toes shall always and forever be webbed."
Then she settled the baby back among his blankets and marched away, snagging three meat skewers from the refreshment table as she passed. Hin simply waved his hands before his nose and blinked. He had not cried or uttered a sound through the entire ordeal.
And so he grew. His father never spoke to Hin, the disgrace of a son who was an entire tenth mouth to feed without even a promise of fortune, but it didn't matter because Hin's father was rude and brash and no one liked to talk to him. No one every bowed to Hin as was customary, but it didn't matter because it meant everyone thought he was a heathen and so no one expected him to bow either. He could laugh at people's bald spots and poorly tied braids and there was nothing anyone saw fit to do about it. His webbed toes gave him more trouble, since it meant the thong of his sandal rubbed uncomfortably at the flap between his big and second toes, but after a time, he devised a way to tie his sandal behind his heel and that was all right too.
But he was still cursed and now it was catching up to him. Why else would he have done something so foolish as to hide in a baba's house?
o-o-o
It seemed so obvious now. If he held his breath, he could almost imagine he could hear the house's claws scratching at the dirt beneath the floorboards.
But, as he forced himself to take a deep breath, perhaps not all was lost. The house felt empty. Abandoned, even. Perhaps this wasn't really the baba's house, or she was away. Perhaps she had even died. Maybe, if he left now, no one would be the wiser. In any case, he was more willing to face the bowl vendor accusing him of theft than he was a baba catching him trespassing.
But then, on his way out, his lack of luck caught up to him again and his sandal caught on a broken floorboard. Hin tried to twist out of the stumble, but instead, he went crashing painfully and very loudly to the floor, pulling down a broken panel of wall down with him. The sandal went flying, the ankle strap coming untied from its clumsy knot.
Hin picked himself from the shattered remains of wood and paper and cast about desperately for his footwear, pulse roaring in his ears. Then he froze, catching sight of the figure holding the sandal.
"A thief in the baba's house, eh?"
It was a woman's voice, low and dry, coming from what looked like a bundle of rags at the corner of the porch, just under the gutter overhang. A thin, tan hand grasped the sandal, holding it out like bait, and a pair of wild brown eyes sized Hin up from under an even wilder arrangement of black hair. The eyes seemed to glow in the gathering twilight, like rats' eyes.
"A-are you the baba?" Hin stammered, throwing himself onto the ground in a position of complete surrender. He couldn't see the woman where his face was pressed to the rotting wood, but he could hear the shifting of her rags and something hard scraping over the floor as she moved.
"No," she said, without anger or cursing. If anything, she sounded like she was laughing. It wasn't a pleasant sound. "But you'd best be running along, little Frog-Toes, before she comes and finds you."
Hin's webbed feet curled and froze with fear, but he forced his head up.
"Y-yes. Thank you."
The woman hadn't moved all that much, just extended one equally thin and tan foot from beneath the rags. The hand not holding the sandal was hidden, buried in the rags about her torso, hugging some sort of staff or cane to her chest so that it extended over her shoulder. She didn't look like a baba, with her long face and hooded eyes. And she didn't seem to be interested in giving him his sandal back.
"Uh, please-"
"Run, Tadpole. I'm warning you." She was smiling, her teeth a white gash in her brown face, and she was still holding out his sandal as if taunting him. She was too far for him to reach it. He couldn't leave it. He was the only person in the village to wear his sandals the way he did. The baba would find him.
"I-"
"Oh, sorry. Too late." The woman didn't seem sorry at all.
At first, Hin didn't hear anything and for one wild moment, he thought the woman was teasing him and he was going to make a break for it and everything would be fine. Then he saw the way the house was suddenly lighting up from within. It was more than simple light too. In each circle of illumination, from candles to light bulbs to lava lamps, the varnish and paint was restored on the walls. Cracked glass wasn't anymore and mold melted into wallpaper designs. Shadows fell on corners of furniture that were suddenly there and the hallway of doors stretched further and further back until the end was lost into the white of light.
The last light to come on was a glowing line of neon around the door Hin had stumbled through and in its harsh pink glow, he crouched, frozen, on freshly sawed and sanded boards.
A silhouette appeared in the doorway.
"Got a present for the baba, Tua," the woman said, wrapped in her rags, still holding the sandal. The silhouette didn't answer.
"What?" Hin couldn't help it. He gaped at the woman, who somehow still managed to be in the shadows despite the light streaming from every cranny of the house. "You-"
"I told you to run. Too late now." The sandal disappeared as she tucked her other hand against her body as well. Her stick rapped against the wall behind her.
The silhouette still said nothing, but as Hin finally gathered his wits enough to escape, the black shadow materialized into a man, his arms, legs and face too long for the rest of him, and a hand corded with tendons clamped itself on the back of Hin's neck.
o-o-o
Hin Langoleer had not been born a lucky child.
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