“Fire!”, they answered.
The children stared at each other and then at the old lady standing in front of them. She smiled in a way that reminded me of a witch. How did we even end up answering pointless riddles by some beggar lady inside a lonesome attic far off town anyway?
“Good… Good… Impressive intellect for one so young such as yourselves.”, the lady whom I decided to call Old Raven said. She examined us with her seemingly huge bulging eyes and nodded slowly. She began pacing around the room muttering strange, yet familiar words that sounded more like gibberish.
Mark shifted uneasily beside me. I could tell he was scared shitless. The expression on his face and cluttering of his teeth gave him away. I didn’t attempt to shut him up considering how terribly afraid I was too at that point. How were we going to escape this room and return to The Bar? The door was locked tight and the only visible way out is out the window… 3 storeys high. With Old Raven blocking the way too, I don’t think we’ll be able to run away so easily.
“Bam!”, the sound of a wooden stick echoed loudly in the empty attic room. I immediately snapped to attention. Old Raven was clutching the mahogany walking stick with her two scrawny hands. The sound that came earlier felt too strong for such a pathetic looking granny like her to muster.
“You boys must be wondering why you’ve been brought here. It is not by coincidence you ended up in my little home. Fate brought you here. Destiny ascertained that,” Old Raven spoke in a voice almost unrecognizable from before. Her voice sounded… younger. As if twenty years have been lifted from her.
Mark and I exchanged puzzled looks. What the hell was this crazy woman talking about? Fate? Destiny? This isn’t some Narnia fantasy you know from books and movies. This lady was nuts.
As if Old Raven could read our thoughts, she sighed loudly. “It seems you boys don’t believe me. Come. Let me show you.”
She knocked her walking stick on the wooden planks underneath three times, and let out a creepy four tuned whistle. Nothing like the one in The Hunger Games book at all.
Suddenly, the window behind Old Raven vanished into thin air and was replaced by a seemingly endless pitch black void. Two pillars with stone gargoyles holding swords resting at the top guarded the entrance to what I thought were the gates of Hell itself.
Mark gave out a shriek and cowered in fear. I was wide-eyed, paralyzed with fear and feet rooted to the ground. I didn’t want to die. Not so young. How will my mother take care of baby Ben if I’m gone?
Old Raven’s voice broke my chain of nightmarish thoughts.
“Now, now. Shall we begin?”
She gave her ominous smile and turned towards the gate. As she entered the structure that looked to have come out of the darkest nightmares, it might have been my imagination but where Old Raven stood a moment before, lying on the ground were three, black feathers…
Lupin Hills 