Pieder's tossing and turning slowly stilled, and after almost half an hour the string slipped back out of his nose. It lay quiescent on his chest, just a string and nothing more. Laurinda shivered, horrified and scared. The old woman took a scrap of cloth from a pocket and used it to lift the string. As soon as the cloth touched it, an eerie melody began to fill the silent cottage. The old woman nodded and turned to the couple with a faint smile on her hideous face.
She placed the string and cloth back into one of her pockets, then pantomimed money dropping from one hand into the other. The parents glanced at each other uncertainly.
"You want payment?" Douglas asked.
The old woman nodded.
"We don't have much money," Douglas said.
The old woman waved a hand dismissively.
"You want something else?"
The old woman nodded. She pointed a stubbed finger at the boy.
"Yes we want you to heal him," Douglas said, perplexed. He had thought this was clear already from the way the old woman has been checking the boy over.
The old woman frowned and pantomimed money once more, then pointed to the boy.
"You want... Pieder as payment?" Laurinda gasped.
The old woman nodded. The parents stood frozen. "We can't," Laurinda said to the air.
"Better a servant or slave than dead," Douglas said dully.
"But to her?" Laurinda wailed.
"She seems nice enough," Douglas said, uncertain that he was telling the truth.
"We can't," Laurinda repeated more faintly.
"We have no choice," Douglas said grimly. "Yes, you may have our son if you can make him well."
The old woman smiled with a set of perfect, white teeth. She walked past the couple and, despite being blind and in a new house, started a pot of water boiling with almost no trouble.
The witch healed Pieder with little to no trouble. He spent several days recovering, and once he got his wits back he argued with his parents about being "sold" to the Witch of the Wood. They apologized, but Laurinda remembered the writhing string that had come to life and refused to anger the old woman by refusing her the payment she had requested. With no home willing to accept him, Pieder reluctantly walked with his father to the Witch's residence.
After a tearful goodbye with promises by Douglas to visit his son as often as possible, Douglas left Pieder standing beside the brambles and jogged back down the forest road heading home to his cottage.
Pieder stood for more than an hour trying to persuade himself to look around the brambles and failing. Finally, a humming and sound of digging came from through the thick, prickly growth. "Hello," Pieder called out tentatively, unknowingly imitating his father.
The Witch's head poked around the underbrush and she smiled when she saw him. She held up a hand to keep him in place and retreated once more behind the brambles. Pieder stood rooted in place, terrified by his first non-delirious sight of the Witch. After several minutes and a great deal of shuffling about, the Witch reappeared. This time her eyes were not empty sockets but were white glass balls. The lack of an iris or pupil was almost as unnerving as the lack of eyeballs altogether. But Pieder appreciated that she was attempting to put him at ease.
The Witch beckoned Pieder to come along a narrow path around and then through the brambles. Once on the inside, he was confronted by a riot of flowers and scents. He was stunned, wondering how there could be this much growth at the beginning of winter. There had been several hard frosts that should have killed the more delicate plants and sent the rest into a dormant state. Yet here they were, blooming in all their glory.
2,345 words out of 50,000 total
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