The Pearl Fox

Kidnapped

Sunlight shone golden despite the hazy lilac sky. It was a hot Summer in South Diaphry. Flora Radish spent the whole of her free weekend enjoying it; fruit picking, climbing trees, swimming in the Purple Disk Lake and spending time with her female friends in Belldark. She wanted to have as much fun as she could that weekend because soon she would join her colleague Vandox to patrol a village called Southernville 70. 

"Why have they sent us here for?" she asked when they'd arrived at the village. 

"They need us to patrol the village at night. The place had always been empty but now people live here."

"Oh, yeah," she sighed, and flicked her rose blonde pink curls. "I thought it might be to do with that dead starlet Charsine and her gang members who stayed here."

Vandox was half interested but she had an interesting point. "That will be for the police to worry about. We're only here to keep curfew at night."

They visited the inn. Flora noticed how odd these villagers behaved and how unwell they looked. Their eyes were just opaque and strangely marbled, glassy dark or pale as egg shells. There were young twin sons of the innkeeper who helped work there in silence and never smiled or looked at her. A teenage girl served food and drinks, was cheerless and always breathing heavily. Posters put on the walls inside the inn, as well as on the trees outside of the inn, reminded everyone there was no cider to be sold and they had no cider in stock. Flora and Vandox were certain they passed wild orchards en route to the village.  Then Vandox stood up and tugged Flora's sleeve. "Come on, we're leaving."

Flora was liking the cheese roll and the cup of lemonade that she was halfway through eating. Vandox hadn't finished his beer and and took one bite of his bacon sandwich. Flora wasn't happy to be told to quit her snack. "I'm not quite done yet."

"Don't touch anymore of that," he just warned her. 

"But Willow said..."

"Yes, I know what he told us. Leave it up to me when we get back to headquarters."

Vandox paid for the uneaten food at the bar and then left the inn with Flora. Both were surprised to see their horses roaming the yard, unattended. No one had kept their horses in the stables, and it was incompetence of the stable boy who wasn't seen anywhere. 

Vandox's brown horse was grazing nearby, and he approached, ready to climb up when the appearance of an old woman frightened the horse. The old woman waved her ash stick and twirled her necklace. Flora's own dapple hinny reacted in fear just then, and ran off towards a copse of white oak trees. Flora gave chase, but her horse fled further across an overgrown field and into a woodland. 

Flora decided to get Vandox to help her find her horse because he would be faster on his own mount. She returned to the place at the yard by the inn although couldn't see him now. Instead there was that crazy old woman standing there as if waiting for her. The old woman wore a long black gown and carried a stick. She started to walk away with a distinctive hobble.

"Excuse me, madam, have you seen my colleague Night Patrol officer?" 

The old woman stopped and turned to stare icily at Flora. Her beige eyes were cold. Around her neck was a necklace of baroque grey pearls. 

"Stupid girl! You dress like a fool and think that is a uniform!" barked the old woman, who then laughed, and by doing so, exposed a set of black teeth and a black tongue. The woman's complexion was unusually dark grey like mortar. "You don't know, idiot!"

"Quit insulting me, madam. I have to find my colleague," Flora tried hard to keep her cool but the woman made her feel tense and very nervous. She was already close to shouting for Vandox, when the old woman charged at her with her stick raised. In sudden quick movements, Flora moved away and pushed the insane woman away from her. It wasn't a hard push, but the woman fell down with a sickening drop, and dissolved before Flora could make sense of it. 

On that grass lay a rotting corpse that was beginning to liquefy. It occurred to Flora that this person must've been dead for a long time to decompose in such a quick way. Flora considered that the old woman had to be extremely old or perhaps undead, but the latter was absurd.  

"Yuck!" Flora was feeling sick. "Vandox!" She bent over to retch, and found on the grass near her feet, the pearl necklace that must've fallen off the dead corpse woman. After the horror that just happened, the pearls shone like stars. They resembled shimmering floating meteorites in the indigo night sky, and they appeared so lovely and pure. Looking at them sent Flora healing, and she was wiped of sickness and fear. She picked up the pearls, and they were warm and precious as Summer fruits.  

"Oh! Amazingly beautiful." She said while staring at the pearls in admiration. 

Vandox retrieved his horse, and returned to the grounds of the inn where Flora was standing. Her horse wasn't in sight but on the ground was the skeletal remains of an aged body garbed in black. Flora looked most calm, and there was a smile on her face that he hadn't seen ever since they arrived at this place. He saw the new pearls around her neck. 

"Flora? Tell me where you got that."

"These are the pearls I found on the floor. The old woman had been wearing them and she fell down dead," Flora pointed at the corpse on the ground. It was the same old woman who spooked their horses. He saw that the necklace was shining and he remembered. His grandfather told him frightening stories about Hag Pearls when he was a boy. And his grandfather knew about it because his own grandfather told the same tale to him when he was a boy. The memory sent him chills. 

Flora noticed the terror on her colleagues' face as the colour drained him then. Vandox slid off his horse and lost feeling in his legs. He collapsed to the ground, and buried his face in his hands. He trembled and lost all sense of dignity. 

"NO!" he screamed. 

"What's the matter?" Flora asked, frightened by his angry and hysterical behaviour. 

"Please! Flora! Don't take that necklace off! You can't ever take it off!"