Nano Bytes - A Collection of Short SciFi Stories

Obsidian: Price I, by Cornman

Obsidian: Price I

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Mr. Price's skin burned. His hands were bound behind him, wrists and arms gripped tight in the hands of several people. They pressed him close to a bonfire, its flames clawing at the dark sky like a man possessed. Sharp pops like cracking carapace and the whoosh of dying breaths escaping. Price's skin had long ago grown pink. It now made its way towards maroon. A deep, violent color on his pasty flesh.

He was forced to stand upright against the heat and face it head on. His clothes had been stripped. Sweat poured down the length of his body, but did nothing to assuage the burning. The bonfire's pillar made the shadows surrounding him deeper; intense wells of dark mystery amidst the looming pines. One of the shadows broke away from the treeline and slunk towards the fire. It had a human form. Price could tell little else until it spoke. A woman's voice.

"How do you answer for your crimes?"

Price swallowed, his throat coarse and dry. "What crimes?" he asked, voice cracking. "I hear no things laid at my charge."

"Have I not named some already?" the figure asked. Price tried to place her sound, but could not. She was no woman of the village. An outsider? "You countenance those that are transgressors of the law," she said. "You are, thus, the same in fact."

"What law?" Price said. "This is no court of God or man. You've taken me from my bed and to the wood." His eyes scanned the scene. "It is witches that do this thing."

"This court is not of your god," she replied, moving forward. "But it is one of men. Men you once knew." The hands gripped Price tighter. The woman was dressed in fur and leather. Her skin gleamed bronze in the firelight, half her face bathed warm in the aura.

Price scowled. "I've kept good my dealings with your kind."

"You recall the party of Wilmott Somes? They came upon your farm late one night, seeking shelter."

"They were hunting and setting snares," Price replied. "A storm took upon them and they needed aid. This was more than a year past."

"What did they hunt?"

"Rabbit, perhaps. Fox? I do not know for certain."

"You didn't care to ask?"

"It seemed not to matter."

"And if I told you they hunted men?"

"I would know nothing of it."

The woman turned to study the fire.

"And so you say that you knew nothing of their hunt. That they came upon your farm and you did not wonder at their lack of rabbit? Their lack of fox?"

"What breach of law is that? In entertaining them?" Price asked.

"I have named it already. That you gave shelter to these men who had killed and robbed. That you did so knowing their purpose on that night."

"It matters not if I did. I answer to no heathen court."

The woman turned and stepped up to him. "You've called us witches. You think we have signed the devil's book with blood from an inkhorn? I dipped my finger therin and made a blott in the book?"

Price shook his head. "I know not. Regardless, only God has authority over me. You are nothing."

She reached up and placed a hand on his bare chest. Chilled flesh. She leaned in close and whispered in Price's ear.