CH 6: Hanging With Hags (Patreon)

As David's fingers thrummed impatiently against the steering wheel of his car, he lambasted himself again for forgetting a crucial piece of information. When he accepted a job to aid a Welsh coven of hags he had been thinking about all the neat wards he would get to experiment with; he had been thinking about how long it had been since he created a ward scheme for anything larger than a single building; he had even been thinking of how beings like hags would fare come the fall of the Statute.

He had not been thinking about how the job was in Wales. Where he had no apparation points memorized. 

David had briefly considered jumping as close as he could to the client and then renting a car for the last leg, but ultimately resigned himself to just driving the stretch of Britain. His envisioned two day trip would just have to become a three day excursion. 

Now, after six hours of driving, he had finally arrived. 

As gravel crunched under the tires of his Metro, he admired the forest the coven had chosen to retreat to. Gnarled trees erupted through dark, loamy soil, branches grasping greedily for the sun. Lichen hung from the bows, a blanket of pale green tossed haphazardly over primordial limbs. Mist crawled around his feet, not yet banished by the morning sun. When the engine of the car grumbled to a stop the denizens of the forest briefly stilled, evaluating whether the sudden absence of the low rumble was a signal they needed to heed before once more bursting into the cacophony found only in the wilds.

Water was everywhere. A thin layer of moisture beaded on his before dripping off as the impervious charm woven into the hemline went to work. It was an endless battle as the faintest breeze sent moisture laden air to replace what had fallen. David took a bracing breath. The scent of earth, flowers in bloom, and the faint aroma of vegetal decay filling his nose. For a moment, the faint tightness in his chest that he had long learned to live with loosened.

It was minutes later that he noticed a faint rustling in the undergrowth slowly approaching. As he pushed himself up from the side of his car, a stooped figure emerged into the clearing. She–for no wizard or witch had ever seen a hag that was a he, although logic dictated they must exist–was a being a little over five feet tall. Long, tangled hair shrouded a face that would not be out of place in a penny-dreadful on the witch trials. Her face was bumpy and pockmarked and her nose was a bulbous David only associated with profligate drinkers. If he didn't know better, he would think her faintly greened skin was a trick of the lighting, but experience had taught him she would remain the same unsettling color no matter the location. Seeing him waiting for her, she grinned, her teeth more that of a wolf than man.

It was unfair of him, but for a brief moment his instincts screamed "danger" and his hand twitched for his wand.

The movement didn't escape her, as her grin melted into something more wry. "Aye, me and my kin have that effect on you wand-wavers."

David dipped into a moderate bow. "My apologies, madam. I believe it's something in the teeth."

She shrugged, unbothered. "None of that 'madam' nonsense," she said, "Betony my mam named me when I was whelped, and Betony I shall be when I die, be it to time, wand, or blade." She looked him up or down with a gimlet eye. "So you're the warder the goblins foisted our job off to, when they decided they were too good for our coin?"

David was distinctly sure Gringotts had never been too good for coin, only that the coven wasn't paying enough to be worth the time but was tactful enough not to say that. Instead, he nodded his head, "Aye, that would be me. David Hull, at your service."

The hag spat on the ground, "Well I hope you know what you're doing, boy. Things are getting tense again and I don't feel like letting me and mine be a spot of fun for some wand-waver."

"I assure you Matriarch, the protections I set will keep your coven safe from everything short of a siege."

Betony glared at him. "See that they do Mr. Hull. I would hate to have to waste my ticket back to the Great Mother to haunt you should your wards not do as you've promised."

Morbid curiosity was the only reason David could explain asking what he did next: "Do hags leave ghosts? I can't say I've ever seen one."

A mirthless smile spread across the creature's face. "Not ghosts, no. Poltergeists and wraiths, though?" She let out a high, undulating cackle before grabbing his wrist in her clawed grasp, "Best you never have to find out, boy. Now come, come, there's business to be done!"

David took one last glance at the clearing, before letting the hag pull him deeper into the forest. As the sound of his car's cooling engine faded behind him, he comforted himself with the fact that the coven had no anti-transport wards to prevent his escape should the need arise. He was there to set them, after all.

It was an hour's walk to the glade the coven had commandeered for their use, although the impatient glances Betony kept giving him made David think that it was a much shorter journey for the Hags. 

The new nature of the community was evident in its construction. A ring of mud hovels, vaguely hemispherical constructions the David suspected he wouldn't be able to stand up straight in, surrounded a central green. At one end of the enclosure three larger "buildings" stood, presumably for the matriarchs, and at the other was a communal cooking area. The glade had been cleared fifty yards back from the huts, the hags having used the open space to grow herbs and roots both magical and mundane. 

As David and Betony emerged from the tree line a clamor of voices rose to meet them. Dozens of hags emerged from the hamlet, flocking to Betony. David watched on as she exchanged what he could only assume were greetings with the group in a harsh, guttural tongue. It sounded vaguely like a Germanic language, although not one that had graced the lips of Man this side of the fall of the Roman Empire. 

Apparently having satisfied their greeting party, Betony turned to David and said, "Welcome Mr. Hull, to the Coedwig Coven. Be honored to be the first, and hopefully last wand-waver to see such a gathering of my sisters."

Taking the cue, David tucked his staff to his chest and bowed deeply. "I am honored, Matriach. Your coven is strong and your roots grow deep."

Betony's eyes widened at the traditional greeting–a piece of knowledge he had lifted from a book on Pictish cairn protections–but quickly returned it, "May your fields flourish and your enemies wither."

Like a dam breaking, the rest of the hags took that as a sign to approach the wizard. He was soon swarmed by inquisitive beings, poking and prodding at him and his equipment. Like having forty grandmas making sure you had eaten enough he thought, as he tried to deflect curious hands from jabbing at his enchanted robes, if grandma had claws that could disembowel a man.

"A wand-waver," one had muttered.

"But one with a staff," said another.

"A druid?"

"Nay, I can't smell a lick of nature on him."

"Can you smell him at all, sister?"

"Nay." "No!" "Not one delicious whiff."

"How strange," said one of the older hags, "why are you invisible to our noses, manling?"

Well, it was good to know his newest piece of equipment worked. It had stopped spontaneously combusting five or six iterations in, but he had run into the hurdle in that he couldn’t actually tell if the thing worked. David had resorted to covering his hands in tuna and skulking around town to see if any of the village cats noticed his presence. None had, but he worried that it may just have been the inherent laziness of cats.

Now if only the hags would stop looking like they wanted to cut him open to figure how he ticked.

David glanced awkwardly at Betony, but she only waved at him to answer. Tentatively he held up his left hand and gestured to a grey ring adorning his finger. "Enchanted jewelry," he explained, "I've bespelled it so that I am scentless as long as I wear it, out of consideration for your... tastes."

That swarm of moss-toned beings peered at his hand.

"How strange."

"What a queer invention."

One of the more handsy sisters poked it, only to recoil with a hiss, "An artifice of iron? How? Nothing so untouched by the Great Mother should be able to affect such workings!"

He considered not answering, but decided that the knowledge of what he had done would not help the beings overcome it. He slipped one of his rings off his finger–a piece he had enchanted to protect against extreme heat in case anyone thought they were clever and tossed a fireball against his shield of steel–and showed them the inside. 

“Runes,” he said, “cut carefully and filled a blood-based mixture to work the magic I desire.” The coven hummed appreciatively as he continued, “this ring is made of gold instead of steel because I want it to last longer than a few weeks, but the principal remains the same.”

Betony peered at him, new calculations clear behind her yellowed eyes. “You might not be totally useless, manling, if you are willing to ignore the foolish rules against blood-based workings. Come,” she beckoned, “and let us break bread while we discuss what protections you shall lay today.”

David followed the withered figure into the central-most hut. It was barely big enough for him to stand unencumbered, but demonstrated a level of craft that belied its outer shell. The walls were constructed of tightly woven branches, through which David could see boughs of hemlock that somehow maintained their vibrancy underneath the thick mud that made up the weather-side. From nearly every inch of the ceiling hung drying herbs of a quality that would make a potion master weep with envy. A crude wooden shelf was filled with clay amphoras that David suspected contained ingredients darker and rarer than anything found in Hogwart’s hallowed halls.

Betony gestured for him to sit on a rug that seemed to have been made from the hide of a demiguise before shuffling over to a woven basket next to a fur-covered bedroll. Two more hags entered behind David–the other matriarchs, he assumed–while the rest of the coven dispersed to other business. Business, David was amused to see, that kept them suspiciously close to the Matriach’s hut. 

“So tell us wand-waver,” one of the elders asked, “what sort of protection has nearly all our gold bought us?”

“Anti-portkey and anti-apparation are a given,” David began, “I assume you want this stretch of the forest unplottable as well?”

The two hags nodded as Betony set down a block of jerky-looking food in front of them–if the jerky had been pulverized, dotted with berries, and held together with the fat of something–and poured a liquid that smelled of berries and alcohol in clay cups. David hesitantly cast the few poison-detection spells he could. Betony cackled at the act, not offended in the least at the insinuation she would poison a guest.

“Good instincts,” one of the other two said, “the old crone is a dab hand with poisons.”

“Who are you calling an old crone, Campion?” Betony snapped, “Have you seen your withered face in the lake recently?”

“Sisters,” the third hag pleaded, “we are getting off track. And it is unbecoming to make a scene in front of a wand-waver. Even if he was invited.”

David was not at all comforted by Campion–he was certain that his detection spells were insufficient against any concoction Betony brewed–but took the offered opportunity to direct the conversation back to business. “Muggle-repelling wards and wizard-repelling wards I should be able to fit onto the ward-stone your money bought you.”

“Wizard-repelling wards are possible?” Campion asked, shocked.

David shrugged, “Not according to the Ministry.” Almost as one, the group scoffed at the statement. “They’re not foolproof,” he warned, “but they should forestall casual discovery.”

“Anything is better than nothing,” the yet unintroduced matriarch muttered.

“That’s all well and good,” Betony said, “but what can you offer for protection if we are discovered?”

He hesitated, trying to find a diplomatic way to explain the difficulty in that proposition. “Not… much,” he said. He hurried to elaborate, seeing their mutinous expressions, “Wards are binary things–they are either off or on. There is no inherent intelligence in a ward, other than the conditions the warder sets. Those stories you hear of the manors of pure-bloods smiting intruders? That is either because their wardstones have a byzantine network of activating conditions–something you haven’t paid for–or a wizard or witch at the wardstone, manually activating the defenses.”

The trio hissed in displeasure and he nodded sympathetically. The type of manual activation took a level of familiarity in wizarding magical traditions that he doubted anyone in this coven had. 

“There… is one possibility,” he admitted, “but it would necessitate you revealing secrets that you might not want to.”

“Speak, manling,” Campion demanded, “and we will decide.”

David took a sip of his drink, wincing at the burn of what seemed to be a strong berry wine. “The Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt,” he explained, “believed that what they were buried with would go with them to the afterlife. Consequently, they wanted assurances that no one, muggle or magical would raid their tombs. They tasked their court magicians to come up with a solution, and they eventually succeeded." He attempted to gnaw at a corner of the meat-thing in front of him before giving up.

“Get to the point, Mr. Hull,” Betony said.

David scowled. No one appreciated history these days. “The magicians developed a ward–a curse really–that detected any active magic and responded… gruesomely. Dozens of Gringotts cursebreakers had their eyes boiled out of their skulls before they learned how to break it.”

“That sounds excellent, wand-waver,” Campion said, “so what’s the catch?”

“Well to begin with it’s deeply illegal to place or possess,” He was unsurprised to see the hags did not consider that to be an impediment. Taking another sip of the wine he continued, “The ward functions by detecting any magic that extends more than a few inches away from a being–to catch active spell casting by would-be tomb-raiders without killing the Pharoah’s magicians setting the thing. If you instructed me to set it you would be giving away details about how hags interact with magic.”

The hut erupted in the guttural language of the beings. He could tell that Betony and the third matriarch were arguing against Campion, although who supported what position he couldn’t tell. The argument escalated into sharp grunts and shrieks as the trio began to jab with their claws and gnash their teeth. He began to worry that the two matriarchs would kill the third before Campion slumped in defeat.

“Set the ward,” said the eldest of the trio, “and speak of this to no one.”

David spent the rest of the day pacing the perimeter of the village, determining where the anchor stones would need to be set in order to get the best effects. 

He had decided on a network of three sets of seven stones to anchor the protective network and six to anchor the curse. The three sets of seven would provide the best stability and longevity, while the set of six would leave the curse in constant tension, waiting for some offender to trip the activation and provide a–very temporary–seventh anchor.

After apparating to a hotel he had passed by on the way to the coven for the night, he returned the next day to begin setting the wards. A fresh chunk of obsidian sat in the center of the village round, chalk lines covering where he would need to carve the various runes. He cast a charm he had learned to temporarily soften stone and begin to cut the designs into the black facets. As he did, he found himself answering the queries of the children of the village, their curiosity having overcome their fear.

“Why are you cutting that, Mr. Wizard?”

“To provide a path to set silver runes so your village doesn’t appear on maps.”

“Why are some of the shapes just lines while the others are all loopy?”

“Oh that’s actually a good question. You see it’s because–”

“Is it true that wizards bathe in the blood of magical beings?”

“What? No. Well, define bathe and define being.” 

That one had sent the children–haglings? David wondered if there was a specific term for them–screaming and bought him a blessed thirty minutes of silence until Betony came sauntering over.

“You’re ok with the younglings,” she observed.

“Damning me with faint praise.”

That sent the hag cackling. David had to repress the shudder the sound seemed to induce no matter how many times he heard it. He would be annoyed if he was forced to recut the current rune because his hand shook.

“‘Tis true though,” Betony said. “Not many of your kind see us as anything but monsters to be stamped out.”

David nodded in commiseration. “Men have enough monsters among our own, what are a few more?”

“Plenty of monsters stirring these days,” the matriarch said, “Some sisters have gone silent and there’s been word that the Bloodsuckers and the Weres are on the move once more.”

David could only sigh. “Aye, wizards were attacked at the Quidditch Cup this summer. The Ministry wants us to believe it was just malcontents trying to make a nuisance of themselves, but we both know how little their word is worth.”

Betony let the conversation fade as the pair sat in the August heat. For a while the only sounds was the quiet chink of chisel on stone and the murmurs of hags working the fields that surrounded the village. 

“Keep your kith and kin close, David Hull,” she eventually said, “blood will flow and many magicals will find themselves in the embrace of the Great Mother before this storm blows over.”

David had nothing to say in response. She was only repeating what he already feared.

It was the work of the rest of the day and most of the next to finish the ward stone and it’s supporting anchors. Only when he was satisfied that the cuts were flawless did David put down his chisel and pick up his wand. A partial transfiguration softened the silver and allowed it to flow like molten wax into the grooves. As the runes filled with the metal they began to glow faintly; not yet active but clearly magical.

As he retraced steps around the village he felt a bit like the Piper of legend, with seemingly every hag of the coven following at his heels. One by one he drove the anchor stones deep into the loamy earth, until all that was left was to activate the central ward-stone. 

As he approached the plinth of midnight and silver he gestured for the matriarchs to join him.

“The wards are primed and ready to be activated,” he said, “once the bowl at the top of the ward-stone is filled with magical blood they will begin to activate.” He gestured to a depression at the top of the pillar. It was a shallow chamber, serving as the termination point for lines of silver, one line for each unique set of wards.

“The repelling wards will be the first to activate,” David continued, “the curse will be the last. If you keep the bowl topped up, the full suite of protections will be active by the end of tomorrow.”

“Any magical blood will suffice?” Campion asked distressingly.

David wished they hadn’t caught onto that particular bit of trivia so quickly. “Ah, well… yes.”

A wide grin stretched across the creature’s face and David was struck with a reminder of just how inhuman they truly were. 

“Excellent work, wand-waver. The coven will write to Gringotts and release the rest of your payment.” Dismissing him, she turned to the gathering of hags and began to give a speech in their harsh language. With a triumphant shout, she sliced her palm and let the blood drip into the bowl. The runes flashed a brilliant argent and the crowd ululated in triumph.

David hurriedly clasped his flat cap to his head and disapparated back to his car with a quiet pop. He felt no desire to test if his guest-rites extended past when the anti-apparation wards came up.