What Cost

Last weeks Writing Prompt was again from my deck of StoryWorld cards; The Charm of Healing, utilizing “Who needs this charm today?”

++ I’m sweating through my dirty shirt, and it’s stuck solid to my back. Chaffing against my thighs my trousers are torn and are colored with many unnamed stains. I’ve been running for days, catching brief naps up in tree limbs, never falling deeply asleep for fear of toppling from my uneasy perches. Now I’m only a few miles from my desperate destination. I can do this, I tell myself firmly. It’s the only way to save my son, so I’ll make the deal and the wort woman will come back with me, and the Charm of Healing will bring health to the sick.

++ I’m not even a little reluctant to pay the price the wort woman and her healing charm will demand of me. I know the price for my son’s revival will be dire for me indeed.

++ Many believe in the great kindness of those who follow the old wort craft, but all know that only truly desperate fools will deal in the deadly magic of the Charm of Healing.

++ Powerful and fail proof; the charm will bring health to all who are sick, so long as they haven’t passed beyond. The price however, to wield that blessed magic, is dark, dark.

++ A single year of life from the supplicant was the usual deal made to heal a broken limb, five years to banish a plague. My son was now lying in a fever, the last painful phase of a curse to Death, and the years I would have to trade in order to cure him? Perhaps I didn’t even have enough years of life left to power such a Charm. But I ran on, those last few miles, and I’d deal away my entire life to bring back health and future to my little boy.