Hemlock

Mr. Perigo was dead. There was no doubt in this matter. It had been established by his mourning widow, the clergyman and the undertaker. He was as dead as an inanimate object could be. As dead as a cartwheel abandoned in a canal, as a flickering candle in a haunted mansion, as a penniless poet’s inkwell. Take your pick, he was defiantly a goner.

It is important to establish this here, alas the rest of the proceedings will lack the fantastical element the author had intended.

The only person to be seen at Mr. Perigo’s funeral was his grieving widow Rebecca who had, after much effort, produced a tear or two. It was a sorrowful sight to behold on that grey and dank January morning as the mist crept around the graveyards permanent residents. However, if you were of a keen eye, you might well have spotted a dark, cloaked figure leant nonchalantly against a twisted Yew.

Mary Hemlock was a former employee of the Perigo’s and, as she watched on with interest to the proceedings, chuckled to herself.

Don’t be misled, Mary was of sound mind. Her dark, intelligent eyes glinted from under her black cowl hood. Several magpies gathered in the branches above her head and around her feet a murder of crows. The birds were greedily feasting on earthworms surfacing from the soil. Their blind eyes searching for some darkness more intense than the earth below them.

Dark attracted dark and knew when in the presence of a master.

The wintery chill had little effect on Mary. She was the cold that crept under your doorway at night, the foreboding that stirred you from your sleep, the hail scratching at your window. Nothing could take away the warmth from her soul, it had been extinguished long ago. Her heart a pendulum swinging in a dark and empty void.

Children shrunk away when they met her in the street. Newborns would howl in her presence as confused mothers fussed to calm them. She took no heed, had no time for the pleasantries of town folk as they bustled around with their cheery dispositions.

When their fairytale turned sour, the lovers tryst bore fruit, the prince became the Beast, when there was no way out, they knew where to find her. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and she charged handsomely for such services.