The Ritual

out while you do it. Throw you in a tree like an animal.’ Loki grinned.
    Luke laughed, until it hurt his nose, his split lips, his bruised cheekbone, and whatever had gone wrong with the top of his head. ‘The most evil band in the world, eh? The serial
murderers who summoned a demon. It’s pretty rock and roll, Loki. I’ll give you that. But it counts for shit. You are a fantasist. This is all a load of Dungeons and Dragons, mate.
You’re a cliché.’
    ‘You are a dead man walking, Luke. Or one that is lying down.’
    The old woman put the tray down beside the bed. Luke’s mouth filled with saliva.
    ‘Time for you to eat, Luke. And to stop talking.’ Loki peered on to the plate and wrinkled his nose. ‘I wish it was nicer for you, because it is your last meal, my
friend.’
    ‘You can stop this now.’
    ‘Not possible.’
    ‘Loki. At least let me run. Give me a chance out there.’
    He grinned. ‘Please eat. Do not make this hard for me. I am not a bastard like Fenris. I do not want to . . . erm . . . taunt you.’
    ‘My friends had families. I want to see my dog again. That’s it. I won’t beg.’
    Loki smiled. ‘You eat. Then, we get you ready. I leave you alone now.’ He walked towards the door, then paused, turned around. ‘Hey Luke. If somehow you get off this bed, then
crawl down the stairs, or something stupid like that, I let Surtr cut you like she want to. She is only a few seconds away from blood frenzy with you, Luke. So I make a deal with her. I tell her,
if Luke run again before it is time for him, then, I tell her, you can cut off all his toes. You can totally fuck him up. And you know something, Luke? Luke?’
    ‘What?’
    ‘I am not joking.’
    Loki left him alone with the old woman.

SIXTY
    She prepared him with her small gentle hands. Luke watched those doll fingers cut the soiled disgrace of his underwear from his waist and legs, to reveal the tidemark of grime
that rose to his hips. She cooed to him to reassure him when he flinched as the steel of the big old scissors was close to his genitals. The pads of her fingers were coarse and leathery, same as
her face, but her touch was soft when she bathed his face and his swollen nose, and when she patted his crusting scalp.
    She fed him with care and with precision, tucking the warm brown stew inside his swollen lips with the old wooden spoon. Then she held the back of his head, and let him gobble and snuffle at the
stewed beets she held out to him. All about the cuts on his face and scalp, she dabbed a black mixture that smelled of rain and moss.
    Her eyes were little obsidian flints set so deeply in that impossibly wrinkled hide of a face, and they were smiling all the time she worked about his body, trussed upon that reeking bed. But
there was warmth inside her eyes too. It was genuine, he felt. But perhaps no more lasting than the affection shown to a favourite hen, or lamb, or piglet. He mattered as much as livestock. He was
important, he was valued, but only for the sustenance of other older appetites.
    Good times, old times she remembered. She was washing a corpse. Perhaps her own family had once been bathed and dressed too, but in readiness for the eternity of that loft, by other old women
with gentle hands. She lived with the dead. Perhaps she had learned this ritual from those still-twitching ancestors upstairs, made from parchment and dust. And maybe she had prepared other poor
wretches too, for that mighty and unnatural presence that governed these black woods. To be given. Given .
    He began to breathe too quickly. Into his mind came the other attic he had seen out here, and with it the memory of a black face, long, and wet about the great pink bullock nostrils; he thought
of worn but strong horns the length of swords. How long did it keep you alive out there in the wet darkness? ‘Jesus. Jesus, Christ. Please.’ He said, and tried to sit up.
    She came closer, held him, gently touched his forehead, like he was a child having a nightmare.
    He swallowed the panic. He welcomed her arms, and her quiet words that he could not understand. Her little body was so hard under that dusty black dress that stretched up to her wizened throat.
But he welcomed her bosom and he sobbed into it.
    The bones of men and beasts, the skeletons of forsaken homes, the forgotten places of worship, now bound them each to the other. He had come here living and warm but now must become of it. There was no other place for him in