The black waters whispered. Candle light skimmed over the stream and flowed into the women's eyes as they circled the stones, their loose black garments writhing like fire behind them in the soft autumnal breeze. All around them, the trees dappled their branches into the fragile shell of light, probing the growing shadows and holding their breath in anticipation.
The door was opening.
The three women's voices rose and fell like the rushing water at their feet, weaving together like the whistle of the wind. Eight candles rose from the leaf covered earth, their flames red against the inky blackness of the forest. In the centre of the ring of candles, a pile of flat blue stones lay, its rain soaked surface shimmering like gold in the dim light.
The women in black stopped. Silence fell. They were being watched.
Two silver eyes grew from the shadows in the trees. The light from the moon above casting deep into them, drawing out a face, pale, cold, and dead.
The women turned to face the creature, their robes streaming about them as they came to rest on the earth. The candle light grew in the halting wind to reveal an array of knives and spikes arranged purposefully about the stones. White lines and curves littered the leafy ground, joining here and parting there, like an endless trail of
The eyes in the trees shifted as the creature cocked its head. Its skin, now visible in the faint light, seemed carved from rock; rough and pitted with scars which spiralled at its cheeks, chin, and temple. Forcefully, it stepped forward.
"Hail," the witches crooned.
The creature stepped further into the light. Its feet, black with dirt and hairy, contorted in the cold, toeless and bleeding. Its naked chest hung heavily under the weight of its back, skin pulled tight over aching muscle. A cloak of matted fleece draped upon its shoulders and dragged through the leaves beneath. A heavy hood covered its scalp, from which three antlers rested, strung with weeds and the corpses of late summer flowers.
"Old Grime, father of the winter. Rise now from the forest, and take your throne."
Old Grime blinked, and the sound of a thousand winds came rushing from the distance. Slowly, he opened his mouth, wider and wider until a crack was heard as the jawbone shattered. An icy wind shot at the women, the candles extinguished, their garments once again as fire.
"O wandering Lord of the night, rise and rise again!" their voices now indistinguishable from the roar of the wind which scratched at their faces and pulled at their hair. The trees around them began to spin as Old Grime came closer, stronger now, it seemed. The forest closed in around them and the wind shook ferociously at their skin, ripping and tearing until blood tore into the spinning air. The women screamed in agony as their eyes misted over, as frost grew on their receding skin and as the fingers of Old Grime reached out and bit deep into their flesh.
Sunlight slithered over the dewy forest floor. Three piles of black cloth lay about a frozen stream, red candle wax splashed about the trees. A young woman rose from her slumber.
"Sisters!" The two women at her side awoke, their naked bodies blushed pink with chill.
"Did it work? Is he here?" The brown haired woman's frantic breaths chimed shrill in the early morning air. Their eyes met in the foggy winter light. They knew the answer, but not one of them dare say it.