The next night the King arrived with his guard. He stood before Sylvanis’s cell, less patient and less affable, and asked the girl to marry him.

She refused.

The King angered quickly this time.

“Have you forgotten what I have told you?” he shouted through the bars. “Are you so quick to spit upon my goodwill? Or perhaps you think my words hollow? That I offer them up falsely? Would you so callously condemn the boy you love?”

“I cannot marry you, for I do not love you,” Sylvanis said, and she shrunk into the corner of her cell.

“Then he who suffers has you to thank for it,” the King shouted. Then he ordered his guard to go and beat the boy, and stormed in anger out of the freezing dungeon.

Sylvanis watched the guard closely as she pleaded he be merciful. She watched that man carefully and the key ring on his hip. She saw, and noted firmly, just how they looped around his belt. Then she hugged her legs and soothed herself as the distant cries began. She forced herself to listen for the moment they ended, forced herself to bear the weight of the sentence she’d decreed. Then the dungeon quieted. Footsteps echoed dimly up the stone stairs. Then came the creak of heavy wood, and a slam. The wooden door shut tight. The dungeon, at last, was empty.

Sylvanis leapt up from the stone.

“Shadow! Oh, shadow!” she cried frantically.

From the stone below the demon appeared.

“Good evening, little witch,” he smiled. “You are still here?”

“Oh great shadow,” the girl breathed, relieved. Then her temper rose. “What gift did you give to me that cannot open locked doors? Did I not wish to be free of these cells? Is your power so feeble?”

The demon frowned.

“What temper, little witch, though I have come back to help you. Was it not you who wished to open cells? Are you not free of them this very moment? Have I not upheld our bargain? The wish was yours to make, after all. Is it then my power which is feeble?”

Sylvanis withered and lowered her gaze.

“Forgive me,” she said. “My anger was misplaced.”

The demon nodded.

“Do not fret, little one,” he said. “You are not yet without hope, for I am here and you have more to offer. You may yet win your fate. What is it you desire?”

Sylvanis straightened her back. This time she breathed in deeply, focused and firm. Her mind turned to dark thoughts and dim cries still fresh within her memory. A weak heart, however, made her stumble.

“What might you take from me,” she began with reluctance. “Should I wish for the King’s death?”

The demon’s interest perked.

“Oh?” he smiled. “What sudden spark of cruelty from a maiden so reserved.”

“Well, might it do the world a service?” she said. “How many might be free to live, were I to wish it? How many rescued by his saintly demise?”

“How many indeed,” the shadow said. “And thus why you cannot afford it. Ten thousand lives may be spared by the death of a King; have you ten thousand to pay for them?”

“I see…” Sylvanis said, defeated, yet somehow relieved. Then she fumbled through a dozen odd wishes.

“What then if I wish for you to take us far away from here, that my love and I might be together and free?”

“Together and starving in cold mountains perhaps: far away and dying, yet free. Take care with your wishes, maiden, or they will be granted in accordance with what you have paid. Such is the way of my kind. You are no good to your beloved a corpse, or to me.”

Sylvanis sat down at the demon’s words. She thought hard on what her feeble state might reasonably attain.

“So I must earn escape by my own hands…” she said. “…with these wishes as tools and not ends. Very well: I wish then for you to be my sword; help me take the keys from that guard, and protect my love and I as we flee castle and kingdom.”

“A clever try, little witch,” she shadow said. “Yet impossible. I would not wield my strength on your behalf, not for all and everything you might offer to me, for I am Master and not Slave. Yet perhaps another may serve. I can grant to you the tool that you seek.”

“Then that is my wish,” Sylvanis said. “What cost must I pay for such a weapon?”

“To suit your needs, a greater spell is needed. Thus the cost, in turn, must be greater. For this wish, I require your touch. Let a finger represent our bargain.”

Sylvanis reared back. Her spine chilled. She straightened her shoulders and breathed deeply in.

“What cost, you say?” she asked.

The demon flickered in response.

“To guard flesh and bone must in turn cost both. Worry not, little witch—there will be no pain.”

Sylvanis steadied her heart. She blinked once and inhaled, breathed out through her mouth, and swallowed the dryness of her tongue.

She held her hand forward and turned away.

“You would offer me your flesh?” the demon asked.

“Oh, please hurry and be done with it!” the girl cried.

The demon reached out.

It took the girl’s hand with its ghostly form as black tendrils wrapped quickly around the third finger. They curled around flesh, coiled it up like slithering ink, until it was bound and black. Then the finger, like her hair, disappeared into the black. It faded suddenly, entirely, away.

A small stump stuck out from where once a finger had been.

Sylvanis felt a rush of cold, as deeply chilling and frozen as the time before. Then she opened her eyes. She looked down at the nub and reached forward to caress it.

Then she noticed that the demon had gone.

She looked around the small cell.

Nothing changed. The prison, open an empty, looked no different.

Sylvanis felt a rush of sudden, angry regret. All frustration welled up in her chest, and she grit her teeth. With a helpless kick she ran her foot through the straw bed in the corner of the cell, scattering thin stalks across the room.

A hole appeared beneath the bed of straw, a large crack where the wall met the floor.

Sylvanis looked curiously towards it. As wide as her hips, yet not so tall as to crawl through, it sank through the stone and into the dirt below.

Sylvanis narrowed her eyes and reached toward it.

The hole sprang to life.

A creature moved within. Its head emerged suddenly from the pit. Heavy and black and brown with yellow eyes, it slithered up from the hole, out from darkness, huge and hulking and hungry. Its body took up the whole of the crevice, and as it pulled itself into the cell, the other half still had yet to emerge.

A giant snake crawled up from beneath the earth.

Sylvanis lurched back. She fell against the far wall of her cell and shrieked. In that moment she forgot the illusion of her prison, that the cell door had long since been unlocked. She looked only at the great yellow eyes of the serpent before her.

Closer and closer it drew near.

Sylvanis threw up her hands.

The snake put its head gently to rest on her leg. It pulled the rest of its enormous body from the hole beneath the straw, covering half the cell floor with its thick scales. Then it coiled itself together and stilled.

Sylvanis caught her breath.

The snake did not move.

A minute passed.

Slowly, cautiously, Sylvanis reached down to touch the creature. She stroked its head once, and recoiled.

The serpent closed its eyes.

Sylvanis allowed herself to breath. She took a moment to poke the creature again, to see the ways in which it might react.

It did not.

She ran a hand across its huge head.

It rested content on her leg.

Sylvanis ran her tongue over dry lips.

The snake did the same.

“Are you for what I gave my flesh and bone?” the maiden finally mumbled.

No response from the serpent, and Sylvanis grumbled.

“A terrifying sight, certainly,” she said. “Yet what good are you here? One look at your beastly size and the guard will flee in terror. How are you to help me sneak away the keys? Surely the only place to hide you is that hole.”

As she spoke the snake moved. It slithered suddenly, deliberately, back into the hole. It sank inside, moving deep into the earth, until its head finally vanished.

Fear overwhelmed Sylvanis.

“Wait! Come back!” she shouted in panic.

Then the serpent poked its head from the hole. Slowly it emerged and came to her.

Sylvanis paused.

“Can you hear me?”

The snake did not move.

Sylvanis spoke.

“Go put yourself out in the hallway,” she said.

The snake moved. At at her command, slithering across the stone, it came to a rest in the dim dungeon hall.

“Come back, now,” she said.

It came.

Sylvanis marveled at her tool, and wondered to herself just how much it would obey. She wondered if it might coil itself between the bars of the cell, even were it to tangle.

The snake obeyed her thought, and wound itself between the bars. It twisted its neck and began to suffocate.

“No, stop,” Sylvanis said. “I only meant to see if you would.”

The serpent struggled free, then came and placed its head back on her lap.

Sylvanis stroked the creature as it rested on her thigh, gently patting the flat of its head. Slowly, as she drifted to sleep, she began to muse on how she might obtain her keys.