There is a girl, naked and trembling, beneath a bed. The cold floor hard against her bare skin and the eerie moonlight peeking in through the thick curtains. Through the room strides a man, also naked but unabashedly walking around. He is why she is trembling, not the cold. He is a short man, rather fat and unfit, not as strong or as fast as her. In his clammy hand he holds a flute, a thin flute made of some feeble dead wood. The girl pushes herself deeper under the bed as the man walks by. He draws closer and closer to the bed, the dark flute in his hand, a stylised bird skull carved on it. The flute, of Auriomach.

Rho had been named for her great grandmother. Her mother had always told her about her great grandmother, apparently she’d been an artist, a great artist whose paintings were sought across the kingdoms and sold for many times their weight in gold. Where all this gold was now her mother had never specified. They certainly hadn’t ever had any of it. Rho wasn’t the name she used any more of course. That wasn’t a name her clients would like. The name she used now was Selena. She was something of an artist as well. She bought joy and pleasure to people who paid her well for it. Just not the sort of artist her mother had been talking about. It was her mother’s fault of course. She’d never had any money or ability to pursue any other profession, at least none that paid so well.

She worked at the brothel, Katrina’s. Katrina was now and old and plump woman who could stare down any man she didn’t want in her brothel and who near everyone feared to cross. It helped that she’d probably fucked them sometime when she’d been younger or employed someone who had. With her running the brothel the whores were free to mock and tease the townsfolk with impunity. Selena enjoyed it. She was the most beautiful woman in the town and always got the best customers. Her favourite was Barda, the son of the carpenter whose wealthy father had seen he had a proper education as well as a privileged life. He was tall and attractive with a close cropped beard and powerful muscles. He always requested her by name and she was happy to oblige. The other whores envied her, she knew. They were like her, raised on the streets, or constantly moving from house to house. With a single parent or no parent at all. They had not been born as beautiful as her though, and how they suffered.

Many men graced the doors of Katrina’s. There was the old woodsman who barely entered the town and seemed more animal than man. There was the strange fisherman who always smelled disgusting and cackled inanely at every girl he saw. Then there was the worst of them. The third son of the fat old mayor. He was short and plump, just like his father, with beady and evil eyes that sent shivers down her spine whenever he looked at her. And look at her he did. Constantly, he would always request her and knead his fat hands as Katrina fetched her. She would reject him, she would reject all of these lesser men, she could afford to. The other girls envied her as they had to sleep with someone or not get paid. So it was in Katrina’s, Selena only slept with the best customers while the other whores were left with her leavings. Her mother had died of disease many years ago and she did not miss her, they had never agreed from what Selena could remember and somehow she doubted her mother approving of her current career.

Selena awoke to a bright and sunny day. She had not had any man this night and wondered what the day would bring. She left the the brothel and walked through the streets with the sun high in the sky. As a whore she worked at night and rarely roused early. She left the town and walked into the small wood at the edge. It was a quiet wood with easy paths to walk along and many flowers and birds. Many people lived in the wood but she was looking for a certain person. Mother Magda, the old woman who brewed the potion all the whores and many of the village girls drank. It didn’t always work, sometimes one of them would get pregnant, but Magda had a potion for that too. She was very useful that way. She was also often completely insane, but that was forgivable.

Selena knocked on the door of the old cottage and the old woman let her in.

“Selena,” Magda said staring over her shoulder with a trembling lip. “Come inside, come inside, dark clouds are looming.” There were no clouds in the sky.

Selena followed her inside. The cottage was a mess with all sorts of arcane and esoteric things hanging on the walls and piled up on chests and tables. On one shelf were the ugly green potions. Magda reached up to the shelf and took on with her trembling frail hands. She always looked terrified, her eyes far wider than Selena would’ve thought naturally possible.

“Be careful Selena,” Magda said rushing across the room to peer out through the door. “There are even more clouds now.” There weren’t.

“Thank you Mother,” Selena replied, sliding gracefully passed the old woman and through the door. “I’ll watch out for those-”

Magda’s eyes grew even wider and her hand snapped out to grab Selena’s wrist. Selena jumped in surprise and then calmed down.

“Sorry about that Mother,” she said reaching into her pouch and taking out a gold coin. “Will that do? I have-”

“You can survive it, I think. But you won’t, no escape when old Aurio’s on your tail.” Then she saw the gold coin and her eyes shrunk a bit to a more natural size. She snatched it. “Thank you Selena.” Then she let go of her wrist, closed the door and slipped back inside.

Selena shrugged and began to walk back to the town. She wasn’t bothered by Magda, she said strange things all the time. The day was bright and sunny, the birds were still singing and this was the day Barda usually came to the brothel. It would be a good day for her, even more so than normal.

Then she saw a cloud. It wasn’t a black cloud, or even an ominous cloud, just an ordinary fluffy white cloud. There hadn’t been any clouds in the sky when Magda had warned her about them. She watched the cloud. It wasn’t very big and as she watched it it grew smaller until it dispersed and faded away. Did clouds do that? She wasn’t sure.

She looked around, the sun was still shining, the birds were still singing. In fact they seemed to be singing louder. There was a strange bird singing now, almost like a giggling laugh. She didn’t know much about birds but this one seemed to stand out for some reason. She kept walking back toward the town, clouds and birds were hardly dangerous. There was nothing in this tiny forest that would hurt her. The most dangerous thing was the woodsman and he was terrified of Katrina, same as everybody else.

She saw a shape in the distance. A rock, or a tree maybe. Then it moved, it moved like a person would move, but it wasn’t a person. Then it dashed into some bushes and disappeared. An animal, some creature that looked strange from this angle and this distance. She walked all the way back to the town, slightly faster than she’d been walking before.

Barda came to the brothel in the late afternoon while the sun was still shining. He often came early and then went to drink in the tavern at night. He was a skilled minstrel and would entertain the tavern patrons for hours. He asked for her and she walked down the stairs to meet him in her most revealing dress. It wasn’t a very impressive dress, their local tailor wasn’t very skilled and didn’t branch out into the fancy noble gowns she so envied. Barda took her in with his warm eyes and they went up to her room, trading private jibes with each other all the way. They had each other all over her bed and she screamed into the afternoon street. Then he paid her and left, smiling at her as he closed the door. She lay content in her bed and counted the gold, the blankets tousled beneath her.

She fell asleep with the sun streaming in on her naked body and woke up later when the sun started to set and a cold wind blew in the window. She got up and dressed and closed the window and the curtains, then she went downstairs to mingle with the other girls. When she arrived downstairs she saw the mayor’s son standing there, staring up at her with his beady evil eyes. He held a flute. A black flute made of dead wood.

“I don’t want-” Selena began.

“I haven’t come to hire you,” the mayor’s son said calmly. “I just wanted to play a song for you.”

“You can’t just-”

Then he began and she stopped. She couldn’t continue, couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. Could only listen. The flute sounded beautiful, but in a bleak and terrible way. Beauty in the way that absolute desolation and misery is beautiful. It isn’t, but through the flute it seemed to be. She could only listen to the notes as they played. And then she heard the laughter, the laughter of that creepy bird and she struggled to move. The flute stopped and she could move. She didn’t.

“Thank you for listening Selena,” the mayor’s son said. Then he turned around and walked away with his dark flute.

Selena grabbed the stair rail and just stared after the mayor’s son. The other girls in the room glared at her, some whispered to each other. No one had ever played a song for them. For once in her life Selena envied them.

That night she was a girl again. Living in a rotting house and struggling to keep warm under threadbare sheets as cold wind whistled through the broken window. Her mother downstairs, not talking to her after some fight. Then she stood up and went to the cold window. She looked out and saw only a desolate plain, a grey waste in every direction with cold wind howling across it. She looked into the waste and seemed drawn into it. Away from the safety of home and her mother into the alien wasteland. Empty in every direction except for howling winds and dark clouds. But it wasn’t empty in every direction. In front of her was a shape. A shape that moved like a person, but wasn’t a person.

She woke up and her bedroom that had been so warm before was cold. She looked at her warm blankets and reached for them only she didn’t. She stood up and walked through the cold to the door. She panicked and rushed back into her bed, away from the door only she didn’t. She unlocked and opened the door then walked out into the hallway and into the street. She struggled against the force moving her body and ran back inside to her room only she didn’t. She walked through the cold dark town, the cold dark town she had always feared walking alone in at night. She tried to scream, tried to run, tried to do anything, only she didn’t.

She walked into a big house. A house she’d never been to before. She walked up to the door and knocked. She ran away but instead she waited. The door opened and a man so old she could barely believe he was alive greeted her.

“Selena,” he said smiling. “The master is in his room.”

Selena walked past the man and he bowed to her. Around his neck hung the skull of a bird, a tiny skull, a baby bird. She liked baby birds. She grabbed the skull as she walked past and ripped it off the man’s neck only she did. She looked down at the bird skull in her hand, the threads of rope still attached to it. That was strange, why had she been able to do that? She walked through the big house and up some stairs. In the room was a large soft bed and lying on it was a large soft man. The mayor’s son, already naked, with his evil eyes staring at her. On the bedside table was the flute and he stood up and grabbed it as he did so. He walked toward her and she tried to run but instead stayed and watched as he raised the flute to his lips and played another note of beautiful desolation. She tore her clothes off. In a feat of grace and strength, normally reserved only for Barda and her highest paying clients she stripped for this evil eyed monster. His eyes grew more sinister when he smiled with malice as he watched her. Following every movement until she was naked before him. He reached for her and she ran. She ran from the room into the hallway and bolted down it, passed all the doors and into the main room only she did. For some reason her body and mind listened to her and she was able to run, able to flee. She relished it.

The mayor’s son blinked in shock. That wasn’t supposed to happen. He spun around to grab his clothes and give chase when he saw on the floor, the baby bird’s skull, now shattered into many pieces when Selena had thrown it away as she undressed. How had she gotten that? But of course he knew how she had gotten it, he hadn’t told her not to. There was no time for clothes, who knew how well the flute would even work without the skull. He dashed after her with the dark flute ready.

She was a girl again. A girl hiding from everyone who wanted to hurt her. She found a bedroom that didn’t look very used and hid under the bed. She trembled in terror and shock, she was trapped, she was trapped in this house with this monster. She heard him moving about the house. She heard him talking with the old man, yelling at him about the bird skull. She couldn’t hear the words very well. The skull was important, somehow, it was linked to the flute, linked to what was happening to her, and she didn’t have it any more. What could she do? Just a little girl, trapped under this bed, at the mercy of the flute.

The mayor’s son walked into the room and walked around. He was still naked and she watched his feet wander about the room, he looked in the wardrobe, he looked out the window. Then he walked toward her bed. She watched his feet approach and watched as he raised the flute to his mouth. She envied all the other girls. She envied the girl who got the woodsman, the girl who got the fisherman, and she envied the girl who got nobody at all. The girl she’d been before she became a whore. What had that girl done? That girl had fought.

She pressed off the wall behind her and lunged forward. Her body uncoiling as she leapt at the feet in front of her. She was taller, with more strength and grace than this evil eyed man. All he had was that flute and the flute was just a stick if you didn’t play it. She grabbed his legs and he struggled but she pulled him down and leapt to her feet. She wasn’t a girl any more. She grabbed the flute and tried to pull it from his clammy hand but he held onto it. He stared up at her with those evil eyes, now contorted with hate and fear, and put another hand onto the flute. He looked so ugly and pathetic, lying on the floor, squabbling over a stick like a child. But he wouldn’t let go and she couldn’t pull the flute from his grasp. She heard footsteps and saw the butler approaching. He was old and had so many lines she couldn’t see his face, but he was less frail than he’d looked and he held a sword. A sword! Why did he have a sword? He walked toward her and with both hands on the flute she could only watch.

Then she heard a crack and stumbled backward with one half of the flute. She crashed to the ground and looked at the dead black wood in her hand. The mayor’s son and his butler both stared at her in horror. Such horror that she wondered if she had somehow changed from her original self into some monster. But they weren’t looking at her. They weren’t really looking at all.

A shape walked into the room. It walked like a person but it wasn’t a person. It laughed like a bird as it tore them apart.

“It was her!” the mayor’s son screamed. “She broke it, it wasn’t me, it-”

The butler seemed to be praying but it did him no good either. The shape turned from the blood and looked at her. It looked like a person but it wasn’t a person. It looked at the broken piece of flute. Selena offered it to him and smiled weakly. Maybe he would take it back and leave her alone. But there’s no escape when old Aurio’s on your tail.

Barda left the tavern with the last dregs of its patrons. He’d played there all night and now he needed a place to rest. He could go back to his house with its feeling of home and safety. But Barda cared little for home and safety. He was much more interested in comfort. He went to the big house the mayor’s son lived in. There were so many rooms that they wouldn’t notice him taking one for the night. He walked around the edge of it, weaving through various well trimmed plants and hedges. He found a window and worked his knife under it. His father had given him that knife many years ago and it could cut through anything given time. He opened the window and stepped through. He wandered through the house looking for a bedroom. But he smelled blood, he was well accustomed to blood after singing through many a bar fight. He investigated, working through the rooms until he found the source. There were three of them, all torn to shreds. One was Selena, that was a pity, she’d been good. There was two pieces of flute in the room. A flute made of dead black wood. Made of syncordant wastewood. Barda had always dreamed of making a lute for himself. He took the pieces, why make a regular lute when he could make a magical one. He slept in the next room that night. He slept easily.