Forty-Eight:
Princess Ashden
There was something wrong. There was a sweet smell that had filled my nostrils, coming from nowhere. Haven had gone to put gas into the car and hadn’t come back. I got up out of the car, wondering if perhaps he’d gone off to go to the bathroom. “Haven!” I called out. “Haven!” There was the sound of a snapping twig, and I turned to see an old woman standing there.
“Excuse me,” I said, “have you seen a young man around here? Tall, blond, with green eyes? Looks a bit like Thor in a suit?”
The old woman shook her head. She was wearing a black cloak, and she had wirey gray hair. There was the smell of something sweet coming off of her, but it wasn’t a good sweet stench. There was something acrid about it, rotting.
She smiled at me, and something about th
