The Poisons of Caux: The Shepherd of Weeds (Book III)

Chapter One
Mrs. Mulk
Through a gate of jagged iron needles sat a decrepit brick building. At some point in its long life, the fence along the gate had endured a botched repair and was bandaged in places with barbwire, which sat rusting in sharp and dangerous clots. Behind it was a plot of rubble that could never be mistaken for a play yard, but in some sad coincidence was indeed just that. It was littered with stones, bits of broken glass, and scraps of rusting metal. The only visible toy was a small, weathered doll that sat headless and dejected. When there was a thin window in the brick building, long, uneven bars stretched across it. A faded sign announced this destination as a final one.

The Wayward Home for Indigent Orphans and Invalid Hotel
It was, in fact, a picture of perfect misery. But appearances did not matter for the Wayward Home for Indigent Orphans and Invalid Hotel, as there were never any visitors (unless you were unfortunate enough to be an orphan or an invalid).
No visitors, that is, except tonight.
From somewhere up the battered pathway and in the general vicinity of the crippled entry, a blast of impatient knocking shook the old front door. And then, rat-tat-tat-tat, a second. From the stoop, in the silence that followed, there was an irritated complaint, a muffled swear, and the thud of a large package hitting the ground.
Stillness followed.
Above, the worn slate roof was the same color as the cold night sky, except where a yellow incision of moon was carved beside a crumpled weather vane. Dark thornbushes scraped against the old walls, making strange, unsettling whispers. Vines edged over the creaky windows in a tenuous green curtain.
Finally, the peeling wooden door opened just a crack and a slash of weak firelight escaped from the orphanage.
"Who goes there?" accused a falsetto voice, the matronly one of Mrs. Mulk. "We are not due for another delivery." She attempted to close the door but found a stranger's shoe to be preventing this. Examining the shoe, she saw it was of unusual quality--possessing an oily sheen--and terminated in a silk stocking that bagged upon a bony ankle. It wriggled, trapped. Mrs. Mulk narrowed her eyes, and contemplated squishing it.
"Wanda," the visitor murmured.
It was a whisper of a word, and the darkness somehow made it more potent. The name--the softness of the letter W, the gasp of the final da--was a name of broken promises.
"Wanda," he said again.
The name stayed her hand.
"Who's there?" the custodian hissed. She brought an eye thick with mascara to the opening and peered out. The tar upon her lashes clumped together rebelliously, and when she blinked, it threatened to seal her eye altogether in a gluey mass. "If you prefer your foot attached to your body, I suggest you remove it at once. Otherwise, it will become the property of the orphans and invalids in my care. They are, it just so happens, in need of a new toy."
"Wanda. It's me," the nasally voice repeated, this time louder. It took on a pout. "Surely you have not forgotten?"
Mrs. Mulk thought for a moment. Few knew her by her given name. Could it be? While there was something familiar about the voice, there was something quite different, too--and it had been so long.
Times had changed in the kingdom of Caux. The Deadly Nightshades had been deposed, and while many in the land awaited news of their previous ruler, Good King Verdigris, a stubborn few hoped quietly--sinisterly--for the return of a more dangerous way of life.
Mrs. Mulk was one such person. She saw that now there were far fewer poisonings, and fewer poisonings meant fewer orphans. It was bad for business. Wanda Mulk did not like the current state of affairs in the least.
She thought for a moment, a name upon her lips.
"Sorrel?" Mrs. Mulk was suddenly tentative. "Dear Sorrel--Sorrel, is that really you?"
"Yes, Wanda. It's me."
The door was flung open and the generous form of the orphanage's lone custodian filled the frame. Wanda Mulk greeted her old friend and cohort with a look of genuine pleasure. Theirs was a friendship born from great misfortune--not their own, but that of others.
"Oh, Sorrel!" Mrs. Mulk's hands met at her bosom and her fingers laced and unlaced themselves in nervous expectation. Between them on the ground was a large and unwieldy package, wrapped tightly in an old rug and finished with rope.
"And, as usual, Wanda," Sorrel Flux continued, "I come bearing gifts."

Chapter Two
The Package
In the parlor the orphan maker and orphan minder conversed in low tones while the package lay unopened at the bottom of the cellar stairs, beside a few crusted barrels of saltpeter in the tallow room. The reunion was punctuated with Mrs. Mulk's muffled trills, Sorrel Flux's nasal tones threading between. Soon the tinkling of glasses grew more boisterous, while--perhaps in a trick of the candlelight--the woven carpet that haphazardly wrapped Sorrel Flux's gift seemed to pulse and swirl. It possessed a weave that was at once complex and captivating, and dark and discouraging, and, above all, ancient. But the years had not been kind, and the carpet was threadbare in places, and matted and overgrown in others--and the entire thing possessed an overwhelming odor of rotting vegetation.
While Sorrel Flux allowed himself the attentions of Mrs. Mulk, and liberal cupfuls of her sherry, he plotted the package's demise. This came quite easily to the miserable taster, as his dislike of anyone other than himself was what commanded the weak pulse in his sallow wrists. He talked long into the night, quite happy to hear his own voice--dripping with vainglory and tinged with conceit.
The package, he explained, contained a child.
"An orphan?" Mrs. Mulk asked hopefully. They were so much easier than invalids.
"No. Not yet," Flux allowed.
And then he opened his pasty mouth, a slit in his yellowed face, and told Mrs. Mulk the reason for his visit.

Indeed, Flux was right in that the package did not contain an orphan. But, in an interesting coincidence, the package, when it awoke, would wish to be one. It was, in fact, a bitter coincidence that the package should find itself within the walls of an orphanage, for the package most definitely possessed two parents--each more treacherous than the other. The package's mother had seemingly slipped it a very potent sleeping potion, resulting in this current situation. And its father, well, the package's father was bent on world destruction.
So, in the hands of its former, fiendish taster, the package slept--and dreamed.

The basement was composed of walls of bare rock, and dotting the various crannies were dingy candles, dripping molten wax upon everything beneath them. Many more had burned themselves out, nothing but greasy stumps, but the smell of the rendered fat remained.
To look on the bright side, the room was well lit. Sadly, the view was one perhaps better relegated to the dark.
Above a far door to the laundry room was an embroidered sign.

DON'T BOTHER DOING ANYTHING NICE FOR YOUR CHILDREN. THEY'LL ONLY REMEMBER THE BAD THINGS ANYWAY.

Chapter Three
The Boil Pile
It was the laundry room where all these bad things happened.
As awful as the basement was, the laundry room was far worse. It could be found, beneath the embroidered sign, through a small, riveted steel door. Inside, industrial-sized machines clugged and sloshed the sheets and tattered uniforms in a syrup of gray suds. Next, a large cylinder with a hand crank would squeeze out most of the dreary water, preparing the laundry--normally--for the drying process. But since Mrs. Mulk's clothes dryer had long ago expired, the washing was then unceremoniously returned to the various cots and shoulders whence it came, damp and discouraging. And then Mrs. Mulk would turn her attentions to what she found to be a far more agreeable project: the Boil Pile.
In one corner of the laundry room, a boiler sprouted many crooked pipes and occasionally belched a cloud of steam. Beside it was a vat--indeed, a cauldron of sorts--which was heated from a vast, glowing orange coil of wire beneath. From a broken metal hatch below it all, tangles of frayed cords and bulging tubes spilled forth along with the occasional spark. There was no off switch. There were no windows. A thin vent pipe threaded through the damp foundation and led to the orphanage's exterior, and was the only clue of the room's existence to the outside world.
For it was here Mrs. Mulk practiced her pursuit of perpetual youth.
Because Mrs. Mulk had it in her mind that there was nothing as precious as youth, she had long ago concocted a way to get herself some. With youth came the promise of longevity and vitality, both in short supply in Caux. But this obsession of Mrs. Mulk's did not translate into perhaps a more healthful lifestyle--the occasional enjoyment of the outdoors and an appreciation of fresh air and good deeds. No, Mrs. Mulk intended to steal herself some youth. And from whom better than the youngsters in her care?
The custodian of the Wayward Home for Indigent Orphans and Invalid Hotel found herself thinking that youthfulness could be extracted--quite simply, albeit horribly--from cherished objects belonging to her children. Upon arrival, the orphans (already parentless and destitute) were forced to relinquish their only beloved objects--their last possessions, filled with the sweat, kisses, tears, joys, and fears of their miserable lives.
A short list of things upon the Boil Pile:

1. One teddy bear, left eye missing, lovingly replaced with a battered button
2. A child's blanket, silken edge rubbed raw from cuddling
3. A broken locket
4. An odd doll's shoe
5. A thick book, titled The Field Guide to the Poisons of Caux, by Axlerod D. Roux

Mrs. Mulk would carefully boil down each of these treasures and, from the burnt dregs at the bottom of the vat, produce a mass of creams, powders, and lotions that would--she hoped--imbue her with eternal life.

Chapter Four
"It Is Done."
Sorrel Flux's eventual departure from the orphanage brought with it an uncheery moment of silence.
He pattered down the creaky steps. He skulked through what was once a small rose garden, which now grew nothing but vicious thorns. He made his way along the dark hedgerows that lined the walk, covered in a stingy winter's snow, past a few tattered scarecrows made from the cast-off clothes of abject orphans. The scarecrows were silent. A slight wind moved through their straw arms, causing a few to sway worryingly, but Sorrel Flux paid them no mind. His was a nature not to be troubled by nightmarish things--he preferred, instead, to cause them.
The grounds that surrounded the orphanage were, if possible, even more dire than the place itself. Much of the countryside was riddled with wetlands, and in the warmer months, the impassable earth was thick with deadwood and slime-covered puddles. Round hills rose from marsh, and fell back again into field. Tonight, everything was frozen and unwelcoming, even beneath a blanket of snow.
The moon was high now, a sulfurous wedge of yellow in the dark pool of Cauvian night. It easily illuminated the dented pipe from Mrs. Mulk's laundry room, and Flux made a beeline to it. He unwound the silken ascot from his yellowish neck and balled the fine fabric into a small clump, which he then stuffed satisfactorily into the ductwork before him. It was thoroughly jammed. Satisfied at his handiwork, he turned his back on the orphanage.
Sorrel Flux then found his way cautiously in the low light to an old crab apple tree, where he stopped and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He shook off some of the snow from his polished shoes and waited. He coughed once, and then thought better of it. He stifled a yawn.
Finally, from the deep recesses of the winter night, another figure emerged. It was a grand one, tall and glorious, especially beside the insignificant silhouette of the taster. The moon shone down, revealing a dress of such spectacular fabric as to mimic the celestial heavens above. A deep, night blue--devoid of all stars.
This was Clothilde. She appeared, as if stepping down from the ether, hands upon her hips. Her long hair--once fiercely black--was now a wintry silver, icy. The moonlight coursed through it like a waterfall. With an elegant sweep, she pulled it back into a tidy bun, securing it with a flash of a silver hairpin.
Sorrel Flux, his eyes narrowed, regarded his companion. But he was distracted not by his companion's utter resemblance to the child he had just delivered into Mrs. Mulk's questionable care. No, instead, he was preoccupied with a fantasy. It surged within his scrawny ribs, a dream of his future, one to which he was now one step closer.
"It is done," Flux smirked.
The unlikely pair then turned, bound for Templar.

Damp Idyll No. I
In the gloaming--before the light falls away completely in the evening--a trio was gathered in an overgrown garden. They were sisters, these three, from a time in Caux's history when great feats of magic were performed by cherished kings and hands wove spectacular tapestries made from silken ribbon and strong enchantments.
But these ladies, like Caux, had seen better days.
The first sister had long ago succumbed to a fungus, and her face was lumpy and porous with hundreds of small mushrooms. The next was wrapped in a cloak of moss so old and formfitting it was hard to distinguish where it began and her flesh left off--if indeed there was such a place. And the last of the sisters was like a very ripe cheese--mold had converged within her veins, and her skin was aged and crumbly. Hers was not a skin but a rind.
These were the Mildew Sisters, and they were gathered together for a spot of tea. A weak fire had been lit beside the garden's stricken scarecrow, and a dented kettle warmed between them.
"We are too late," the aged-cheese sister muttered. "The tea leaves do not lie."
The other two nodded, thoughtfully appraising the soggy pile of brewed nettles on the ground between them. They leaned in, divining.
"You are right, as always, Lola. The girl has returned to Caux, a failure. The Prophecy is unfulfilled. The King has not been cured."
All three nodded, agreeing.