The Favour

Prompt: You sold your soul to the devil some years ago. Today he gives it back and says, "I need a favour."

The old trade road hurled down the arid mountainside, unravelling like a silk ribbon knocked from a teetering merchant cart. It looped wide, careening out to the perilous edge of dusty cliffs, then snagged on crumbling rocks, folding in on itself, over and over, until it disappeared into the blanketing green valley far below.

In the night, the silvery road continued to unwind beneath the leafy canopy. It trailed over hills, dipped into streams and swung around massive moss-covered trunks. Ancient trees arched overhead, intertwining their limbs. Their deep shadows softening the edges of the old road.

By this time of year, dusty sandals of that summers travellers should have tampered a well-worn path down its centre. Carts should have been bobbing and swaying through its ruts, and birds of forest should have been chattering indignantly at the shuffle and clang of the interlopers; however, not one merchant with his rattling cart full of wares could be found braving the near winter chill this late at night. Even the birds seemed to be but a distant memory. Save for a cold breeze rippling through the trees every now and again, the air was cold and soundless.

The unreasonable temperatures had driven all creatures away from the old trade road- all except for her.

She was a young woman of some twenty years, prettily dressed, with her blonde hair pulled back in a perfect plait. Her blue eyes were shadowed with a quiet sorrow that one wouldn't detect unless they knew to look for it.

She stood out in the cold in the middle of the night. wolves howled in the distance, trees rustled in the breeze. Her eyes darted to a freshly dug hole in the middle of a cross-roads. It was stained dark with blood from the palm of her hand, which she had hastily bandaged, once she'd completed the final step.

Her gaze rose from where she eyed the ground immediately in front of her.

Her palm stung. She ignored it.

Shadows flickered across her face as the moon went in and out of view.

She checked her watch again. Three minutes had gone past since she'd last checked the time.

She stomped her feet trying to get warmth back into her toes and looked up at the sky. The full moon trundled along its path: bright, cold, and indifferent.

A bird called out. Another answered.

She'd give the smarmy git five more minutes and then she was going home, never to speak of this ill-advised attempt again.

A leaf crackled underfoot and she jumped, swinging round to face the sound.

The man who stepped into view made her sag with a relief that she immediately hated herself for.

Before her, half hidden in shadow, stood Tom Morrison Ryker, a man still regarded as mysterious for all that he's lived in her small town for a year now.

She ignores the feeling of longing that always seems to spring up when she is near him.

"You're late," she said, voice clipped to disguise her nervousness.

Tom smiles at her.

Seeing that smile, she recalled her mother's warnings clearly; the devil was a man of incredible beauty, she had said. He stood tall and proud, with an arrogant set of his mouth as he gazed upon his victims.

Tonight, she was his victim.

"Terribly sorry." His voice is sardonic; that fake smile grows a little wider.

He watches her as she shivers in the cold. The full moon peeks out behind a cloud and in its light, a modest wedding band glints on the woman's finger.

His smile grows at her obvious discomfort as she hides the band from view.

She stares at him, at his pale angular face, the almost cruel set of his lips. She stares at his cold eyes rimmed with dark thick lashes. Her fingers twitch as she suppresses the urge to run her fingers through dark hair that shone like the blackest, moonless night.

Oh, he was beautiful indeed.

His gaze meets hers. She sees something in them that she cannot place.

"Tom," her voice is low, scared. "I need your help."

She does not know when he had moved, but he now stood directly in front of her. He was almost uncomfortably close as he towered over her petit frame.

His cold blue eyes bore into hers. "You understand the price for your desire will be your soul?" His voice wraps around her familiar and yet not at the same time.

He looks like the man whom she had long fancied. She thinks back to scorching kisses shared in the apple orchard, before she gone ahead and married the bakers' son for reasons of practicality rather than love.

She knows he is not the same man now. His blue eyes shine with a quality that is otherworldly.

She nods, not trusting herself to speak.

"Fleur." He draws out her name. "Tell me your desire."

"I want a child," she whispers. "A daughter." She looks up at him and he can see the despair that lurks in her eyes. She had tried for so long for this child. She had sought out specialists and witchdoctor's from afar. Nothing had worked.

"You would give your soul for this child, Fleur?"

"I would give my life," is her firm answer, voice unwavering in her conviction.

His grin is near feral.

From the inner pocket of his waistcoat he pulls out a folded sheaf of parchment. "The contract," he drawls lazily. "In ten years' time I will come to collect your soul."

Her hand wavers over the parchment for only a moment. She takes a deep breath and signs her name with a flourish.

Fleur Westaway.

She has sealed her fate.

The bit of parchment is quickly tucked away and Fleur finds herself pulled close by firm hands. Her cheek is pressed against Tom's chest.

His hand strokes her hair. She trembles at the familiarity of his touch. He whispers in her ear, something dry and twisting that she cannot understand. It reminds her, she thinks, of a snake's hiss. Strangely, it is beautiful.

She is no longer cold, she realises, as Tom releases her from his grasp. She finds, unsurprisingly, that she misses the contact.

She looks to her surroundings. They are still in the middle of the road. Tom has laid a blanket on the ground and is unbuttoning his waistcoat with deft fingers as he watches her. A fire burns within its contained circle.

She warms under his gaze and he moved to stand before her, his shirt flapping open in the breeze. Her breath catches at the sight of his smooth chest and the valley of muscles that dips below his trousers.

Her eyes meet his as his hands roam across her bodice, pulling strings free so it falls off her shoulders. She stands, breasts bared to him for the first time, in the moonlight.

She is helped out of her skirts and stands, arms at her sides, as he admires her. "You are so beautiful, Fleur."

Her head almost rolls as he takes one saccharine breast into his mouth. This is what she had longed for. Her own husband never treated her this reverently, as if she were something so very precious.

Her senses are assaulted repeatedly throughout the night. She feels pleasure she has never felt before as she pulls him into her, her breasts bounce with the force of his thrusts. Their cries of passion echo around her, as their sweat soaked bodies glitter in the moonlight.

The sun has just barely begun to rise when she collapses atop Tom thoroughly spent.

Ever the gentleman, the devil helps her dress herself, offering her one more kiss that she secretly wishes would never end. She closes her eyes in pleasure. When she opens them again, he has disappeared.

She makes the slow trudge back home, disappearing into the tree line opposite the fire circle. She sighs, watching the sunlit crossroads disappear behind row upon row of brown trunks. The forest is undeniably vast; going home will take an age. Despite this, her mood is the best it has been in a long while.

She'd come here as a girl often enough, that the landscape was achingly familiar. She kept watching the forest, looking for an opening between the trees. She could feel that she was near the old trade road, although she'd not yet caught sight of it.

Finally the ancient trees broke their ranks and allowed for some undergrowth. She had traveled for what felt like miles, climbing over gnarled roots, hopping across puddling creeks and sliding down leaf-thick slopes. With the broad forest now behind her, the land now rolled under her feet. Shrubbery thick with brown and green foliage scattered amidst rocks and boulders, large and small, slowed her pace.

She was very near the road now, though she hadn't seen it yet. From her current vantage point, she estimated that it should be just beyond the next hill. She'd made it to a shallow couloir nestled between two hills, where she'd often been warned not to play there as a child. Nora looked up the steep sides to the bush arching over the top. The path was flattened and well hidden.

If this was here then the road couldn't be too far away.

A large tree had fallen and pulled one of the slopes down into the gulch with it, leaving a gap that offered a tantalizing wide-view glimpse of the surrounding area. To continue down the trail she would have no choice but to scale the log.

She flattened her hands on the bark, but didn't move further. Instead, she shot a glance back over her shoulder and down the length of the tree. Beyond its grasping airborne roots, she could see the entire woodland valley unfolding. She sucked in a shallow breath.

Slips of yellow glimmered through the mottled green and brown landscape, winding teasingly in and out of view. It was the old trade road curling around trees, bobbing over the hillocks. It was what she had been searching for- the thread that connected her to home.

She scrambled down the couloir then hiked back up another one, before stopping below a large outcrop of rock. Taking a moment to rest, she proceeded her upwards trudge. Nora hesitated at the crest of the hill. Beyond her the road twisted relentlessly through the woods, flat and empty.

It slipped around a tree and disappeared.

A little further along the way, nearing midday, she came upon a small clearing where she had played in as a child. Flowers of all sorts bloomed there during the summer. She smiled. She was almost home.

It was well past midday when she'd come upon her door. Her husband, thankfully was away the next town over and wouldn't be home until the fortnight.

Days later, when her monthly bleeding did not start, she knew.

The devil had delivered his promise.

Nine years and eleven months later.

It is not quite the done thing, selling one's soul to the devil. Many, who were foolish enough, did it for power or for fame.

Her own mother used to lecture against such an abhorrent deed as seeking the man out. "The devil," said she, "is, after all things, a man, and those you should never trust."

She'd disregarded her mother's warning, thinking her desire to become a mum more important than the pursuit of money or fame.

She had been a young woman of some twenty years the night she'd sold her soul to the devil.

Now she stood, still blonde and blue eyed, though perhaps not quite as pretty, at thirty as she was at twenty, watching a little blue-eyed girl pour tea in her pretty white dress. Her dark hair, so soft and lovely, shone like the blackest, moonless night.

"Mummy!" The little girl calls, having noticed her standing at the door. "Mummy, come have some tea!" She motions to her collection of linen dolls sitting around a play table in her room.

They came every year on her birthday, one beautifully crafted linen doll after another. Foxes and Bears and Cats and Hares; all came beautifully packaged in elegant tissue paper and done up in a long black box with a pretty grey bow.

Last year she had received a beautiful silver unicorn.

No sender was ever named, though deep down she knew who they were from. She could not bare to part with them, beautiful as they were, for they were the only connection she and her daughter had to him.

She moves to join her daughter, fondly ruffling her hair. "Æthel, this looks lovely!" She beams. Her smile does not reach her weary eyes.

"Cat and Bear want extra sugar, mummy." She doles out a pretend lump each.

She has one month left with her daughter, before the devil comes to collect. She knows this in her bones.

Days pass and she gives her daughter everything her heart little desires.

Every night she cries.

When there is naught but a week left, she gets a knock at her door. It is the middle of the night.

She throws on a dressing gown to ward off the chill and goes to open the door.

Standing before her is none other than Tom Morrison Ryker, the dazzling man who had given her everything then left town.

Silently she invites him in.

He sits at the kitchen table while she, ever the good host, busies herself preparing tea. On the table next to him sits a long black box with a pretty grey bow.

She sits across from him, watches as his lips part around the teacup. She grimaces at the way he takes his tea: plain without the milk and sugar she's put in her own cup.

He is still so very beautiful that it almost hurts to look at him. His eyes are still so very blue and are still so very cold; the set of his lips is still arrogant. She smiles weakly as she spies the bit of grey marring his perfect dark hair.

"There is still a week left, Tom," her voice is pitched low, hesitant, as she voices that which she most fears.

"So, there is, Fleur." His measured blue gaze burns her up with its cold fire.

His eyes alight on her bare left hand. "No ring?" He queries.

"When Æthel was born," she pauses for a moment, then elaborates in a voice full to the brim with fondness. "That's her name, Æthel Rose."

He nods. "A beautiful name choice; Noble Rose."

She continues on as if he hadn't said anything, though secretly she is pleased he approves. "My husband," she says the word with disdain. "As you might remember, was, as I am, blond. When he saw that Æthel is not, he realised I had been unfaithful and left us both."

She was quiet for a moment more, noting how Tom's eyes had flashed in anger at the thought of her being treated so poorly.

"She has your hair, Tom. Your eyes. She is truly beautiful."

She does not mention that like her father, Æthel possesses an otherworldly quality to her beauty, that this makes the other children and their mums weary of her.

They sit and talk for a while of meaningless things. The sun has just barely begun to rise when she finds the courage to ask why he is here.

"I need a favour," is his simple reply.

She sits there stunned, watching as he pulls from his waistcoat a familiar sheaf of parchment.

"Your contract," he explains, as if she does not recognise it. "In exchange for doing this favour for me, you get to keep your soul. You'll be with your daughter until the end of your natural life."

Her tea sits abandoned as she eyes him with trepidation. What could he possibly want so badly that he would relinquish his hold on her soul?

"Please don't look at me like that, Fleur. I only want to get to know my daughter." His voice is coloured with pain and grief, and for a moment she thinks he will break down and cry.

"I was unable, due to the stipulations in the contract, to come to you before today. You've no idea how much this pains me, Fleur. A child should not have to grow up without her father, even if he is the bloody devil himself." He scoffs at this.

They are silent for a moment more, watching each other.

"Does she enjoy playing with the dolls?" His voice is quiet, hopeful.

Fleur smiles, all fear and worry gone, and takes his hand. "Very much so, Tom. She adores them. I've told her they are gifts from someone very special who lives so very far away."

"How I've hated being apart from you both." His voice is strained and sad. "The heartache I must have caused you both."

"You are the devil, Tom." She smiles weakly as his lip curls in disgust at his own title. "I knew that when I met you. I knew it even as I fell in love with you."

He blinks at her almost owlishly at that revelation. "You love me?"

She says nothing but continues on. "I knew it when I married another and begged you, all those years ago, to help me conceive. Bloody hell Tom, I knew you were the devil when you last kissed me that night. I knew it and I liked it. I never wanted that night to end." She looks at him with a modicum of fear tainting the sorrow he could see in her eyes.

Fear of rejection, he realises.

"Especially, Tom, I knew it when our daughter was born looking so very much like you; so inhumanly beautiful." He almost seems to preen at that.

"You are the devil, Tom. I cannot fault you for that." She squeezes his hand. "What matters is that you are here now."

Her voice grows stronger with her conviction, her passion, as she continues to speak. He knows then that this is why he had fallen in love with her, that pretty blonde girl, all those years ago.

Her passion.

"Tom, I accept your request of a favour, though I've one request in return." She turns eyes of steel his way. So certain she is that he will not refuse her. "I want you to become a part of our lives, Tom, not just pop in for a quick meet-and-greet before you're off again."

Her voice is as hard as the steel in her eyes. "I'll not allow either of us to have our hearts broken. You'll stay or there is no deal."

"I agree." His voice is dry, raw.

He adds in the new amendment to her contract, signs it and passes it over to her. She signs her name with a flourish.

Fleur Westaway.

Her soul is once again her own.

The sun has fully risen now. They hear a shuffle at the stairs, and soon enough, a little head of dark hair comes into the kitchen.

"Can I have pancakes for breakfast, mummy?" The voice is small and sleepy.

"Of course, sweetheart." The smile she offers her daughter is fond. "Have you gone and washed up?"

"Yes, mummy. I made my bed as well!" The little girl looks proud of her accomplishment.

Fleur smiles at her daughter. She looks to Tom who sits there staring at Æthel in wonder. "Æthel, darling, there is someone I would like you to meet. He is a dear friend of mine who has finally come home."

"The one who lives so far away, mummy?" She nods at her daughters innocent query.

Tom crouches down to Æthel's level and offers an easy smile. "Hello Æthel. My name is Tom."

The girl smiles shyly. "Hullo," is her soft reply.

Her face brightens immediately as she spies Tom reaching on the table for a long black box with a pretty grey bow.

He hands her the box. "I do believe it's high time you receive your birthday present from me in person, don't you?"

The little girl squeals and eagerly undoes the pretty grey bow with a practiced ease. Nestled inside the elegant tissue paper is a beautiful linen doll.

It is a grey elephant this year, dressed up in the prettiest gown of grey and white tulle. She has small painted silver feet, and flowers of white cotton, with small silver leaves sewn on top of her head, as if it were a crown. The insides of her ears have a lovely floral pattern to them.

Æthel holds the doll reverently to her chest. In a quiet voice she asks of Tom, "Would you like to see my stuffies?"

"I would love to, Æthel." He allows her to take his hand and lead him to her room.

It is there that she finds them once breakfast is ready.

She stands, now, still blonde and blue eyed, though perhaps not quite as pretty, at thirty as she was at twenty, watching Tom interact with their daughter. He is still so very beautiful that it almost hurts to look at him. His eyes are still so very blue, though they are not quite as cold now; the set of his lips is still a touch arrogant, though most of that is softened by the smile he wears.

She smiles weakly as she watches Tom dazzle a little blue-eyed girl in her pretty white dress clutching a linen doll, telling her the story behind each pretty doll he'd gifted her over the years.

Her dark hair, like his, so soft and lovely, shone like the blackest, moonless night.

Softly she calls out, "Come now, breakfast is ready, my little bug."

Tom's gaze meets hers over the breakfast table. She sees something in them that she cannot place.

Æthel chatters on merrily between them. They send her off to play and clear the table in silence.

"Fleur." He says her name so softly she almost doesn't hear him.

She does not know when he had moved, but he now stands directly in front of her. He is almost uncomfortably close as he towered over her petit frame. Fleur finds herself pulled close by firm hands. Her cheek is pressed against Tom's chest.

His hand strokes her hair. She trembles at the familiarity of his touch.

Ever the gentleman, the devil helps her out of her apron, before capturing her lips in a kiss that she secretly wishes would never end. She closes her eyes in pleasure.

When she opens them again, he is still here.

The devil had kept his promise.