The Hedge 1

Hike stared at the trio of farmers coolly over his emerald shades. They were dusty and nervous and looked out of place in the saloon with its polished mirrors and high-stakes gamblers. They held their hats in their hands and looked at each other but said nothing. Hike smiled.

"I don't bite," he purred, tipping back his felt hat and grinning in a way calculated to be something other than reassuring. "What can I do for you gentlemen?"

The eldest farmer swallowed hard. "They...they say you got the mojo."

Hike removed his gloved left hand from the top of the bar and held it up for the men to see. He clearly had the extra pinky that all sorcerors have. He waggled it at the farmers, who jumped.

"I got the mojo," confirmed Hike. "More than enough for you boys, if you're here looking for trouble. I don't care for lynchers. Turn 'em into smoke and watch 'em blow away." Of course Hike couldn't do any such thing, but yokels couldn't know that. Under his duster, Hike kept his right hand on his revolver just in case he needed to work a little real magic.

"We ain't no lynchers," said the spokesman for the trio, sweating, his eyes fixed on Hike's sixth finger. "We....we need a job done."

"Of course you do." Hike indicated the other stools by the bar; the farmers showed no signs of wanting to sit in them. "What kind of job? Cattle sick? Vampire swarms?"

The men shook their heads. "The hedge," one blurted. "It's a-comin'."

Hike frowned. "Hedge?" he said.

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Hike's horse was half-serpican; it could see very well at night and could go for days without water, but its clawed feet couldn't keep up with regular hooved animals. The farmers had to stop and wait for him a few times. They could have just gone slower, but they were impatient. Their ranches and town were in danger.

The rolling prairie smoothed out and entered a vast bowl. Looking across the knee-high grass, Hike could see a black line drawn across the land from horizon to horizon. It wasn't perfectly smooth and it wasn't of a uniform thickness; it was like a line drawn across grainy parchment using a blotty quill. It wasn't perfectly motionless either. Hike sighed audibly and spurred his horse.

"It come by here 60 years ago," shouted one of the farmers over the din of hoofbeats. "Come right through looking for blood. Kilt everything what come across it. Destroyed the whole land, it did. Kilt my grandpa too."

"How'd they fight it back then?" yelled Hike back.

The farmer shook his head. "You don't fight the hedge!"

Hike rode within 50 feet and stopped. Up close the hedge looked like a wrought iron fence designed by a madman. It was a forest of black poles, spines and outriggers, jutting crazily in all directions. The tallest pike was perhaps twelve feet tall, and he could just see daylight through the black mass, suggesting it wasn't much more than twenty feet deep. The hedge was a tangled maze of thrusting corkscrews and barbed antennae and slats and rungs and claws of iron, all pointy and quivering slightly.

As Hike watched, several of the taller projections stabbed downwards, digging slightly serrated heads into the dirt a few feet from the Hedge's margin. The mass of the thing lurched, and metal creaked and popped as the Hedge dragged its bulk forward. Smaller wires and tendrils groped the air in front of the beast, seeming to taste the air. Hike looked up and down the length of the Hedge, and the same thing was happening all along it. The monster ran for miles and miles.

Hike's horse reared and nearly threw him; then it screamed. The sorceror looked down and saw that an iron rod had shot out of the ground and speared his horse's leg, anchoring it to the ground. Sneaky hedge, he thought, reaching underground like that. He climbed atop his saddle and jumped as far as he could away from the Hedge, sprinting for safety as soon as he hit the ground.

Hike's horse's cries were mercifully short. The Hedge seemed to know it had found helpless prey, and it lurched forward eagerly to engulf the animal. It overran it with its myriad spines and then churned the earth with its stabbings. In a moment all was quiet.

"The hedge do like blood," observed a farmer. "Give you a lift?"

Hike frowned. "No," he muttered darkly. Forming his extra pinky into a hook of sorts, he waved his hand in the direction of the Hedge, which seemed to have paused to digest its meal. A thin column of white vapor rose from the knot of ironmongery that covered Hike's horse; it flowed upwards like sand running into an hourglass and pooled in the sky, billowing and expanding until it had the shape of a horse. The ghostly horse-form shook itself, then galloped through the air and alit close to Hike. The phantom animal eyed the sorceror with an expression bordering on resentment.

Hike mounted up. "Well, I can't say I care for your hedge," he said, smiling thinly.

"Then you'll do somethin' about it?"

Hike spurred his dead horse. "I have a plan," he lied.

TBC