The Night Mother

[Barnak Pengryffin]

By the time Barnak reached his rooms he had second-guessed a hundred times over his decision to tell the older Ruberagon boy about his plans. Nonetheless, outwardly he exuded nothing but self-confidence as he tossed the sack to his elf and crashed face-down on his bed, ignoring the creature's muffled cry as the knobbled object hit him head on and knocked the tiny elf to the floor.

[Binky]

Binky picked himself up and made sure that not a single precious seed had fallen to the floor. He paused and glanced toward the bed, but by now he had grown accustomed to his master collapsing fully clothed on top of his mattress and had learned not to disturb him, and he padded as silently as possible across the stone into the next room.

The only thing opulent about the washroom was its very existence. His master had ordered him to strip it bare of most of the hangings and decoration and all that remained was a heavy curtain across its tiny window to block out the light. He had, as ordered, prepared a large, round keg of darkest soil in the far corner of the room, and it was here that he now untied the bag and began to lay each bergundy bundle down as a mother would her crying babes. He spoke to them soothingly and stroked each of their faintly glossy skins before covering them lightly with a further handful of soil. Then he pulled over them a crudely cut hessian sheath, once the fluffy bathmat his master had ordered removed.

He had read very carefully the herbology book his master had borrowed. The little pods would be well cared for until they were ready to respond to his master's voice. And if they didn't... well, he knew what to do then, too.

Binky stood and brushed the floor clean, padding back out into the main room and placing another log on to keep the fire burning for what remained of the night. He watched his master sleep and, though the only smile that ever crossed his face was a sycophantic grimace, inwardly he began to like the boy.

[Binky]

Three Weeks Later

Binky smiled. Week by week he had tended them. Like a loving mother he had fed them, watered them, kept them warm, spoken to them encouraging words the like of which he would not even speak to his own children, had he the time of day for any. And he was sure that they had loved him back in their own way, their hungry thorns prickling outward as he approached the keg of soil where they lay, growing, thriving in the rich fertile home that he had provided.

The master came to them several times a day and spoke in a soft voice, mimicking the wrangling purr the tiny plants seemed to produce in human company and offering them morsels of blood as food. Binky always watched these exchanges very carefully. He knew it was not the master's blood. Instead, Binky knew, they were being given a taste only for impure blood, the blood of those whose parentage was not of the true wizarding kind. Binky never asked where the master was getting this blood, and the master never asked Binky where he got the special fertilisers or the soils or anything else that they needed. As a result, the little darlings hardly ever tried to scratch the master any more. He didn't smell right. He didn't smell like food.